Guiding Quote

“Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow. The important thing is not to stop questioning.” Einstein

Saturday, December 22, 2012

Project Managers and Team Members: Semi-Detached


Some team members never completely commit to the project, they are semi-detached. They give you and the project goals half-hearted support, but it’s always your project, it’s never our project. This lukewarm commitment is usually easy to detect when the project team is located in one spot, far harder to observe when the team is dispersed across many sites and countries. Out of sight, out of control is a good description of their attitude. However the use of “your” rather “our” is usually a give away, also if they’re always giving priority to other work.
            
There two steps for dealing with them. The first involves making them responsible for a specific project deliverable: make them own something. The second approach is to ask them how the performance of the project could be improved and then give them the responsibility for making that improvement. If these steps fail then you might as well change the designation from semi to fully detached and ask their management for a replacement. Some projects are too important to carry nonperforming passengers.

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