Lisa DiTullio - Project Team Dynamics: Enhancing Performance, Improving Results

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Copyright 2010 by Management Concepts, Inc.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by an information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher, except for brief quotations in review articles.

Printed in the United States of America

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

DiTullio, Lisa A.

Project team dynamics : enhancing performance, improving results / Lisa DiTullio.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-1-56726-290-2
1. Teams in the workplace. 2. Performance technology. 3. Performance
Psychological aspects. 4. Organizational effectiveness. I. Title.
HD66.D58 2010
658.4022dc22

2010026502

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Lisa DiTullio is the principal of Your Project Office, a PMI Registered Education Provider and consulting practice dedicated to introducing project management as a business competency and enabling organizations to improve decision-making, instill accountability, and enhance communications. Her business offers training programs and advisory services that support project/business management and teambuilding activities, as well as virtual project office support services to organizations that do not need a full-time PMO.

Lisa is the editor of ProjectBestPractices, a quarterly newsletter from ProjectWorld, a regular contributor to the Silicon Valley PM and Project Connections blogs, and a contributor to PM Network. She is the author of Simple Solutions: How Enterprise Project Management Supported Harvard Pilgrim Health Cares Journey from Near Collapse to #1. She is a recognized international speaker in her field.

As past director of the PMO at Boston-based Harvard Pilgrim Health Care, Lisa was a core member of the turnaround team for an organization that went from being placed in state-supervised receivership in 1999 to being the Number One Health Plan in America in US News & World Report five years in a row.

Lisa is on the Board of Directors for the South Shore Chamber of Commerce and is past chair of the Womens Business Connection, a preeminent womens organization within the South Shore Chamber of Commerce. She is also a member of the ATHENAPowerLink Governing Body, which oversees a program to provide women-owned businesses an opportunity to work with a panel of experts to grow their businesses.

In todays competitive environment, conducting business requires collaborative involvement across an organization. Project teams must include a number of participants from different areas of the organization. Parties from external agencies will also likely be involved, whether they are consultants or vendors. And in todays challenged economy, you are not guaranteed to get everyone you need, forcing you to make the most of your team and to do more with less. Regardless of who is on a project team and how many members it has, the project will not meet its deliverables and deadlines unless the group operates as a high-functioning team.

No matter what type of team you belong to, its challenging to keep everyone focused and productive. This is particularly true on project teams. The secret to managing successful team dynamics is to keep the practices as simple as possible.

I love simplicity. Throughout my personal and professional life, I have always aimed for the least complicated path to find the answer or to complete the task. When communicating with others, I strive to impart my messages using short, tangible descriptions instead of long, abstract discussions. When teaching, I go out of my way to introduce concepts that are easy to grasp; they are often underscored through interactive activities so learners can experience the message rather than simply hear it. When speaking in front of large audiences, I design presentations that contain few words. White space and pictures help to spotlight my messages in a memorable way.

The simpler our business practices, the more likely we are to follow them. The more consistent we are with easy practices, the more likely we are to evolve corporate cultureultimately embracing simple, effective, successful practices.

Enhancing team dynamics to improve team performance does not need to be complicated or time-consuming. In fact, the simpler you keep team-focused practices, the more likely you are to practice them consistently.

The extraordinary success of Apple suggests we are drawn to simplicity. From the hip design of its personal computers to the clever intuitiveness of its software to the sleekness of the iPod and the genius of the iPad, Apple consistently redefines each market it enters by creating gadgets with brilliant simplicity and ease of use.

Some people have a knack for making things more complicated than they need to be. Ive found that to be the case, particularly when project managers make incorrect assumptions and become intertwined in an endless but futile effort to prove themselves right among team members.

When things get too complicated, change your assumptions and try again. Keep it simple to be successful.

This book will help you understand the value of teamwork and the link between teamwork and project/business outcomes: you will appreciate how simple investments in project team dynamics can provide big returns, you will learn how to introduce the right set of behaviors to support productive teamwork, and you will become familiar with easy methods to improve team dynamics and reduce conflict.

Some of the concepts and practices discussed in this book are derived from my experience managing the enterprise project management office (EPMO) at Boston-based Harvard Pilgrim Health Care. As a core member of the turnaround team for an organization that went from being placed in state-supervised receivership in 1999 to being named the Number One Health Plan in America by US News & World Report five years in a row, I have firsthand experience with the power of teamwork and collaborative efforts.

Since leaving Harvard Pilgrim in early 2008 to establish my own training and consulting practice dedicated to introducing project management as a business competency, I have had the opportunity to work with many organizations across various industries that are looking to break down functional silos and deliver priority initiatives through effective and efficient means. This book is a compilation of best practices, tips, and techniques identified during my association with clients, colleagues, and project management professionalsall in support of healthy team dynamics.

You will find a number of tools and templates throughout the book, each designed to support a specific team need. An electronic version of each tool with a variety of templates, process tips, and techniques to support healthy teams is available for immediate download at the website .

This book focuses on project teams. In the spirit of team achievement, many of the concepts, practices, and tools introduced in this book apply to all types of teams in business today. In fact, when you consistently apply similar practices across the different types of teams in your organization, you will slowly shift the organizational culture toward teamwork in a real and meaningful way. Organizations that appreciate the value of teamwork and perform in true team-like fashion tend to outperform those that only talk about teamwork. So feel free to share this book with other teams; they will thank you.