{"id":477,"date":"2007-08-16T14:59:43","date_gmt":"2007-08-16T14:59:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/2007\/08\/16\/part-5-of-6-on-teamwork-pervasive-personal-responsibility-accountability-and-initiative\/"},"modified":"2019-08-07T14:37:51","modified_gmt":"2019-08-07T21:37:51","slug":"part-5-of-6-on-teamwork-pervasive-personal-responsibility-accountability-and-initiative","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/?p=477","title":{"rendered":"Part 5 of 6 on Teamwork: Pervasive Personal Responsibility, Accountability, and Initiative"},"content":{"rendered":"

One of the things I’ve tried to do in this series is use some “word pictures”: ways of describing things that\u00a0 hopefully bring an idea or\u00a0 behavior to life so that it’s easier to apply in the real world.\u00a0 I love the phrase “victim or vanquisher?” because it evokes for me VERY clear pictures of two different behaviors.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I’ve in the past described my PMness as being a “paranoid PM bulldog”: which for me conjures up the picture of someone continuously on the watch for what could go wrong and highly persistent in dealing with everything that needs dealing with.\u00a0\u00a0 Using words like this helps me better paint a picture of adjectives-and-behaviors-in-action to help people (including myself) truly “get” how we need to act differently.<\/p>\n

To wrap up my thoughts on teamwork as exhibited by individual team members who are not the project manager (I’ll talk about that person tomorrow), I want to end with another word picture.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

I hope it helps paint the picture of what our teamwork-fostering high-contributing vanquishing team members look like in the real world.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 A colleague and I came up with these characterizations as we put together a beyond-the-basics project management workshop to bring out the people side of project performance (my thanks to ICS Group www.icsgrp.com<\/a> for this excerpt). We positioned it as the first and most important of several principles that are required beyond what normally gets taught as PM Fundamentals: .\u00a0 The principle is an admonition not just to the project manager but also to\u00a0 each and every team member:
\n\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Principle:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/strong>Cultivate Personal Responsibility, Accountability, and Initiative in every team member<\/strong>.\u00a0\u00a0 <\/strong>
\n<\/strong>To have the greatest possible team results, you need pervasive<\/u> personal responsibility for team effectiveness and project outcomes, and team-wide personal initiative for handling tough issues.
\n\u00a0<\/strong><\/strong>What it looks like:<\/strong>
\n<\/strong><\/p>\n