I think the majority on here will agree that Simon was in a no win situation with both Alex and Claire determined to not perform and do everything to undermine him.

was there anything that he could of done differently? Any way he could of got them to be in any way helpful?

I'm struggling to think how anyone could of dealt with trying to manage those two.

So could you have managed them, if so how??

It is was me, I would have sacked them and sent them home. Taken all responsibility off their hands and just worked with the remaining candidates. I would have explained to them that their unco-operative nature was harming the execution of the task and, although production volume would be hit, the team would be better off without them. Maybe given them a chance to re-affirm their loyalty to the project and TL, if their attitude remained - send them for an early shower.

I would then explain to Sir Alan that if some one is so unco-operative, putting their own interests ahead of the team, then the decision taken was in the best interests of the completing the task. It would have displayed decisive leadership, exposed the bad apples spectacularly and explained the poor performance. The line I would take in the BR would be:

"I had to make a decision, the team was suffering due to some unruly elements. I tried to bring them round, offered them positions of authority, but they just served to undermine the team for their own purposes. I had no other choice other than to pull them out and work with those who wanted us to succeed. Whilst I knew this would harm our profit margin, at least something could be salvaged. Having taken this step, we moved forward on a firmer footing."

He shouldn't have been project leader!

Right from the start he indicated that, out of the whole team, he had the ideal skill set for photography. He was a key facilitator, and in this task being such a key facilitator was demanding in terms of time, seriously limiting his ability to manage the team. This was not his task to lead, he should have waited until the right task presented itself. Ideally he would have been looking to manage a task where he wasn't tempted to be too involved in facilitating a major part of the process, where he could let the others be the facilitators and be able to take a step back and manage the team.

JMHO (with the obvious benefit of hindsight)

I agree. One thing we don't seem to be seeing from the PM front is a PM divorcing himself from the task and taking a more strategic view, leaving principle members of the team with delegated powers to act on the PMs behalf. Too many want to be micro-managers, feeling they need to get deeply involved so as appearing to be doing something.

It would have been better if Simon could have just have concentrated on taking the photos and let others sort out the selling & order processing. Whether he should have given himself such a specific role while he was PM is debateable.

His theme actually worked suprisingly well.

However, he was able to delegate the selling OK, they got on with it & were successful. I don't think it was unreasonable as PM to expect the combined brainpower of Jenny, Alex & Claire to be able to handle the processing. They were awkward, difficult and unmanageable.

I don't think there was anythng he could have done differently, other than put somebody co-operative in the processing team and ignore Claire & Alex (send then to buy a long weight, or something!!!)

Actually I think Simon should have done the backroom processing and let the others get on with selling/taking the pictures.

IMO. His first mistake was to confuse the role of the project manager with that of being the creative designer. He became too involved in the project and was unable to take a step back and review how it was performing.
This was doubly important to do when considering that half of the team were working remotely where it is important to keep a regular check on what they were doing.

He'd backed himself into a corner where he knew the back end was falling apart felt he couldn't leave the front end as he was the photographer. So as a result he effectively gave control to others in the team who used the opportunity to undermine and obstruct.
It was a general failing of project management to allow this to happen.


In his position when you are managing difficult team members, the last thing you do is to put them in any position whereby they could cause a significant risk to the project.
He should have identified what the key roles were and put either himself or people he trusted in those positions, then split the difficult members up and monitored the situation.
So when he saw that Claire and Alex were being difficult then he should have put them on the front doing sales. Where he could also keep an eye on them and stop them colluding.

He should have identified that the critical path was the order processing, and put his most reliable person there. He should have reviewed the order mechanism and seen how it was working rather than relying on others.

But then again all very easy with hindsight.

Agree with most of this. As I said on the other thread:


The only way a PM could "ride both horses" in this way would be to concentrate on managing, but act as mentor to whomever was made photographer.


Agree. Seems like people in Bluewater are in a holiday mood and will pay for anything. Perhaps the TV cameras helped? (a general comment). The DB lookalike was a far better wheeze, and is probably why the other, similarly-cr*p team, won.


Eh? They made a loss!! (I know what you mean, though :0)


They should have responded better to problems that cropped up. A ten-minute walk from site to back-office, for example, is a pain in the *ss. In particular, when the queue built they should have managed the meet-and-greet and the customers' expectations, better (rather than breaking down in tears -- a sure-fire eviction technique.)

Any project manager could claim that any failed project is a no-win. That's why strong management does what its says on the tin (boys' laundry task?)

Dave

The only thing he could have done really was to have both Alex & Claire on his half of the team so giving them less scope to sabotage the task.

I think Simons' first mistake was to declare himself PM because he had the right skillset for a photo task. This made him look arrogant and cocky, which set the others on edge straight away.

I think his opening gambit should have been that he had promised Sir Alan he would try and take on the role of PM after being in the boardroom the previous week. This would have shown the others he had good reason for putting himself forward. He should have also understated his photographic experience, not making himself out to be an expert!

Needless to say Claire and Alex did seem determind to undermine him from the start, so its hard to say whether any change of action would have made any difference.

I think Simon’s first mistake was to declare himself PM because he had exactly the right skillset for the photo task. This made him look arrogant and cocky, which set the others on edge straight away.

I think his opening gambit should have been that he had promised Sir Alan he would try and take on the role of PM after being in the boardroom the previous week. This would have shown the others he had good reason for putting himself forward (and they had little choice but to accept it).

Needless to say Claire and Alex did seem determined to undermine him from the start, so it’s hard to say whether any change of action would have made any difference

I'd have poured salt on Alex and Claire. Best way to deal with slugs.

Keep your friends close.
Keep your enemies closer.

Making Claire his "link" was a big error. He should have given Sara that task.

Leaving Claire to "transform" the customers............?

(See the cloud of dust.........)

Thats my take too....and Simon said as much on BBC Breakfast this morning.

What would I have done? Got someone else to photograph, someone else to search for props, put the most technologically inept person in charge of technology, and sat around the backroom bitching about everyone whilst knocking back endless cups of tea. Hey, it worked for Helene.

Once he realised in what a mess he really was, the best strategy might have been to leave Sara at the photoshoot, go to the processing room, split up Alex and Claire and send Claire to assist Sara in rounding up business while staying with Alex to sort things out in the backoffice.

He's doomed when Alex refuses the job of making things happen on the production side. Its not clear enough who was responsible for that therafter and he's doomed when he can't find anyone else but himself to take the photos. No supply and no one to manage is the result and sort out the problem. He actually gets the creative bit right and its not clear he would have created the demand if he had let anyone else take the photos.

He's also got the problem of the thing going wrong at the tedious nitpicking detail stage which needed a run through to spot the problems and someone who thought in terms of nuts and bolts to sort out. Given the laundry task you would think someone would have thought how to get the right goods to the right customer and had a runthrough whilst people were gathering the props but he didn't make that happen and was too busy creating his studio. He did realise he needed a production team and a liason/troubleshooting team but then Alex refused to lead one and Claire failed in the second role - that should have got one of them fired but SAS doesn't think that clearly and saw what he wanted to see.

Not taking a pop - but JMHO meant nothing to me until I googled it. Wouldn't have taken long to type it out in full.

Lol...spot on

I agree with this.

I think at the point where we saw him distressed and falling apart, he would have been far more productive getting himself off to the production room and confronting all three to see exactly what was going on for himself.

Instead he made the grave mistake of sending Claire to do that. The same Claire who had been challenging his authority all of that morning.

Just brilliant

Speaking as someone who is a manager, I don't think in that situation there was much Simon could have done. I am classed as a good manager by my bosses but a large part of that credit really belongs to my team. Because I have such reliable staff under me my job is far easier and enjoyable. If you have people under you that are disruptive and back stabbing no matter what you are going to achieve far less. At least in my situation if I had people like Claire and Alex sticking the knife in me I could get rid of them very easily, Simon of course could not.

Just to add though, the problem with the backroom and picture numbers, I don't know why Simon just did not delete the unwanted pictures from the memory card?

The only thing I think he should have done differently is instead of stressing on the shop floor he should have gone up to the backroom and seen for himself what the issue was. He could then have either changed the order system, or better still show Alex how to do the job properly. This might have taken 30-60 minutes, but better than the 3 hours or more that was lost.

Very depressing episode, the way Simon was treated and bullied was disgraceful. I think his big mistake was not to give the camera to someone else for an hour and go down to that back room and get the processing sorted out.

This is the only series where you get the feeling people are trying to deliberately fail tasks in order to 'pick' someone off and it succeeded.

Some nasty characters in this year.