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Not only will all prior content be here, but some new goodies as well.

 

Bloodtype of a Contractor

Real programmers don’t work from 9 to 5. If any real programmers are around at 9am it’s because they were up all night.
-Anonymous

What is a contractor? This is a good question, and one which is not as easily answered as one might initially think.  Also, there are many nuances to the term contractor which bear discussion.

True contractors have a specific blood type.  It is a different blood type from that of a consultant, but a blood type none the less. True contractors also are distinguished from people who work on a contract while between full-time employees (contractor by convenience).

I differentiate contractors from consultants by a simple rule of thumb. An organization will hire a consultant to advise them on a course of action. An organization will hire a contractor (or many) as a source of external labor to execute against a pre-defined plan. In the IT arena roles of project manager and programmer are frequently filled by contractors. Consulting assignments tend to be shorter (often measured in weeks) and contracting assignments tend to have a longer duration (often measured in quarters or years).

Using this as a backdrop, here is what makes up the blood type of a true contractor.

Passion for area of expertise. Contractors are typically very deep in their area and have a tremendous passion for what they do. This is not to say that other forms of labor are not passionate about what they do, but true contractors take this passion to another level – and it shows on every thing they do.

Very good at what they do. True contractors only survive by being exceptional at what they do. The market demands their skills and they meet this demand with their talents, attitudes, and general wherewithal to adjust to most any situation.

Thrive on the energy of a new project. You often will find contractors (often used serially within an organization) at the leading edge if projects not only because of the skills they bring, bit because they absolutely thrive on fresh projects, and have an enthusiasm which is infectious.

Tremendous amount of focus. I have always found that true contractors have a tremendous amount of focus. This comes with the territory of being exceptionally good at what they do. The down side of this, if it can be considered a down side, is that it is difficult to spread them across multiple projects. Whole their talents are valuable and it is tempting to share their riches of talent, it often is the case that any more than a single project is very difficult to pull off as they lose focus.

Disdain for corporate bureaucracy. Many contractors I have had the pleasure to work with find the traditional corporate bureaucracy crippling. They often make comments that they would suffocate if they had to “live on the inside”.

Love independence. True contractors also love the independence which comes with not being tied to any single organization.  They, assuming they are in demand, can choose who to work for and to some degree the terms of the work.  While this is very alluring to people who a thinking about being true contractors,

Traditional corporate benefits are not enticing. Organizations provide their employees a package of benefits (inclusive of salary, bonus, as well as health insurance, retirement options, etc). This form of package typically does not interest a true contractor. They are interested in the work and being paid fairly for the results they produce.

Comfortable with the “in-between” times. By it’s nature, contractors are not employees and as such will have some time between engagements. Although the percentage of time between projects is lower than that for consultants, it is significant to the psyche of the individual as they know they are always only a couple of weeks from the end of the income.

Contrasting the blood type of a contractor with that of a consultant, an obvious question is, can an individual be both a consultant and a contractor?   Absolutely!  While the terms are certainly not interchangeable, an individual with sufficient talent can perform both functions.  It is a rare blood type, but many talented consultant also do a significant amount of contracting work.  On the the other hand, it is harder to find people who are exceptional contractors which can also serve as consultants.

If you make your living (or part of your living) providing professional business services to other companies, do you do it as a contractor or a consultant?   I look forward to hearing your comments.

 

Bloodtype of a Consultant

Before getting into blood type, it’s worthwhile to define the term “consultant” as I believe the industry has muddied the term to the point of confusion. Unfortunately, it is common today to refer to all labor external to an organization as “consultants.”

Consultants are hired to advise (or consult) in areas which are outside the body of knowledge inside the organization.  Consultants will typically have either extensive first hand experience in the subject matter, or a research arm which identifies the issues and best practices in a leading edge area of business. Organizations hire consultants to provide their opinion and “advise them what to do” often for the purpose of driving highly material decisions. This is in sharp contrast to a contractor who is hired to “do as they are told.”  [In a future post, I will discuss the blood type of a contractor.]

The term blood type refers to the collection of characteristics which are possessed by consultants.  Professional consultants typically have all of these characteristics, often in the extreme, and therefore share a unique “blood type.”

Consultants will possess the following characteristics:

Unquenchable Curiosity.  Consultants will have an unquenchable curiosity to stay on the leading edge of their area of specialty coupled with a deep desire to apply their knowledge to many varied situations, and in doing so deepen your area of knowledge.

Solid Domain Specific Frameworks.  It was once said that you can judge the quality of the consultant by the quality of their frameworks / tools.  There is something to this.  Consultants have typically developed and refined (or develop as part of the engagement) a solid set of frameworks to apply to the situations encountered within their body of knowledge.  Each time the frameworks are used, they will get increasingly refined and increasingly valuable.

Framing the Issue Correctly.  Consultants have the ability to identify and pull apart the real issue(s) from the situation (as opposed to the stated or too obvious issues).  Paraphrasing, it is said that a question correctly asked is half solved.  Consultants know how to ask the correct questions, and ask them in the correct way to properly frame the issue solve the real problems.

Focused Deliverables.  Consultants typically think through (as defined by frameworks) the deliverables to be produced and work diligently to complete these deliverables.   This requires an ability life themselves up to stay above the fray while staying focused on the deliverable set.  This is opposed to performing “activities”.

Working in Someone Else’s Home.  Consultants need to be comfortable with the fact that the culture they will be working within (culture that helps / hinders the organization to operate) is not the culture which you must follow – referred to as the danger of “going native”.  In many cases it is the culture which needs to be fixed in some way.

Hired to Go Away.  Consultants are comfortable with the fact that they are hired to go away once they have addressed the issue they were hired to go away.   The premium associated with the consultant’s expertise often necessitates a short term for the engagement.   It also means that the friendships made within the organizations will last, but the social aspects of the work will not exist in the traditional sense.

Personal Sacrifice.   At a personal level, Consultants need to be comfortable with the sacrifices which they will make in order to ply their craft. At one time being a consultant meant living in a hotel in some far off city on weekdays, and at home with your family on weekends. (Strangely, the further a consultant needs to travel to a client site, the greater the perceived credibility – at least initially).  Great sacrifices are made by spouses and families as well as the life of the road warrior puts much greater stress on the home life of those carrying on independently.  At the beginning of a professional consultant’s career, the travel seems somehow romantic.  Within a year, there is very little romance left in the constant travel, and this feeling is replaced with drudgery.

To turn a phrase made famous by Jeff Foxworthy, if you….
  have an unquenchable curiousity,  develop solid domain specifc frameworks,  regularly accurately frame issues,  work off of focused deliverables,  are comfortable working in someone else’s home,  realize that you are hired to go away,  and endure personal sacrifice by yourself and your family for the sake of your craft,
… you might just have the blood type of a consultant!

 

Playing to Win

In a prior post I used a sports metaphor as an analogy to describe the efforts at establishing and reinforcing fundamentals within an organization.    At the risk of over-extending my sports metaphor, I think a worthy accompanying thought to my prior message would deal with an organization’s leadership.  

I see many sports organizations consistently, year after year, playing to win – as opposed to playing to not lose.  They will make the extra effort to ensure they have the right players are in place, but much more than that they will ensure the management talent is in place.  They will have extensive recruiting networks, deep management talent at all levels (both at the professional and feeder teams), and cultivate a culture of success throughout the organization.  In short, they have made the conscious decision to “play to win.”  These teams enter training camp with the attitude (and every person on the team knows it) that the season will only be considered a success if they win the championship.  

It should also be noted that this is not related to finances as many people believe.  George Steinbrenner was known as spending fearlessly (and some say foolishly) to win at all costs.  He was not the wealthiest of the owners, not even close.  He played to win.  Mike Illich, owner of the Detroit Red Wings hockey team, does not spend anywhere close to what Steinbrenner did with the New York Yankees (now he is prohibited to with the NHL Salary Cap), but he has build an organization which from top to bottom is the envy of all.  He has spent more on management than most, brought in the best management talent (from general management, to coaches, to farm teams) he can find, and developed an organization that superstar players will happily play for at a reduced salary.  He plays to win.  Many people put Arte Moreno, owner of the Anaheim Angels (I refuse to call them the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim) in the same category.  

Acknowledging that every organization defines success differently, different at different points in time, and different based on the backdrop of current internal and external issues being dealt with.  With E2.0 being less tactile than many initiatives an organization undertakes, the definition of success would be even more varied.  If we use positive movement in primary and secondary business drivers as a starting point for definition of success, then what does “playing to win” mean for organizations undertaking E2.0?  What are the critical decisions which must be made?  What are the questions organizations must ask and answer of themselves?  What would the ideal management team look like?  Does E2.0 tie directly to corporate strategy and boardroom initiatives and therefore would often have its own funding source, or does it grow from the grassroots (or both)?  Framed another way, if on the cover of Business Week three years from now was the face of the CEO who had demonstrated “playing to win” in E2.0, what would the in-depth article outline he done from his executive’s post?

I’m interested in your thoughts.

 

E2.0 Fundamentals

“Excellence is an art won by training and habituation.  We do not act rightly because we have virtue or excellence, but rather have those because we have acted rightly.  Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.”  — Aristotle

Over the last few years I’ve been connecting dots, data points actually.  These data points relate to innovation and the opportunity presented by Enterprise 2.0 (E2.0) technologies.  While there is a tremendous amount of evidence from companies who have started navitgating down this road that these technologies, individually and collectively, provide great benefits and are seen as potentially game changing.  With these new technologies companies are learning why and how to best make use of them within their organizations.   Along the way they are seeking the fundamentals for success and trying to avoid the dangers that come along with most far reaching technologies.

Having played several sports, and blessed with having had a few wonderful coaches, I vividly remember the hours spent on drills to get the fundamentals of the sport correct.  Some drills seemingly had little to do with the sport per se, but I realized after the fact that what was being asked of us was building a capability that was necessary to succeed.  Others were designed to build endurance which would allow us to succeed as our competition grew weary.  There were seemingly endless drills designed to build muscle memory for the correct way to perform some action.  Another form of drill was to watch film to understand situations and “pre-think” before the situation took place so that pattern recognition and behavioral reaction could take place simultaneously.

What these coaches realized and imparted on us was the many and varied types of preparation required to succeed.  The other aspect to this is the universal truth that the more we put in (effort, intensity, duration), the more we would get out (wins).

The question (and related questions) are… What are the fundamentals required to succeed at E2.0?  Likewise, what is the level of commitment required for success?  Being a more mature organization will certainly put you on a better position to succeed, but is Maturity Level 3 a pre-requisite to success?  Finally is a coach who will push the organization to success required?

I’m curious as to your experiences in this area – fundamentals are important.  Anyone who has had a coach deeply understands how important.

 

The Problem With Ease of Use

“I have often thought that if photography were difficult, in the true sense of the term – meaning the creation of a simple photograph would entail as much time and effort as the production of a good watercolor or etching — there would be a vast improvement in the total output.  The sheer ease with which we can produce a superficial image often leads to creative disaster.”  — Ansel Adams

Ease of use is something which is highly desired.  Industries are built around it.  Intellectual property laws allow entrepreneurs to innovate to make almost anything easier to do.  In the 1980’s and 1990’s companies would spend a great deal of time and money on business process (re)engineering.  The end goal was to have processes and systems which were easier to perform and easier to use.    While it was recognized that this would be expensive, the elusive “ease of use / ease to perform”  was thought to be well worth it when all was said and done.  The investment was seen to pay for itself handsomely through increased efficiencies and greater organizational effectiveness). 

But here’s the rub.  Once outside of the primary knowledge domain, the ease of use concept too frequently translates into “easy to do.”  There are at least two aspects to this phenomenon.  I characterize them as “how hard can it be?” – which is form of naivete in complexity, and “anyone can do that” – which is a form of naivete in skill set. 

How hard can it be?  Over the last few years products have come to market with exceptional user experiences.   This is in large part to the confluence of recent technologies for execution of user interaction, tools to blend the design and development processes, and an increased emphasis on information architecture as it pertains to usability.    A well designed user experience will give those using the system exactly what they need, when they need it – and nothing more.  It will operate seamlessly in the operation of the process it is designed for.  Most importantly, it will be extremely intuitive.  Frequently this means hard fought for simplicity in core functions at the expense of functional abundance.    Unfortunately it is this simplicity which leads people to think that it is exceptionally easy to deliver, irrespective of the amount of work in the user interface to arrive at the simplicity, nor the amount of work that has to happen through all layers of the application or system architecture.  In short, the naive thinking is “This is great, how hard can it be to deliver?  After lunch would be fine.”

Anyone can do that.   This is very prevalent in the area of end user computing.  Spreadsheets, for example, are used by virtually everyone in accounting and finance (and most other functional areas outside of core manufacturing).  For the most part, everyone who can use a spreadsheet can author a spreadsheet.   What frequently happens is that what starts out as a very successfully developed spreadsheet to perform a straight forward function somewhere its life crosses the line (largely due to its initial success as a single purpose spreadsheet) and becomes a software application which uses numerous formula which the author is not fluent in, perhaps has some visual basic for applications, pivot table, and charts, and imports data from other spreadsheets or third party services.  No where in the spreadsheet development is a rigorous software development test performed (as it would be if it was developed by professional software engineers).  [By the way, virtually every documented study shows greater than 90% of all spreadsheets contain errors – many of which are undetected and continually cause damage until the errors make the headlines. ]  The notion is that it always has worked, so why wouldn’t it work now.    The issue is the general sense that anyone can program spreadsheets as it is so easy to do so.  

Access databases are similar, although there are fewer people who jump in with both feet, but it is easier for people to stretch a little beyond their capabilities in programming database queries.   In the end, while it may be easy to do, you might end up with something different thatn you expected, headaches and all.

The take away here is three-fold.  First, there is typically a high correlation between the system simplicity / intuitiveness and the difficulty in delivering this state.  Second, not everyone can deliver this highly desired state – there are special skills required.  Finally, be careful what you ask for when adding features and complexity, you might end up with a wolf in sheeps clothing.

 

Some Things Never Change

 

“Perhaps better we not obscure the idea that happiness and misery, kindness and greed, and good works and bad deeds aer within the capacities of us all, not merely a select few.”  — David P. Mikkelson

 

This week I had the fortune of flying from Los Angeles to Orlando and back in 36 hours. I will let you judge whether this is good or bad fortune.

One thing these trips allowed me to do was to spend some quality time with music. While my musical interests are quite broad, what struck me was how the lyrics of two songs from decades ago are so appropriate for today.

The economic condition we are globally facing today is generally acknowledged to have been driven by greed. Greed at all levels. Greed of mortgage companies, brokers, real estate agents, appraisers, title companies, real estate speculators, Wall Street investment banks, securities investors, and even naive CDO investors who should have known better. At the same time there was greed in many of the people who purchased far more that they could afford. “Living the Dream” that they had convinced themselves they could afford.

Roger Waters penned the lyrics to “Money” for the Dark Side of the Moon which was released in 1973. This song, written over 35 years ago, describes not only the greed of society, but the attitude of stepping on anyone who gets between them and the gold.

Money, get away.
Get a good job with good pay and youre okay.
Money, its a gas.
Grab that cash with both hands and make a stash.
New car, caviar, four star daydream,
Think Ill buy me a football team.

Money, get back.
Im all right jack keep your hands off of my stack.
Money, its a hit.
Dont give me that do goody good bullshit.
Im in the high-fidelity first class traveling set
And I think I need a lear jet.

Money, its a crime.
Share it fairly but dont take a slice of my pie.
Money, so they say
Is the root of all evil today.
But if you ask for a raise its no surprise that theyre
Giving none away.

Huhuh! I was in the right!
Yes, absolutely in the right!
I certainly was in the right!
You was definitely in the right. that geezer was cruising for a
Bruising!
Yeah!
Why does anyone do anything? 
I dont know, I was really drunk at the time!
I was just telling him, he couldnt get into number 2. he was asking
Why he wasnt coming up on freely, after I was yelling and
Screaming and telling him why he wasnt coming up on freely.
It came as a heavy blow, but we sorted the matter out

A few years later, Dennis DeYoung wrote “The Grand Illusion” which was released by Styx in 1977 (7/7/77). This 30+ year old song tells of the never ending quest to strive for more, keep up with your neighbors, and live lives that are beyond our means. Living “The Grand Illusion.”

Welcome to the Grand illusion
Come on in and see what’s happening
Pay the price, get your tickets for the show
The stage is set, the band starts playing
Suddenly your heart is pounding
Wishing secretly you were a star.

But don’t be fooled by the radio
The TV or the magazines
They show you photographs of how your life should be
But they’re just someone else’s fantasy
So if you think your life is complete confusion
Because you never win the game
Just remember that it’s a Grand illusion
And deep inside we’re all the same. 
We’re all the same…

So if you think your life is complete confusion
Because your neighbors got it made
Just remember that it’s a Grand illusion
And deep inside we’re all the same. 
We’re all the same…

America spells competition, join us in our blind ambition
Get yourself a brand new motor car
Someday soon we’ll stop to ponder what on Earth’s this spell we’re under
We made the grade and still we wonder who the hell we are

Perhaps these songs have stood the test of time because they resonate deeply with people – a reflection of the human condition. It interesting that these songs written by a Brit and Yank over 30 years ago are poster songs for today’s global economic crisis.

Some things never change…

 

Types of Meetings – It Depends on Your Perspective

“Any simple problem can be made insoluble if enough meetings are called to discuss it.” — Mitchell’s law of Committees

The marketing guru Seth Godin describes three types of meetings which occur in business – Information, Discussion, and Permission meetings. I found this very interesting and somewhat of a parallel universe.

In the business world that I am familiar with, management of Information Technology, I am used to four primary types of meetings, and a different set than Seth describes.

Status Meeting.  IT can be a highly structured department based on highly structured processes. Defining and adhering to a schedule are critical to the success of several aspects of information technology. Status reports are the periodic report cards which everyone gives and gets. As collaborative technologies are moving more into the mainstream, and the workforce becomes very comfortable in using these technologies, I see these formal meetings become a relic of another age.  Gone will be the traditional (and surprisingly painful for many people), hierarchical reporting of status from those doing the work up to succeeding levels of management who summarize and spin information for their audiences. Replacing this process will be collaborative and on-going reporting of progress. As this takes place the formal meeting will either go away of morph into a formal or informal presentations.

Decision Meeting. Frequently decisions need to be made by senior management, steering committees, or leadership teams. Successful organizations will have worked out the process for making decisions quickly and effectively. Successful organizations also have a means of recording the request and result of the decisions being made.  At the heart of this process is a meeting where alternatives are presented with recommendations.   Unfortunatately most organizations do not have a means to make decisions and as a result.  In a prior post I discussed the anatomy of a decision. 

Working Session. These are held by a small group of people who are working through a particular issue, concern, deliverable, or objective.  These are the essence of collaborative action. Preparation for these meetings will typically be sent out a few days before hand and each individual will, unfortunately, not be reviewed to the extend desired or expected.  A variant of the working session is the Planning Session.  

Presentation.  There are two primary types of presentations which often fill my calendar.  At the heart of each presentation is communicating information to an audience.  At one end of the spectrum is communication for the sake of informing.  At the other end of the spectrum is communicating for the sake of selling.  While the both have their place and I don’t mind using a reasonable percentage of my calendar to participate in these presentations, I do look forward to the day when the Garr Reynold’s and Nancy Duarte‘s of the world will have weaned presenters off of the traditional PowerPoint “sliduments” and on to the next generation of presentations based on integration of presenter and topic with supporting slides.  Looking forward, this type of meeting will begin to incorporate many new forms of technology as it moves to the mainstream of corporate life.  Everything from how presentations are delivered (on-line and in-person, integrated multimedia), when and where (immediate in-person, on demand) will change in order to better communicate with the audience.

What is clear to me is that the type work to be completed drives the way work is performed and how people interact. Marketing clearly is different than IT and the nature of this is reflected in the types of meetings being held.

 

Memories

 

  “The palest ink is better than the best memory.” — Chinese Proverb

 

I use the popular service Evernote.  They make the case that their service serves as an external brain for those that use it.  In some ways, I believe them (at least external memory, if not external brain). While I don’t use all the features of the service, it is comforting to know that as I come across something I would like to remember I can store it somewhere and come back to it when needed.

Recently, Seth Godin made a great point in Personal Branding in the Age of Google that while checking into applicants for a babysitting position he “Googled” each applicant and learned a lot about them through posts they had made on Facebook and other social sites.  [A good read on this is Oh, What a Tangled Web Print We Leave, by Brett Popplewell]   This is a great example of how people’s behaviors on-line mirror their off line identities. At least for those people that use their own identities on-line. 

In Coming to Grips with an Internet That Never Forgets, Michael Geist showed us how Google never forgets. Each of us can make time machines of sorts by Googling a company, individual, or general topic and have returned to you a list of events, press releases, marketing materials, opinions, announcements, etc over time.

Let us all remember that Internet based search engines hold the worlds collective memory. Individually, these memories don’t decay over time, they don’t morph into other memories, they don’t get lost or forgotten.

It is also woth noting that unlike Wikipedia, there is no self policing or self correcting mechanism in place. The memories are in many cases biased, unedited, and unfiltered. The memories are not so much facts as data points which should be considered with the same care as all other data points we collect in our day to day lives.

The Internet never forgets. It also has no (or very little context) with with any of the individual data points reside. Given this we should take care in what we put into this collective memory, and take equal care when we reach into the time machine.

 

The Art of Building a Team

 “Build for your team a feeling of oneness, of dependence on one another and of strength to be derived by unity.”  — Vince Lombardi

 

Over the course of the last twenty years I’ve been part of and put together dozens of teams.  Over the last few years I’ve been putting together teams more often.  I’ve found that it is important to recognize that teams evolve.  They take on an identity.  They have a culture.  At the beginning of a project they are a collection of individuals, at the end of a project the team is far more than the sum of its people – in ways that are difficult to predict.   At its essence, teams are organic entities which are grown as opposed to assembled or built.

Why do some teams succeed where other fail, sometimes dramatically so? While there are is no magic answer, there are several things I have learned along the way which increase the chance of a team being successful.  None of what is mentioned below is revolutionary, but a few common best practices.  The challenge is be able to execute against these best practices in environments which have many constraints and organizational dynamics which impede these practices from being put into effect.

Environment and structure.  Success begins with setting the proper environment to be successful.  There are many aspects to this, and will be different for every team.   At its most basic, it involves a clear understanding of what success looks like to each of the stakeholders, understand the work that needs to be accomplished, and how it  fits together.  It may be necessary to drive awareness and commitment to higher levels of the company in the form of steering committees and/or advisory boards both for approval and “air cover”.  This will be necessary as over the course of the team’s existence numerous threats to the teams time and commitment will occur and prioritization will have to take place.  To be successful, the prioritization decisions have to move in the direction of the team instead of activities external to the team.  Having said this, I’m not a big believer of structure for the sake of defining formal hierarchical reporting relationships.  Structure, should be established for the purpose of communications to various stakeholder groups.

Find the right mix of players.   It is a rare case when I have been able to hand pick my team.  This is often the area where the greatest number of constraints occur.  In the ideal world, I would be able to hand pick a team from not only my company, but also my client’s company and external third party expertise where required.  We however, do not live in the ideal.  Typically a negotiation is required where fewer resources are available than needed, of those I am able to secure there will be a blend of A, B, C players, and they all won’t be able to start when needed.  Such is the nature of teams and projects.  I’ve always tried to ensure that the highest risk areas on the projects are assigned to “A-players,” but don’t feel that a full team of A players is effective.  A-players have typically been very successful in their past and have well earned egos.  If everyone is a lead, there is no one to support them – and no TEAM.

Allow team to form in own way.  Back to the organic nature of teams, a team is living entity.  The changes within a team which take place between the beginning and the end of the project is in some ways amazing.  It is important that these changes take place on a course of their own.  Forcing this will be counter-productive.  By allowing a group to establish its norms, culture, leaders and followers, methods of operating, and methods of interacting with others, it will establish its own identity and culture.  The only constraint I typically place on a team is to ensure that they know what has to be accomplished in what time frame.   How the team meets this contraint is up to them.

Enable teams and maintain accountability.  Successful teams understand they are accountable for their deliverables.  This goes far beyond the activities the team must perform (which is a common perception today).  By enabling the team to make decisions in order to be successful, and holding them accountable for both their decisions and their success, a positive feedback loop is established which accelerates project progress and provides team ownership.  It is this ownership that will drive the success of the project.

Pave the road and clear obstacles.  Teams need to be focused on the day to day work.  They also need to work on a track which is free from potholes.  Potholes are inevitable – small ones which are irritations, and large ones which could potentially detail all efforts.  All projects have potholes.  It’s important that someone is living in the future and preventing the the teams from hitting the potholes.  Usually this is a project manager, but not always.

As mentioned earlier, none of this is revolutionary.  The reality of putting together successful teams is that it is far more of an art than a science.  Every project is unique.  The needs are different.  The risks are different.  The personnel available to work on the project are different.  The environmental factors are different.  The pressures are different.  The art of building a successful team takes all of these factors into account.

Looking Forward.

Teams and team dynamics are changing.  As larger and larger numbers of boomers leave the workforce and are replaced with the net generation, the overall concept of team and how to accomplish work is changing.  Coupled with this is a new set of technologies which accelerate collaboration and communication.  The net generation is not only fluent with these type of technologies, but expect them to be part of their work practices.  The hierarchical checks and balances which are so comfortable to the established workforce are foreign and seen as a level of overhead that get in the way for much of the net generation.  The new generation will look to a person’s Google, LinkedIn and Facebook profile for each person they are working with, as well as every new hire in the organization.  Accountability is different with the net generation than with their more aged colleagues.  

I can certainly see that in ten years the process of putting together teams will be radically different than it was in the prior ten years.  The interesting time is in between these points in time when we are meshing cultures to achieve common goals.

I’m curious as to your thoughts and observations in this area.