Dynamic Reteaming, 2nd Edition

Chapter 1. The Evolution of Teams

Think of a team that you were a part of in the past. Can you remember when you joined or when you left that team? Many of us aren’t on the same teams forever—our team experiences have beginnings as well as endings. And other people might come and go from our teams in the middle of all that. An ecocycle, like the example shown in Figure 1-1, is a useful metaphor for thinking about the evolution of a team and how it changes over time.

Figure 1-1. An ecocycle based on the adaptive cycle by Lance H. Gunderson and C.S. Holling, Panarchy; and Keith McCandless, Henri Lipmanowicz, and Fisher Qua, Liberating Structures

Here’s a short example from forestry to illustrate the general concept of an ecocycle that I will then relate to dynamic reteaming. In the Los Padres National Forest near where I live in California, we can witness the ecocycle of oak trees firsthand. At a very high level it works like this: Acorns drop from the trees. They find their way underground and take root–like a birth phase. Next is the adolescence phase, in which the young oak trees grow and grow and grow. Then there is an accumulation taking place as the forest becomes denser. The trees that thrive get really thick and develop canopies—they are in the maturity phase. The trees that do not do well might never get to adolescence and will instead struggle and probably die off. This ...