How to lead a team through a change of course
And other musings on the career-version of the hero's journey
Happy new year! I took a few weeks off to recharge my proverbial brain crystals over the holidays and am starting 2023 feeling energized! Before break, I was especially drained because I had spent November and December sunsetting something that my team was working on. It made me realize that no one talks about how to effectively lead teams through a change of course. There’s literally no manual for this type of work, which makes it even harder (and perhaps even lonelier)! Lots of people are going through different versions of “a change of course” right now due to the weird tech environment we’re in, so I wrote about it. Hope it resonates.
As a builder, you’ve likely already been impacted by the tech recession we’re sailing through. I hope the impact has been small and inconsequential but in reality, it probably hasn’t been. Over 150,000 people have already been laid off in the tech sector alone which is ominous. Where does it stop?
As someone who has been playing the tech game for 13 years, this ain’t my first rodeo. A normal part of walking the path of a long career is a side quest (or several), that centers around tackling an unexpected challenge that you need to complete to get back on the path. It could be a team change, a role change, a reorg, a layoff, or any number of things that people in our industry are going through right now. You are on your own hero’s journey and it is guaranteed that you’ll encounter some unplanned for shit at some point. It’s a part of the game.
Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey is used as a storytelling tool, but if you squint it also describes the arc of a good career. On my hero’s journey, a lot of the trials and failure stuff has happened around making decisions and then having to change course during fluid times, like the beginning of covid (which I’m still processing tbh!). That first brush with hard decisions and changes of course breaks you. But as with all hard things your skin gets thicker with practice and by the fourth time it still sucks but you are at the very least better at doing it. If only more people talked about how to do this stuff well.
Your job is to land the plane safely and help people process the experience
As a builder, times like these can be extremely stressful as you’re responsible for both delivering business results in an unpredictable market, all while keeping spirits up so your team can ship. You’re also making hard decisions and then having to implement those hard decisions in a hopefully human-centric and thoughtful way.
Making hard decisions, while maintaining velocity, and acting with grace (and a little bit of style) is really fucking hard. To me the grace and style part comes into play when you actually care about the humans involved and consider their well-being in your decision calculus.
If you read anything about helping people process change or loss, a big theme that continuously presents itself is how to create closure when change happens. Helping people process change so they can move forward is incredibly important, yet it’s rarely something we do as managers. The majority of us are not therapists or psychologists, yet a lot of that foundational knowledge comes into play during change moments and we lack the training to do it well.
I can’t tell you a time I’ve sat in a meeting about a big change that will impact a team where someone asked, how do we help this person or team process this experience and get closure after it’s done (that wasn’t coming from me 😌). There’s a lot of room for builders to get better here.
Why help people process an experience?
Helping people go through and then process an experience has simple knock-on effects that will help your team be high-performing down the road. High-performing teams have trust, psychological safety, and morale so they can innovate. In order to keep a team humming, it means you have to manage them through crises in ways that aren’t dispiriting.
So why is closure important? And why should you create it intentionally?
It keeps team morale high: Creating closure can help improve team morale and prevent any negative feelings or unfinished business from lingering. This is especially important if the project was particularly challenging or stressful.
It keeps velocity high: When team members have closure on a project, they can move on to their next work with a fresh mind and be more productive as they move forward.
It allows you to be better next time: Reviewing and reflecting on the project can help identify any lessons learned that can be applied to future projects. Build smarter, build better next time!
It preserves the hard-won learnings: Documenting and archiving the project's process, outcomes, and lessons learned will preserve hard-won learnings and allow them to be passed along to make future teams smarter.
It builds respect for the leader, team, and company: People leave companies, don’t let them leave with a bad taste in their mouth.
In order for forgiveness to happen, something has to die. - Brené Brown in Rising Strong: How the Ability to Reset Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead
How to create closure for teams
So how do you actually help a team process an experience and get closure so they can move forward? Here’s a punch list:
Ace the communications: It is so important to be transparent and upfront about what is happening and why it’s happening. This will give the team time to mentally prepare for the end and allow them to wrap up any remaining tasks. Don’t slack on perfecting who knows, when they know, and how they are told, and what you say. This matters a great deal and in my experience, people often fuck up the hardest here.
Carve out time to review and reflect: Host a retrospective as a team to look back on the work that was done. Review and reflect on your successes and challenges. This can help team members feel a sense of accomplishment and closure. It can also help identify any lessons learned that can be applied to future projects.
Celebrate achievements: Recognize and celebrate the team's achievements and contributions to the project. These exercises make people feel seen, make their work feel valued, and boost morale and give team members a sense of accomplishment that they can carry to other things.
Document and archive the project: Document the project's process, outcomes, and lessons learned in an accessible way. Make sure the project's work and knowledge is not lost and can be accessed by future team members or stakeholders.
Thank the team: Show appreciation for the team's hard work and dedication to the project in company-wide forums. And don’t be stingy with bonuses, baby.
Required reading during the dark times
Finally, I’ll leave you with some more reading on changing course and building better during times like these:
Matt Mochary on Lenny’s Podcast - Great words of wisdom from a CEO coach who helps CEO process/act on some of the things above!
Rising Strong: How the Ability to Reset Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead by Brené Brown - Need to reread, it’s been too long!
The Hard Thing About Hard Things by Ben Horowitz - Seminal, everyone should read this.
Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard by Dan Heath and Chip Heath - Helping people want to change is another helpful frame on making course changes.
Building layoffs on a Healthy Foundation by Kellan Elliott-McCrea - Used to work with Kellan at Etsy long ago and can confirm he cares deeply about the humans
Article image by Veranika Zhuraulevich
Important topic, thanks for sharing your experiences Nickey.
To your point about giving your team the opportunity (space) to process + close a chapter so they can open up a new one -> I've generally found the Bridges Transition Model to be most prescient: https://wmbridges.com/about/what-is-transition/
One of the core concepts in it being that people need to traverse a "neutral zone" as part of the transition process. That process may be quick for some and slow for others - but you can't skip past it regardless.
So few instances of this done well. Some of it has to do with the mindset and language: “kill a project” “sunset the initiative”. Does it have to be so fatal? Imho “closure” can still occur when we evolve & move on, and a prerequisite for that is for everyone to be a part of the decision.
Too often there’s secrecy on why a certain thing is getting killed. Unless there are some tangible business risks, it’s so much better to spend the extra time and inform the team that a decision is coming, explain the tradeoffs, and leaders would be surprised how often a team will come to the same conclusion - we should stop X and move on to Y.
All of the above is harder if roles have to also go away, but the amount of angst and anger could be greatly reduced still.