Business leaders and managers must increase individual and team capability for future challenges, while achieving step-ahead outcomes today.
According to the 2023 Annual PMI Global Survey on Project Management, business project failure rates are still staggeringly poor. It is not unusual to see failure rates as high as 70%, as businesses also fail to implement solutions that align with the corporate strategy, and efforts are inadequate to ensure project benefits are realized and sustained, after project implementation is complete. This lack of performance can often be summed up in the following:
We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.--Albert Einstein
The recent and highly visible failure of the "DEI-Industrial Complex" illustrates this. If you read articles from business experts that have analyzed this failure, these gurus point fingers at the lack of strategy and targeted actions, insufficient budgets, inadequate KPIs and even the very unconscious bias these programs were created to address. Seriously? The fact we can say such things with a straight face, demonstrates an odd dichotomy where business leaders and experts appear to lack an understanding of the design fundamentals of leadership, execution, and business viability (*autopoiesis). Success requires a thorough understanding of the scope of the work, a team design appropriate for the challenge, and investment into the development of the team for future challenges.
Many business leaders look at team participation as a means of gaining buy-in of an initiative or change, or a way to empower individuals and groups through engagement. These may be good reasons for expanding participation; but the most important reason for deciding on team members, is to create capacity and variety to fulfill its purpose for existing-to resolve the complexity of the team environment, which could include:
The problem to be solved
Adding business capability
Entry into new market
Culture change
Strategic planning
The technical requirements of the solution
Critical timeline
Scope
Stakeholder complexity
This is accomplished through two approaches:
Regulating environmental variety by implementing control mechanisms through creating buffers (e.g., contingencies, reserves, etc.) and planning (e.g., schedules, budgets, etc.) and management (e.g., risk management, change and scope control, stakeholder management, etc.) to reduce the level and rate of potential variety coming at the team.
Increasing system capacity by increasing team capability and capacity to (mainly) decrease and streamline the time required to plan, manage, share information, learn, assess, and make good decisions. This is done through adding budget, training, technology, more resources and/or adding expertise and authority within the team.
Notice the maturity at which the team regulates itself and its environment, is an emerging property of the system (team) capacity. Teams achieve agility, benefits management, and facilitate opportunities through power sharing and transparency. Team design is critical to success.
Thinking about the two side-by-side photos below, may help increase understanding of system (team) capability and the system environment complexity and variety (the problem, happenings, and impact from stakeholders external to the team). Changes and other complexity come at a team at higher rates like rush hour vehicle volume in a multi-highway interchange. As the volume increases, traffic designs can absorb a certain amount of variety, but under certain conditions, complexity can exceed design if, for example, a multicar accident occurs during inclement weather, or detours impact the traffic capacity design. In those instances, the system absorbs these changes, until the complexity exceeds the system design, and a traffic jam occurs. Similarly, the capacity of the team should be high enough to exceed the complexity of what the team must accomplish, and what could come at them.
Therefore, design of the team should be an appropriate response to its purpose to resolve the solution or problem, or elevate the business. In the graphic below, we see that budget, autonomy and authority, and cross-functional capability should increase in response to environmental complexity, and decrease in response to low complexity demands.
Of course, the degree to which the problem complexity is understood, becomes crucial to staff and team capacity and composition (design). There are a variety of ways to accomplish this, but minimally there should be:
Boundary judgements
Stakeholder solicitation
Knowledge sharing
Structured forward thinking where the team applies structural predictions to the ideal future state
It is also important to recognize that the team assembled today is unique, and will never be seen again. Even if the same group of people are brought together on a future initiative or project, they will have had different experiences that will change their perspective and thinking. This is another aspect of team design that is often neglected. Within each project, there should be actions and activities that expand the skill base and capability of the team-so that their way of thinking evolves and matures, preparing them for future challenges, while achieving step-ahead outcomes today. This can be accomplished through training and structured thinking and inquiry as described in the previous paragraph.
If business leaders assemble a team capable of fulfilling its purpose, understand the complexity of the problem (or solution), and establish a team culture that expands the skill base and capabilities of the team, they will elevate the business and develop thinking that will reduce the frequency and degree of problems, while developing the capacity for handling the challenges of tomorrow, and dramatically increase the success rate of their project management!
PLS Management Consulting can show you how to implement successful team management practices. Reach out to us today!
*Autopoiesis is the property of an organism (or system or organization) that allows it to maintain and renew itself by regulating its composition and conserving its boundaries.
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