Re: Teams Leaders what are they, and do we need them? - Extension from Re: [xpAdopti

Hi Ron,

 > > We did that at my last company, and still had lots of
 > > trouble.  A big reason for that, I think, was that we lacked
 > > a "stop eating when full" rule.  Each person was assigned way
 > > more stuff than they could do.  Also, our projects were
 > > highly matrixed.  One person leads a project, supported by
 > > many people from many other organizations, each of whom leads
 > > and participates on several other projects.  The combination
 > > of highly matrixed and overcommitted set up a deadly dynamic:
 > > lots of progress early on.  Near zero progress as deadlines
 > > neared.
 >
 > Why would that be the dynamic? Were people not overloaded at
 > the beginning?

People were typically not as aware of being overloaded at the 
beginning, either because they underestimated the challenges, or 
because they assumed that the level of support they were 
receiving from others at the beginning would continue throughout 
the project.

There were several other factors leading to this particular 
dynamic.  The projects I'm talking about were typically 
organizational change projects (restructuring, policy proposal, 
process improvement, etc.).  The projects were usually very 
different from each other, so it was harder to map past 
experience onto current projects.

The projects were typically established at the start of the 
fiscal year, and usually scheduled to deliver at the end of some 
quarter.  Most would deliver intermediate results quarterly, and 
complete at year end.  So most of these projects were scheduled 
to deliver at about the same time.

Executive bonuses were based largely on satisfactory delivery of 
these projects.

Team members would often be working on other projects -- their 
"regular" jobs -- as well as on these projects.  Priorities for 
the other projects changed, changing people's availability.

Given all of this, it was usually easy to get support from others 
near the start of the project.  Lots of enthusiasm; lots of 
progress.  Later, as people realized that the projects for which 
they were primarily responsible were harder than they thought, 
and as deadlines loomed, each person would focus more on their 
primary projects, and offer less support to other projects.  In 
essence, each project would become a single-person project. 
Given the nature of the projects, they were impossible to do well 
with single people.  Enthusiasm waned; progress slowed.

Dale

-- 
E-mail: [email protected]
Web:    http://www.dhemery.com



------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor ---------------------~-->
Get 128 Bit SSL Encryption!
http://us.click.yahoo.com/FpY02D/vN2EAA/xGHJAA/nhFolB/TM
---------------------------------------------------------------------~->

To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
[email protected]

 

Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/