One of the hardest things I faced when I was an accidental project manager (at a 3D digital content
creation company) was that I didn’t know how to do what the digital artists were doing. To their way of thinking, it was a case of "Those who know, do; those who don’t, do project management," and "Why should we listen to you when we’re the artists and you just enter stuff into some business project management software program."
I had to find a way to not only build team cohesion, but also find a way to garner their respect to insure they listened to me and worked with me, so the projects we did together were successful. In the case of this sort of project based work, failure was simply not an option—the 3D content was commissioned by a customer for use in a commercial, movie, or simulation, and it had to be ready to use on or before the due date. No excuses.
What to do? This was a completely foreign situation for me (I’m told I’m quite likeable, really). I’m fairly creative and artistic, so I tried to learn how to create digital content using a ‘simple’ 3D modeling program; sadly, I was really not very good at it. But in the process of trying, I did learn a lot of relevant terms and concepts that were incomprehensible to me prior to my aborted attempt to walk the walk. I could now look at a wireframe model and see an inverted polygon; I could look at a texture-mapped image and find areas of interpenetration, I could speak with them in their own geeky-3D language!
And, just like that, everything was ok. Turns out all they wanted was to know that I felt their pain, respected their work, recognized their genius, and appreciated that what they did was definitely NOT something just anyone could do. Some call it mirroring; some call it mentoring; I call it team-building.
When starting a project, it’s important to first develop a rapport with your team. Everyone has a different approach to this … some use pizza and donuts, others do team-building exercises and games, and far too many just don’t bother to do anything more than fix deadlines and yell at people. Can’t see this last one ever being very useful.
How do you turn your new teams into cohesive units?
I have been reading your article for the second time ..and i feel yours make a lot of sense and i have adviced all my subordinates to read this article.Thanks a lot for the painstaking job you have been doing but i feel that you are some information about time sheet that would made yours a complete one ..