Leadership Management And Innovation In R D Project Teams

In today's knowledge-driven business environment, research and development teams face particular challenges as their purpose is to discover and/or develop new concepts, products, or processes; the pressure to perform is intense. A year-long study of 58 R&D project teams set out to identify the factors that distinguish the successful teams from the under-performers. The resulting book argues that a substantial part of a team's success is not dependent on the type of work (fundamental research vs. product development), the institutional environment (corporate vs. public), or even provision of resources—but leadership. Successful team leaders employ a transformational style that inspires and motivates team members to perform at their best; they set clear goals and tasks; they establish an environment of mutual trust and respect; and they are skilled politicians who liaise with external stakeholders—including customers, senior managers, service providers, and regulators—to gain essential support. Integrating insights from the fields of technology management, social psychology, and organizational behavior, Leon Mann and his colleagues present recommendations to assist organizations and management in developing strong team leaders and building innovative teams.

The primary cause of many project failures is that responsible executives, because of their lack of knowledge in project management, fail to demand that their managers and staff properly utilize the well-proven best practices, processes, systems, and tools that are now available in this field. This book remedies this situation by providing executives at all levels with the understanding and knowledge needed to best take advantage of the power of effective project management and thereby lead and manage innovations within their enterprise. In Leading and Managing Innovation: What Every Executive Team Must Know about Project, Program, and Portfolio Management, Second Edition, the authors present concise descriptions of The key concepts underlying project and program management The important characteristics of projects and programs How projects and programs are best governed and managed How to determine if the desired benefits have actually been achieved The book presents a list of 31 reasonable demands that executives can and must place on their staff members to ensure excellence in the way their programs and projects are created, selected for funding, planned, and executed. Placing these demands communicates to the entire enterprise that top management understands what it takes to achieve the best performance possible and fully supports the continuous improvement needed to ensure continued success. Leading and Managing Innovation explains how to measure the project management maturity level of an enterprise, benchmark against competitors, and identify where project management improvements are required. It discusses the many ways that an enterprise can derive substantial success and competitive advantage from increasing its project management maturity level. A helpful quick reference summary of all of the book’s key information is included in the final chapter. Armed with this information, you will be well-qualified to give excellent direction to your managers and staff to ensure that your vital capability in the field of project management—and how you manage innovation—is equal to or better than that of your competitors.

Engineering businesses today run through projects. Projects are successful when we have effective project leadership, which builds effective teams and teams. All these attributes increase the performance of the organization and enable it to achieve competitive advantage. Project management is the need of today’s businesses for acquiring business development and attaining business performance in local as well as in global markets as business performance is driven by competitive advantage, which is possible through successful project management. Development of new products and other competitive products and services is done through the implementation of projects. Projects are deployed for process improvements, which further add to the profitability and growth of the business. This book discusses the aspects of project management processes, project leadership, and team building in context to project management together, which improves business performance.

Leadership in projects has been under-represented in many of the most influential project methodologies, where the focus has been on management and process. The importance to project success of key roles such as project board member, executive sponsor, project manager, client representative or team leader, increases exponentially with the scale and complexity of the project. Kaye Remington's Leading Complex Projects draws on original, empirical research into successful leadership of complex projects, including 70 in-depth interviews with people, across a broad range of industries, selected for their roles in guiding complex projects towards successful outcomes. The book, structured around the major themes from the interviews, explains and applies emerging best-practice in a coherent and focused way. A potent combination of wisdom from leaders in practice and the latest knowledge from many fields of research will engage experienced practitioners, as well as those who are teaching and researching projects, complexity and leadership.

Even though project-management researchers have become increasingly interested in factors that may have an impact on project-management effectiveness, their efforts fall short of addressing the "human factor." And, unfortunately, many project-management scholars are largely unaware of the I/O psychology literature--relying, for example, on outdated models of motivation and team development. On the other side, I/O psychologists who research groups and teams often ignore the contextual influences--such as business sector, project type, placement in the organizational hierarchy, and project phase and maturity--that have a crucial impact on how a project will unfold. In this volume, a cross-disciplinary set of editors will bring together perspectives from leading I/O psychology and project-management scholars.

Project Management Leadership is a comprehensive guide to the human factors involved in Project Management, in particular the leadership skills required to ensure successful implementation of current best practice. It provides the latest insights on team building, motivation, collaboration, and networking skills, and the way these can be harnessed to manage a successful project. Exercises and worked examples are provided throughout.

This is not another how-to guide for program managers or another reiteration of the Project Management Institute's standards for program management. Instead, Program Management Leadership: Creating Successful Team Dynamics examines various leadership approaches and illustrates the value of effective leadership styles in Program Management for

Imagine if we were using the same medical techniques today that were used during the Industrial Revolution, including the practice of bloodletting using leeches. Medicine has come a long way since then. So why do organizations and corporations cling to management techniques that are just as obsolete as the bleed-and-leech model? In a global workpla