In part 1 of this Project Management series, we covered the five fundamental phases of a project. Much of what was said in part 1 was really relating back to what you can do to create, manage, run, and finally complete a project on your own, by an individual basis. But what you are seeking to do is to build something with other people. When you bring other people into the equation of whatever it is you’re trying to do, especially things that might be creatively oriented, the situation tends to change completely. When talking about the five phases of a project, it is easy to take that from one source and then translate it to another. With managing a team, or even taking part in the true spirit of team work, I don’t know how easily we can make guidelines or a rule book of any kind.

Let us first decide that this will tell the perspective of being a team leader. In order to be a team leader, you must be versatile, and adaptable. But also important, perhaps even more important than your flexibility under the leadership of teams, is the flexibility and versatility of the team itself. No matter what the project, whether it is renovating your home for the latest trends and fashions or if it is starting a business that is intended to make millions for you in the bank, picking the right people to partner with and the right team mates to collaborate with is a critically important process.

Perhaps the best way to illustrate this point is to tell my story.

I first joined what would later become a full blown corporation, but originally started only as a group, in 2002. What was the group? It was Barton Ct. Productions, a company under works in its early stages by a young teenager my own age named Stephen Wolfe. Stephen and I met each other in a high school P.E. class where we first met and decided to pursue a new project that, with its new technology, would change the overall face of the group itself. Stephen was the first one to begin the company in 1999, and is later one of the only ones left running it with me to this day in 2007. Over the course of what is now turning into an eight year journey for the newly formed company Barton Ct. Productions Inc. we have had a lot of people come and go.

It is important to not get too attached to the people you begin projects with. Or perhaps I should say, it is important to not stay attached to the people you begin projects with. For the remainder of this article, I’m going to use the story of my production company to illustrate the principles of picking your team, keeping that team together when you can, and also how to utilize the individual talents within that team.

Again, I have to come back to the example of the film making industry. During the writing of a script or screenplay that will later be used to shoot, edit, and then release a movie, there is something called the casting process, in which actual actors are hand picked to play particular characters within the screenplay’s story. This is the reason that we see Mel Gibson play certain kinds of roles, why Tom Cruise has almost always played a character who is coming to terms with his own humanity and nothing much else, why Tom Hanks IS Forrest Gump. While each actor in the field can be highly versatile, it is also important to note that no matter how varied they become, they are usually going to stick to one particular kind of character overall. Even the good ones! Adam Sandler can play a serious character as he did in the movie Spanglish, but for the most part, actor Adam Sandler was known as a comedian from his years of experience on Saturday Night Live. Just as actors are suited best to particular characters, people are often best suited to particular jobs and functions.

The importance of capitalizing on the natural affinities and strengths of others is evident everywhere, in all kinds of different areas. First and foremost, I think it the first place I noticed it was in the area of education. Children tend to be either right brained or left brained thinkers, and in education it would be ideal for teachers to tailor to different learning styles. It is always possible for people to learn with their other senses, should they be willing to do the things it takes, but why waste your effort when you have powerful potential waiting for you in a unique, innovative form?

When it comes to creating anything that takes more than just one individual, multiple individuals are going to make the difference. But I also want to stress once again – you should never put a number of people on a team that is not necessary. Do the bare minimum, but do the bare minimum with the highest quality possible. For instance, when Barton Ct. was filming its short film Daydreams at a high school, we had only the people we needed on the shoot. The directors, the cast, and a small crew. The setting takes place in a classroom, but we only filmed the majority doing only the main characters, and then for one day only we brought in the extras. There is no use, whether you’re filming a movie or not, in having lots of people just sitting around watching. This can create distraction, disruption, and overall chaos.

The basic sorting process for determining what person will go to what job is sorted out in my own projects is as follows:

  • First, you assign everyone who LOVES doing particular things to those jobs. If someone prefers to do paperwork over more physical tasks, give them the paper work if it’s available.
  • Limit the amount of people on a team or the individual teams of that team itself. Do not include anymore than is needed.
  • Make sure those put in charge have shown serious dedication. Leadership positions belong to those who work for them most. If someone has a great deal of experience and has always shown a passion for what they’re doing, you should assign them the leadership position before any other. But dedication is not always exclusive to experience – use your best judgment for deciding who is most passionate about a particular job or role.
  • Get to know your team as people. While this does not mean dating the girls who work with you, it does mean getting to know the others you’re either working with or whom are working for you on a more personal level. This is part of the reason companies often do “team building” exercises such as movies, dinner, and company sport sessions where the entire firm will come out to play basketball with each other, or anything similar. If the team builds a connection with each other that is more personal than professional, work will not feel so much like work.
  • Let the team handle its own disputes before you handle them. If there is conflict within the team because of differences and/or disagreement, always instruct them to work it out among themselves by reaching a compromise or agreement of their own before you are asked to step in to either mediate or intervene. A team is a team, not a group of people who are kept together by one person, that person often being you.
Be Sociable, Share!