If you have a team that works well, the instinct is sometimes to change something in it. According to the source, you do not take that team apart. You strengthen it, hat it better and add people beside it. To hat someone is to train them on the written duties of their post.

Most of the booklet deals with the employee who is not performing. The last chapter deals with the team that is, and with a mistake you can make precisely with it, because the right answer is almost never the one instinct gives.

The rule

According to the source, this is a prohibition: when a unit, section, department or division is operating well, you do not take it apart.

Right after that, the source gives the alternative. Strengthen the team, hat it better, put apprentices in it opposite its posts so they can learn, give it help, and do not scramble it.

Those are four permitted actions, and each of them adds something to the team. None of them moves a person out of their place.

An apprentice works beside whoever holds the post until they can hold it alone. In the booklet's sequence that is step four, between the hatting and the post itself. That is how you strengthen a team that works without moving anyone.

Suppose an owner who swapped the posts of two employees to freshen things up. The output of both dropped for two months.

Now suppose the same owner put an apprentice beside his strongest employee instead of moving him. Both went up.

Years to build, a night to wreck

According to the source, it takes a great deal of executive time and effort to build up a section, department or division. Against that, an urgent, vital personnel action can undo years of work in a single night.

That gap explains why the mistake repeats. Nobody feels the slow work of building, and the quick work of wrecking feels like taking a decision.

Suppose an owner who let go of the person holding the client relationships, on a decision made in one day. Three years of relationships went in a week.

Or suppose a landscaper who redrew the division of work halfway through a busy season. A month later he tried to return to the old arrangement, and by then it no longer worked.

The words urgent and vital show up just before a destructive personnel move, so notice when you are saying them.

Why it happens at all

According to the source, actions like these are taken only by people too lazy to recruit and train new people, or because of unreal financial planning, or because of a failure to get the section to produce.

In all three the problem was there before the dismantling, and the dismantling only postpones dealing with it. The first cause leads straight back to the two reasons the booklet opens with, recruiting and training. Someone who does not recruit and does not train moves around the people already there.

The source adds a short sentence worth keeping: “People like their jobs.”

Suppose an owner who shifted people from post to post to avoid recruiting. A year later nobody was good at anything.

Or suppose a studio owner who hired a fourth instructor instead of moving the three she already had. The hire cost money and kept the team intact.

Who holds things when you are away

There is a question that nearly every one-person business postpones: who covers for you. According to the source, every key post should have a deputy who is in training or in apprenticeship for it. A key post is one with urgent responsibility and great expertise.

In a small business there is usually one key post, and it is yours. According to the booklet, the question is who holds things together for the week you are ill. That is a much smaller question than who would replace you.

Here too the source gives a measure: personnel are not really personnel until they are utilized.

Suppose an owner who spent a week away. Three jobs came to a halt, since only he knew how to price them.

Now suppose he wrote the pricing method on one page and set how far an employee decides alone. On the next absence nothing stopped at all.

The booklet gives this chapter two short exercises, called identify and decide.

A team that works took years to build. Before you touch it, check whether you can add people beside it instead of moving the ones inside it.

The booklet is general knowledge about managing people, not legal advice.