End the Turf Wars
|
Do you think your organization is the only place where Finance and IT are continually at odds? Think again. Productivity, common sense and personal accountability have fallen victim to the Turf Wars in corporations all over the world. One of the most telling indicators is project success rates.
If you picked ten completed projects at random and asked the project managers to rate their success or failure, then asked the project teams for the same information, you might get the same answers. But take the question to the end users, and the rating might change. And when you involve the folks from Finance, yet another opinion may surface. The big problem isn't that you each define the results of a given project differently, though that is a problem. The problem is that future decisions in each of those organizations will be made based on their perceptions of your success rate, not yours. This is where turf wars start. Two groups of competent, well-intentioned, people look at the same data, or circumstance, or project, and see completely different things. And then, you pull people from both sides of the issue and put them together on a project team and expect them to be productive. Unfortunately, there is no instant or easy solution once the turf wars are underway. Each side retreats behind walls of poor communication, eventually building silos where they can work without being contaminated by influences they don't like or understand. The lengthy, difficult solution is to build bridges between warring camps. Connections and communication. Duh. But how? At this point, conventional wisdom tells you to put everyone in a room for a team-building activity. If you've got a large budget, you send the whole group out into the woods for something involving a ropes course and large quantities of gravity. A smaller budget means...paintball. These strategies are tried and true. They worked once. But now, your people are immune to the bonding opportunities afforded by a paintball gun or a 40-foot drop. At Consulting Stance, we've developed tabletop training for project teams and internal consulting groups that address the issues commonly found where there are silos and turf wars. Each kit is designed to be completed by four or five employees working together to follow instructions, solve problems and identify new ways of communicating. The team-building element is not obvious to the participants. To them, they're just playing a game, solving a puzzle and answering questions. As they go through the exercises, you'll see the barriers begin to come down. If you are fielding a new project team with members from opposing camps in the turf wars, we recommend you start with an all-day Project Launch meeting. Between project-related presentations and the margaritas, split them up into groups of four or five and give them the Project Launch training kits. Each team should include members from each department or business unit. You'll be amazed at how fast new bonds are formed. One 90-minute training kit won't bring peace to the organization, but you will get a temporary cease-fire where you can begin to build those bridges you know are needed. |
Spend 90 minutes around a table with 4-5 colleagues and learn a new skill!
Available topics:
Accomplishing Objectives
Establishing Strategic Relationships
Accelerating Your Authority
Project Launch
|
We've all seen the statistics about IT project failure rates. Depending on the source, between 40% and 80% of projects are considered failures, but the statistics aren't as interesting as the variations.