Organizations are currently facing a cultural and technological transformation challenge that requires new management models to achieve benefits.
All business changes must be part of the corporate strategy and therefore managed under an agile governance model based on the practice of Project Management, a building block for the achievement of organizational benefits through the interpretation of the strategy and the fulfillment of the project goals. Hence, management based on high performance project teams is key to achieve success.
High performance project teams stand out for taking sound actions, while creating a sense of identity within the project and the organization and setting realistic goals. They are directly related to the framework(s) and the management applied, and are essential for the success of each project developed by the organization. To make this happen, a project team must:
1) Bring on board professionals with expertise based on three pillars: management, leadership and technical skills.
• Management means engaging professionals to perform the required activities according to their own evaluation, while leadership implies professionals wanting to perform the relevant activities with a strong commitment to results. Project teams must keep a balance between management and leadership.
• Technical skills are directly related to the abilities required by the position to perform the operating tasks defined, and apply the relevant framework(s).
2) Have three essential attributes: dynamic experts, professional responsibility and circular operation.
• Dynamic experts lead the project towards conceptual agility setting the pace and eliminating waste (activities that do not add value). They stand out for being proactive, highly motivated, focused and confident, and for having the appropriate competencies to be able to fulfill the responsibilities assigned to their role.
• Professional responsibility is directly related to ethics and values, and how they are articulated through the professional's communication with the entire ecosystem. In this process, each professional disseminates his/her values, those of the organization, and his/her knowledge of the practice of Project Management. This attribute also helps all members of the project team to achieve an effective and distinctive social relationship, applying their responsibility vis-à-vis the profession and the organization, and codes of conduct such as honesty, credibility and seriousness in their actions, the fulfillment of the word given and solidarity.
• It is part of the professional's and the team's responsibility to determine the completion date of a project or activity in a specific and achievable manner, as well as to warn, with the adequate justification, if a date cannot be met when it is demanded or imposed.
• The circular operation ensures the appropriate team operation and high performance. It also ensures that the bonds established are effective and capable of resolving the conflicts that may arise in such a way that they result in a collaborative and continuous task. This attribute includes four critical success variables: strategy, personality, cohesion and communication.
- The strategy sets the way in which the project team is grouped and operates. It is transmitted through the structure and is aligned to the project strategy. It is based on self-organized and self-directed teams, implying that both these and the professional team members make decisions, allow for error and learn the subsequent lessons.
- The personality provides the team with insight into facing the planned activities and solving problems with decision and security. Teams with personality are those that drive change and are oriented to goal achievement.
- Cohesion consolidates the project team by achieving accurate operation through the continuous flow of actions.
- Communication integrates strategy, personality and cohesion through management and leadership. It is one of the critical success areas in a project and should always be approached with an integrated vision of the information by the project team. The best information is that which is communicated with solid grounds and strength, and enhances collaboration.
The last variable is critical to achieve high performance teams: the higher the number of professionals, the greater the communication achieved, and therefore the more complex the relationship and collaboration scenario. Knowing the number of relationship channels in a project team to determine the level of complexity, the mathematical formula (n*(n-1))/2 can be applied, whereby "n" is the number of members in the team or in the environment to be related. In other words, if there are 10 professionals in the team, the number of existing channels would be (10 * (10-1)) /2 = 45 communication channels. If a new member is added, no additional communication channel should be added. Following the previous example, if we now have 11 professionals in the team, the existing channels would be (11 * (11-1))/2 = 55, so that adding a professional would increase the number of communication channels by 10.
This set of axes and attributes enables a team to increase cohesion management and efficiency while achieving identity and soundness, gaining insight into what to do in each step of the project and solving the conflicts that may arise. It also helps the organization to develop and build a professional and dynamic culture, as well as to create acceptance and empathy among professionals minimizing the turnover rate.
From a broader perspective, if the project team has been built on the right axes and attributes, it will add value through a high performance operation that will have a positive impact on the organization and, above all, lead it to achieve benefits meeting the project goals.
This article was written by our CEO and posted on the Estrategas website. Please follow the link to access the original version.