Make a path together

{ Posted on May 11 2009 by Rob Borley }
Categories : leadership, team

Working with a team can be hard work. It’s made even more difficult when you are not all pulling in the same direction. This is true whether you are running a small project team or a whole organisation.

You have two real approaches available to you. The first to to push on with your wonderful plans and try and take people with you whether they like it or not. The second is to work with your team to formulate your plan and, as far as is possible, take them all with you as you go.

The problem with the first option is that while you may get to run your team exactly as you’d prefer you do run the risk that the members of the team will be less than committed to the cause. In a worse case scenario they could be disruptive or even disappear all together.

Taking your team with you; allowing all involved to feel like they own the plan is by far the best approach. There are a number of ways to help facilitate this process.

Communicate

Open and honest communication is key. Be clear and transparent with all members of your team about what you are trying to achieve and by when. Also make it clear, right from the start, what restrictions there are in formulating the way forward and why these restrictions are in place.

There may be a tool that has to be used. Or hoop that needs to be jumped through. Make the team aware of these restrictions.

Listen

Whether you have a clear idea or not about the way ahead, seek the opinions of your team members. Allow them to be a part of the planning process and formulate  a plan that can be owned by the individuals in your team. Other people will think of things that you have missed and others will be more skilled in some areas that you are. Good leadership is about knowing when to take advice and not to be afraid of the areas where you are not as strong as others around you.

Use the individuals at your disposal to asses the risks to your plans. The different perspectives are essential in predicting the future problems that your team will face. If you can predict issues early, you can prevent them.

Playing to your strengths

By drawing on the skills and experience of your team members you are not only more likely to come up with a better, more thought through and thorough plan but you are also more likely to have a team who is more committed to it.

If people own the process they will work harder in an attempt to make it succeed.

This entry was posted on Monday, May 11th, 2009 at 6:19 pm and is filed under leadership, team. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.


3 Responses to “Make a path together”

  1. By Sam Barnes on May 11, 2009 | Reply

    Hey Rob, really like the idea of planning a project as a team. I heard the Boag’s Audio Boo the other day about you guys planning a project as a whole team and thought “cool”.

    But while the benefits are clear, I cant help but wonder one thing…

    How do you carve out the time to stop a whole team from working for a day in order to have this mega planning session? Is it something you tried once or twice and it proved to not only engage and motivate the whole team, but also resulted in provable savings in project cost and time? Or is it just case where Headscape are currently doing well enough to stop production for a day and adopt this approach?

    Sam

  2. By Rob Borley on May 13, 2009 | Reply

    Sam, I think it’s fair to say that the evidence we have so fair is fairly anecdotal. We don’t have any metrics with which we can confirm that we have saved money or time by taking this approach.

    It’s also fair to say that this is a new approach for Headscape and one which I’m sure will evolve.

    This approach has been met with enthusiasm from team members on the projects which we have attempted this and the signs are that we will be finding measurable savings in time and stress levels.

    I will keep you updated on these.

    Rather than seeing this as a lost day of production I think it needs to be built into the project as part of the process. If you are able to educate clients so that they will pay for it too; all the better *smile*

  3. By Sam Barnes on May 19, 2009 | Reply

    I’ll be really interested to see if you can identify any tangeable results (time and money) from this process. Really love the willingness to try this kind of approach when work is no doubt piled high.

    Getting a client to pay for it… now that’s a different challenge ;-)

Post a Comment