Project Corps - Strategic, Program, and Project Management Consulting

Each of the organizational issues revealed in the team member interviews is a long-standing systemic issue. Each is familiar to most project managers- a leader unwilling to make decisions and resolve conflicts; a staff member who has been allowed over time to develop into an over-reaching and controlling police authority; and, a team lacking the knowledge and experience to take itself to the next level of development or maturity.

The simple process of identifying individual team member issues and working through them in a process that distills them to key organizational issues can do more to jettison a project team forward than any other teambuilding and group dynamics process. Unlike organization dynamics, which are regularly addressed with a multitude of formal and informal programs, project team dynamics and teambuilding efforts focus on the team as though its dynamics initiate on day one of the project and stand alone from the organization.

For many organizations the thought of a project manager collecting and surfacing organizational challenges can be somewhat threatening. However, if done well by a seasoned business and project manager, this process can actually become the catalyst to addressing long-standing unresolved issues. Enterprise or organization-wide projects, in particular, can open up new avenues for addressing seemingly un-resolvable institutionalized problems.

ADDRESSING THE PROJECT TEAM SUPPORT SYSTEM

Back to our project and project manager. With issues documented and revealed as fundamental to the success of this key city project, the Mayor and City Administrator were able to look at long-standing issues in a new light. They set off to incorporate and address them as part of an overall change initiative built upon the foundation established by a process improvement and automation project.

The Finance & Administration Director was replaced, but given the option to remain in a position more appropriate to his/her experience. Addressing the issue as part of a change initiative that focused on achieving the next level of maturity rather than an audit, assessment, or punitive action, the former director chose to remain and moved into a support position on the project team. The staff level sponsor was replaced by the new Finance & Administration Director with the skill and experience to make decisions and resolve conflicts. The former staff level sponsor was constrained to an appropriate team role in which he/she was coached in developing collaboration skills. The city hired a consulting firm to assist the project and city management in developing a strategy and plan for developing processes and the new system to support more mature operations.

Not possible in your organization, just a fairy tale you say. This took place in a highly visible, politically charged atmosphere that captured the attention of the media, the city council, and local citizens. Why did it work, you ask? Because, it worked from the project team outward - starting at the individual, and moving to the collective issues. All too often we approach a project team's challenges by accepting the organizational challenges as a given and that under these conditions project teams cannot, in fact, affect substantial change Taking this approach with an enterprise or organization-wide project only serves to incorporate the status quo and severely limits the projects impact and benefits. With issues identified at the individual project team member level, and then extrapolated to the collective level, you can begin to identify quantifiable impacts and develop a compelling case for addressing them. Project managers of organization-wide projects need to take the time to work team and group dynamics at the individual level in order to establish the collective solution that can support the team's and project's success.