Context – At the time of writing, I lead a team that’s gone from 3 people to 15 and growing in less than 2 years.
We’ve gone from a fully flat hierarchy to the creation of 4 distinct units with separate responsibilities and contributions to the delivery of our strategy.
It’s amazing for so many reasons, but we’ve also started to experience the teething problems that accompany team expansions. Projects get stalled out, it’s unclear who should run with what, units deliver some of the same work twice, things fall between chairs, and it’s hard for team members to deeply understand the contributions from other units.
This isn’t the first time we’re experiencing team-growth challenges, and it won’t be the last.
For this iteration, which is essentially the first transition from a single-squad setup to a multiple squad setup, the key is going to be clear documentation how the full team contributes to strategy delivery, and what key levers each unit has at their disposal to work with.
From the top, this living document includes
- Diagnosis
- Strategy to address the situation
- Principles we operate with
- How we’re organised and how responsibilities cascade through the team.
- Key projects to deliver
- Current SOPs (tactical, not operational) per strategic focus area (in our case channels and initiatives)
- Key communication guidelines
- A core customer experience we want to deliver
- How we measure results
- What our work cadence is like
- How we collaborate with other teams in the organisation
ALL of the above was implicitly known in a team of 3.
MOST of it was still clear in a team of 5.
With the implementation of a single distinct unit with their own leadership inside our team though, the above list started being something the team was losing touch with.
A living document we can all look at for reference, and hold each other accountable to is the next iteration. This requires a slight adaptation of our command and control processes to incorporate a new tool – but it’s incredibly well worth it for the clarity gains.