Feb 6, 2009
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President Obama’s Management Style and Flexibility
Washington gave us an interesting example today of a flexible management style with the President’s decision to be flexible on the proposed $900 billion legislative package making its way in the legislature. I’m not commenting on the pros and cons of the bill or of the President’s action. I just find it interesting that he is opting to change the initial package, his original “project plan” as it were, in order to achieve a different goal. For him, it seems that the true goal of the package (the purpose of the project) is to get something done fast and that has joint input for both parties. Again, whether that’s right or wrong is not the point of this post.
The point is that this is an example of a management style that is focused on a business goal, as it were, of the project rather than the specific deliverables originally defined in the project plan. In this case, the business goal seems to be: the process. The President wants Congress (the team) to work together in a specific way -and with speed. There is flexibility on the deliverables themselves. The focus is on process, on how the team works together. Depending on how its done, it can be either very frustrating for the team or empowering. Frustrating, since the role of every team member is generally to facilitate accomplishing a specific deliverable. Empowering, if team members find that the new process allows them to accomplish deliverables faster or more efficiently. Let’s see what happens.
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