Max Wideman Interjected
Luis, that's a very nice piece of oratory. However, there is one question in my mind: Can you really do all of that within the confines of a project?
Luis Alarcon
Hello Max — My personal take is that we can't afford to not operate in this manner if the goal is a "High Performing Team". I've been fortunate enough to develop a handful of highly effective teams throughout my career but it comes with a price. I average somewhere between 55 and 65 hours per week. There is a heavy initial personal investment but once the synergy takes hold, the same team that you invested a lot of time into will begin to take on many of your tasks and grow its scope.
This allows for a very competent level of project control with a resulting by-product: (professional recognition for the team often leading to more complex and exciting opportunities). My Linked-In account has quite a few recommendations from previous team members that attest to my statements. It's my opinion that this is why there are so few high performing teams within organizations. That's because it's not simple, it's complex and its not only complex it's ongoing and requires a great amount of energy (raw and emotional). As the team leader ones energy/mood must convey as often as possible a calm and confident optimism even in the midst of chaos.
Book stores are full of team development books, this forum is full of statements which are all correct yet we continue to struggle, as a whole, with developing highly effective teams. (The gap is in the enormous amount of personal investment required to control the ongoing and ever-changing team energy in order to maintain synergy.)
If you do maintain it, the project will succeed ...
Max Wideman responded
Hi Luis, you wrote: "There is a heavy initial personal investment but once the synergy takes hold, the same team that you invested a lot of time into will begin to take on many of your tasks and grow its scope, allowing for a very competent level of project control" I think I follow where you are coming from and I am not disagreeing with you in principle. However, what are the sorts of durations of the projects to which you refer and how long does it take for "the synergy to take hold"?
A further complication is that the composition of a project team often changes as it moves through the successive phases of the project life span. And are you able to maintain the same team for subsequent follow-on projects? Many of us do not have these luxuries.
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