GETTING STARTED

Congratulations! You’ve just received your new project assignment! As project manager, you are propelled into the project. You need human resources to help scope, plan, and execute the project on schedule and within budget. You need a variety of skills and expertise to support the project’s complicated needs—and you need them quickly.

Sound familiar? Many project managers immediately find themselves thinking about who they need versus what they need when identifying project resources. In other words, many project managers select team members based on previous working relationships. Team members who hold required subject matter expertise and who performed well on previous projects are likely requested for future assignments; poor performers are seldom invited back.

This model works well when organizations have excess resources and support team culture. True team culture exists when members both demonstrate their best talents and function synergistically to achieve common goals. Unfortunately, many organizations lack both the bandwidth in resource availability and the true team mindset. As a result, project team leaders often find themselves fighting for the same small pool of ideal team members. There are never enough star players to fulfill all project team requirements, forcing project team managers to staff with “B” players.

Identifying what is needed on the team rather than who you want on the team is a great way to approach functional managers when requesting resources. When you are able to describe the skills, expertise, and assets of what you need on the team, you are effectively informing managers how to develop other staff members who might not quite have what it takes to make the team today. This has long-term value for both you as the requesting manager and the functional manager. Having large pools of highly qualified staff maintains the delicate balance between supporting project needs and meeting operational requirements without depleting the “A” players.

Be willing to accept rookie players. New members bring fresh perspective to solving project challenges, there’s nothing like a fresh set of eyes to solve an old problem.

Aside from selecting team members who hold the “right” level of skill and expertise needed to support the project requirements, it is just as important to identify team members who are able to work well with others and exhibit consistent levels of cooperation. These “social intelligence” skills include the ability to persuade, negotiate, compromise, and make others feel important.

Team members come in all shapes and sizes, with varying levels of training, expertise, experience, education, and background. Some team members come with extensive industry and/or subject matter expertise, whereas others do not; many fall between the two extremes. The challenge you face as a project manager is to know what you want in a team member before you search for one. Be thoughtful and precise in assessing the level of skill you need (to support the size, type, and magnitude of your project), and overlay those requirements with emotional, social, and interpersonal intelligence requirements.

In fact, be careful not to overemphasize technical requirements when evaluating candidates. Limiting your search to people who have strong technical capabilities but lack professional decorum and interpersonal skills is not likely to produce optimum project results. Project members who have subject matter expertise but lack collaboration, tolerance, and understanding are not likely to fit well on the team; instead, they are more likely to alienate their teammates. Project team members who can get the job done but will leave a trail of destruction in their path are less-than-ideal candidates for any team.

Projects cannot afford team turnover. The challenge is this: How do you select the “right” team players?