Team Work | Planning

This year I had "issues" due to misunderstanding on how to use planning tools and manage teams.

Planning

A plan is a tool to increase efectivity, efficiency and productivity; and to improve communications within team stakeholders

So,

Do you need a plan for everything you do?
-No! If the action will satisfy the functional unit core needs in a productive way... Do it!

The Team and the Plan

The Plan takes a major role when managing a team. It coordinates actions and timing, besides it builds an accountability system and, in the best cases, it becomes a motivational tool.

Is it required to build the plan with the team?
-It is advisable, not required.

Is it required to transmit the plan to the team?
-YES! Since the first day the team must have a clear vision on how pieces will fall together. If the plan is done, you must sell it; if not, you must build it with the team. Or -even if it sounds unproductive- build the plan to make the plan...

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For those of you who don't know me that well...

I am very structured, I avoid doing things that doesn't add value.

If you ever get to be in the same team than me, you can expect questions like: why are we doing this? How are we impacting our goal? Can we skip it? Isn't it a cheaper way to do it? ...

I am just looking for sense, then simplicity.

A nice person I met in AXLDS told me that she was impressed with my "insecurity" :) From my perspective, everything can be challenged and, at the right timing, I am willing to do so.

I am not a reader, neither a meditational person but from time to time I do research on certain issues.

Visit the Goldratt Institute to learn about the Theory of Constraints (ToC), read The Goal for its aplication on general management, Critical Chain on Project Management and The Haystack Syndrome on classifying information.

Reference from Harvard Business Review on Critical Chain:
"This book is valuable to two main audiences: project managers and senior managers...useful for dealing with one of the most difficult and pressing management challenges: developing highly innovated new products." "Eli Goldratt's first novel,The Goal, shook up the factory floor...Goldratt essentially adds a discipline for understanding what drives project performance and therefore what the focus of a project manager's attention should be."

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