December 2020CIOAPPLICATIONS.COM9better clarity on your goals, more support when problems occur and a source of solutions and alternatives when you need to solve a problem. Stakeholders who have not bought into the project need to be aligned quickly, else the project will almost certainly fail. Time invested early on in stakeholder buy-in is time well spent.Energized teams. High achievers dread coming to work when everyone around them lacks energy. They want an environment of like-minded individuals who want to work together, to see the project be successful and are all pulling in the same direction. Energy is not the same as excitement. Excitement is good for a while, like a sugar rush or the unboxing of a new gadget, but it soon fades. Energy is self-perpetuating. Energy is additive. If a team lacks energy there is no drive behind getting the work done and the project becomes more difficult for everybody. Leaders must invest in creating an environment where the energy can naturally flow, and not set up barriers that get in the way of project success.Project transparency. Few things frustrate leadership more than not knowing what is going on with an important project. Lack of transparency feels like something is going wrong. It is fun to be transparent with good news. Bad news you want to hide until you get a chance to fix it. Fight that natural instinct; embrace the bad. Use the fact that the team is facing problems to create a dialogue around the issues. This can lead to a better understanding of the scope, and better estimation of the costs and realistic expectation of time to deliver. Being transparent, and the closely related corollary of being honest, always results in better outcomes.Individual responsibility. A leader is accountable for any failure of the team. But each team member is responsible for their actions. Individual responsibility is about doing the best work you can do in alignment with the goals of the team. It is not about doing your best individual work that does not help the team be successful, for example, writing great code but not documenting how it works. A responsible individual is focused on making the team great, not on making themselves look great.Leadership. A successful project must have leadership. This does not mean every project must have a formal leader, but rather that the leadership function must exist within the team. Some teams can function effectively with a collective leadership...always doing the right work, pulling in the same direction, resolving conflicts together, knowing when to ask for help, and so on. Most teams need a guiding force that provides these capabilities, as well as providing a vision for how the team operates, how it interacts with the greater organization and how to navigate changes in processes, tools or goals. A leader must provide the right touch inwardly to let the team operate effectively, while providing the outward messaging to be sure the team has the necessary resources, visibility and support required for success. Not every project is the Panama Canal, however, every project must embrace these core attributes for success. Practice these six key enablers and you will be part of a winning team.
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