There’s a big celebration as your team has won a large project. A huge effort went into the tender process involving a large investment, late nights meeting immovable deadlines and an unwavering commitment from you and your team. The celebration is important yet brief as the pressure to deliver now becomes the focus.
The search for resources quickly becomes a scramble. The initial desire to find the right cultural fit with the right skills quickly comes down to who is readily available. Delivery deadlines are already in place and so the team needs to get cracking right away.
This can be a recipe for misalignment, causing unnecessary stress, frustration and challenges.
The critical success factor for driving successful delivery on projects is a high performing and aligned leadership team. The culture and behaviour of a team is always driven from the top. An aligned and capable leadership team is even more important on JV’s and large projects where there are resources from multiple businesses, disciplines and skills coming together. Different cultures, varying approaches, a variety of systems and processes can all get in the way of delivery and the leaders need to be skilled to collectively resolve challenges early and often.
All teams experience phases where they are ‘storming’. Typically, this phase is chaotic, with obvious conflict and competition. Dominant personalities emerge, creating subgroups and team performance can actually decrease. Teams often get bogged down in this stage. Rather than taking a ‘wait and see’ approach, it’s an ideal time to support the team and fast-track them through the storm.
Having an external consultant support the leadership team up front will ensure the team are aligned and performing at their best to achieve the contracted outcomes. Taking the time to help the leaders to understand each other, how they are going to work together, their particular areas of responsibility and agreed behaviours will setup the team and project for success.
We work with JV’s and project teams to do just that. Having us to facilitate and coach your team will place the leaders and their teams in the best position to be successful. They can enjoy the creative process of building a project and culture that everyone involved looks back on as an incredible and fulfilling experience.
If you’d like to know more about how we do this, contact us now ofr an obligation free discussion around how we support leaders and teams to drive success.