Psychosocial outcomes Storming stage (p.
197) Task outcomes (p. 201) Trust
(p. 193)
(p. 201) Superordinate
goal (p. 199) Team building (p.
188) Virtual teams (p. 202)
Punctuated equilibrium
(p. 198)
Discussion
Questions
6.1 This chapter discussed the
characteristics of high-performing project teams. List the factors that
characterize these teams and give examples of each one.
6.2 “Trust can actually encourage
disagreement and conflict among team
members.” Explain why this could be the case.
6.3 Identify the stages of group
development. Why is it nec-essary for project teams to move through these
stages in order to be productive?
6.4 Gersick’s model of punctuated
equilibrium offers an al-ternative view of group development. Why does she
sug-gest that some defining moment (such as an explosion of emotion) often
occurs about midpoint in the project? What does this defining event accomplish
for the team?
6.5 Explain the concepts of “task” and “psychosocial” out-comes for a project.
Why are psychosocial outcomes so important for project team members?
6.6 Distinguish between the traditional, behavioral, and inter-actionist
views of team conflict. How might each explain and treat a project team
conflict episode?
6.7 Identify the five major methods for resolving conflict. Give an example of how each might be
applied in a hypotheti-cal project team conflict episode.
6.8 What are some of the guidelines for adopting a strategy of “principled negotiation”?
6.9 Explain the idea that we should “focus on interests, not po-sitions.”
Can you think of an example in which you suc-cessfully negotiated with someone
else using this principle?
CaSe
STuDy 6.1
Columbus
Instruments
Problems have been building at
Columbus Instruments, Inc. (CIC) (not its real name) for several years now with
the new product development process. The last six high-visibility projects were
either scrapped outright after excessive cost and schedule overruns or, once
re-leased to the marketplace, were commercial disasters. The company estimates
that in the past two years, it has squandered more than $15 million on poorly
de-veloped or failed projects. Every time a new project venture failed, the
company conducted extensive post-project review meetings, documentation analysis,
and market research to try to determine the underlying cause. To date, all CIC
has been able to determine is that the problems appear to lie with the project
man-agement and development process. Something some-where is going very wrong.
You have
been called into the organization as a consultant to try to understand the
source of the prob-lems that are leading to widespread demoralization across
the firm. After spending hours interviewing the senior project management staff
and technical person-nel, you are convinced that the problem does not lie with
their processes, which are up-to-date and logi-cal. On the other hand, you have
some questions about project team productivity. It seems that every project has
run late, has been over budget, and has had subop-timal functionality,
regardless of the skills of the project
manager in charge. This
information suggests to you that there may be some problems in how the project
teams are operating.
As you
analyze CIC’s project development pro-cess, you note several items of interest.
First, the company is organized along strictly functional lines. Projects are
staffed from the departments following negotiations between the project manager
and the department heads. Second, the culture of CIC seems to place little
status or authority on the project managers. As evidence of this fact, you note
that they are not even permitted to write a performance evaluation on proj-ect
team members: That right applies only to the func-tional department heads.
Third, many projects require that team members be assigned to them on an
exclusive basis; that is, once personnel have been assigned to a project, they
typically remain with the project team on a full-time basis for the term of the
project. The average project lasts about 14 months.
One
morning, as you are walking the hallways, you notice a project team “war room”
set up for the latest new product development initiative within the company.
The war room concept requires that proj-ect team members be grouped together at
a central location, away from their functional departments, for the life of the
project. What intrigues you is a hand-lettered sign you see taped to the door
of the project
(continued)
war room: “Leper Colony.” When
you ask around about the sign, some members of the firm say with a chuckle, “Oh,
we like to play jokes on the folks assigned to new projects.”
Further
investigation of project team members suggests they are not amused by the sign.
One engineer shrugs and says, “That’s just their way of making sure we
understand what we have been assigned to. Last week they put up another one
that said ‘Purgatory.’” When you ask the project manager about the signs later
in the day, he confirms this story and adds some inter-esting information: “Around
here, we use detached [meaning centralized] project teams. I get no say as to
who will be assigned to the project, and lately the func-tional heads have been
using our projects as a dumping ground for their poor performers.”
When you
question him further, the project man-ager observes, “Think about it. I have no
say in who gets assigned to the team. I can’t even fill out a per-formance
review on them. Now, if you were a depart-ment head who was trying to offload a
troublemaker or someone who was incompetent, what could be bet-ter than
shipping them off to a project team for a year or so? Of course, you can
imagine how they feel when they hear that they have been assigned to one of our
project teams. It’s as if you just signed their death war-rant. Talk about low
motivation!”
When you question various
department heads about the project manager’s assertions, to a person they deny
that this is an adopted policy. As the head of finance puts it, “We give the
project teams our best available people when they ask.” However, they also
admit that they have the final say in personnel assign-ment and project
managers cannot appeal their choices for the teams.
After these discussions, you
suggest to the CEO that the method of staffing projects may be a reason for the
poor performance of CIC’s new product develop-ment projects. He ponders the
implications of how the projects have been staffed in his organization, and
then says, “Okay, what do you suggest we do about it?”
Questions
1. What are the implications of CIC’s approach to
staffing project teams? Is the company using project teams as training grounds
for talented fast-trackers or as dumping grounds for poor performers?
2. How would you advise the CEO to correct the
problem? Where would you start?
3. Discuss how issues of organizational structure and
power played a role in the manner in which project management declined in
effectiveness at CIC.
CaSe
STuDy 6.2
The Bean
Counter and the Cowboy
The morning project team meeting
promised to be an interesting one. Tensions between the representa-tive from
marketing, Susan Scott, and finance, Neil Schein, have been building for
several weeks now—in fact, since the project team was formed. As the project manager,
you have been aware that Susan and Neil do not see eye to eye, but you figured
that over time they would begin to appreciate each other’s perspective and
start cooperating. So far, unfortunately, that has not happened. In fact, it
seems that hardly a day goes by when you do not receive a complaint from one or
the other regarding the other team member’s behavior, lack of commitment or
cooperation, or general shoddy performance.
As the
team gathers for the regular project status meeting, you start with an update
on the project tasks, any problems the team members are having, and their
assessment of the project’s performance to date. Before you get too far into
the meeting, Susan interrupts,
saying, “John, I’m going to be out of town for the
next 10 days visiting clients, so I can’t make the status meet-ings either of
the next two Fridays.”
“That figures,” Neil mutters loud
enough for all to hear.
Susan whirls around. “I have
another job around here, you know, and it involves selling. It may be
con-venient for you to drop everything and come to these meetings, but some of
us have other responsibilities.”
Neil shoots back, “That’s been
your excuse for missing half of the meetings so far. Just out of curios-ity,”
he continues sarcastically, “how many more do you figure on blowing off while
hanging out poolside on your little out-of-towners?”
Susan turns bright red. “I don’t
need to put up with that from you. You bean counters have no clue how this
business works or who delivers value. You’re so busy analyzing every penny that
you have perma-nent eyestrain!”
