MICHAEL DEMPSEY - Cranfield University

Teams
At that meeting, reference was made to 25 projects and this is
supported by the notes from a project co-ordinators’ meeting in July
2000 where there were reports from 11 project teams and the
establishment of a further 15.
So this was a very substantial exercise on the part of the union which
resulted in significant outputs, such as a substantial guide to organising
on Greenfield sites. It was suggested during 2002, however, that the
impetus had been lost:-
The project management style of working, of getting different
groups of people from different parts of the organisation together
who under normal circumstances wouldn't have got together
was an excellent idea and it died. It was one of those things that
had a shelf life of less than 12 months. And again it was
something that some officers were more enthusiastic than others
about. And again, either we do it or we don't. And it was a case
of, well, we'll see. Project management was an initiative and
then we moved on to something else and we had another set of
priorities that we had to address and deal with again, it goes
back to the absence of strategy. (Interviewee L)
Further research would be necessary to establish the present situation
but, for the present, it is sufficient to identify project management as a
significant corporate initiative, to achieve staff working together, thus to
facilitate the integration of the new union and to achieve recognisable
products. It denotes a positive attitude to team working in general
within the union. One manager found a particularly innovative way of
building her team:-
It is interesting. Last year we did a day out here for the
department as a team event. We have made up a garden of the
local children's charity. The idea that came from one of the
research officers who thought we ought to do this and J and I
discussed it and said that, well, this is something that has come
from them so let's go with it and let them organise it and support
it. And when we discussed about what was the need for this
and why people wanted to do it, really the answer came back
that it was that they almost wanted to celebrate the team. We
are not that often physically together -- we have some people in
Bournemouth, some in Bristol, some in Cardiff, some in Glasgow
and people here and it was the sort of thing where everybody
could be together and celebrate being a team. That was really
quite rewarding for J and I. So they do work together and they
do support each other. (Interviewee J)
And several managers drew attention to the importance of teamwork to
their work:-
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