Teamwork
Have you, in your life, been part of something truly excellent, created, at least partially, by you? Something that made you think afterwards: -”How on earth did I pull that off?” or -”I had no idea I was capable of that…“? Think carefully, as this doesn’t have to be work related, it can be your first-born child, the first time you won a major sports event or when you pulled off that solo during a live concert in front of 3000 people. Chances are you have had that feeling at some point.
Now, if you think back to that event, that thing (whatever it was, unless winning on the lottery): did you really pull it off all by yourself? Again, chances are you had help (particularly if you were thinking about your kids), or that you were part of a team that “made magic” just by working together, be it by parents, partners, team members, coaches or managers.
Project-Team Zen – Part I
Arena
The concept of team work, and project teams, is an interesting one, particularly as there can be more combinations of teams than there are people. As this will be a series of posts on the topic I shall start this one with laying the foundation for some of the reasoning later.
I ended my old article, Excellence – Teamwork or flying Solo, with the following statement:
Now, let us have a look at Project Team composition, how and why it can be so completely “right” one time, but also how and why it can go so completely wrong at other times. When a project team goes not-so-well as well it normally leaves chaos, disaster and/or general unhappiness behind. Please note that I am talking about Project teams here, not departments. I shall touch on the difference later, but for now, let’s have a look at what makes people in great teams to become great, and lets start looking at it from the perspective of a music band, just because I can.
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