Implementation Gap, A Real Problem Even Today

implementation gap

In organizations with short product life cycles, it is interesting to note that frequently participation in strategic planning and implementation includes participants from all levels within the organization. However, in perhaps 80 percent of the remaining product and service organizations, top management pretty much formulates strategy and leaves strategy implementation to functional managers. This will…

Training Team Members

Training Books tunnel

Many new managers believe they must know how to perform every job in their area of responsibility. It’s as though they feel that if some key person quits, they might have to get out there and personally perform the task. If you believe in that philosophy and carry it to its logical conclusion, then the…

7 Easy Ways You Can Rejuvenate Your Project Team

Rejuvenate Your Project Team

Over the course of a long project, a team sometimes drifts off course and loses momentum. The project manager needs to swing into action to realign the project team with the project objectives and step on the pedal. What options are there for the project team? There are both formal and informal solutions. Informal actions:…

Virtual Project Team: Challenges, Solutions, Success

Virtual Project Team

Building a high-performance project team among a mixture of part-time and full-time members is a challenging task. Consider how much more challenging it is to build a team when members cannot engage in face-to-face interactions. Such would be the case for a virtual project team in which the team members are geographically situated so that…

Managing Conflicts Within the Project

managing conflicts

Disagreements and conflicts naturally emerge within a project team during the life of the project. Participants will disagree over priorities, allocation of resources the quality of specific work, solutions to discovered problems, and so forth. Some conflicts support the goals of the group and improve project performance. Effectively managing conflicts within the project is critical…

Do You Encourage Functional Conflict?

functional conflict

The demarcation between functional conflict and dysfunctional conflict is neither clear nor precise. In one team, members may exchange a diatribe of four-letter expletives and eventually resolve their differences. Yet in another project team, such behavior would create irreconcilable divisions and would prohibit the parties from ever working together productively again. The distinguishing criterion is…

Manage Dysfunctional Conflict Easily Using This 5 Step Framework

dysfunctional conflict

Managing dysfunctional conflict is a much more challenging task than encouraging functional conflict. First, dysfunctional conflict is hard to identify. A manager might have two highly talented professionals who hate each others guts, but in the heat of competition they produce meritorious results. Is this a pleasant situation? No. Is it functional? Yes, as long…