Leverage Small Teams: Faster Change

My team and my peer’s team were dwindling over the last year because of team attrition.

As a manager a shrinking team made me worried about my own future. If the team size gets too small: the need for a manager decreases, the management overhead per individual contributor increases without adding significant value.

At the same time, I found an upside to having a smaller team: faster change.

Where Large is Good

When the team is large and when there is a decision for something new, the amount of discussion I needed to have was a lot. There were more people, more viewpoints, more objections, more of everything to stop a decision from implementing a decision.

In a large organization, this is one of the benefits over small - more viewpoints ideally lead to a better decision.

Where Small is Better

When the team became smaller, changes I want had less resistance because: there were fewer people to discuss, fewer viewpoints, fewer objections. In essence, fewer of everything to stop a decision to change.

Fewer: viewpoints, discussions, explanations, people to teach, and shorter time to implement change!

Embrace Small

With this, I do not fear the shrinking team anymore. In fact, I now take advantage of it to implement change!