I've seen this mistake countless times. A project starts slipping, another one explodes in urgency, and the instinctive response is: "Let's move some people around."
On paper, it looks efficient, capacity follows demand. In reality, it's chaos disguised as management.
When you move people between teams, you're not just moving headcount. You're breaking trust, context, rhythm, and identity. Every team has its own cadence, a shared mental model built through a thousand small interactions. When you shuffle people, you destroy that model and force everyone to rebuild it from scratch.
What works better — much better — is to shift scope, not people. Keep the team intact, move the work.
If a team has slack, expand their responsibility slowly. Let them grow into it, keeping the system stable. They'll adapt far faster than if you injected new members into a completely different context.
When this isn't possible, there's another option I've found powerful: rotate individuals intentionally.
Not as permanent transfers, but as temporary missions. Someone joins another team for a fixed time, helps, learns, contributes, then returns home. It's amazing what happens when you give people clear boundaries: they focus fully, they integrate faster, and they come back with fresh insights that elevate both teams.
This approach does two things at once:
It keeps identity intact, people still belong somewhere.
It reveals the system's real slack.
If no one can step away, even briefly, it means your organization is already operating at its limit — a fragile equilibrium that will eventually crack.
Leadership isn't about moving chess pieces. It's about maintaining system coherence while allowing adaptation. Move the scope, not the people. Preserve the rhythm. Protect the culture. Let the system evolve without losing itself.
That's how teams stay alive and how organizations stay sane.