PMI Global Insights

Tips for Managing a Cross-Functional Team

LOOK FORWARD, NOT BACKWARD

My goal is to communicate the challenges, fun and “things that have worked” in managing projects team that has widely different backgrounds, experiences, education, and understandings.  Informational diversity is based on different functional, educational and industry backgrounds that constitute information and knowledge resources upon which the team draws. 

THE TIME V. INFORMATION DILEMMA

The project team members should be cognizant of other parts of the project – this is especially true for cross functional teams, or teams with high informational diversity.   Not only that, but the project manager should know exactly how the project is doing.  The Project Manager must understand the course the project is going in and attempt corrections if things are drifting too far off.

The problem with this simple concept is that there is simply too much information to absorb for multiple disciplines and multiple projects.  It’s in different technical languages, it changes daily, it requires an in-depth understanding of each discipline.  The team doesn’t have time to learn how or what the other disciplines are doing and complete their own efforts.  Even if that were all possible, not enough time exists to absorb the information and manage the projects

So, the question becomes, when managing a cross-functional team, what information, or indicators should be used to judge the health and direction of the project.  It must be a subset of all the information the project team possesses.  The key is to focus on “measures that matter.”  And, to do that, it’s important  to understand the differences between leading and lagging project information.

LEADING AND LAGGING INFORMATION

Lagging information is something that gives us a window into the past.  It’s something that HAS happened. It’s nearly impossible to drive a car down a road while looking only in the rear view mirror, but that’s exactly what most projects do.  They concentrate on LAGGING information. 

Some of the most popular Project Information to be collected and digested fall into the LAGGING category.  In other words, “How we did in the past, will tell us how we’re going to do in the future.”   Ask yourself, is that true?

Here are a list of popular project LAGGING indicators.

Lagging Indicators

• Backward Looking
• Tracking Progress
• Customer satisfaction
• Defect Rate
• Scope change requests
• Overdue tasks
• Earned Value

Wouldn’t it be better to find, discover and measure LEADING indicators?  Things that tell is where, to the best of our knowledge, the project is heading?    Certainly!  But like most good ideas in project management, it’s very difficult to identify and track leading indicators.   But we must make an attempt. 

It’s quite possible that a project’s best leading indicators are not a clear-cut single measurement.  It’s more likely that the course and direction of the project is best determined by a function arrived at by examining several indicators at one time.  Performance measurement “To-Complete-Performance-Index does this. But that method may not be a good fit for your project.  You’ll need to explore and discover your own.

Leading Indicators

• Forward looking
• Predictive
• Performance Goals
• None are intrinsically a leading indicator
• Leading Indicator = f (measure, time, interpretation)

WHY BOTHER?

If you have predictive or forward looking indicators for the health of your project, you’ll be able to look in the same direction you’re driving your car in.  That’s useful!  It’s also very difficult to arrive at meaningful leading indicators.  It will require a team effort, failures and patience.

Pay attention to the rail road crossing sign (leading information).  Don’t wait until disaster strikes to understand your status. 

TRY TO FIND AND USE LEADING INDICATORS FOR YOUR PROJECT

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MEET ME IN SAN DIEGO NEAR THE PROJECTMANAGEMENT.COM BOOTH.

MAKE AN ONLINE / EARLY RESERVATION TO TALK TO ONE OF OUR EXPERTS HERE! 

The first five blogs:

1. Herding a group of cats, cows, sheep, goats, dogs and llamas….http://bit.ly/2cr0ddH
2. How hard is it to herd a group of cats, cows, sheep, goats, dogs and llamas?  http://bit.ly/2c6n3Gv
3. Cats, cows, sheep, goats, dogs and llamas *CAN* be herded.   -  http://bit.ly/2cLpS2w
4. Things that have worked leading Informationally Diverse Teams - http://bit.ly/2cfkKka
5. Things That Have Worked Leading Project Teams @ NASA http://bit.ly/2cDFaGl

The digital era is the time for inspiring and impactful leaders. We are no longer in a time where only the top manager commands, and everyone obeys or follows regardless anymore. Therefore your organization expects you to inspire them and make a positive impact in their organization and their future. Otherwise, you may quickly lose your shirt and more in this volatile market. 

You’ll need real support from experienced leaders and facilitators while personalizing things for your business and most importantly, taking action. You position calls for a truly evolved and transformed person with a harmonious blend of skills and a broad personality. You are one of the brand new inspiring and insightful leaders of the digital age: you are a Digital Transformation Leader.

Therefore, being a Digital Transformation Leader who wants to live up to the highest expectations, here are 10 rules to act on so that you can succeed in your mission.

1. Don’t look to please everyone but set to inspire everyone to be transformed.
2. Understand that your people do not want the changes but they want the rewarding transformation.
3. Do not force them to accept change, for you won’t experience success this way, rather you can lead them to embrace the changes themselves and succeed together.
4. Never fire anyone, but instead release individuals from their end-of-cycle positions, and sometimes reassign them.
5.  Don’t be responsible for everyone’s individual happiness but for the business performance and sustainability. On the other hand, create an environment that promotes individual happiness, performance improvement and therefore organizational success.
6. Invest in the best digital technologies for your business, without relying too much on the technology but making the business the true driver.
7. Invest as much in people as you invest in digital technology, because as rewarding as it can be investing in technology, investing in people is even more rewarding for your organization both in the short and the long term.
8. Start the digital transformation with your personal transformation first, because you will be shaping the future of your organization and it will be a reflection of your mindset.
9. Create the best leadership support team that you can, because you can’t do it alone.
10. Innovate and leverage the organization, customers and prospects innovative potential.

To support you and help you live to your organization’s expectations, I make it my commitment for you to succeed personally, professionally and holistically.

Join our community that is a place for coaching, exchanging, and creating more transformed and successful leaders.

Attending the PMI Global congress in San Diego?  You can schedule an individual session with me in the “Ask An Expert” sessions and meet me in the Solutions Center (exhibit hall). Book your session here.

Are you leading one or more digital transformation projects? Be ready to embrace a new type of project management with more change-based leadership and individual transformation involvement than you have before.

1. You must move from the traditional project management triangle and adopt the new rectangle for the project involving change and transformation leadership.

   Digital transformation is not about one change but multiple changes that will    create the transformation. Your most effective management of time, cost        and scope can easily be sabotaged by disengaged individuals, making you      look like a novice.

2. Your team now extends beyond your traditional stakeholders in terms of your competitors, influencers, your clients, their kids, their friends and their little knuckle-head friend on Facebook.

    Digital transformation is about innovation and business efficiency.           Innovative ideas are born out of people’s experience, whoever they are. We have moved to a social era where social media trends, shares, and happenings shape our reality and possibilities. You get to use that as an extended resource.

3. You must and should go ahead and find out about the plan of other leaders in your organization, and it’s necessary to keep an eye on what they are doing.

With the many changes happening in different parts of your organization besides business-as-usual, expect any other ongoing plan to change at any time, impacted by the market, or whatever other factors. You don’t want to be aware of it last or after finding out how it impacted your agreed deliveries negatively. Also change in other part of your organization can impact positively your strategic plan, giving you leverage that you did not have to start with.

4. Don’t even think of complaining about your plan changing too often. Consider it the standard way. Like in point 3 above, be ready to change your plan, adjust it or reinvent it at any time. Your plan was one of the possible alternatives and should be adopted after proper strategic planning. At the same time, great strategic planning will allow you to choose another previously spotted possibility or to create one from nothing.

5. The vision is not only for the top executives, as project managers must own the vision as well whether you created it or not. Otherwise you may get sidetracked as you implement changes indefinitely. When you don’t own the vision, it is difficult to engage your team and lead them successfully. Engaging your team gives you the dynamic to create digital transformation successes!

6. Whether your title has “digital transformation” in it or not, most change and transformation projects in organizations today are related to digital transformation.

    That is because digital transformation is not about the technology itself but about improving the business so that it prospers in the digital age. The technology is used as support for making the transformation happen, but the deeper transformation is to be created and maintained by people. When the people experience / leadership aspect is neglected, the organization may get lost in implementing changes and turning in a circle but never evolving. It will be as such until the organization changes its approach or until it can’t survive anymore, and there happens a type of business cannibalization.

Attending the PMI Global congress in San Diego?  You can schedule an individual session with me in the “Ask an Expert” sessions and meet me in the Solutions Center (exhibit hall). Book your session here!

Join our community of Digital Transformation Leaders here and download the digital transformation report. 

Attending the PMI Global Congress 2016 in San Diego?  You can schedule an individual session with me in the “Ask an Expert” sessions and meet me in the Solutions Center (exhibit hall). Book your session here. http://congresses.pmi.org/NorthAmerica2016/sponsors/hours-overview

Posted by Lawrence Cooper on: September 12, 2016 12:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

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