The Assessment: Phil Jones’ Dilemma
The Assessment: Phil Jones’ Dilemma
Phil Jones is a project leader at Engineering Co and leader of a team operating in six different geographical locations across two time zones. Phil is a mechanical engineer and his technical skills have been recognised by Engineering Co and he has made steady progress with the company since leaving university.
Phil has been the Senior Project Team Leader for six months on a blue chip project, an integrated rail and metro system in the Gulf region of the Middle East. The project went out to global tender and Engineering Co won the contract for supplying rails, switching gear, electrical supply and the metro stations and it secured the contract largely on its ability to deliver high quality projects on time, on budget and fit for purhref="https://lgfwz.com/zh-mo/tags-nw6e-0.html" target="_blank" >pose. Engineering Co did not submit the lowest tender for the project but the client was convinced of its technical and managerial capabilities which have given it a clear competitive advantage. The company enjoys a strong industry reputation and for engineering and management graduates, it is an ‘employer of choice’ as it is widely regarded as having one of the best graduate development programmes in Britain. Engineering Co is essentially a project-based organisation but its structure is nominally a combination of functional and divisional units. There is a clear division between planning and execution in Engineering Co and while strategy is ‘owned’ by the senior management team, the majority of the work is delivered through project teams.
Phil Jones is only thirty years of age but he is seen as having senior management potential and has been given leadership of one of the key project teams. Phil is based in Surrey, close to London, and he travels frequently throughout the UK to meet project team members and he is on-site in the Gulf every six-to-eight weeks but crucially, he is the only one in the team who has met the other members face-to-face. The project is still at the planning stage of the work and it has gone reasonably well up to now but Phil believes that performing ‘reasonably well’ means it is operating sub-optimally and that is not good enough; Phil wants it to be an exceptional team and he is determined to drive it towards that objective. The project team members were all internal applicants and Phil was given the final say on who would be recruited to the team. There was a significant number of internal applicants and the selection process was exhaustive, with each member being selected across a range of competencies. Phil was certain that he had the right people with the rights skills in the right jobs at the right time but six months into the project, he senses undercurrents of tension amongst team members. In several instances team members have agreed with each other and it seems to Phil that they are doing this to avoid any overt conflict. Phil is not going out of his way to generate conflict but he believes that a certain level of it would be good for the team as it might bring some of the undercurrents into the open where they could be acknowledged and addressed and which might allow the team to develop into a more effective and efficient unit.
Phil is angry at the way it is going for he feels he is losing focus on the project as his time is increasingly being taken up with ‘people issues’, an area where he is the first to admit his strengths do not lie. Some of the issues Phil has had to deal with include team members stating that they are still not 100% sure of their role in the team and consequently work has been duplicated and that has cost the project time and money. Phil was pretty sure everything would somehow have fallen into place as at first people appeared to be committed to the project and the team. He thought he had made the immediate project goals clear and he assumed everyone knew what it was they had to as he thought he had given the team clear boundaries. Phil has also found that there are cultural issues around authority and responsibility and when it comes to decision-making, several team members look to him to make the calls. This irritates Phil as he has told people repeatedly that they are empowered to make decisions and they must stop referring every problem back up the line, but several team members countered that they are unsure of what they can make decisions on and that Phil is inconsistent, telling people to be pro-active and then overruling them later.
Phil is a problem-solver and he decided that the best course of action was to get some books on teams and groups to gain insights into what teams are, how they function and to gain a better understanding of some of the dysfunctional aspects of teams. Initially, Phil approached these issues as an engineer; the team is a system and if the problems are analysed dispassionately the analysis will generate solutions which should be accepted by everyone as they are the outcome of a rational decision-making process. Phil takes comfort in certainty and he wishes at times that people would just act rationally and accept his decisions as they are based on what is best for the project. Grudgingly, Phil has come to the view that he is a mini HR Manager first and a Project Team - Leader second and the project team is in danger of losing focus and momentum. Phil read Bruce Tuckman’s stages of group development with interest and he is now convinced that the team is stuck at the storming stage and he is unsure of what has to be done to get it to the performing stage. He is desperate for the team to succeed, not only for his own career. Phil wants all of the team members to be able to look back on their time on the project team as a positive experience and he wants people to be proud to have on their CV that they were part of the Gulf Metro Project Team.
-
五年級廣播稿400字(彙總8篇)
本站小編為你精心整理了8篇《五年級廣播稿400字》的範文,但願對你的工作學習帶來幫助,希望你能喜歡!當然你還可以在本站搜索到更多與《五年級廣播稿400字》相關的範文。篇1:五年級廣播稿大家好,紅領巾廣播站又和大家見面了!今天我廣播的題目是“感恩,讓生活更加美好”...
-
國小畢業寄語自己經典多篇
國小生畢業家長寄語篇一親愛的女兒:你14歲的生日到了,這是一個不同尋常的年齡,它意味着你告別少年,正成長為青年,像早晨八九點鐘的太陽一樣的青年!在這個特別的生日,我和你爸很想送一件禮物,一件不同尋常的禮物。我們想啊想啊,很動了一陣腦筋,可還是不知道送你什麼,什麼禮...
-
唐代詩人王維資料簡介(新版多篇)
少年膽識篇一王維很小的時候便很有膽識。相傳,有一年,知縣看到書上有記載説,當地大山裏有一種石膽,吃了可以長命百歲。於是,他便下令讓老百姓去找。可大山裏根本沒有這種東西,所以百姓們找不到。知縣很生氣,硬説是老百姓把石膽私藏了起來,很多人因此被抓進監獄。幼小的...
-
會考百日誓師勵志口號【經典多篇】
會考百日衝刺口號勵志標語篇一1.百日衝刺戰會考;一鼓作氣創輝煌。2.努力拼搏磨礪意志,團結友愛堅持到底。3.艱難困苦玉汝於成,衝刺會考捨我其誰。4.1班1班,勇奪桂冠;過關斬將,愈戰愈強!5.九年級一班,鬥志不短,百日奮鬥,不懼險難6.師生莫等閒,協力齊心,共同鑄就新輝煌。7.十年...
相關文章
- This is my father 教學設計Lesson one
- Unit 3 The sentence patterns of Comparative Degree 同級比較句型(微課)
- 《Unit 5 What does he do? Part A Let’s learn》 教材分析與處理
- A comparison of Chinese and Korean dining etiquette 中韓飲食禮儀之比較
- Lesson20 The Spring Festival Is Coming!説課稿2篇
- Cultivate students' good English learning habits,Improve the effectiveness of classroom teachin
- Air Quality Devices - Marketing Research Proposal
- PEP四年級上冊Unit2 My schoolbag Let’s spell 教學案例
- 10 Tips on Chinese Table Manners
- Unit 6 How many? Part ALet’s learn & Let’s chant教學設計