When a team isn’t successful, there is usually tremendous pressure to figure out how to make it better. Sometimes the best solution is to simply give up. If your team is some version of a committee or task force and one or more of the following conditions are present, consider disbanding the team:
- The team doesn’t have a clear goal. It is terribly difficult to reach an undefined destination.
- The team doesn’t have the right resources. Skills, tools, time, and motivation are all required elements of an effective team.
- Stakeholders don’t care. A change in the organization’s strategies and goals might put the team’s work at the bottom of the priority list.
There’s such a social stigma associated with quitting. Disbanding a team may be frustrating and painful, but it can be equally painful to try to hold it together. The people on the team can be re-deployed to projects with a better chance for success, and applying your resources to where they can do the most good seems like a pretty smart action to me.
