Team ‘On Watch’

When we restructure and merge work teams, it’s easy to disregard the disruption the merger might cause to the performance of the new team. If performance is hard to observe, it’s too easy to turn a blind eye to any such disruption. Yet teams are a central driver of an organisation’s performance, so they are worth keeping an eye on.

One industry where performance of merged teams is often more observable is the investment funds sector. And in this sector, when investment teams are merged, the fund involved is frequently put on some form of ‘watch’.

It appears that research houses in the investment funds sector believe that an internal restructure to ?merge teams may bring a risk to the ongoing performance of a fund. Whether a team merger in an investment fund does actually impact ongoing investment performance in a negative manner will only be observable over time. That period may be months or run into years. In effect, by placing a fund ‘on watch’, a research house is saying, ‘We have previously rated this fund, but given this significant organisational change, we now have it under review.’

In the investment sector, other changes which may lead to an ‘on watch’ status include the loss of a key person, a takeover (hostile or otherwise), the investment team being poached by a rival company or a significant revision to the fund’s investment strategy. That’s how big a team merger is in an industry where performance is reasonably observable.?

This practice of ‘on watch’ from the investment sector is a good guide to leaders in other sectors; when merging teams through an internal restructure, put the leaders of the team ‘on watch’. Let the leaders directly involved in the merger know that you are giving them extra support and closely observing the team’s performance. Through this observation and support, the plan is to move quickly through the potentially disruptive period of a merger.