Remember that guy who wrote a proposal to invest in solar panels for your warehouse roof three years ago? What ever happened to him? Where did you put that proposal?
It just didn’t fit into your immediate plans at the time, but now, three years have past and weren’t you looking for something substantial to use for your company LEEDS program and tax benefits last year?
This is the way it goes, thousands of innovative ideas are passed up because there is no precise cubby hole to stick that specific form into. Who’s job is it to track all this idea stuff anyway? How does a traditional hierarchical system delegate tasks that have no traditional design?
The Jungle is Over-Run
Just as a jungle that is overgrown becomes too shady to see the details, and new growth is stifled because the light is cut off, so is the traditional hierarchic system, during this era. Middle management is closed to sharing what they know. They are afraid someone will take off with an idea they are saving for their own benefit, in case they “need something” in the future.
Middle managers often hold on to their power with jealous control, as the hierarchical power struggle continues to be “dog-eat-dog”. What if everyone was a stakeholder, and ideas were just as much a part of the daily routine as passing out paychecks and meeting clients for lunch? Horizontal work ethics would improve co-worker relationships as quickly as employee to client communications would open up to new possibilities.
Cross Functional Survival
In the dead heat of competition, teams that know how to work within a cross functional system will master the work hand off principle. This is another example from the basic skills of IT teams that function within a horizontal management design. The central focus is to give the customer what they need. The group is developed to be able to handle each portion of the design, analysis, development, testing, documentation, and communications throughout the entire project process.
Team members take turns being the facilitator and the project communicator. The active facilitator acts as the buffer to protect their team project developers so they can work uninterrupted. Facilitators have a turn at running interference against distractions and events that could hinder the teams “hands on” progress.
During their time on point, the facilitator maintains software documentation on backlog orders, helps the team establish self-organization, monitors the progress and milestone reports for team meetings, helps the team establish definitions of “done” for each project goal. Fields customers calls that can be handed off to the project communicator.
Sharing the Load
The team also rotates the project owner or communicator role. This role can be taken on for the duration of a daily, weekly or project basis, depending on the projects’ complexity. The communication tasks for this effort includes writing each milestone review and organizing releases. The communicator provides demonstrations of solutions, and new concepts for stakeholders who were not present for daily meetings.
This person also negotiates project schedules, funding, scope, and priorities. Key to this communication success is that the project communicator ensures that all product backlogs are clear, visible for the team, as well as transparent.
The difference in the function of this system compared to a project manager in the traditional sense, is that the rotating roles of facilitator and project communicator are servant-leader roles that are equal in authority within the group.