I am in graduate school. My school places students in groups of six students for the first six months of class. I would like suggestions on how I can influence this group to make our a close deadline. We are in a situation were our assignment is due in a couple of days and we can seem to get anywhere. I need to figure out a way to get this group of "team leaders" to work together and finish this project. Please help!!

-- David Panters (Mrs_fancypants@yahoo.com), November 01, 2000

Answers

The only thing I can think of is a beer ban. You have to go to your group and offer them two alternatives

Choice No 1. Get totally stoned and get pissed drunk and get thrown out of college.

or

Choice No. 2 Everybody agrees to no beer unless you get a certain percentage or grade point for your assignment.

Talk to their straight at their heart David, trust me they have one. If you try an team leader stuff on them, they will only wonder what you have been drinking.

My advice is to choose Choice No.2

-- Mark Zorro (zorromark@consulant.com), November 01, 2000.

Sounds like you need help building consensus and leading the "leaders" forward to knock this thing out. My suggestion is to use what I call a "Consensus Building Document" to do this. By creating a simple one or two page document you can have a baseline to work with and use it as a tool to move forward.

If you put your ideas and objectives (YOURS, don't worry about anyone else in the group to begin with) into this document you'll have a good start. Other team-mates may agree or dis-agree with some of your objectives or parts of your methodology, but that dis-agreement is PROGRESS. It's careful to only entertain disagreements that alternative objectives or methodologies associated with them. Make sense?

Here's my template for a consensus building document. I use this as a tool to gain consensus or budget approvals from upper management but I also use it to gain consensus from people I manage. It is much easier for me to manage people who understand their objectives and how those objectives fit into the big picture (in my case, how the project's objective meets key company objectives).

BTW -- when you need to make a personal decision or explore ideas around a problem this template works well to help think through the problem in an objective fashion.

Here's my template. It's based on a P&G template that was handed down to me by my dad. He made some modifications to it and this has become a very usefull tool for me. Email me if you would like a MS word copy of this template:

PROPOSAL TITLE Proposal Purpose. One or two sentences describing the project/proposal.

BACKGROUND One or two short paragraphs outlining the background and issues around the proposal. Use this area to outline all of the obstacles in the past or to demonstrate need. If this section is written in two paragraphs the first one usually works well as history and the second one usually serves as a good lead into the next section (Objectives).

OBJECTIVE(s) B7 This often works best as a bullet list. B7 You usually do not want to have more than five (5) objectives. Two to three objectives are best. B7 These objectives should naturally flow from the background statement. In other words, based on the background given, these objectives should be rather obvious. If they're not, re-work the background statement or determine if the project/proposal is motivated by some other problem. B7 Start these objectives with active words if possible for example: B7 Improve customer service by . . .

MANAGEMENT OBJECTIVE(s) -- in your case this may be unnecessary or you may want to adjust it to reflect your school's objectives B7 There are really only three management objectives: B7 Increase the Stock Price B7 Increase Revenues B7 Reduce Costs. B7 While this is meant as a joke, at the same time it is fundamentally true, and this should be understood when writing a proposal. It is best not to directly state these objectives, but translate the objectives section above into management objectives. (see the personal note that was sent to me by my mentor below for more info if it helps)

METHODOLOGY (optional) 1. This is best presented as numbered list. 2. Use this as your outline or headers for your MS Project Plan (if you create one) once the proposal/project is approved or you believe you have enough justification to spend the time/resources to create a more fleshed out plan (if necessary) 3. This should be kept simple, presenting the implementation/methodology from a "100,000 foot view". 4. In some cases the methodology is not really necessary, for example if you're proposing a headcount change. It's okay to exclude this and move forward if it makes sense. In fact, it is okay to exclude any element of this template (or the template itself) if it does not meet the requirements of the project or proposal.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY or Proposal or Details This is where you lay out a more details or a plan including your schedule.

-- Todd Emerson (temerson@metacrawler.com), November 02, 2000.