How often do you move team members around to cross-pollinate skills and culture? - SmartBrief

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How often do you move team members around to cross-pollinate skills and culture?

The most recent SmartBrief on Leadership poll: How often do you move team members around to cross-pollinate skills and culture?

2 min read

By Mike Figliuolo 01/17/20

Leadership

How often do you move team members around to cross-pollinate skills and culture?

SmartBrief

SmartPulse — our weekly nonscientific reader poll in SmartBrief on Leadership — tracks feedback from over 250,000 business leaders. We run the poll question each week in our newsletter.

How often do you move team members around to cross-pollinate skills and culture?

  • Rarely: 34%
  • Occasionally: 30.88%
  • Never: 18.41%
  • All the time: 16.71%

Don’t let them get stagnant. Leaving your people in the same role, same location or same team for extended periods of time creates risks and misses opportunities. The risk is they get bored or disillusioned and when that happens, performance drops or they leave the organization. By not moving them around, you’re also missing an opportunity to spread and reinforce culture, build new skills and strengthen co-worker relationships. Granted, there’s a balance of how often you move them, but no movement at all is problematic. Think about how you can create some fresh experiences for the members of your team. These don’t have to be permanent reassignments — projects are a great way to get things moving around.

Mike Figliuolo is managing director of thoughtLEADERS. Before launching his own company, he worked at McKinsey & Co., Capital One and Scotts Miracle-Gro. He is a graduate of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. He’s the author of three leadership books: “One Piece of Paper,” “Lead Inside the Box” and “The Elegant Pitch.”