This week: the joy of team rivalry
This week in the pm-clinic discussion forum: Topic #52 – The joy of team rivalry.
I’m a team leader on a project chartered with rethinking how rss/blog newsreaders work. It’s a good team (Team A), I love the problem space and things are good. My problem is that there is another team (Team B) that is trying to solve similar problems, but from a different direction. No one has said outright “you are competing with each other” but it’s pretty clear the designs each team has are on mutually exclusive paths.
How do I balance the conflicts of interest? Ho do I treat team B when I talk to them? Is it appropriate not to share all of our plans? What do I tell the members of my team when they encounter people from team B?
– Signed, The joy of rivalry
I appreciate the difficult position you find yourself in, but the main point here is that your company wants the best solution, not necessarily your solution.
I might sound like some kind of kamikaze-pilot here, but I would be totally open and I would expect the other team to be as well. This provided that this is what management want, i e they don’t see it as a good thing to keep the teams isolated from each other.
Perhaps you and the team leader for team B should sit down and have a discussion regarding your different views of the same problem? Then talk to management and discuss the potential conflict of interests. If both initiatives come from you, that is something that surely should work in your favour.
My guess is that the final product would benefit from insights gained in both teams.
I always try to be loyal to the company I’m working at (I work as a consultat with project management), and I try relly hard to ignore my own interests (pay, work, career) in this. It is my experience that this actually works in my favour since people listen more to you if they view you as unbiased.
If you find that the other team leader isn’t interested in cooperation or if it is a clearly stated goal that you should compete, then go for the kill. If it is a competition then I would try to gather as much information as possible without giving out any of my own, but this is really not my preferred option. I do not believe that two competing teams is the best way to get a good result although I’m very well aware of the management theories behind this assumption.
Summary:
– Talk to the other team leader about the issue.
– Talk to management about the issue, together with the other team leader if he/she’s interested, but alone if not. Do not try to bad-mouth the other project if alone, rather praise their work, if you can.
– Be open. Share. If possible.
Just my two cents.