Shifting Left - How Small Teams Handle Organizational Gaps Without Breaking
Every small organization has gaps. Maybe you have an engineering lead but no dedicated DevOps team. Maybe your product manager is stretched thin and the tech lead is absorbing PM responsibilities. Maybe a designer role is emerging, but nobody owns it yet.
These gaps often emerge in specific domains. Growing organizations typically need four types of engineering leadership, and early-stage teams almost never have all of them covered. This is normal. The question is: how do you respond?
Teams may make the mistake of dumping the entire burden on one person. They identify the gap, find whoever is closest to it, and expect that person to absorb all the additional work. This breaks people.
There's a better approach I call "shifting left." (If you're familiar with DevOps terminology, note that this means something different here. In DevOps, "shift left" refers to moving testing and quality checks earlier in the development cycle. In organizational design, it refers to distributing responsibilities across team members.)
The Cascade Principle
Think of your team as a line, each person responsible for their defined role. When a gap appears to the left of the line (a new responsibility without an owner), you don't just ask the person nearest the gap to stretch into it while continuing to do everything else.
Instead, they shift left into the gap. This creates a new, smaller gap where they used to stand. The next person in line shifts left slightly to cover that gap, creating an even smaller gap behind them. The person after them shifts left to cover that gap. And so on down the line.
The entire team shifts left together. The load distributes across everyone instead of crushing one person.
A Concrete Example
Say you have a four-person team: a tech lead, a senior engineer, a mid-level engineer, and a junior engineer. An emerging product owner role needs coverage that the product manager cannot provide.
The wrong approach? The tech lead takes on all product owner responsibilities while maintaining their full tech lead role. They burn out within months. Work quality drops. The team suffers.
The shifting left approach:
The tech lead shifts left into the product owner role, taking on backlog grooming, stakeholder communication, and sprint planning with product.
This means the tech lead has less bandwidth for engineering leadership. So the senior engineer shifts left into some tech lead responsibilities. Maybe they start facilitating sprint reviews and standups.
Now the senior engineer has less time for their senior engineering work. The mid-level engineer shifts left, taking on some architectural decisions and code reviews that the senior engineer was handling.
The mid-level engineer now has less capacity for their normal work. The junior engineer shifts left into doing slightly higher-tier development work than they were before.
The Load Distribution Math
Here's the key insight: the load doesn't distribute evenly, and that's the point.
Using illustrative numbers, let's say the gap represents 10 units of additional work. In the wrong approach, one person absorbs all 10 units. In the shifting left approach:
The tech lead takes on 10 units of product owner work but sheds 6 units to the senior engineer.
The senior engineer takes on 6 units of tech lead work but sheds 4 units to the mid-level engineer.
The mid-level engineer takes on 4 units of senior work but sheds 2 units to the junior engineer.
The junior engineer takes on 2 units of mid-level work.
The net result? Instead of one person carrying 10 additional units, four people carry 4, 2, 2, and 2 additional units respectively. No single person is overwhelmed. The team remains sustainable.
When to Apply This Model
Shifting left works for several organizational situations beyond emerging roles.
Someone goes on vacation for two weeks. Rather than finding one coverage person who does their job and their own job, the entire team shifts left temporarily.
Someone is underperforming and cannot handle their full responsibilities right now. Rather than letting work fall through the cracks or overloading their manager, the team shifts left to cover while the performance issue gets addressed.
The team is growing and roles are evolving. New responsibilities emerge before new hires arrive. The team shifts left to handle the transition period.
Common Mistakes
The first mistake is not communicating the shift. If everyone just quietly takes on more work without acknowledging it, resentment builds. People don't understand why they're suddenly expected to do things outside their job description. Make the shift explicit. Name it. Talk about when it will end.
The second mistake is not shifting back. Shifting left should be temporary or should come with permanent role adjustments. If the junior engineer is now doing mid-level work permanently, their title and compensation should reflect that. If the shift was temporary, there needs to be a clear signal when everyone returns to their original positions.
The third mistake is assuming everyone can shift the same amount. Maybe the senior engineer takes on more than expected, while the mid-level engineer takes on less. Account for individual circumstances when deciding who shifts and how much.
The Alternative is Worse
When you don't shift left as a team, one of three things happens.
The person closest to the gap absorbs everything, burns out, and either leaves or becomes less effective. You've traded a gap in one area for a gap in another.
Work falls through the cracks. Nobody owns the gap. Quality suffers. Customers notice. Technical debt accumulates.
You panic-hire without proper vetting to fill the gap. The wrong person in a role creates more problems than an unfilled role. You end up spending months managing a bad hire instead of months with a distributed load.
None of these outcomes are better than having the whole team shift left temporarily.
Making This Work in Practice
Start by mapping your current organizational chart, including the informal responsibilities that aren't in anyone's job description. Identify where gaps exist or are likely to emerge.
When a gap appears, have an explicit conversation with the team. Explain the shifting left concept. Ask people what they can take on and what they would need to shed to someone else. Work backward from the gap to distribute the load.
Set review points. Every two to four weeks, check in on whether the shifts are sustainable. Adjust as needed. Some people may need to shift more, others less. Be aware that teams often experience a temporary productivity dip when organizational changes happen; this is normal and expected as the team adjusts to new roles and responsibilities. Understanding why team productivity drops after changes helps you set realistic expectations during the transition.
Plan for the shift to end. Either the gap gets filled permanently through hiring, or the responsibilities become permanent parts of redefined roles, or the need passes and everyone shifts back.
The goal is not to avoid gaps. Gaps are inevitable in growing organizations. The goal is to handle them without breaking your people.
Related Content
