Teams’ lifecycles should be designed with fixed-term membership and an automatic review, so that healthy questioning of their existence occurs on a regular basis. And this review should be more than a simple review. It is a beginning, an end… and a new beginning. Create, disband and recreate teams, but never give them an unlimited life span.

To fix a term for teams and their membership sounds like yet another ‘obvious’ thing to do, but the reality is that in many cases teams seem to have a life of their own and tend to drag on well beyond their ‘sell-by date’. It should be a simple discipline to design a beginning and an end for teams, with their goals, objectives and milestones mapped out in between. But I would not fix the end to coincide with the moment when everything has been achieved, but around the achievement of milestones. Fixing terms will focus people’s minds on what needs to be achieved and will help achieve it in a ‘shorter’ period of time. The team’s membership can even be totally or partially modified or upgraded within the total life of the team. Some people would say, “Yes, of course.” However, for each team disbandment or simple existence query, there are hundreds of team formations. We are very good at formation, but not so good at declaring that the mission has been accomplished or a key milestone achieved and that a new team should take over.

I am stretching the argument here, because I know that in some cases the membership of the ‘new’ team may be very similar to the ‘old’ one. But this is not the issue. It should be a matter of principle that the new team is launched, if need be, the day after the previous team has been ‘disbanded’. This fixed-term life has the advantage of reminding everybody of the fact that things won’t be allowed to simply drag on with peaks of excitement and periods of silence. It forces the different functions providing members to a cross-functional team to re-think their presence, the value of their contributions and to decide on the best people to join and serve in those teams.

Examples of these fixed-term teams that have worked well in my consulting work are:

• Interdisciplinary brand marketing teams that are formed to prepare a business plan, strategic plan or annual cycle and are disbanded as soon as the budget has been approved. The next team is in charge of the implementation of the strategy and may or may not have the same cross-disciplinary members.
• Product development teams that focus on reaching a particular milestone and that are disbanded when they reach it, only to be re-created immediately for the next phase. Whether the project leader is the same or not, is irrelevant. The declaration of the ‘end’ is a terribly symbolic thing to do, as is the declaration of a new beginning. It also punctuates the fact that the time has come to get new membership applications.

Some people may call this just a game, but organisational life is full of games and rituals and this one adds many benefits such as:

• continuous focus on outcomes
• guaranteed review of membership
• guaranteed assessment of effectiveness
• provision to change leadership to one more appropriate to the phase

To some extent, fixed-term teams are the equivalent of parking spaces that are signposted ‘2 hour maximum, no return within 1 hour’. The notice is very clear: this is as long as you can stay and once you have left, you can’t come back within the hour to give a chance to others to park. Even the second part could apply to teams, although there may be cases where that may not be realistic.

All teams have a clause in their mission statements: this team will be disbanded, no matter what, by midnight (date here).

Publicise internal team formations and team discharges heavily.

Consider some functions or team memberships as ‘may not return within six months’.

Copyright © - Leandro Herrero - 2008