I recently conducted a leadership workshop for a group of technical professionals at an industry conference, and as always, I walked away from the session with a couple of insights gained from the input of the participants.  One that surprised me was that after talking about characteristics of high performance project teams, I asked for a show of hands from anyone that had been a member of this type of team.  Only 5 out of 58 raised their hands.  Even discounting for the people that don’t tend to respond to "showing of hands" requests, anything even close to the 10% range here seems abysmal.

I suspect that I may be a bit spoiled, as I have definitely been part of and around high-performance teams during my career—teams that are driven to succeed, focused on solving problems and motivated by a shared vision for their project and its potential impact on someone or some group.  Once you’ve experienced this type of project environment, you don’t want to do anything but work with and around this type of a team.  It’s what work should be…people working and fighting for the right things, and forging deep business and even personal relationships in the process. 

If the informal survey results above are even remotely close to reality, many/most people have not had the experience to participate on a high performance project team.  While successfully managing projects is a tough task, I do not believe that we are dealing with a degree of impossibility.  If project success is critical to your organization’s advancement, everyone from the CEO on down has a vested interest in ensuring that greater than 10% of the project teams take on the characteristics of a high-performance environment.

In talking with the attendees at my workshop and in follow-on discussion with other project management professionals, I heard a number of comments (paraphrased): that might provide some insight into this situation:

"Top management has no idea what we are up against with this project. They beat us up on schedule and expect us to pull miracles out of the air."

"Everyone is fighting and the project manager does nothing to help solve this problem."

"Our sponsor is a talking head.  He shows up, gives a pep talk and leaves.  When it comes time for him to jump in with support in front of the executives or to help us secure additional resources, he’s nowhere to be found."

"Our priorities are shifting so fast, no one knows what they should be working on.  We ramp up for one task and get pulled the next day in a completely different direction."

"Our project misfired initially, and when we got back on track and threw a pizza party to celebrate the milestone, the CEO said that we had not earned the right to celebrate.

and my favorite…

"High performance!?  The only thing that this team down on-time and with enthusiasm is head for the parking lot at the end of the day."

When asked what it would take to create a high-performance project environment in their workplace, the participants offered some priceless perspectives:

"Better leadership from the project manager."

"A process to resolve differences of opinion."

"A project team that would quit acting like a debating society."

"An active, involved and interested sponsor."

"Quit shifting priorities…bolt down the deck chairs so we quit running around rearranging them while the ship is sinking."

"Make sure that everyone, including the executives understand the vision for the project."

"Give us a chance to celebrate small victories."


The bottom-line for now:

While projects can be complex, the formula for creating the environment for project success is not.  It starts with the executives and especially the CEO acknowledging and holding the organization accountable for project excellence.  Accountability is powerful force in an organization when employed fairly and consistently. 

The project manager owns the issue of creating the right project environment and requires the attention and support of executives and functional managers alike in support of this goal.  The project manager is also accountable to his or her team, and team members should be comfortable highlighting working environment issues and offering prospective solutions.  Last and not least, project team members are accountable to themselves and each other for doing everything in their power to put aside personal differences and focus on the business of the project.

Accountability starts at the top and must be reinforced at all levels and in all circumstances.  Eliminating the option to opt out of being accountable for is the foundation of a high-performance project team.  Let’s all work on bringing up the percentage of great project teams in our organizations.  Like winning, success with projects quickly becomes habit forming.