This useful post notes that less than half of projects are considered successful. Running a bank is all about projects, so these characteristics are worth remembering as we move ahead, and understanding which of these characteristics require improvement.

Leadership

The survey revealed that 70% of the respondents did not feel that their senior management team served as a positive role model very often. Also, when asked how effective team leaders were at helping meet team goals, 42.5% rated their team leaders a 3 or less on a scale of 1 to 5, with 5 being very effective and 1 being not effective at all. Even more respondents gave their team leaders poor marks for their leadership skills.

Process Discipline

Two-thirds of those surveyed indicated that overall team goals were very clear, but 42% said that individual roles were not. Thirty-eight percent said either their teams did not have a project management process or they weren’t sure if they did. Another 43% said they had no problem-solving process.

Performance System

More than half of the respondents did not think their project teams always or often had the right people or leaders. Eighty-four percent said that team members were rarely or never relieved of their day-to-day responsibilities when assigned to a team. Fifty-eight percent indicated that upper management publicly recognized a project team’s accomplishments only sometimes, rarely or never, and 87% said that financial rewards were given out just as infrequently.

Interpersonal Dynamics.

Almost half of those surveyed could not give high marks to conflict resolution on their teams, and more than 90% reported the teams spent up to half of their time dealing with unresolved conflict. Nearly 44% gave their team a score of 3 or lower for intrateam communication, with 5 being very effective and 1 being not effective at all.

Source: Canadian Management Centre’s Training Blog: Survey Finds Four Factors Key to Team Success