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Permanence is a trap
Once a team, role, or process is established, it’s normally treated as a permanent fixture—even if its purpose disappears. This rigidity stifles innovation, clogs up resources, and leaves people defending structures long past their relevance. By contrast, this pattern assumes all organizational constructs are temporary. They exist to solve a problem or seize an opportunity and should be reconfigured or dismantled as soon as they stop creating real value.
Some of today’s most adaptive companies put this principle into action:
Basecamp structures product work in six-week cycles. Small, dedicated teams form around a specific project, then disband (or re-form around new goals) once that cycle ends. This prevents outliving a project’s usefulness or tying people indefinitely to a single initiative.
IDEO fields project-specific teams for each client challenge. Once a design problem is solved, the teams naturally dissolve and members shift to new engagements, preserving agility and preventing inertia.