Added resources...

2008-01-13T17:19:00.000-08:00

If you are interested in this ongoing discussion, you might find some other links of interest from http://del.icio.us/MarkEvans . There are links there pertaining to management, ITIL, technology and other things of particular interest to me... and maybe of interest to you.

Managing Teams

2008-01-13T16:33:00.000-08:00

If someone asked you, "How do you manage your team?" how would you answer? If you had to answer that in 1-3 sentences, what would you say? Try it out... While you're thinking, I'll try. "I believe in building a sense of common purpose." Does this say all I need to say? How do I do that? Define that? Build that? Personalize that? Sustain that? Likely, I'm like most other managers, trying to use what works in specific situations, with specific people, for specific projects.

According to Wikipedia, 'team building' generally refers to the motivation of result oriented teams ... or specifically to group self-assessment in the theory & practice of organizational development. The process of team building includes, clarifying (the) goal(s), & building ownership ... & identifying barriers to teamwork & overcoming or mitigating them. [I've edited this from Wikipedia a bit...]

This does not say, "HOW to do this" nor how I do. I can offer examples of things I do & you can jump in to say why you think there is a better way. Some things include:
1. sharing an on-line meeting agenda all can access between meetings to build or edit for the next meeting... & having these agendas project-based... not people-based... & having these agendas with notes from prior meetings all appended within the same Word file...
2. sharing on-going documentation on all work (both production & "project"-based) accessible within linked MSProject files... with around 300 hyperlinks to related diaries, spreadsheets, PowerPoint files... to which anyone on the team can add or edit
3. having bi-wkly meetings with direct reports using projected or printed meeting agendas as reference... Notes are usually added back into the online file during or after each meeting.
4. approximately, quarterly reviews of strategic goals and progress on attaining them ... & how the work we do is in line with (or requires adjustment to) those goals...

More on this... in another posting...

Managing work & thinking strategically

2008-01-11T13:08:00.000-08:00

Managing both operational work and short & long term projects usually means managing teams, managing projects, modeling effective communication, balancing reactive responses to events and keeping what is strategic in perspective. Clearly, this topic covers a lot of ground, but gives us lots of room to discuss things that seem to work, why we think they do, and hit on things that we learned are not as effective as we expected.

teamsnprojects

Added resources...

Managing Teams

Managing work & thinking strategically