Using Self-Selection to Create Journey Teams at Avvo
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About this week’s chapter
This week’s chapter is a case study of a self-selection team formation exercise we used at Avvo. I talk about the process we created, its rationale, our experience building the teams, and some lessons we learned from it.
I would not suggest creating an organization using an exercise like this unless you are in our situation. We were moving from one organizational structure to a completely new one. Self-selection gave the people in the team much more control than they would have had in a normal top-down re-organization. It helped avoid a lot of the resistance and dissatisfaction that is often a part of a re-org and helped the people involved feel a sense of commitment to its success.
If you’ve never heard of self-selection team formation or are curious about how you might organize one, this will be an interesting read!
This is chapter 28 of It Depends.
Using Self-Selection to Create Journey Teams at Avvo
originally published on December 9, 2018
Many companies are interested in experimenting with self-selection to organize their teams. I see questions about the process often in online forums. While there are some excellent books and blog posts on the topic, I thought I would share a self-selection exercise we did at my last company, Avvo. It worked well and with relatively little drama. If you are considering a similar exercise, you might consider this approach.
I joined Avvo as its’ CTO in the summer of 2016. At the beginning of 2017, we moved to a new team structure. The basis of the new team structure was the customer journeys through our product. The new teams were naturally called “Journey Teams.” I describe Journey Teams briefly in my talk “Building a Culture of Continuous Improvement in Your Company.”
Traditionally, at Avvo, the leadership organized the development teams top-down. I had heard from the individual developers some frustration at how they were placed into teams and moved without consultation. I decided that this re-organization was an excellent way to demonstrate the more inclusive and autonomous culture that I was building. Allowing people to self-select their new team seemed a perfect way to break from the past and set expectations for the future.
Preparation
We decided on six Journey Teams. Four were product-focused, supporting customer journeys. The other two were internally focused. One Journey Team supported our developers with tooling to help them manage their services. The other internal journey team focused on supplying business analytics to the marketing, finance, and sales teams.
If someone chooses a team, they need to understand what the team is and why they would want to join it. With our direct reports, the Chief Product Officer and I set the number and charters of the Journey Teams.
Once we set the number and missions of the Journey Teams, we picked an initial leadership group for each team. That leadership group consisted of one senior member of each functional specialty that would be part of the team. The product teams each had a Product Manager, a Development Lead, a Test Lead, a UX Lead, a Data Engineering Lead, and a Data Analytics Lead.
The new Journey Team leadership groups were each responsible for setting up the initial scaffolding of their teams. The scaffolding included: fleshing out their missions, establishing their spheres of responsibilities, putting together some initial strategies they would use, and choosing their core metrics. As they progressed on these, they would review with each other and the senior product and technology leadership. We needed to ensure that every part of the product and platform had an owner and that the plans and metrics made sense.
As the Journey Team leadership groups made progress in building their plans, they put together staffing estimates on what they would need to execute their strategies. The staffing estimates were valuable as they helped me decide what staffing I would need in the next year’s budget. The budget process was happening in parallel with this effort.
As we moved into December 2016, the leadership of each of the Journey Teams had made enough progress that I felt comfortable setting the self-section exercise right after the New Year's break in January. At this point, the board had approved the budget. The CPO and I could determine what staffing we would allocate to each team based on their mission and strategy. Each Journey Team then needed to think about how they would structure their efforts based on their assigned staffing.
The Exercise
The self-selection exercise structure was a job fair with a festive atmosphere. The entire product, design, development, test, data engineering, and data analytics teams assembled. We had cupcakes and drinks. One by one, each Journey Team leadership group came up to pitch their team to the rest of the organization. They described their mission, goals, initial plans, and the planned size of the team. Some had already designed logos and slogans. Each team was selling their mission to their peers. Some teams put a lot of effort and salesmanship into their pitches. Other groups had a difficult time articulating why people should join them.
After the last Journey Team had presented, every person in the room got a card. The card contained a space for their name and a list of the Journey Teams with areas to put their order of preference. We asked everyone to rank their choices entirely, just in case we would need them.
When all the cards were filled out and collected, the meeting adjourned.
Finalizing the selection
After the self-selection meeting, the people managers from the organization met. The responses from each card were now in a spreadsheet showing each person’s preferences, the number of people currently assigned to each Journey Team, and the number of people budgeted to be on the team.
The people managers were part of the process because they knew their reports’ interests, challenges, growth plans, and interpersonal issues. They were there to advocate for their employees’ wishes. They were also there to understand the process. With an understanding of the process, they could explain to someone why they didn’t get their first choice. The people managers helped to ensure that each team had the best diversity of skills, backgrounds, and experience so that they would have the highest chance of succeeding.
The process of matching people and teams was iterative. As the teams started to fill in, we had to go back and re-adjust a few times. The task of matching people and groups went relatively quickly, only about 90 minutes for a 120-person organization. Along the way, we shifted one headcount between teams to accommodate a developer’s professional development interests.
We matched 99% of the people to their first or second choice of Journey Team. In the case where someone got their third choice, we had a reasonable explanation for them about the decision.
Once we set the initial rosters for each Journey Team, the individuals had a chance to review and give feedback. For the cases where people didn’t get their first choice, their manager could discuss it with them in their 1:1s.
While we were open to further iteration to accommodate any concerns, it turned out that it wasn’t necessary. The Journey Teams and individuals were all content with the matching.
A week after the self-selection exercise, we sent out the official announcement of the new team rosters. The teams started meeting to flesh out the initial plans, and individuals moved to sit with their new teammates. We made it clear to everyone that if they were unhappy with their decision, we would help them switch.
A Retrospective on the exercise a few weeks later found very high satisfaction from the organization with the process and the teams it produced.
The Result
The exercise itself was a success. It had tremendous engagement from the organization. People felt empowered in the activity and committed to their new team because it was their choice. Only one person switched teams in the three months after the exercise and only a handful in the rest of the year.
What I would do differently Next Time
The process of preparing for the exercise from each of the Journey Teams created some tension in the organization. The Journey Team leadership groups spent much time meeting together in the weeks before the meeting. The groups weren’t transparent enough about what they were doing. We, as leaders, hadn’t set reasonable expectations about communication. We started encouraging them to send updates to the organization on their progress, but it came later than it should have. Next time, I would give more guidance to the leadership teams about how they could go about their initial organizing. I would put tighter time expectations on them and ensure they were transparent to the rest of the organization.
The presentations themselves were a bit of a challenge for some teams. We did encourage groups to make their presentations fun and to sell their missions. We didn’t help the teams with their presentations, though, and we didn’t do a run-through with them. The disparity in presentations did mean that some groups attracted an inordinate amount of interest. Next time, I would have a run-through where each group could see each other’s presentations, and we could give some advice to help improve their presentations.
Regular Self-Selection Exercises
Some in the organization were so happy with the self-selection exercise that they suggested we repeat it every year. I know that there are organizations that do this. From my experience, I can see it working within a small company where almost everyone already has a good connection with each other. Going through the forming, storming, and norming phases in a smaller organization would take much less time. In a larger organization, regular re-organization would mean much wasted time trying to get teams going.
For Avvo, the self-selection made sense at a juncture when we were doing a complete organizational restructuring. The old teams were utterly gone. It took a while for the new teams to get going, but once they established themselves, they worked well, and it made little sense to change them again. Individuals always had the option to move between teams if they felt ready for new challenges. The organization was growing, and so the teams were always hiring. If we had been in a more constrained environment, we would still have done our best to facilitate smooth movement within the organization.
The core thing with an exercise like self-selecting teams or any other activity is to be deliberate in your intent. Why are you doing the exercise? What benefits do you expect? What are the downsides? If it is successful, what will you do next? How will you roll it back if it is unsuccessful, or what will you do instead?
Conclusion
Letting the people in your organization self-select into teams can be an active driver of engagement and autonomy. The exercise we did at Avvo was successful for us and is worth looking at as inspiration for your process. If you are considering self-selection, be deliberate about your goals, what aspects of self-selection help you achieve them, and what you might do if the goals are unmet.
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