ABSTRACT
In this chapter we explore why some teams are stagnant, caught up in habitual routines that might once have been effective but now impede effectiveness. Changes in the environment or in the system in which the team is embedded put new demands on the team. The team needs to adapt its way of working to be effective but is not successful in doing so. Our contribution is that we integrate previous well-established models of how teams adapt, with new research on what makes teams adapt. Why are some teams better at adapting to novel demands than others? It is a question of the team’s capacity to adapt, how well the team performs in the adaptation process, how adequate and developed the team knowledge is and what triggers the adaptation.
