JLupo's Ravings

Ok, here is my thought (and opinion of course). When there is conflict within a work team or department, who is responsible for dealing with it and coming up with a workable solution?

If you have people that are very good at what they do, but personality or work style and ethics are different, then how do you fix the situation? Do you just get rid of the people that don't exhibit the behavior you want even if they are very good at their jobs?

My answer, you have to work with the whole team to overcome impressions and personality differences. You can't just wash out or get rid of good resources. Management and leadership are not easy. It takes a good manager and a stronger leader to build real teamwork. To label someone not a team player when the rest of the group blacklists them or doesn't work with them, is possibly labeling the wrong individual. Not always, but it could be.

I have found when one person is being singled out, there is usually a click or a cultural difference that needs a liasion to work through and bring all members to work together. Teamwork means everyone has to compromise to some extent for the differences in each others personalities.

Maybe I am wrong, but I don't think so.

My research is about aligning business and technology to increase project outcome success. One of the interesting things about this is there are a lot of different reasons IT/IS projects fail. One of the best reports I have read about it was the Chaos report. The basic conclusion from the Chaos report is the problem is too complex to have a simple answer. My goal in my research is to look at the relationship or lack of between business and technology leaders who have worked on IT/IS projects within the last 5 years.

To learn more or take the survey go to www.jrlupo.net. The first page describes the survey, the second is the survey which takes no more than 15 minutes to complete. It is anonymous and results will be provided to those who request them. Maybe TR will even let me publish an article on the results with them. I would like to since the first articles that pushed me on my path were from TR.

Note: This research is not sponsored by TR and has no affiliation with them. It is soley my own work as partial fulfillment of my doctorate.

 

There was a study in Europe called the BEST project. The team set out to build a model/tool that would help companies improve project outcome success. Apparently their results were very good and many of the companies that participated have retained using the tool.

The study was conducted over 18 months, if memory serves me correctly. There is a website that I will have to find again. The researchers and project partners have posted literature about the research and the outcomes that were really interesting.