Case Studies

TACTILE MANAGEMENT™: CULTURE OF INTEGRITY

The secret to creating successful teams lies within the title above. Of course, working the hours, hiring smart people and having the right plans are important, but many leaders already do those things.

Every collection of human beings working on a set task (a team) creates a culture around itself. This culture defines how that team is going to approach the task it has been assigned. Whether or not management overtly tries to create the right culture, a culture still develops.

Many leaders have great individual integrity; they just may not know how to lead teams to create a culture of integrity to drive the often chaotic, contradictory and difficult business goals that the team faces. People who act with individual integrity do not necessarily create a culture of integrity within a team.

A culture of integrity based on Transparency, Accountability, Communications and Trust, with the right Infrastructure and Leadership led to Energized teams for Doug on several occasions in the past. That is TACTILE MANAGEMENT™. These stories may better illustrate the point. The first one shows the result when there is a lack of integrity somewhere within the team process. The second story shows the result of integrity in a relationship, no matter how painful at the time. The third story shows the direct benefits of creating a culture of integrity inside a product development design team.

TALES FROM THE PROJECT MANAGEMENT JUNGLE™

The MIC (Most Important Customer)

This story shows the result when there is a lack of integrity within the team process. One of the many people I have gotten to know over the years is a PM buddy of mine; called Harry H. Harry swears this is a true story.

Harry's boss had technical (not business) responsibility for all of the design projects for a division of a major technology corporation. He called Harry in one day and said, "Go look at the Project X schedule and see what date they can really make. We are meeting with MIC (Most Important Customer) next week and I want to know what to tell the staff before the MIC meeting."

Harry found the team the next day. They were already in a schedule review. Harry spent a couple of hours looking at their schedule, which showed month "so and so" as the finish date. He asked a bunch of questions and they all agreed month "so and so" was "aggressive but doable." Harry then this reported back to his boss.

The next week Harry was in a review that the division manager and his staff held in preparation for the meeting with MIC. When the project area business manager went through his summary...

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A Three Letter Agency

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The Gang that That Could (Finally) Schedule Straight