Strategy Survival Guide

WHY
...are you telling me this?
SO what?
NOW what?
THEN what?
• The bottom line
• The key facts and
implications
• Your recommendation
with reasons
• Next steps
Team-working appraisal
A method of monitoring and appraising team-working may be found to be useful. For instance a 'team
barometer’ could be used to measure satisfaction with the project and approach. This involves anonymously
answering a number of questions, every 3 weeks, on a scale of one to five, such as:
1. Overall, how satisfied are you with experience on the project since the last pulse check?
2. How satisfied have you been with:
• Clarification of roles and general project progress
• Our individual workloads
• The work itself (interesting/challenging enough?)
• Personal development (are you learning?)
Team leaders may feel that they work sufficiently closely with individual team members to be able to gauge
satisfaction without this relatively formal approach. The option of using such a method should be discussed
with the team and a decision made based on this feedback. An appraisal method can be introduced at any
stage in the project, based on perceived need.
If this rather formal method is used, the team leader is obliged to act on the result. Using these sorts of
formal methods can sometimes inhibit rather than create conversation as they use the medium of forms
rather than dialogue. It is usually better to encourage people to take responsibility for speaking up rather
than communicating through an anonymous process.
Strengths
• Agreeing norms within the team will help the team work to maximum effectiveness
• Away-days are a very good way of both promoting team bonding and ensuing buy-in from team
members on the project structure and approach.
Weaknesses
• Away-days and formal team meetings can sometimes be neglected as the detailed work gets
underway.
Strategy Survival Guide – Strategy Skills
Page 54