Managing complex projects is difficult. The business of managing complex projects across a variety of industries and geographical locations has never been more difficult, given the rising complexity of a global economic environment and the multi-national corporate entities that inhabit this brave new world. There is a clear need to find improved ways of managing this often difficult process now and into the future.
Leading Complex Virtual Teams: A how-to guide for Project Managers offers the means to improve your ability to manage/lead projects involving complex virtual teams.
|
|
BENEFITS |
Manager to leader. As a project manager, the goal of transforming yourself from a manager to a leader is an elusive nicety that can take a backseat to other priorities in the hectic life of a manager. This book can help you make the transition in a steady, incremental way. Find out how to get people to want to do what it is you want them to do, rather than using force.
Career advancement, higher pay. Senior management is always on the lookout for leadership material in the management ranks. Display leadership and this will not pass unnoticed. This book will also benefit you as team-member who wants to move into management.
Learn the essence of Leadership. Leadership can be expressed in different ways in different situations. Learn about the essence of leadership; vision, objectives, integrity, action-orientation, original-thinking, individualised consideration and management-by-exception. Apply these in your maangement practice, and see it transformed.
Improve your practice by bench-marking against best-practice, at your own pace. Benchmark your current leadership capability against best-practice, and undertake your own personal improvement program, working at your own pace applying the principles in your current projects.
The distinction between management and leadership is not well understood. Leadership can be learned. Any manager can learn leadership skills. These skills have a flow-on effect across the full spectrum of management activities. The result; more productive, more efficient teams that finish projects on time and on budget. Win-win, no downside.
There are clear benefits to the organization; improved productivity, profitability, staff retention and morale. The manager/leader increases their value to their employer while enjoying the personal benefits of improved self-esteem. Team members benefit by being a member of a well-integrated high-performance team, leading to improved morale and retention.
|
LEADERSHIP |
Leadership as a concept has been well-researched over many decades; however there is relatively little empirical research in the area of leadership of integrated teams in virtual environments. This book is the result of an empirical research project to address this gap in the literature.
Social influence. The Oxford English Dictionary defines leadership as the ability to influence others within a given context. A leader motivates others to achieve a goal.
Eisenhower. This quotation from Eisenhower sums up the process: Leadership is the art of getting someone else to do something you want done because he wants to do it. Of the hundreds of quotes about leadership, this definition seems to exhibit best, though perhaps does not explain, the enduring enigma that is leadership. A manager may use authority to achieve compliance, but a leader finds a way to make the person want to do it. But how do we understand the distinction?
No commonly accepted definition of leadership. While leadership has been observed and studied for countless generations, little consensus exists as to what true leadership is. Indeed, on-going controversy exists between psychologists, sociologists, historians, political scientists and management researchers on this point. Despite all of this time and effort, a universally accepted definition of leadership is yet to be developed.
Nature or nurture? The thinking on leadership is polarised into two opposing views. Conventional wisdom maintains that leadership is an innate ability that natural leaders are born with, and which cannot be learned. A different school of thought, typified by Peter Drucker and Warren G. Bennis, maintains that leadership can indeed be learned; that in effect, leaders can be made rather than born. This is an underlying assumption of this book, and a view supported by the philosopher Plato who maintained In The Republic that the art of ruling (leadership) can be based on scientific principles and can therefore be learned.
|
PURPOSE OF BOOK |
The book outlines a set of processes that comprehensively describe effective leadership behavior in complex virtual teams. The model can also be applied to similar good effect in co-located and/or simple teams. It is very flexible in its application.
This book has the potential to significantly improve your ability to lead your team/project to more successful project outcomes, particularly when complexity and virtuality are factors. It has the potential to shift gears in your project management career. It identifies improvement opportunities and gives useful guidance on how these improvements might be achieved. |
CONTENTS |
The book is a combination of theory and practice. A comprehensive introduction to the nature of leadership, particularly in a project management context, is followed by a detailed walkthrough of the 20 processes that comprise the leadership process model, interspersed with exercises.
Each process is described in terms of purpose and outcome. The purpose clearly states the intention, and the outcomes describe the activities that if performed will achieve the purpose. This leaves great flexibility in how the project manager interprets and applies the process.
Readers gain the knowledge to apply the process to their own practice. This is a unique book, the result of cutting-edge research. It can give you a winning edge in a challenging world.
Download Table of Contents (pdf) | Download a sample of the book (pdf)
|
WHO SHOULD BUY IT |
Leading Complex Virtual Teams: a guide for Project Managers is aimed at project staff from any industry sector; project managers, team leaders, any professional seeking to give themselves a competitive edge in a project environment with a view to career advancement.
|
|
Ordering your PDF copy of Leading Complex Virtual Teams: a guide for Project Managers for only US$19.95 direct from the author is easy. The printed book would sell for two or three times this price on the big online bookstores. It represents good value for money and a sound investment for any project manager, team leader or person wanting to develop their leadership skills and apply them in a project team environment.
Transaction Record. Your credit card transaction will be processed using the latest secure processes by CCNow (One of the WWW oldest and most respected Credit Card processors). Your credit card transaction statement will show CCNow.
Delivery Information. You will receive a download link by email soon after you place the order. The download contains the book in PDF.
Money back guarantee. Your purchase comes with a money back guarantee if you are not completely satisfied.
|
|
ABOUT THE AUTHOR |
David Tuffley is a Senior Consultant with the Software Quality Institute and a Lecturer in the School of ICT at Griffith University in Australia. He has published extensively in the academic literature on the topic of this book, and also extensively in the commercial world of practical how-to guides for project managers and staff.
David developed the leadership model as part of a PhD project beginning in 2005. Before joining academia in 1999, David consulted in the IT industry, beginning in London in the 1980's, specializing in software quality in general and software requirements in particular.
Long-established on-line bookseller. David has a proven track record in the production of practical, user-friendly guides for project managers since the early 1990's. He has been selling these guides to satisfied customers via the internet since the mid-1990's, making him one of the longest established on-line book-sellers on the WWW.
|
PROCESS MODELS |
If you can't describe what you are doing as a process, you don't know what you're doing. This quote from W. Edwards Deming sums up a basic assumption of this book; the factors and behaviors supporting effective leadership can be described in a process model.
Process descriptions. Nelson Repenning and John Sterman from the Sloan School of Management write persuasively about the value of considering the broad range of an organization's activities in terms of processes rather than functions. Meanwhile, the value of formalising processes into process models has been demonstrated clearly in various ISO standards and the work of the Software Engineering Institute at Carnegie-Mellon University.
Organisations need leadership training. Watts Humphrey demonstrated the importance of leadership in the software development domain, including the importance of having managers learn leadership skills in his well-respected book Winning with Software. Humphrey notes that as Director of programming with IBM he supervised 4,000 software professionals across many locations. His first step in transforming this extended team from one which had never delivered anything on time to one that did not miss a single commitment was to send 1,000 managers on a one week training course to establish effective practices.
Leading Complex Virtual Teams: a guide for Project Managers takes the lessons learned from the bear-pit of complex software engineering projects and generalises them for use in projects from any discipline or industry. It distils the essence of leadership and allows you to adapt these factors in your own case, in your own way.
|
INVITATION TO PARTICIPATE IN RESEARCH |
Contribute to the evolution of this model. You are cordially invited to particpate in the on-going work to improve this model. Work-products and actvities that support specific outcomes are particularly welcome. The aim is to develop an extensive list of such inputs and outputs for inclusion in later versions of the model for the guidance of readers. Other input, including comments and suggestions for improvement are also welcome. Your contribution will be recognized in the Preface of the book.
|
WORKSHOP |
The book is supported by a one or two day workshop delivered in locations around Australia or internationally by arrangement. In-house courses can also be arranged.
See brochure for more information.
|
