The Changing Faces of the Team

It must be very interesting to work at the White House during any administration let alone the current one. I loved the West Wing TV show! Imagine showing up to work not knowing if your boss will be the same person it was yesterday. Imagine the uncertainty this must create. The inconsistency in trying to finalise important pieces of work. And this is on a grand scale!

I’ve experienced something similar with a previous employer. In the period I worked for this organisation, I had more managers in five years than I had had in my entire working life, some 25 years at that time. During that period there is a stand out time when the revolving door of managers had a negative effect.

We were implementing a major project into the organisation. This project would deliver massive benefits to the business. It had been attempted before but never in the way we were doing it. Failure was not an option. In the midst of delivering this project, our business unit saw a change in manager at least four or five times, sometimes the same person twice. Some managers were only given a month to prove themselves. When that didn’t happen, they were moved on. Not the best strategy when you have a major goal to achieve.

For us, the team, the consequences of these continual changes was frustrating to say the least. Information was not being passed from the departing manager to the arriving manager even though the departing manager was sometimes still working in our business unit. The new manager was not sharing information with us, working at a lower level then he should have been and basically protecting his position. In some ways you could understand why they did this when their future was not assured. This made it very hard for us to get the project off the ground let alone succeed.

Changes in leaders and team members will happen. It’s inevitable. When it happens too often there is uncertainty, loss of continuity and performance dives. It’s chaos!

Do you have a revolving door in your business? Why?