6 Key Factors for Effective Collaboration

“What are all these people doing here?” Angela, the engineering manager, asked herself as she logged into the Teams meeting and saw 30 people already there ahead of her.

Jeff, the project manager who called the meeting, began: “We have a request from management to update our budget numbers, which are due tomorrow. I need to go through each of the budget line items and confirm that what we have is still accurate.”

“Jeff, we have a development milestone tomorrow that we’re all working hard to hit. Why do we have to do the budget update now?” Angela asked.

“I understand, Angela, but my management wants the numbers.”

“Jeff, there are a lot of people in here including my whole team. Is this a new request?”

Anna, one of Jeff’s PM colleagues and Jeff’s mentor, responded, “Jeff, this ask has been out there for over a week. Why the fire drill?”

Jeff paused. “Well, I’ve been really busy and am just getting to this. Can we just go through and verify numbers?”

Angela tried to contain her frustration, “Jeff, we need to hit our dev milestone and I can’t have my team sitting in a meeting to verify budget numbers just because your management wants it. Do the best you can on your own; we need to get back to work. Sorry, Jeff.”

Angela and her team dropped from the meeting while most of those who remained turned off their video to work on other things.

Anna sent him a private message suggesting that he cancel the meeting and try to update numbers on his own. Jeff reluctantly agreed and canceled the meeting.

“I try to be a good collaborator, but why does it seem I’m the only one collaborating?” Jeff asked himself as he closed out the Teams meeting.

Read more at ProjectManagement.com.

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