As we ease into the new year, many organizations’ executive teams are ramping up hiring for new talent. They’re refocusing their efforts to align portfolios to finish strong for the fiscal year and are launching new initiatives to support strategic plans for the calendar year.

All these efforts require precise judgment to hire just-in-time talent, using data to make strategic project decisions at a portfolio, program and project level and launching new high performing teams. Of course, this assumes that organizations are streamlining processes, using new digital transformation approaches or methods and are assigning competent project managers to lead small, medium and large teams.

It’s not solely about the decisions of executives though, it’s also about great project leaders learning to run fast and lean while developing high performing teams that can deliver value to their organization. Let’s review the impact of high performing teams, highlight their principles, behaviors and competencies and share strategies from influential voices in our community on how to thrive in lean times.

Project Performance Affects the Bottom Line

According to PMI’s Pulse of the Profession 2018 Report, “9.9 percent of every dollar is wasted due to poor project performance — that’s $99 million for every $1 billion invested.”  Also, key to their findings was the insight that “the future of value delivery is a spectrum of approaches — predictive, iterative, incremental, agile, hybrid and whatever will come next to change how we work.”

So, what is different about how we work today?  The report identifies “now-niche practices such as design thinking, cognitive computing systems, machine learning, artificial intelligence (AI), DevOps and much more. It’s safe to say that new and disruptive technologies, natural and man-made disasters and political and economic factors are impacting daily work and, at times, changing the trajectory of the future.” Clearly, improving project performance should be a strategic imperative for organizations to reduce poor performance.

The changing nature of how we work should shift our focus to develop strategies to improve project capability and maturity to improve the bottom-line. These strategies are best executed by high performing teams that can handle a fluctuating work environment.