The Resource Augmentation mode to manage operations posed a unique challenge of having many team members with similar experience in a team, with similar technical background and equal capability to take all the responsibilities of team leader role. We found a solution by quarterly rotating the role within the team.
We were working in a Resource Augmentation mode for 3 years developing a CRM platform for one of our clients. I was given a team of developers, architects, business analysts. The team comprised of people of different nature, different technical background, speaking different languages, diverse experiences, different geographical location.But the project was in difficult situation; Project Managers were changing every quarter, the work has gone stagnant, the client’s IT department was not ready to take the system in maintenance since many of the key deliverables were still pending. I stream lined the way work was getting carried out. Slowly things improved and we manage to finish most of the important pending deliverables in couple of months. And finally the IT department decided to take the CRM system in maintenance. What happened in these 2 months was the System responsible from IT was very much impressed by the way the offshore team worked and the way project was managed. While the good things were happening and we were about to win an opportunity to manage entire platform ourselves; at offshore the things were changing. I had many senior team members with similar experience, similar technical background and equally capable to take all the responsibilities as a team lead. The conflicts in views started appearing in every team meeting. The senior team members stopped helping each other. Till now the team which was working without any team leader but helping each other well suddenly started asking about who is the leader at offshore? Why should we follow anybody’ instruction? It was started getting difficult for me to manage the things from onshore and the team was about to collapse due the personal differences. Then I thought of implementing the unique leadership model.
Tailored Leadership Model.
I understand that in the past people might have worked in this fashion making internal adjustment within the teams. But we made it more formal by amending the Roles and Responsibilities matrix, creating formal team structure, formally announcing the change to all the stakeholders and also on the organization’s intranet.
In my team we together agreed to have a team lead role which will be rotating each quarter and all the individuals in the team will be given an equal opportunity to lead the team. Accordingly an updated Roles and Responsibility matrix has been created.
Main objectives of this new model are:
1. To provide equal opportunity to all capable and eligible individuals to lead the team.
2. As Gary said give an opportunity to mentor, to help understand how to build a coalition, how to become the one who bring together ideas and talent and resources together. To help teach the team members what it means to exercise leadership when you don’t have formal authority defined by the organization.
3. To bring out more leaders in the process.
4. To create healthy competition.
5. To understand new ideas and views of different individuals in a leadership role.
6. Last but not the least smooth functioning of different operations in the project.
I could see the positive outcomes already- the team members asking me feedback on the working style. They want to be accountable for the decision they take. They seek advice and feel free to express their views. I am really very optimistic about this experiment I understand that we may need some changes going ahead but I want this to be successful to the extent that others look at it as a successful case study and implement it.
1. Exercising leadership when you don’t have formal authority defined by the organization.
2. Keep the momentum going; remember the leader was just a team member sometime back.
3. The process of achieving Self actualisation is difficult.
4. Difficult to adjust working when a colligue has become our Team Lead.
5. Controlling emotions and working professionally.
We announced it on 7th June 2013. It is an experiment and I would like to see how it works in future.
When I was young and In school our teacher used to always tell that everyone has a leadership quality and should be given chance during the time of election for class monitor. So everyone can lead others unless he have a detailed knowledge of that particular field.
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