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mon team values with goals aligned throughout the organization and shared by each and every team member. The promotion of a common objective requires team bonding. This bonding process across national boundaries within global teams and, similarly, within a postmerger organization, where old loyalties and different working cultures conflict, can be problematic. This is particularly true without a shared culture, heritage and training, and it is unrealistic to expect a team to function as a team until they have met in person. In this respect, the IT of today struggles to provide an adequate replacement for human interaction. |
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The mere existence of technological capabilities does not mean that they will be used effectively without the support, willingness, and appropriate skills of the users. Equally, information sharing capabilities mean little unless sharing is the norm. This is a difficult task because traditional organizational structures have led to fragmentation of information and knowledge (see section II of this chapter). Additionally, employees do not have the inclination, incentive, or mechanism for information sharing. For many individuals, their own unique knowledge represents their power and security, and any attempt to share that knowledge will be actively resisted. This problem will be exacerbated if the reward criteria within the organization are in opposition to the team approach. |
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Without successful management, these problems can expand into interdepartmental and international conflicts, creating an internal competitive focus rather than the desired process or deliverable focus. The promotion of a common objective and a productive team atmosphere is the responsibility of the project managers. They must be proactive members of the team, helping with problems and providing encouragement. Without encouragement, the team can lose its focus and motivation, leading to a decrease in productivity. It is clearly essential that the project manager is considered independent of these deliberations. This is proving difficult because project managers have their own connections and experience usually in one particular function and even one culture and location. |
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Continued management involvement in the process is also essential to avoid becoming excluded. Casual interaction with team members is the best way to gain soft information beyond the hard factual data supplied by any IT infrastructure. The soft data, for example, casual comments, judgments, and rumors are extremely important sources, and their interest and value should not be underestimated. Additionally, it is important that the virtues of intuition and judgment are recognized as valuable contributions to forming an overall balanced picture. This information is difficult to gather without some form of face-to-face contact. The project managers |
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