Overcoming dysfunctional teams

Building an effective team is so much more than a nice thing to do, nowadays it can be mission critical as increasing numbers of businesses have to sell or deliver solutions through third parties rather than directly to the customer. Add in the move towards  matrix management and this can be a real recipe for disaster for all parties.  As with so many things, though this can be avoided by effective team set up at the start.

I was recently asked to help a team that was dysfunctional by their own admission and relationships were almost irreverocabily damaged. This was at crisis point between the two companies and was jeopardising the entire customer contract. A series of interviews, facilitated intervention and effective use of a neuroscience based profiling tool PRISM proved to be enlightening and pulled this team back from the brink. I take my hat off to the overall sponsor who although removed from the project directly, recognised the problem and was prepared to take ownership for resolving it, even when that involved paying for an external and objective party to intervene such as myself.

Key learning:-

• Profile the team and raise awareness of personality preferences and plug gaps at the start
• Ensure the leader/programme director sets up clear goals, objectives and accountabilities with all parties buying in, ideally 2 days facilitated at the start of the project
• Don't assume that two different companies follow the same processes e.g. One may not schedule scarce resource without an authorised project plan and the other may not sign off a project plan until it is perfect - end result, missed deadlines and blame throwing
• Schedule regular reviews on how the team is performing against its goals, objectives and desire behaviours - every 3-6 months

The potential for savings in time, money and customer satisfaction are huge