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Further
Reading ...
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10 Secrets of Successful Entrepreneurs - Jenny Fulbright Running a one-person business is a creative, flexible and challenging way to become your own boss and chart your own future. It is about creating a life, as it is about making a living. It takes courage, determination and foresight to decide to...
Must-Knows for Marketing on the Internet - Susan Dunn Marketing Coach and Consultant If you market exclusively through the Internet, or mainly through the Internet, you need to work on your communication style and develop one compatible with the Internet. Here are some tips: 1.WHO OWNS THE INTERNET? We the people. What does that...
Being a Disciplined Home Business Boss - Lawrence Roth Leaving the corporate world for a home business is exciting. Being one’s own boss and making one’s own decisions is a great feeling. However, one still needs to have discipline to be effective at being a home business boss. In my home business I...
Desperately Seeking the Truth - John Jantsch People today are bombarded by so much information that they have become numb to what feels like advertising or, during political cycles like we are in today, out and out fabrication. Small business owners should resist the temptation to copy...
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Building Your Project Team
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Written By:
Arthur Cooper
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Building Your Project Team By Arthur Cooper (c) Copyright 2005 http://www.arthurcooper.com/
Suppose that you as a manager have been asked to form a team for the life of a particular project. How should you set about choosing your people and forming them into a well functioning group?
Selecting your team.
Take care to choose the right people. Pick them for their skills and abilities as they apply to your particular project. You don’t necessarily need the person most qualified in absolute terms, but you need the person most qualified for your specific project. Concentrate on the skills you need for the job in hand. Don’t be seduced by reams of paper qualifications that you will never need.
You almost certainly need a mixture of team members each with a different set of skills and abilities, rather than a series of clones all with identical skills. Ensure that taken as a group they together represent all the skills you need in the proportions that you need them.
Don’t overlook the need to choose people who can all get along with each other and work together as a team. A group of prima donnas is the last thing you want.
Set the tone and the ground rules.
Do this at your very first team meeting. Make sure that you call this at the very start of your project and that everyone in your team comes to the meeting. Don’t be late yourself and don’t allow lateness in others.
This is the meeting where you have to make it clear who is in charge and what you expect from your team. This is where the team hierarchies and reporting structures are restated. This is the time to remove any ambiguities or potential conflicts. Make sure everyone is clear about his role and responsibilities. Delegate tasks as appropriate and make it clear who hold the delegated authority.
Setting clear goals.
You must set clear achievable goals. You must set them for your team as a whole and you must set them for the individuals within your team. They must be unambiguous and they must be mutually attainable. That is to say, no one individual’s goal should in any way conflict with that of another individual. In fact you want it to be in everybody’s interest that each - continued below ...
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individual achieves his own goal. Design the goals accordingly. You must try to build a team that works together with common aims, all working towards the same final goal.
Achievable early goals.
Make use of your goals to build team spirit and enthusiasm. Do this by setting small, easily-attainable goals early on in your project while your team is still bedding-in and settling down. Make them worthwhile goals, but goals that you are almost certain can be reached. In this way your team will notch up some early successes, which will certainly boost morale and establish a sense of pride in the achievement. Later goals that you set can (and should) be more taxing and testing, but the early successes will do wonders for the spirit of the team. This spirit will endure long into the future as the going gets tougher.
Communication.
It is almost impossible to exaggerate the importance of communication within any organisation, and in particular within a work team. Make it your duty to ensure that everyone within your team knows what is going on. Make sure that everyone knows of outside events that will affect the team. Make sure that everyone knows their own goals and objectives and those of the team as a whole. Make sure they know the objectives of those interfacing to them and of any potential conflicts. Make sure that a problem or a delay in one area is immediately communicated to those whom it may affect.
Encourage and foster co-operation, not competition. Make sure it is in no-one’s interest to keep information to themselves. Communication will come naturally if it is in everyone’s own interest – and this will be the case if you have earlier ensured that you all have common mutually interdependent goals.
These guidelines on their own are certainly not enough to guarantee a fully functional and successful team, but following them will go a long way towards creating one. On the other hand, if you don’t follow them your chances of success will be minimal.
About the Author Arthur Cooper is a business consultant, writer and publisher. For his mini-course 'Better Management' go to: http://www.barrel-publishing.com/better_management.shtml
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Inflation: What Is It And Why Does It Happen? - David Berky "Inflation is the overall or specific increase in the cost of a good or service." Thank you, Mr. Dictionary. Inflation is when your mom or dad complains about the prices they have to pay nowadays compared to what they paid when they were a...
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