Teams are immutable
About change and stability
“Teams are immutable” - what a weird phrase. I can’t remember where I read it first but it stuck in my head ever since.
At first, it puzzled me because how can teams be immutable—incapable of or susceptible to change—if we live and work in ever-changing environments?
Later, it grew on me: Yes, teams are a unit of people who figured out how to be (more or less) effective with each other. They figured out how to communicate, collaborate, and succeed. But if you change one element, a team member leaves or joins, the mission, rituals, or some other defining factor changes, you won’t have the same team anymore. You are creating a new team that will need to start to figure out all these things again.
In the agile world, this is called “the storming phase”, often described as a one-time event at the founding of a new team. Agile coaches rarely describe it as a loop caused by internal and external team changes.
Much later I found the full quote:
Teams are immutable.
Every time someone leaves or joins, you have a new team, not a changed team.
Richard Dalton, Head Of Design at Verizon
In an ever-changing world, it’s valuable to keep in mind that every change is also a challenge to the high-performing teams we’ve built over time. So remember this before you swap people, change team missions or hire a new leader. Your teams won’t be the same for a while.