Yesterday was an interesting day. I worked at 9 to 5, which is so rare for me that I was exhausted. It was not the work that was hard, I loved it! It was the context fraught with psychological airwave overload.
I had my antennae up trying to catch the signals from everyone. My husband brought my former Speech Communication professor (who wrote my recommendations for the doctoral program) in as a Trainer and I was able to assist him in practical ways AND be a fly on the wall. It was interesting, very.
We got there early and set up. I was able to see some of his long time coworkers, but most of these folks were new to him. It was an older crowd than he formerly managed and he was placed strategically in order to show his broad applicability across groups and sectors. The challenge is to see if the company can get off some systems that are run by their rivals. The team that has to work on that, though, is uniquely qualified in the system of the competitor and I find it hard to believe they can be successful in a project that calls for their demise. Nevertheless, that is the requirement and it is of utmost priority to the leaders of the company.
The team does know that, but there are multiple groups across the company that work on part of this large scope project, and I guessed from some of the comments, that they see themselves as only part of the larger whole, not integral to the success. This perception must be changed. They need a vision of their victory and what it can mean to the company.
I had a good time and so did my prof. He was really jazzed. As this workshop was very successful, we are going to continue to find inroads into Dell as well as work for my husband on cross-cultural communication and conflict negotiation throughout various teams that are interconnected.
Yesterday was a combination of my man's group and another guys. My man has the developers who "sling code", as they say. The other group is the project managers, or process people, who make sure everyone is on task where they need to be and require documentation of everything.
They do not see each other as being in the same boat. That was an analogy that the other manager brought to the group. Both groups need to understand there are not two boats and one will sink if it fails but the other will not. Rather, if one goes down they ALL go down because the two managers report to one director and the success of both of them falls on him.
It was all very productive and some problems were placed on the table. Communication is just beginning but the off-site will give them some mutual dialogue with each other that may increase information sharing and understanding. I was pleased to be a part of it and hope we can take it to Brazil, as has been discussed.
No comments:
Post a Comment