Should you always hold teams sacred?

Written By Allison Pollard

Photo by sophiadphotography

When an organization adopts agile, there is typically a shift to forming cross-functional and self-organizing teams.  Create persistent teams.  Bring the work the team.  It takes time to reach high performance, so don’t disrupt the team.  Hold the team sacred because team members will learn, grow, and challenge one another in the safety that the team provides.

But what about teams that have been together for a long time and are not actively learning, growing, or challenging one another?  That are not striving for high performance?  The ones that are mired in destructive conflict?  What do you do when complacency has set in?

I vote for disruption.

Change the work and what success looks like.  Change the people.  Change the environment.  Change processes or communication to the team.  Don’t change everything, but please change something!

Agile is about teams that are striving for high performance. For excellence.  What does that look like?  I like Lyssa Adkins’s high performance tree metaphor:

How do your teams rate?  Are they striving for high performance or ripe for disruption?

Allison Pollard

Allison Pollard is a coach, consultant, and trainer who brings the power of relationship systems intelligence to go beyond tasks, roles, and frameworks to create energy for change. She engages with people and teams in a down-to-earth way to build trust and listen for signals to help them learn more and improve. Allison focuses on creating alignment and connection for people to solve business problems together. Her experience includes working with teams and leaders in energy, retail, financial, real estate, and transportation industries to help improve their project/product delivery and culture. Allison currently volunteers as program director for Women in Agile’s mentorship program. Her agile community focus is championing new voices and amplifying women as mentors and sponsors for the next generation of leaders. Allison earned her bachelor’s degrees in computer science, mathematics, and English from Southern Methodist University in Dallas, TX. She is a Certified Professional Co-Active Coach (CPCC), a foodie, and proud glasses wearer. Allison is a prolific speaker at professional groups and international conferences, including Scrum Gatherings and the Agile Alliance Agile20xx conferences. Allison is co-owner of Helping Improve LLC.

http://www.allisonpollard.com
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