114 • Creative, Ecient, and Eective Project Management
CONCLUSION
A good body of knowledge exists on what it takes to set the stage in a
work environment to allow creativity to blossom. Unfortunately, a lot of
understanding exists but very little action is taken. ere seem to be more
pressing concerns. Everyone agrees that creativity is important and, in
the meantime, other concerns or issues seem to eclipse it in importance.
It is small wonder that creativity remains in short supply despite everyone
embracing it. Project managers must take the initiative to set the stage
for creativity, and ultimately innovation, to become a major focus of their
projects or its probability will be low.
Getting Started Checklist
Question Yes No
1. Have you determined which of the following actions (or all) you will do
to engender a creative environment for your project?
Establish a receptive audience.
Make training available.
Grant necessary access to data and tools.
Concentrate creative energy.
Encourage a certain degree of anxiety and tension.
Establish priorities.
Encourage diversity.
Build and maintain trust.
Bring on board people with fresh knowledge and experience.
Support people’s growth.
Encourage ownership.
Stress communications.
Emphasize coordination.
Relax rules, procedures, and so on.
Align individual and organizational goals and objectives.
Allow for risk taking.
Reward risk taking.
Allow time for problem or issue denition.
Provide opportunities to create.
Broaden people’s knowledge and experience.
Counter groupthink.
Encourage transformational leadership.
Establish a receptive audience.
Make training available.
Laying the Groundwork for a Creative Environment • 115
Getting Started Checklist
Question Yes No
Grant access to do their job.
Grant access to the necessary tools.
Concentrate energy.
Encourage a certain degree of anxiety and tension.
Establish priorities.
Encourage diversity.
Build and maintain trust.
Support people’s growth.
Encourage ownership.
Stress communications.
Emphasize coordination.
Relax rules, procedures, and so on.
Align individual and organizational goals and objectives.
Allow for risk taking.
Allow time for problem or issue denition.
Provide opportunities to create.
Broaden people’s knowledge and experience.
Counter groupthink.
Encourage transformational leadership.
2. If applicable, select the specic action you will take to accomplish the
following:
Establish a receptive audience:
• Apply stakeholder management (e.g., understand interests, concerns,
and so on).
• Communicate continuously about key activities on the project.
• Encourage participation by key stakeholders on activities involving
creativity.
• Share information about progress of creative endeavors.
• Other:
Make training available:
• Apply the buddy system to work on activities requiring some transfer
of skills and knowledge.
• Communicate best practices from other organizations.
• Exploit the use of all training media, e.g., CD-ROM training.
• Provide cross-training.
• Share lessons learned from creative activities on other projects.
• Other:
Grant access to data to do their job
• Conduct frequent data-sharing sessions.
(Continued)
116 • Creative, Ecient, and Eective Project Management
Getting Started Checklist
Question Yes No
• Establish a repository of data to which team members have open access.
• Provide people with the tools to access applicable data.
• Reduce the number of controls restricting access to data.
• Other:
Grant access to necessary tools
• Provide tools adhering to common standards.
• Provide tools with the most current capabilities.
• Pursue cross-training on using tools.
• Reduce the number of controls restricting the use of tools other than
for private application.
• Other:
Concentrate creative energy
• Ask continually at meetings whether the topic under discussion helps
further the goals of the project.
• Have team members participate in dening and planning the project.
• Have team members ask for creative insights from others on how to
address a problem or issue.
• Review the goals of the project at team meetings.
Encourage a certain degree of anxiety and tension
• Give visibility about the project’s progress by reviewing repeatedly
one or two key metrics at every meeting.
• Have other team members serve as a devil’s advocate to question
prevailing thinking.
• Have people become responsible for complete deliverables.
• Mention at meetings potential problems or issues looming in the
background that could negatively aect the project.
• Other:
Establish priorities
• Have team members participate in determining and assessing
priorities.
• Provide continual feedback on achieving priorities.
• Show the relationship of project activities to the activities of the
higher organization at team meetings.
• Other:
Encourage diversity
• Change working relationships among team members from time to time.
• Mix and match personality types on various tasks and deliverables.
• Seek people for their expertise to participate on the project on an ad
hoc basis.
Laying the Groundwork for a Creative Environment • 117
Getting Started Checklist
Question Yes No
• Seek people with varied backgrounds from outside the project to
participate to give a dierent perspective.
• Seek speakers to come in to address topics that are tangentially
related to problems and issues occurring on the project.
• Use personality assessment tools to determine dierent personality
types needed on the project.
• Have people from outside the organization join the project team.
• Other:
Build and maintain trust
• Be accessible to team members at all times.
• Emphasize the need to share information, issues, and expertise.
• Encourage people to seek help if they have a problem.
• Share recognition.
• Other(s):
Support people’s growth
• Allow individuals to experiment more frequently to address
aproblem or issue.
• Allow people to attend training sessions relevant to the project.
• Enable people to come up their own solutions to problems or issues.
• Encourage cross-training.
• Remove or lessen the impact of bureaucratic controls on individuals
and the entire team.
• Other:
Encourage ownership
• Have individuals report on performance for their respective
responsibilities.
• Have people plan their own responsibilities’ dates of completion.
• Have team members participate in the overall planning of a
project.
• Other:
Stress communications
• Communicate frequently on performance status.
• Encourage greater sharing of information, problems, issues, and
soon.
• Encourage participation in the development and review of reports
and other project documents.
• Encourage team members to reach out to peers for insights on
addressing problems or issues.
(Continued)
118 • Creative, Ecient, and Eective Project Management
Getting Started Checklist
Question Yes No
• Provide templates for sharing information (e.g., reports).
• Provide the tools to enable sharing locally and with team members at
remote locations.
• Other:
Emphasize coordination
• Assign people to work jointly on a set of tasks or deliverables.
• Conduct meetings requiring people to interact with others to address
a problem or issue.
• Publish weekly and two-week look-ahead reports so stakeholders can
see what is and will be happening.
• Other:
Relax rules, procedures, and so on
• Distinguish between which rules and procedures are more important
than others.
• Place more emphasis on completing the project rather than satisfying
administrative requirements.
• Shield team members from complying with administrative requests.
• Other:
Align individual and organizational goals and objectives
• Allow individuals to select activities on which to work.
• Have team members participate in planning.
• Hold one-on-one sessions with team members to ascertain whether
their motivational needs are being met jointly with that of the project.
• Other:
Allow for risk taking
• Demonstrate support for failure (e.g., congratulate people for tackling
a tough activity and failing).
• Give visibility to any risk-taking eorts on the project, such as giving
presentations on progress at team meetings.
• Perform a lessons-learned session aer each high-risk activity
completes.
• Remove any administrative obstacles impeding risk taking.
• Protect risk takers using positive incentives on the project (e.g.,
presentations on progress before team members and senior
management).
• Recognize risk taking, whether successful or unsuccessful.
• Other:
Allow time for problem or issue denition
• Involve more than one person in dening a problem or issue to
ensure a wider perspective.
..................Content has been hidden....................

You can't read the all page of ebook, please click here login for view all page.
Reset