When I worked for Siemens, they post a slogan at hallway, "No one is perfect but a team can be". That is true, but how to build a great team is not an easy topic. The challenge of building a project team includes
1. Teams form to solve problems and they must solve problems together - not everyone is team-oriented especially some extra-smart guys. They tend to work independently.
2. teams are temporary so they must learn to work together - Not everyone can work with anyone, ego is a often seen issue between each other. Everyone may have different "way" to work.
The main job for a PM to do is to be a leader. Be a leader and do like a leader. Building a positive environment is always a good leader should do. In my career, I have seen someones have the ability to build a positive environment and I always want to work with them. Beside that, a leader needs to be able to "listen" instead of "talk", listening is more skill required than talk sometimes. PM needs to understand team say and find out potential problems and solve them.
In case study, Habitat for Humanity is a not-for-profit organizations involve lots of temporary volunteers. Since most team members are temp, PM needs to be able to make each other working together on-the-fly. That is a tough task. Compared to work at corp, team members are working for living. Volunteer work needs something non-money to make the work making sense. Habitat builds learning opportunities for every volunteers to fullfil their goal. That proves money is not the only incentive for team to work together.
On these NGO volunteers - recognition is the reward..
ReplyDelete