INTRODUCTION

Your team is moving forward; a mixed bag of individuals as we discussed previously. Some seem to be megastars, some are good solid players, some look decidedly dodgy. There may only be a small number of them, so you are like a close family; or there may be thousands of them. Each person is an individual with his or her own wishes, fears, desires, prejudices, skills, experience, relationships, problems, ambitions. How can you even begin to set about leading such a complex organism? How can you allocate work? Find out what's going on? Keep a check on morale? How can you even measure morale ?

"Beats me," is probably the most accurate answer to these questions. It is an incredibly difficult thing to do. It is probably safe to assume that at any given time some of the people in your team will be unhappy . It is probably equally safe to assume that at any given time some of the people will be behaving in such a way as to contribute nothing or even to retard your project.

The best any of us can do here is to apply those management talents we have as best we can. There are no rules here, only guidelines; and I present mine under the general heading of use an appropriate leadership style.

Each job on your list will be carried out by a person. This makes the combination of job and person unique, i.e. the same job would be done differently by different people. This means there will be hundreds or perhaps thousands of unique job “person events happening on your project, all of which you have to manage. The sum of how you handle all these events is what makes up your leadership style.

Each of us will have a basic style “ autocratic, democratic , soft, hard, etc. “ but we will have to vary our style depending on the job “person event that we are dealing with. Does this mean we have to have hundreds of different styles? And if not, how do we know what styles there are and when to use them? Here's how. In Chapter 4, we discussed the five situations that could arise with regard to a person and a job. These were:

1. can do the job and wants to do it

2. can do the job and is prepared to do it

3. can do the job and isn't prepared to do it

4. can be trained/instructed to do the job

5. cannot do the job

There is another concept we need to introduce at this point. This is the idea of trusting somebody to do a job. Let us use the following definition. If, when you ask somebody to do a job, you can regard the job as being done, then we will say that you trust that person. Obviously if this applied to all the people and all the jobs on your project, there would hardly be a need for you at all, the whole thing would go swimmingly and complete according to plan. It is precisely because you generally do not trust some or all of the people on your project that you are needed, and that projects go awry.

What would cause you to trust somebody as we have defined it above? You might trust them because you had worked with them before and knew they could be relied upon to carry out any job. Or perhaps other people whom you trust might have spoken highly of them. Or maybe you would try them out on your project: tell them what you expect from team members “ that when you give a person a job you want to be able to assume it will be done “ and try them out with two or three tasks . If they perform then you can start to build up your trust in them. A good test is to ask yourself whether you feel confident entrusting your reputation to their judgment and performance. Another is that you can identify some solid evidence as to why you believe you can trust them.

If they cannot pass these tests, then you don't trust them. Simple as that. As the project progresses, you may come to trust them. That's a different issue. Also you may trust them on some jobs but not on others. I repeat the test “ if you don't feel you can entrust your neck completely to them or have no solid evidence, then for the purposes of this discussion, you don't trust them.

Table 6.1 shows the ten possible scenarios and the leadership style I suggest you adopt in each case. Where it says "Resolve into a (2) or a (5)," we will discuss methods in Chapter 15 whereby you might do this.

Table 6.1.

CASE	TRUST	DON'T TRUST
1. Can do it/likes to do it	(A)	(B)
2. Can do it/prepared to do it	(A)	(B)
3. Can do it/won't do it	Situation same as (E)	Resolve into a (2) or a (5)
4. Can do it with training	(C)	(D)
5. Cannot do it	(E)	Resolve into a (2) or a (5)

(A) You trust the person to do the job. Perhaps they've done it before or if not something similar to it. They like doing it or at worst they're putting up with doing it. In short, they're the experts and can make all the decisions internal to the job. Leave them to it. Don't concern yourself with it, other than to tick it off your list on the day when it completes on schedule. Even if something does go wrong we will catch it because of No Surprises as discussed in the next chapter.

(B) They're doing it, their hearts are probably in the right place, but you're not super-confident that they'll do it right or on schedule. You have to watch them: your neck depends on it. There's no need to bug them to distraction “ a bit of gentle hand-holding will do the trick. If there are decisions to be made then you need to work with them to arrive at the correct conclusion.

(C) They've done other things well in the past and now you're trying them on something new. They've come through on everything so far, but this is a new ball-game. Another case of watching them gently, as in (B). Remember that your neck depends on it. You may have a decent relationship with them anyway “ from which the trust has arisen “ and know what level of monitoring to apply. Decisions can be made democratically as in (B).

(D) They've never done it before and you have no reason to believe they can or will do it. It's back to school, guys. Hand-holding. Inching forward with mini-goals spelled out in detail. Constant monitoring for trouble signs.

(E) Here we have a problem. In fact we have two problems. First, there is the problem of what will happen to the job that this person was meant to be doing. This job isn't happening: we need to make alternative arrangements about it. Then there is the problem of the person. On at least one of the jobs on our project this person isn't performing. This potentially means there are others where this is also, or will become, the case. We need to determine what we are going to do about this person. But as project managers, especially a Lazy Project Manager, our first priority is the job. First we have to get that squared away. Then, as a secondary priority, we can worry about the person.

You can use Form 2 from Chapter 4 which is reproduced here (Figure 6.1) to understand which management style to use in which job-person situation.

Figure 6.1. Form 2, assigning jobs