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There should be a
case study on sports teams and the Patriots. In case you are not
familiar with the Patriots, they are New England's football team
that just won their first Super Bowl after 43 years of trying. What
was it they had and did that made them deliver and achieve the
ultimate goal of a NFL team?
I've been slowly
gaining appreciation for the game after watching bits and pieces
over the years and, recently, the entire Patriots games. Sports and
the teams have been growing on me since the inception of my own
testosterone-laden family. I first became aware of the impact of
sports back in the early eighties when a manager that worked for me
spoke in management metaphors all related to sports. He did a good
job translating the meanings to me. Through time and evolution with
my own two boys on hockey, soccer, and baseball teams, I now truly
understand his metaphors and have added some of my own.
So let's pretend
the Patriots had a stellar project manager that helped them achieve
their goal of winning the super bowl. First we have to acknowledge
that old saying among project managers that if a project goes well
the team and it's members get all the credit and if it fails the
project manager is to blame. In other words, in a successful team,
the project manager fades to the background and multiple team
members take on various leadership roles at different times. Here's
some leadership examples from the super bowl game that made the win
possible:
- the defensive
team stopped the opponent
- enabling Tom to
bring them down the field
- so that Adam
Vinatieri could made the kick
- a manager had
their hotel changed the night before so they were rested to
effectively perform
- and they were
taught as a team to stay focused and motivated up to the last
seconds.
There were many
more leadership examples and leaders that emerged during that game
and that football season that contributed to the final delivery of
the Super Bowl trophy.
The Patriots had
the right balance, knowledge and practical application of football,
management and the ability to deliver (project management) with
perhaps some fate and a little bit of luck. The correct mix of
balance, knowledge and practical application must exist to
successfully deliver any project.
A) GENERAL
MANAGEMENT -- Execution and controlling the operations of an
ongoing organization. Skills include, but are not limited to:
o Staffing,
Hiring, Firing, Performance management
o Negotiation
o Motivation
o Leading
o Visionary and
Strategy
o Team building
o Ongoing
Operational Expertise
Symptoms that
maybe imbalanced General Management:
o Experts that
can't deliver
o Lack of Experts
and Skills in the application area
o Highly
efficient organizations without results
o Poor morale and
attitudes that are persist
o Dysfunctional
Teams
B) EXPERTISE
-- in the Application and the content related to the project (e.g.
football, software, career, construction)
o Technical
skills, experience, ability
o Management
contracts, rules, policies specific
to the area
Industry Groups, Regulations, Government, Norms
Symptoms that
maybe imbalanced Expertise:
o Quality
problems with the service or product
o Lack of
knowledge prevents delivery
o Inability to
accurately estimate and predict
o Longer or more
difficult than the industry norm
C) PROJECT
MANAGEMENT -- Deliver while balancing competing demands from:
o Team members,
stakeholders, customers, and others
o Time, cost,
quality and content/skill with processes
o Identified
Goals and Needs
Symptoms that
maybe imbalanced project management:
o Spending more
time on unexpected events
o Inability to
deliver - due to poor planning
o Ineffective use
of resources
o Unable to
predict future needs and demands
o Need to remake
and make decisions too frequently
o No consistency
o Processes
higher cost than the project
The Patriots team
struck a perfect balance this year. The question for all teams is
what will it take to create the perfect balance and to sustain it
for the next project?
I challenge you
to review a project to discover if any of these areas is not
balanced. What do you need to do to enhance and build up that
area? Call me; I'd love to talk to you about it!
QUOTES:
"It's [football]
the closest thing to war. What you're really doing is taking and
yielding territory, and you have certain strategies and tactics."
-- Condoleezza Rice, National Security Advisor
"It is not the
critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man
stumbles or where the doer of deeds could of done them better. The
credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face
is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who
errs and comes out short again and again because there is no effort
without error and shortcomings, who knows the great devotion, who
spends himself in a worthy cause, who at best knows in the end the
high achievement of triumph and who at worst, if he fails while
daring greatly, knows his place shall never be with those timid and
cold souls who know neither victory nor defeat."-- Theodore
Roosevelt
"The best thing
that can happen to a team leader is to have a rebellious [team
member] because if you control that [team member] you control the
team." -- Michael on the USA TV Series La Femme Nikita. |
