When three teams became one

For one of my MSc projects we built a digital marketing strategy for Ready Set StartUP UK, a business reality show about start-ups. I led a small team we called Team Gem. For the first few weeks it was easy. Everyone was motivated, and we met every week with an agenda.

Then, halfway through, our team was merged with two others into one social media campaign group of thirteen or more people. Each team had its own habits and its own reading of the brief. Instructions from the client and from the module leader were understood in different ways, and the group meetings became noticeably tense.

First, I asked the other team leaders to meet, and we agreed to keep everything in one place. I set up a Miro board for the whole group with the plan, the deadlines and who owned what, and invited everyone to it. Once the work was visible, information started to flow and the group began to settle.

I also had to change how I led. With my original team I could mostly delegate. In the merged group, for a while, I was more directive: I set out tasks and turned long discussions into next steps. When people could see the plan, I stepped back again.

Towards the end I took on the final edit. Thirteen people write in thirteen styles, and a client should read one document, so I spent four days merging the sections into a single voice.

Not everything I did was used. One weekend I went to one of the client’s live events to film for the campaign, and my videos didn’t make the final version. That stung a little. I had taken on too much, and leaving the footage out was the group’s decision to make.

The final presentation went well, and the client’s feedback was generous. Looking back, this is what I would do differently:

• Agree on the first day how the group communicates and where the work lives, before anyone needs it.
• Expect a team to go back to arguing whenever its make-up changes. Bruce Tuckman described teams moving through forming, storming, norming and performing in 1965. What I hadn’t appreciated was how quickly a merger sends everyone back to storming.
• Ask the client for feedback halfway through instead of waiting for the final presentation.
• Thank people more often, and for smaller things.

I would run any project this way now, marketing or not, once it has more people in it than one conversation can hold.