There's No “i” in Team

 What it is this statement meant to do:

To help people understand that they can perform better when working as a team and taking the views of other team members into consideration. 

Executive Summary (of the reality of this statement):

A telling off for anyone brave enough to show some initiative and do something that the boss didn’t tell you to do. Daring to have an opinion. Disagreeing with the boss.

The detail of this statement in use:

Attempting to locate the source of this statement is quite a challenge because almost every manager and, more appropriately, management consultant, has used the term, but all would deny it. But, if they hadn’t used the term it wouldn’t be as well known.

Some people work better in teams, some work better alone, not everyone appreciates how important it is to work in a team when in business, almost every type of business requires team work, almost everybody would benefit from working in a team and almost every team is made up of individual characters.

The term has been used a gentle reminder to team members that others have some value too. A reminder that a team can only perform to its peak performance when we all work together towards a common goal, optimising performance of the individual by working as a team.

I was a manager of project managers at one time and during a particularly fraught team meeting, desperately trying to get them to manage their projects in some standard sort of way, so that I could plan and prioritise the project portfolio. Back to the story, well, I was getting more than a little frustrated with the constant excuses why they couldn’t comply with my perfectly reasonable request to standardise. 

I said it, “THERE IS NO i IN TEAM”

They looked at me in horror, stopped them dead in their tracks, they were dumbstruck.

Then one of them replied:

“There’s no F in team either”

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Expose or cover up?

Should a PMO Expose or cover this up?

This is not a 100% true story about a PMO but it is factual about the sustainability of biofuels.

In my neighbourhood I walk my dog and my daughters dog whenever I can. We’re lucky enough to be just 10 minutes walk from open countryside. 

Around ten years ago the government funded a biofuel power station 25 miles away and since then the fields around my town are now covered with a biofuel which locals call elephant grass I’ve no idea what the correct biological name is. 

The fields previously grew food crops that changed each year to keep the soil fertile. Today the monoculture biofuel is grown every year and cut down with huge machinery and then transported in massive bales by the truckload on a 50 mile round trip to the power station. In addition, the soil structure seems to be degrading each year and, rather bizarrely a local farmer was prosecuted because the biofuel once cut into little pieces is considered a pollutant. 

That’s the background, now we come to the dilemma for the fictional PMO particularly now we have an emphasis on ESG (Environmental Social Governance) 

These fields have huge irrigation systems that were used when the biofuel was originally planted, but after the first year or two they are now sitting unused, rusted and degrading. The electric motors on every wheel base have no doubt copper coils that are seized never to turn again. They have large rubber tyres that are potentially polluting the ground around them. Plastic pipes for the water are broken by the summer sun and winter frost. 

These are massive, and the photos don’t really show how large they are. The one dog that you can see is about 3 feet tall to give some perspective. There’s three of these devices in the one field all sitting doing nothing anymore. 

The dilemma for the PMO is about the ethical decision to expose these dis-benefits or not?

I see the choices being:

1. Let everyone know that claiming that this biofuel is sustainable and environmentally friendly might not necessarily be true. 
2. Keep the information quiet because the long term effects are more important than the wasted energy used to build the structures, they have been funded with taxpayer subsidies and to move it requires even more. 
3. Capture lessons from this and make sure it doesn’t happen again. 
4. Measure the amount of carbon saved from fossil fuels while ignoring the fossil fuels needed to produce the structures and transport the crops that way we can contribute to net zero. 
5. This is not a PMO issue, the project has finished its now a problem for business as usual operations.  

They’re maybe some people who will dispute that this is the case because they see anything green through rose tinted spectacles so here’s another photo showing an oak tree growing to approximately 9 feet tall and they grow at a rate of between 1 and three feet a year after two years of acorns sprouting and establishing themselves. 

What do you think a PMO should do in this circumstance?

Is this one of the reasons why the latest P3G portfolio governance guidance from the TSO includes a principle to separate decision making from stakeholders? 

Finally, does biofuel contribute to net zero, if so how does it NOT emit CO2?

If you want to be greener I wrote a little help to help you be the change you want to see:

https://apps.apple.com/gb/app/ru-green/id6444596173

Here’s some simple tips on how to make your portfolio office more agile (simply)

Agile PMO's (Simply)

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0BH5477LM