Five Simple Strategies for Unifying Project Teams
Do your project team members show confusion about who is
responsible for what aspects of the job? Do their conversations
and meetings usually end in heated personal attacks? Or do
individual members ever exhibit an "every person for themselves"
attitude and refuse to help their teammates? If you answered
"yes" to any of these questions, then you're not alone.
Sometimes, a team simply doesn't "gel."
Every experienced project manager has certainly experienced
challenges in getting their teams to behave like...well, teams.
But with organization and guidance you can help your project
teams accomplish more and eliminate many of the setbacks and
challenges that make teamwork so difficult. Consider the
following five strategies for unifying and organizing your
teams:
1. Establish a Project Organization with Clearly Defined Roles
Project organization must go beyond a hierarchy chart. Each
person needs to know what function they play on the team, how
they fit into the other functions, and what happens if they
don't do their 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 type 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
crosschecking 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 a role with a singular point 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
messages that embody them. Consider these classic examples:
"Where's the beef?" "Got milk?" and "Plop, plop, fizz, fizz."
All these unifying messages can be associated with a product.
Similarly, when driving a project it helps the team to embody
some kind of rallying cry or mantra.
Your team's message should incorporate aspects of the project.
For example, 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
they need to do, when they need to have it done, and how their
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.
Each role should be aware of what is happening in other roles
to ensure that they know if and how they fit in to those aspects
of the project. Each role should also realize that if they fail
to meet a deadline or don't perform their job adequately, they
are letting down the team as a whole, not just the project
manager. Meeting or missing deadlines and deliverables are 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 their role in making the project successful. Each
project team member knows 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
each other 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.