When performance issues arise with teams, the underlying belief is often that these issues have resulted from a lack of direction. In response to such performance issues, businesses too often add extra layers of oversight and encouragement to reinforce previously provided direction to the workforce, regardless of whether this direction was sufficiently developed to be actionable.

Too often (and especially when done in haste) these additional levels of review and pressure are implemented without resolving overlapping and fuzzy allocations of responsibility, or assuring the clarity and achievability of the underlying objectives. This often results in inconsistently and poorly communicated target outcomes, which further confuses the people who have to actually make progress towards achieving these goal, and can further erodes their efficiency and velocity. Unfortunately, since these teams are already the ones behind schedule, this may hurt, rather than help, their efforts to move in the right direction more quickly and more effectively. Read more »

Naming something is an act of creation that can seem as difficult as bringing the creation into existence itself, yet is surprisingly important for team identity, branding, and focus. As a project leader, I've had many opportunities to name projects. One of my favorite choices was Swiftsure, a company project I once christened because it spoke to me about getting to the goal - faster and cheaper - reliably; since this was the point of that effort, and a balance of attributes that's hard to get right, it was a great choice. That name also has lots of ties to where I live, including a great sailboat race and a lightship (a mobile lighthouse, though it sounds more like something out of Star Trek).

That choice satisfied things I think are important when considering such names - tthey should be memorable, meaningful, acceptable to the team, and useable for branding and team identity. I prefer single word names, though I like to stay away from acronyms. Read more »