1. Establish a Project Organization with Clearly Defined Roles.
Project organization must go beyond a hierarchy chart. Each person needs to know what function he or she plays on the team, how he or she fits into the other functions, and what happens if he or she doesn’t do his or her job.
Depending on your industry or functional discipline, you may employ standard or customary roles on your project. Start with these standard roles that are typical for your types of projects. But if the particular project need warrants a special role that is outside the standard, then create a special role. And if the project doesn’t need a particular standard role, then eliminate it. This may sound easy enough, but many project managers hesitate to deviate from standard roles. At the end of the day, however, results are what matter the most, not how well a team adhered to the standard project role structure.
If the project is unique or the environment doesn’t have standard or customary project roles, take a more pragmatic approach to role definition. Identify three to six aspects of the project that are most important or that pose the most risk. Create roles that encompass the concern or risk areas. Then ensure that all major roles are defined correctly by cross-checking the roles with the work that needs to be done.
This type of project organization addresses concerns or areas of risk head-on by defining roles with singular points of accountability to manage the areas of your project that are most likely to fail. By doing this, you’ll sleep better knowing that the most crucial areas are covered.
2. Eliminate Finger Pointing and Public Fights.
Every team project will likely involve lively discussions. Often, these discussions lead you one step closer to project completion. But when they get out of control, these discussions lead to finger pointing and fighting.
Be deliberate in letting these discussions take place and in letting team members question each other, but put a few rules in place to maintain a level of civility. Allow team members to challenge and stretch, but when a decision is made, everyone must stand behind it as a team. What happens in the room stays in the room; outside of the room the team remains unified. This means no gossiping or badmouthing a team member to outsiders.
Also, wrong decisions must be accepted as a team. In other words, no finger pointing allowed. And finally, don’t allow problems to become personal. Focus on problems, not on people.
Inevitably some rules will be broken. However, you should still strive to get some ground rules in place to avoid team strife whenever possible.
3. Develop a “Rallying Cry” to Focus the Team.
You can look at any major successful campaign and see the message that embodies it. Consider these classic examples:
- “Where’s the beef?”
- “Got milk?”
- “Plop, plop, fizz, fizz.”
Your team’s message should incorporate aspects of the project. For example, let’s say your team needs to be cautious not to over-design a solution to keep costs down. In this case, you might start using a “good enough” rallying cry during the design phase to serve as a continual reminder not to overdo the solution. Aside from helping to keep the project within bounds, the rallying cry will also help unify the team.
4. Hold Team Members Accountable for Delivery.
With team projects each role needs to clearly understand what he or she needs to do, when he or she needs to have it done, and how his or her work fits into the big picture. Everyone needs to realize that the team isn’t only accountable to the project manager, but they are also accountable to each other. After all, if one person fails, the whole team fails. Therefore, each individual team member must know what everyone else is doing.
All roles should be aware of what is happening in other roles to ensure that they know if and how they fit into those aspects of the project. All roles should also realize that if they fail to meet a deadline or don’t perform their jobs adequately, they are letting down the team as a whole, not just the project manager. Meeting or missing deadlines and deliverables is a team issue and should be exposed to the entire team.
The point here is accountability. Each member needs to feel accountable for his or her work and needs to experience the joy of success as well as the discomfort of failure.
5. Celebrate Victories as a Team.
Driving through a project is tough work, and people can easily get discouraged when the team faces roadblocks or setbacks. Therefore, celebration of key milestones is important to keep morale up and momentum going.
These celebrations don’t have to be extravagant; they can be as simple as ordering a pizza or bringing in a cake. Anything that allows the team members to let their hair down and take a bit of a breather will suffice.
However, too much celebration can lessen the impact of the success and may actually annoy the team members. So celebrate, but do it in moderation.
Teamwork in the Future
A well-structured project team means each team member understands his or her role in making the project successful. All of the project team members know what they need to contribute to the project, when they have to perform, what other project team members are doing on the project, and what it takes to be successful. Just as important, each of the team members helps the others to ensure overall project success.
When you use these five strategies to unify and organize your teams, you can overcome the common teamwork challenges and make all your future projects more successful.
About the Author
Lonnie Pacelli is an internationally recognized author and is president of Leading on the Edge International. Lonnie has had over 20 years of leadership experience as an executive, project manager, developer, tester, analyst, trainer, consultant, and business owner. During his 11 years at Accenture, he built leadership expertise consulting with many Fortune 500 companies including Motorola, Hughes Electronics, and Northrop Grumman. During his nine years at Microsoft, he continued building leadership expertise through the development of some of Microsoft’s internal systems, led their corporate procurement group, managed their corporate planning group, and led company-wide initiatives on continuous fiscal improvement and training process optimization. He has successfully implemented projects ranging from complex IT systems to process reengineering to business strategies.
See more on Lonnie at www.leadingonedge.com and www.smallbizmadesimple.com.
