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Adding a team was the wrong strategic decision

learnings.aleixmorgadas.dev

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Re: Adding a team was the wrong strategic decision

#21

Post by stephbook »

cbbb wrote: post #9

The CX team was created to facilitate the creation of a centralized dashboard to help support staff resolve customer issues quickly. The manager decided there wasn't enough alignment (no "human connections"), and therefore each team should build an individual dashboard, then later (how much later?) realized the teams did not have the skills/motivation to do so. The justification for why the manager steered the projec…

It had the feeling the author made his backend guys develop "product teams dashboards", which they lacked the skill to implement.

Even though that's not what leadership wanted and they tasked the CX team with the dashboards (..for good reason?)

I was definitely confused the whole article and have had to guess at the author's intention. I hope the communication was clearer during working hours..

Re: Adding a team was the wrong strategic decision

#22

Post by misiek08 »

So good to read one single sentence. After the team wasn't delivering (it's separate discussion why and who was at fault) - it was disassembled and issues were still being resolved. So much better than big corps leaving people as-is and then making hardcore reductions seen as bad...

Re: Adding a team was the wrong strategic decision

#24

Post by ytoawwhra92 »

lostdog wrote: post #10
belval wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What exactly should the author have done differently? It's part of the leadership roles to understand the power structures within your organization. Reading between the lines, a new team was thrusted onto an arguably functioning sub-org to address concerns that they had not themselves raised. Then the expectation was for that sub-org to take a hit on their KPIs to onboard to the new teams platform. It's not "tribal"…

The best managers I've seen would turn this situation into a headcount request. The problem is leadership has priorities 1-5. Your team works on 1-3, but the PM keeps getting hassled about 4 and 5, so they look for levers to get them to happen. In this situation, the PM scrounged up headcount from elsewhere, but if you present the option of adding headcount to the existing team, then you create a more harmonious opti…

> letting leadership feel the consequences of its decisions is a reasonable thing to do in this case

In this case the consequence of leadership's decision was a permanent solution to the CX problem with no permanent increase in headcount.

"Sometimes when you do things right, people won't be sure you've done anything at all."

Re: Adding a team was the wrong strategic decision

#25

Post by recursivecaveat »

stackskipton wrote: post #6
nate8bit wrote: post #5

Am I missing something - what's with the "tribe" terminology?

It's part of Spotify model, here is a blog article explaining it: https://www.atlassian.com/agile/agile-at-scale/spotify EDIT: Just like Agile, it's poorly implemented at most companies and can lead to a ton of fighting due to multiple reporting arrows coming off employees.

My immediate assocation with the term would be 'tribalism' so a lot of in-fighting seems on-brand.

Re: Adding a team was the wrong strategic decision

#26

Post by KronisLV »

> The dashboard wasn’t that complex: View information, perform some API calls. Replicate what we were doing in the DB and API manually but in a web page.

> People weren’t comfortable with frontend development. Indeed, some shared that they were backend developers, and they wouldn’t do any HTML work.

Thankfully Claude Code exists. And something like Vue, if you want to keep things simple enough for some internal dashboard. Grab PrimeVue and it mostly gets out of your way.

Re: Adding a team was the wrong strategic decision

#27

Post by wjnc »

belval wrote: post #3
farazbabar wrote: post #2

This team does not report to me, I will ensure their demise and make sure their work is never adapted by anyone within my sphere of control. It is easy to justify such behavior behind snazzy terms but I have seen this so many times that it isn't funny. Sometimes leadership may make a decision you may not agree with or even understand but focusing on why it happened, what you can do to align yourself and how you can h…

What exactly should the author have done differently? It's part of the leadership roles to understand the power structures within your organization. Reading between the lines, a new team was thrusted onto an arguably functioning sub-org to address concerns that they had not themselves raised. Then the expectation was for that sub-org to take a hit on their KPIs to onboard to the new teams platform. It's not "tribal"…

What about expecting them to suck up their pride, work with the other lead for a comprehensive plan that includes possible WONTFIX-es?

Strategy and leadership don’t come to exist on their own. It’s middle management that has the best operational and tactical view bear none. Use that to influence decision making instead of complaining. (Yes, this is a theme in my professional life. Our middle managers don’t know their own worth. Pretty please give me Plans about what you Want to Deliver. Those are so much better than general strategies.)

Re: Adding a team was the wrong strategic decision

#29

Post by order-matters »

farazbabar wrote: post #2

This team does not report to me, I will ensure their demise and make sure their work is never adapted by anyone within my sphere of control. It is easy to justify such behavior behind snazzy terms but I have seen this so many times that it isn't funny. Sometimes leadership may make a decision you may not agree with or even understand but focusing on why it happened, what you can do to align yourself and how you can h…

sports and competitive gaming can really highlight team attitude with this sort of thing.

if you are playing as a team, and someone on the team makes a committed decision then it no longer matters if it was the best decision or not given the info at hand - the team is committed. Everyone making an effort to make the best of ANY plan usually has way better results than a confused/sloppy execution of the best plan.

and with longer term plans, once everyone is moving together and following each others lead, you can quickly pivot into the right plan if something is very obviously wrong.

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