Team Stability Is Not Binary
For quite some time now I was planning to write a post about team stability. As someone who has worked with teams a lot, I had formed my opinion and was pretty confident about it. Or so I thought. As I started writing down my thoughts I just needed to double-check one little detail real quick. That led to another thing I wanted to read up on. And yet another. And then it slowly but surely spiraled out of control and I ended up reading six different books on teamwork, before I found myself digesting academic papers. And as so often: the more I learned, the less confident I became in my beliefs.
One thing that has changed for me, though, is the way I would state the question about team stability now.
Ten years ago I would have asked: Why do we want stable teams? (yes, very leading question)
Five years ago it would have been: Do we want stable or fluid teams?
Two years ago it was: What are the pros and cons of stable and fluid teams?
One year ago: How stable should our teams be?
While I think the last question is much more mature than the first three, I now believe it’s still a bit too superficial. An even better one would be: Which trade offs should we make, in order to find the best level of stability for our teams?
In this post I want to discuss two aspects of team stability that I believe are often misunderstood or oversimplified: 1) The question of team stability is not a binary one. 2) Stability is not independent of other aspects of team design.
Team Stability Is a Continuum
Teams are never 100% stable nor 100% fluid. 100% stability would mean that nobody ever leaves the team (not even for vacation or sick leave) and no new member joins. 100% fluidity would mean that our teams would constantly form and reform, without ever getting anything done. So we should think of stability as a sliding scale rather than an on-off-switch. We don’t have stable or fluid team, our teams are more or less stable or fluid.
Illustation 1: Binary view vs. viewing team stability as a continuum
Once we use this metaphor, we can discuss more nuanced questions like:
Where are we now on this spectrum?
What are we getting out of the status quo?
What potential is being unused right now?
How would e.g. 80% stability look like for us? Or 20%?
What would happen, if we would dial stability up or down for certain teams?
A second aspect to this is that not all teams are the same, especially in larger organizations. When we ask questions like “Do we want stable or fluid teams?”, we imply that all of our teams are (and should be) the same. But is that really true? Probably not. Some types of teams benefit more from high levels of fluidity than others. And some suffer more from its downsides than others.
Stability Is Not an Independent Variable
Team stability is an important aspect of team configuration, but it does not exist in isolation. Two other important factors are often highlighted: team size and cross-functionality. If we stick to our slider metaphor, we can now look at these factors as three separate sliders. But here comes the catch: The sliders are not independent of each other. We can’t just dial all three of them to the max. What happens instead is that, as soon as we move two of them up, the third one will move down (and vice versa).
Illustration 2: We can’t dial up all three variables at the same time
Daniel Ståhl describes these dependencies way more elegantly than I could. In his paper on team stability he introduces the Iron Triangle of Teaming with the three constraints Smallness, Stability and Wholeness (which I call cross-functionallity). He states that, at least in large scale development contexts, teams can be either
small and stable, which means they will be dependent on other teams to finish a meaningful piece of work (because they are not cross-functional enough to build it on their own);
stable and truly cross-functional, which means they will grow very large in size to combine all the different skills that are needed:
small and cross-functional, which means they cannot be very stable. Members have to rotate in and out on a regular basis so the team has access to all the necessary skills without growing in size.
Illustration 3: The Iron Triangle of Teaming
Take Aways
Instead of asking binary questions like “Should we have stable or fluid teams?” we should view team stability as
a continuum
context dependent, meaning that not all of our teams might benefit from the same configuration
a part of a system which also includes team size and cross-functionality (and possibly other variables).
We might have more fruitful discussions and find better solutions, if we instead ask ourselves, which trade-offs are most beneficial in our context.
P.S. There’s obviously much more to say about team stability. Write a comment and let me know which aspects you are most interested in.
Möchten Sie Flow und Effektivität verbessern?
Zusammen mit meinem Bruder Stefan (ja, das sind wir auf dem Bild) gebe ich am 18./19.12.2024 eine Schulung in Hamburg. Dort werden wir mit vielen Praxisbeispielen erörtern, wie man Unternehmen auf Effektivität, Flow und Innovation ausrichten kann.