A common anti-pattern that I’ve seen is managers taking a highly effective team and scattering them across a larger number of teams in the hopes that they’ll take everything they know and make those new teams great. Then instead of having one great team, they’ll have many great teams.
At one client we started calling that Monkey Grassing, after a common weed in that area. You can apparently pick up an handful of monkey grass and throw it across the lawn and it will re-root itself and keep growing.
Unfortunately, that doesn’t work with people. If we take that one highly effective team and scatter the people, we now end up with no effective teams.
An effective team is not just the sum of it’s parts. Its not the individuals that made that original team great, it was the dynamic between them. When we break that team apart, we’ve just destroyed that thing that had made them great in the first place.
Is it possible that some of those new teams will eventually become great on their own? Certainly, but it’s not guaranteed and it absolutely won’t happen immediately.
If you have a great team, celebrate that fact and support them. Keep them together and let them achieve amazing things.