Building a Team

In any project you need to get the right team together in order to deliver a successful result. There is a vast body of literature on the development of teams. The phases of team development are commonly referred to as Forming, Storming, Norming and Performing (The Tuckman Model). If you need to bring together people from different backgrounds and experience in order to take important decisions for the organisation, you need to allow some time for them to develop as a group. In small projects, very basic training or a detailed briefing may be all that is required. In more major undertakings, time invested in developing your team will help ensure you make the right decisions.

It is important to get the right mix of people involved in a team. When changing processes or systems, you need a combination of the people who:

• know why we carry out the process

• know 'how we do it now' inside out

• can inject new ideas

If the process is related to the use of IT systems you also need people who fully understand the capabilities of the system as this can be important in helping to impose a sanity check on blue-sky thinking.

Your team members may be chosen for their specialist experience in a particular function but they will also bring to the team their own style of working and problem solving. A few examples of different approaches are given below. There are also a number of analytical frameworks which you can use to determine the mix of roles you have within a team, the Belbin test being one of the most well-known.

Left and Right Brain Thinkers

The two sides of the brain function differently in terms of how they process information. Left brain skills help people to function well in high tech environments, as they are adapted to analysing things and introducing logic to a problem or challenge. Right brain thinking is more holistic and intuitive. Left brain thinkers respond well to verbal messages and find it easy to describe and define things whereas right brain thinkers respond better to nonverbal imagery. Whilst left brain thinkers respond well to the meaning and context of words, right brain thinkers are more likely to respond to the actual phrasing and tone of sentences. In effect, skills develop within the left brain and values within the right.

Adaptors and Innovators

Professor Michael Kirton, in his Adaptation/Innovation theory, suggests that there is a spectrum of creative style - illustrating the different ways in which individuals approach bringing about change or problem-solving. Adaptors are at one end and Innovators are at the other. Adaptors prefer 'to make improvements in existing ways of doing things' and Innovators prefer 'to do things differently'.

Among many other characteristics, the Adaptor is likely to:

• Prefer improvement of existing structures over mould-breaking change

• Be methodical and prudent

• Put a high value on being efficient within a system

• Be interested in solving problems rather than looking for them

Whereas the Innovator, unsurprisingly given that they rest at the other side of the spectrum, is likely to:

• Prefer mould-breaking change over improvement of existing structures

• Be seen as undisciplined and reckless

• Put greater value on thinking up new skills than on implementing them

• Enjoy seeking out problems

Adaptors approach problem-solving from the inside, and Innovators from outside, in relation to the status quo.

Insiders and Outsiders

Insiders in this instance are those members of the team who come from within the environment or organisation the team is concentrating on. Outsiders are external to the organisation or at least that part of it. Insiders will understand the status quo thoroughly but can often be too close to the issue in hand to effect major change. Outsiders introduce an element of objectivity and are more ready to question assumptions.

Resourcing and Supporting the Team

A mix of left and right brain thinkers, adaptors and innovators and insiders and outsiders can give a healthy balance to a project team. The skill mix within the team is important but so is the fact that the team must feel empowered to deliver the project. They must be able to challenge the status quo and offer solutions that impact across the organisation. This means they must have the backing of a sponsor at senior management level who can resolve cross-departmental issues as they arise.

A further consideration that must be addressed is how the participants' time is allocated to the task in hand. There are generally three options:

This decision is dependent on the type and size of the institution and the project although a 'shared' secondment route is generally discouraged as the disadvantages listed above very often turn into reality.

In the context of planning and implementation projects, 'singular' commitment from individuals tends to reap better rewards (especially in the context of the time constraints previously mentioned), this is however often viewed as something of a luxury afforded to such projects.

If committed resource is available, then the question of secondment or committed post depends largely on the phase of work being undertaken and its duration. For example, in relation to system implementation projects it might be more suitable to employ full-time secondments to a selection phase but to opt for full-time committed posts in the implementation phase itself. Business process reviews tend usually to be carried out by seconded staff although if an institution is going in for a full-blown re-engineering project it is likely that committed posts will be required to see the changes through the implementation and embedding stages. Where a project is broken into different phases then ideally some continuity of staffing should link the phases. If not, then issues such as handover and bringing new staff up to speed need to be factored in to the time and resource estimates.