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Project teams, project oriented organizations, and project management offices have an unusually strong opportunity today for building highly motivated project teams.  The reason for that is projects sit at the center of a new evolving organizational structure.

The New Approach To Careers
Unlike in the past, more and more individuals are managing their own careers, as free agents.  They are much less concerned with promotions, vertical rises within organizations, and more concerned with increasing their marketability, and increasing breadth of skills.  In the past, by their very nature, organizations have narrowed the focus and breadth of a person’s activities as they increased their level of responsibility.  Today, more and more organizations are using flatter hierarchies, populated heavily by consultants, outsourcers, and specialists that can get the job done.  By no means does this say that there are no promotions or that people do not want them, and that vertical rises in organizations are “out”.  However, what it does mean is that there is a world of opportunities outside that, and that world is very attractive and growing for more and more people.

Some key points to building your team

Here are some things to consider in motivating a varied group of team members in this varied environment.

1. Consider that what team members really want is to build their skills in a particular area.   Therefore, construct tasks geared toward leveraging varied skills, and building increased skills.
2. Evaluate team members based upon their successes, in prior endeavors.  Successes mean delivering on time, mastering new skills and working well with other team members.  It also means enthusiastically embracing change and related skills that are most important in today’s economy.  These things play right into the project management mentality.
3. Value breadth of skill and compensate accordingly.  What this means is that you need to recognize the value of breadth of skills.  For example, if you are building a team for a project in the pharmaceuticals industry, there may be a great deal of value in having some individual contributors on that team from outside the pharmaceutical industry.  This provides value to the team through challenging assumptions, and bringing various experience from the outside.
4. Recognize what people can bring to the table, not necessarily what they have brought to a similar table.  In other words, look at the contributions individuals have made on past projects, and try to extrapolate that into what they might bring to your project.  You are hiring somebody for what they might do, and what you would expect that they could do, not necessarily what they have done.

Appeal To The Right Motivations
Today’s professionals are building job security by building a strong tool set of skills. They look at themselves much more as free agents, than in the past.  They need more, and more to be compensated based on breadth, than depth.  They need to be provided additional opportunities to increase that breadth, on projects that they come into.  People tend to be less interested in positions within the hierarchy, and more interested in what they can contribute, and what skills they can gain.  What this can mean for team building in a project environment is that people in traditional hierarchal careers may represent fertile fields, for recruiting strong project team members.  Keep in mind, these motivational factors as you build your project teams.
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John Reiling, PMP
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