Stovepipes of Excellence
Powers was correct, it is difficult to communicate across boundaries. It is hard to break down paradigms that are present within teams. To truly have effective communication across boundaries you have to get buy in from stakeholders and break the "stove pipes of excellence" barrier. You know what that is, it is where groups of people who have formed teams that are successful do not want to share information. It happens all the time, and it is completely natural. Most teams and even individuals within a team treat their knowledge very parochial and do not want to share. It takes buy in and trust to communicate effectively outside of your organization, and even then most people hold information back.
As an example take the situation that I am currently in. My company has a major project that crosses the boundaries of all four sectors. The project capitalizes on each sectors strengths so that the end product is the best that it can be. Sounds easy huh? But it is not, because the sector that is the program anchor is the largest sector and the Program Managers sector there is a feeling that one sector is favored over the others. (The Paradigm)
Each sector does not have equal work share, this leads to squabbling at the executive leadership level. Each sector in my company has excellent capabilities in very different business silos, innovation, electronics, services, aerospace, and rocket building. The problem is that each feels their share is better and more important than the others. This has become a difficult problem that leadership has not handled well in their corporate communications, they try hard but fall short because there is not enough trust between the sectors because of past relationships.
I am a project manager within the largest sector of the organization and I try very hard to keep everything I do to be inclusive and fair to each sector, but it is hard when leadership, in this particular case my director says to me; "you really need to watch sector 'A', don't cut them any slack because they will try to pull the wool over your eyes if you give them any slack". This was a verbal communication but was not in line with the cooperation memorandum that came from his desk two weeks ago.
Trust, without it their cannot be effective communication and projects are doomed from the beginning. Wish me luck!
As an example take the situation that I am currently in. My company has a major project that crosses the boundaries of all four sectors. The project capitalizes on each sectors strengths so that the end product is the best that it can be. Sounds easy huh? But it is not, because the sector that is the program anchor is the largest sector and the Program Managers sector there is a feeling that one sector is favored over the others. (The Paradigm)
Each sector does not have equal work share, this leads to squabbling at the executive leadership level. Each sector in my company has excellent capabilities in very different business silos, innovation, electronics, services, aerospace, and rocket building. The problem is that each feels their share is better and more important than the others. This has become a difficult problem that leadership has not handled well in their corporate communications, they try hard but fall short because there is not enough trust between the sectors because of past relationships.
I am a project manager within the largest sector of the organization and I try very hard to keep everything I do to be inclusive and fair to each sector, but it is hard when leadership, in this particular case my director says to me; "you really need to watch sector 'A', don't cut them any slack because they will try to pull the wool over your eyes if you give them any slack". This was a verbal communication but was not in line with the cooperation memorandum that came from his desk two weeks ago.
Trust, without it their cannot be effective communication and projects are doomed from the beginning. Wish me luck!
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