You want to make a change to the organization or the team.

You could reorg the team, assign new managers, and hope someone doesn’t quit.

Or not. Remember, hope is not a strategy.

Here’s a principle to guide organizational changes: Introduce the change before introducing the change.

Or as we say in Indiana where I grew up: Boil the frog.

The best team split I ever pulled off went like this.

November

I found out my team was going to grow from 7 to 12 people in the year ahead.

In my 1:1s with my team I had discussions like these over the next several months.

Good news! The company sees a lot of value in what we’re doing and wants to invest more in us. We’re going to be growing from our 7 engineers now to 12 next year! More details to come. What are your initial thoughts?

December

Remember how we’re going to grow to 12 people next year? That’s too many for me to effectively manage everyone. It’s likely we’ll end up splitting the team so you can have the attention from a manager that you deserve. I don’t yet know what that split will look like or when it will occur. But I don’t want it to be a surprise for you.

January

I’ve been thinking about options for our team split. Option $A has us divide based on area of product ownership. Option $B has us divide based on area of the infrastructure / architecture. I don’t yet know who will go where or which team I might manage. What are your thoughts?

February

Thanks for your thoughts on those team configurations. After discussing it with team members as well as $MYBOSS and $THEIRBOSS, this is what we’re likely to do. I share all this out of transparency. Put a huge asterisk next to all of this because it could change tomorrow. I don’t expect it to, but it’s always a possibility. Do you have thoughts on which of these teams you’d prefer to be on? And why?

March

Alright, we still haven’t decided who will manage which team, but this is likely to be the composition of the split. For now and the future we’re one team. Based on our hiring plan, we’ll probably split around July.

April

Remember how when we hired $X they were interested in becoming a manager? It’s not fully baked yet, but I’ve been working with them over the past 4 months as we’ve discussed in other 1:1s. They’re demonstrating the necessary results and motivation for the role. I think there’s a strong chance they’ll be prepared to take over one of our teams as manager when we split. I want to start gathering feedback now though on your reactions to that, concerns, thoughts. This isn’t a one time conversation so if you think of things after our 1:1 or can better articulate them over email, that’s ok too.

May

The feedback on $X has been largely positive. Assuming they continue to execute on their roadmap to manager, I think they’ll be ready to take over a team in July. Right now we’re thinking team $Y. Any thoughts? Additionally, I feel humbled by this but it looks like right now I’m being asked to hire another manager and manage them as well as $X. I know that’s a bit of a shift for the team.

June

Here’s the plan. $X will start managing team $Y in July. I’ll continue to manage team $Z as well as $X while I recruit another manager for $Z.

July

Ok. I want to review the team spl… Direct Report: Can we just do the split already? I’ve had some initial 1:1s with $X. I feel like we’ve been talking about this for months. Let’s just do it!

My work here is done. 🐸