Control in Internetworked Project Teams

Previously we wrote control and governance in traditional project teams. We wrote about structure, strategies, systems and society as the primary levers to maintain control, and some of the changes that have rendered those controls less effective.  This month, we expand the controls discussion to today’s modern and high-performing Internetworked teams. 

A Refresher on Internetworked

Our research has shown that while larger businesses have charts and diagrams that show how projects are controlled, in most effective teams these charts are artifacts or naïve wishes. Effective and high performance teams are actually connected by intertwined hubs and spokes in a manner that looks more like the Internet than any traditional organization chart.

The hubs are the topic leaders, the subject matter experts, the people who represent the centers of activities for project or management topics such as planning, commitments, problem solving, customer requirements, technical areas, and many other topics.

The spokes are the balance of the project team who connect directly or indirectly with one or more of the hubs, depending on their work content and their specific challenges.

The Internetworked structure, its creation and operation are described in Dennis Smith’s book, Team Transitions.

Goals, Ideas, and Speed

Clear business goals are any team’s number one need. While vague project requirements remain the top cause of project disappointment or failure, ambiguity in executive-driven business goals almost guarantees unclear requirements. This is true in any organization, in any environment, with any team. The difference with an Internetworked team is that it may have both the wisdom to see the ambiguity and the collective muscle to eliminate it.

A common goal of organizational change is faster progress and shorter projects. This is often attempted by deploying agile or radical team processes. An Internetworked team supports those processes by reducing the time needed to access information, answer questions and make decisions.  It clarifies responsibilities in a fine-grain manner that places fewer people between a person with a question and a person with the answer.

Internetworked teams also achieve higher quality by increasing project information transparency. They distribute project knowledge into a larger number of hubs, ensuring that issues emerge sooner for lower cost mitigation.

Most businesses strive for greater creativity. An Internetworked team’s open structure encourages the interchange of ideas. Ideas arise more easily with fewer impediments from organizational hierarchy. The brightest ideas pass quickly around the network, while the weaker ideas are rapidly filtered out.

Transparent Project Information

First a definition: Transparent Project Information means that everyone has access to all of the project information. The analogy of open-books management applied to projects. This is generally accomplished through a shared project-focused workspace.

The implementation of the workspace also moves people away from email. Today’s practice of ‘hoarding’ information in email causes most team members to remain unaware of decisions taken through email discussions in one of two ways. Either the emails are not broadly distributed and people don’t get the message, or the entire team receives all the email messages and critical project information is “hidden in plain sight” in an overloaded inbox.

While everyone isn’t interested in every detail, the ability to search for answers and see what is happening in the project not only improves project cycle time, but also supports creative problem-solving and builds innovation by bringing more ideas to the table.

Rapidly Adapting, or Planning?

Don’t take anything said here as any possible endorsement of proceeding with a project without a plan. It’s not.

In some cases, the intuition of a well-trained hub is better than a well-crafted plan. Consider, for example, a tennis player. While tennis pros may subconsciously calculate trajectories and speeds of careening balls, creating an execution plan for each volley takes too much time before they have to swing the racquet.  They plan a game based on strategy. They move based on intuition and their subconscious past learnings.

When I see projects with clear requirements that are struggling, something is usually out of synch. The requirements, goals, customer inputs, dependencies, and problem-solving approaches are either non-existent or worse, in conflict. An Internetworked team with more shared information will identify issues sooner and, better equipped with project information, can adapt rapidly to changing situations.

The presence of experienced people on the team will support this rapid adaptation to new challenges. While seasoned personnel cost more and may hold values that differ from younger team members, they also have the ingrained experience that can find issues by recognizing patterns created from the challenges of past projects.

One last thought on hierarchy in a team context: Too many projects are slowed by power players that appear agreeable in public and lay siege to each other in private. We find it the exception for technical marketing, sales, and R&D leaders to work well together. An Internetworked team bypasses those troubled relationships as the hubs and spokes bring key issues forward and circumvent private battles. Too many planning processes require an executive’s immediate attention; clearly goaled Internetworked teams don’t.

Diagnostic vs. Interactive Control

Expecting leaders to diagnose and manage teams or projects from outside the team is analogous to running a factory and judging results solely by what comes off the end of the production line – external leaders don’t have the intimate knowledge to effectively control a project and to manage progress. Even with a strong set of project gates, chaos can reign between those gates and presentations are too easily biased to accommodate the desired target despite particular facts or rules. Externally managed gates lengthen projects.

A factory manager will tell you that good quality comes from having controls at all points along the line. Quality in the build, quality out the end. An external director or manager may be able to lead from the outside on repetitive projects, repetitive manufacturing, or a financial processing office. However, they can’t tell where to look when projects involve unique and highly variable technology, tools, design, and innovation requirements.

Control via leadership diagnostics takes too long and slows unique programs. The answer is real-time and interactive controls. The best people to implement those controls? The people inside the team.

Peer Pressure

Control is best provided through the pressure of peers. That way, it is not just a boss looking over your shoulder at what you do, it’s the entire team. North American culture tends to be individualistic. Setting the stage for peers to apply motivational pressure requires stepping back from the American Cowboy mentality and building a team that wins or loses together. That can be a change-management challenge, but it can be done.

A Motorola executive I worked with once talked about motivating his entrepreneurial teams with group rewards and group shame. Everything was about the group. It was remarkable how innovative and how fast they delivered their programs.  In many countries where North American businesses outsource to obtain lower cost resources, the cultures are collective; the group is the operational entity, not the individual.

The opposite of this approach is the “blame the executive” game. When an executive sets priorities and makes decisions, they are externally managing the team – and providing an instant excuse for anything that goes wrong. One priority for management is to “remove excuses.” By moving the executive out of the project decision loop, team members must depend on themselves to move the project forward. Remove “the executive told me to” excuse, and the project accelerates.

Outside Help Can Be OK

As described in Team Transitions, there are times when a team working on a project is broken, demotivated, or lost. Sometimes the team needs help to re-launch, improve its Internetworked working styles, reinforce the hubs, learn about collective leadership, or get some nay-sayers out of the way. While some teams can take on this role, an experienced leader or outside consultant may be needed.

Working in an Internetworked World

Implementing controls in Internetworked teams requires dedication to managing the necessary operational and attitude changes. But for faster and more innovative results, an Internetworked team can’t be beat.

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