Lindsey had a puzzled look on her face. “I don’t understand. The team missed the deadline. We lost the project. If not the team, who do we hold accountable for the result? And believe me, this was a big deal. There was a big team bonus riding on this project.”
I started, slowly. “Who knew about the project first? Who had knowledge about the context of the project among all the other projects in the company? Who had the ability to allocate additional personnel to the project team to meet the deadline? Who had the authority to bump other project schedules to meet this deadline? Who was in a position to authorize overtime for this project?”
“Well, the Memphis team Manager,” she replied.
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Are we loking at a manager who was in our his head when providing over sight? Or did the manager and the company really did not want the project and put minimal effort into it?
If the company had the right person assigned to the project, the project would have been done on time. If the project was not completed due to lack of ownership assigning blame to individual team members is not going to get the project completed.
Team work is very powerful and never doubts that a small group of thoughtful committed people can change the world.