Teamwork

"November One-Six-Four-Bravo-Lima, turn left heading one-three-zero.   Cleared for the ILS runway 5 approach.”   

Traveling at 115 mph and seeing the runway
less than a mile demands peak performance.

These are the words I heard at the end of a three hour flight, the last hour of which had been spent staring at the instrument panel as we went through clouds and rain, with the destination airport advertising 400 foot ceilings and two miles visibility.    Three hours earlier, I had taken off from the small airport in east-central Ohio, destined for Chesapeake, VA.    The weather in Ohio was nice.   In Virginia, however…not so much.    Flying on an IFR flight plan, I was part of a team - air traffic control facilities in Columbus, Washington, and Norfolk were my teammates on this trip.    Once I heard those words, however, I knew that their roles in the flight had come to an end and now the successful outcome of the flight depended on me.    The rest of the team had done their job, now it was time to do mine.

There is much written about the importance of teamwork.   From constructing a building to writing software and from managing a flight to managing the care of patients in a hospital, teamwork is essential to a successful outcome no matter what the endeavor.    Sometimes, however, the importance of individual contributions to the team are overlooked and this can have a potentially devastating effect on the outcome of a project.

Key players on your team need the freedom to perform their tasks to the best of their ability.   They also need to know that there will be times when the success or failure of the project may hinge on their actions, and that they have the responsibility to be aware of such circumstances and to either have the proper skill set to deal with the tasks at hand or to call for help in a timely manner.

Success is a team oriented goal.   However, just as winning the Super Bowl can hinge on one player’s action or completing a flight in bad weather can hinge on one pilot’s actions, success on your project may depend on the actions of one member of your team.     Have you given them the freedom and responsibility they need?

Decision Height

The typical precision instrument approach, as done thousands of times per day throughout the U.S. and elsewhere, requires the pilot to follow just two instruments in the cockpit: the course deviation indicator (CDI) and the altimeter.    The pilot uses the CDI to keep the aircraft on course, both horizontally and vertically.   The altimeter doesn't provide guidance, but does provide something else that may not be obvious: the point at which a decision must be made.

Most such approaches require the pilot to have the runway environment in sight when they are 200 feet above the ground.   The procedure, therefore, is to look out the window when the altimeter says you are 200 feet above the ground.   If you see the runway, you can continue on and land.   If not, you must execute a missed approach procedure which involves applying power and climbing to avoid the ground.

The key item here is that, like in many projects, there is a point at which a decision must be made.    Successful leaders will have identified the parameters which factor into the decision ahead of time - things like cost, progress to date, risk assessments, and so on - so that the actual decision can be made on a purely objective basis.    When such parameters are not defined, making a go/no-go decision on a project can be a long and drawn out process as emotional or subjective factors are taken into account.   To be sure, there may well be a point in the project where such subjectivity is allowable and perhaps even desirable, but not at a critical decision point.

Another pitfall is that the decision is deferred simply because the decision may be too difficult to make. This indecisiveness can lead to cost overruns, increasing project scope, or additional effort expended on a technically insurmountable issue resulting in lost productivity.

Just as with the pilot guiding his aircraft full of passengers to a safe landing in foggy conditions, leaders need to be aware of their position and be ready to make correct decisions at the correct time based on objective information.   Failure to do so won't help a project, and at worst can lead to a rather sudden and disastrous result.

What kind of decisions do you need to make for your project?    Do you have the metrics in place to objectively make those decisions?