By empowering your teams through a combined process of training, workshops, coaching and the use of best practice tools, they will be more able to consistently perform at their best .
The strategy is to create an environment where your teams can perform at their best whatever the circumstances of the project. This type of continuous improvement is sustainable and will eventually lead to excellence and prosperity. There are great opportunities to be gained today by the skillful management of projects.
Projects are complex mainly because we make them like that! There are often better ways of doing things but our beliefs don't always support this and there is comfort in doing things in the same way we have always done them. Knowledge, capability and commitment can help break poor practices and develop improved ways forward. The innovators gain the prize.
The creation of a trusting and collaborative environment in which those involved can work productively is a good start, but it is only a start. To make full use of this environment we need to challenge our beliefs and work towards continuous improvement. Risk and scheduling in particular are constant areas of failure on projects today and workshops here can speed the project and avoid the common pitfalls. All other project specific issues causing difficulties can also be managed through this strategy of continuously improving our understanding. Project teams are busy people and never seem to have much time so how could they fit in workshops, training courses, coaching and learning how to use different tools?
Benchmarking and critical success factors will indicate how well your team is doing and how much benefit could be gained. Teams have a way of expanding the time it takes to do their work to fill the available time. It is often surprising to people to see how much more can be done in a crisis. Eventually the extra time will come from the improvements made within the team.