I thought her positive reaction on being placed into such an obviously intentionally isolated team was odd. A team of people just so, without the undesirables, their own org structure with dedicated PMs, QCs, and backlog.
The way things fell apart when that cocoon was breached -- both from within and without -- was entirely predictable.
How was this supposed to work in the first place? What did they hope to accomplish with this design?
There must be better designs for these sorts of initiatives, right? What are Microsoft, Apple, or Google doing?
This happened to me at my last job - there were a bunch of us in a celebrated cocoon, and then everything fell apart when it was breached. It wasn't about undesirable people, it was about undesirable management influences; whiplash from constantly changing projects and reorgs, moving goal posts, etc etc. It definitely came with it's fair share of problems.
We were trying to isolate ourselves from the craziness in the rest of the company, and we got a lot of cool shit done while it lasted.
Definitely a net-positive. We should have done more outreach and attempts to bring people into our way-less-drama bubble; but if the theories that the other groups were jealous of our successes was true, it might have accelerated our demise.
Ditto for being clearer with upper management why were liking the isolation.
I think there's an catch-22 problem tho: Anything we could have done would have just been political in some way, which would have been contributing to the drama.
Possibly the appropriate middle ground is to clearly and consistently seek feedback and share successes with the top of our management chain; avoid the politics of multi-person, but keep the awareness that we're doing well and will continue to do so with those that make the decisions about whether we'd get to keep going that way.
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Original response:
It was definitely a net-positive; I got out (I was encouraged to get out by people I trust and respect) before it had a chance to properly explode, and there's a lot I'd have done differently.
Probably the most valuable skill is recognizing that you're in a tailspin; a good way to notice this is failing to achieve your own core values. In my case, people were feeling unheard; I pride myself on listening skills, so that should have been a pretty serious red flag. If you're sucking at stuff you really care about, something's pretty wrong.
I would have liked to have the presence of mind and skill to directly address the meta-problem; but that might have just backfired more, since I gathered that my directness was part of the issue.
So in that case, just bailing earlier. Make sure you don't stick around past the point where the bridges are burned; I'm a little past that, since I don't feel good when I think about going back, but I know I can.
The other option (which was one I was encouraged to take, that then turned into a full departure) was to take a sabbatical. I probably set down 70% of the baggage in the first month, which might have been enough to make a successful comeback - at least in attitude. (There's other complicating factors).
The way things fell apart when that cocoon was breached -- both from within and without -- was entirely predictable.
How was this supposed to work in the first place? What did they hope to accomplish with this design?
There must be better designs for these sorts of initiatives, right? What are Microsoft, Apple, or Google doing?