Conducting Project Kick-Offs
Start the whole team off on the right track
Most projects start as a slow trickle: Team members only join one by one. Exasperating discussions take place all the time, about issues which have effectively been clarified numerous times already – just not with the right people. And team members often work alongside one another at best, if not against one another. Sometimes it takes weeks and even months before you are able to speak of productive teamwork.
The benefits for you
Our project kick-off workshop helps you as a project leader and your team to start well on the project and to work productively from the outset. It is far more than a well intended “motivation speech” given by a manager at the start of a project, something often known as a “kick-off”. You start your projects together with a clear understanding of the goals, the agreed division of tasks and roles. You form a team and agree on rules for your communication and cooperation.
Our method
We tailor the kick-off workshop to your project and team situation. It makes a huge difference whether a team comprises of 5 or 50 people,
and if the team members already know one another, or whether they have never even met before. Also whether a team sits together in a
local environment, or if they are sited in globally diverse locations. All of these things have a great influence on how the workshop is
conducted.
Subjects that we typically work on with the project team:
- Do we understand the same thing in terms of the project objectives and the priorities?
- How stable and realistic is the project planning in our opinion?
- Do we all stand behind the project and planning?
- How are we dealing with risks?
- How do we configure communications and agreements within the project?
- What actual “rules of the game” do we need for future cooperation on the project?
- What agreements do we need in order to deal quickly with conflicts and interruptions?
Our special strengths
We use the experiences of the group dynamic in order to lead the project team in a targeted manner through the phases of team development, and to promote “storming”, i.e. the sometime controversial discussions within the project and with those involved. We are fundamentally interested in constructive solutions and always effect control in this direction. During workshops we utilise a mix of group work, individual work, working on team questions and theoretical inputs. We are also happy to integrate teambuilding exercises, either indoors or out, in order to support the process of getting to know each other and to strengthen the “us” feeling.