Perception Versus Reality:

1
Perception Versus Reality Using Self-Reports to
Predict Factors Leading to High Performance in
Project Teams

Tony Ammeter Department of Engineering
Management University of Missouri-Rolla Janet M.
Dukerich Graduate School of Business University
of Texas at Austin
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High Performance Teams

• Research Question
• What characteristics of teams and team leaders
  lead to high performance?
• One definition of high performance
• Achieves breakthrough performance on relevant
  metrics
• E.g., dramatic reductions in the project cycle
  time and/or reductions in overall project cost

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Why Study Project Teams?

• Project teams are important in today's
  workplace
• Increasing usage of short-term project teams to
  solve a variety of tasks (e.g., Cohen Bailey,
  1997)
• Often the only way of organizing for technical
  expertise, speed, and innovation
• Challenges of project teams
• Complex tasks (uncertainty, multidisciplinary,
  etc.)
• Need to quickly develop good working
  relationships (e.g., Bryman et. al, 1987
  McGrath, 1984)
• Project teams exhibit wide variation in quality
  of output

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Research Plan

• Interview selected high performance teams in
  multiple industries
• Develop survey for construction industry teams
• Use survey results to determine what makes a team
  achieve cost and schedule performance
• Compare perception with reality
• Build a toolkit to help teams achieve high
  performance

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Structured Interview Process

• Step 1 Developing the interview guide
• Focus group and literature review used to develop
  general categories of interest (prior
  instrumentation Miles Huberman, 1984)
• Open-ended interview questions, e.g.
• How do you know if a team is a high performance
  team?
• What was done during the life of the project that
  contributed to team performance?
• Step 2 Developing a theme list
• Subset of interviews used to determine recurrent
  topics of discussion (broad categories of
  themes Bjorkegen, 1989)
• Step 3 Coding the interview data onto the themes
• Step 4 Reducing the theme list through frequency
  counts

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Interviews with Project Teams

• Project teams interviewed
• 8 high performance projects, 1 less-than-high
  performance
• 51 team members interviewed
• Team size ranged from 5 to 10 members
• Engineering Design, Construction, Software,
  Military
• Project cost 10 M to 1.4 B
• Range 10 under budget to 15 over
• Schedule 6 months to 3 years
• Range 18 ahead of schedule to on-time

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Themes From Interviews

• Team orientation sense of belonging
• Critical project leader behaviors
• Good team communication
• Ownership of project success
• Co-location / physical isolation of team members
• Formal and informal team building
• Sense of competition with other or previous
  projects
• Team perks
• High level support for project
• Project team survey questions were generated from
  these themes

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Themes From Interviews

• Team orientation sense of belonging
• You are part of a team, so you cant let others
  down
• Things dont fall through the cracks because
  people are working together
• Critical project leader behaviors
• Forces tremendous work ethicand collegiality
  and communication among members
• Works to keep members informed of the status of
  the project
• Good team communication
• Frequent useful team meetings and status reports

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Themes From Interviews

• Ownership of project success
• Tenure on project tied to sense of consistency
  of the intent
• Co-location / physical isolation of team members
• Camaraderie, cooperation, and an accomodating
  team spirit
• Formal and informal team building
• Team building (formal, informal) was recognized
  as impacting team performance
• However, members not participating in team
  building also mentioned sense of team
  orientation

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Themes From Interviews

• Sense of competition with other or previous
  projects
• Provides practical checks as to how they are
  doing relative to benchmark
• Reaffirms that they are distinctive and really
  high performance
• Team perks and rewards
• Rewards usually given for performance at critical
  junctures
• Sometimes rules were bent to give awards
• High level support for project
• Greater access to resources
• Team members work harder, plan and execute
  better, give more attention because of high
  visibility

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Project Team Survey

• Surveys were sent to core or leadership team
  within construction projects
• Respondents rated their project on specific
  questions about
• Team member characteristics, leader behaviors,
  team processes
• Perceptions of project performance
• Respondents also provided data on
• Project budget and schedule (planned and actual)
• Definition of high performance

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Survey Responses

• 278 respondents (25 response rate)
• Project Managers, Project Engineers, Construction
  Managers, Lead Engineers, Project Control
  Managers
• 151 projects represented
• Project cost .01 M to 745 M (median 62 M)
• 37 under budget to 57 over
• Schedule 1 month to 7 years (median 1.6 years)
• 43 ahead of schedule to 83 behind
• Project Teams
• Size 12 members (range of 3 to 40)

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Data Analysis Factor Analyses

• What combination of survey questions best
  represents the underlying themes in our
  qualitative data?
• Team Member Characteristics
• Team Identification (18 items, ? 0.96)
• We had a sense of belonging to the team
• We felt enriched and enjoyed working together
• We had a sense of ownership of the project
• Team Building (5 items, ? 0.86)
• Our team participated in formal / informal
  team building
• Our team recognized and celebrated successes

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Data Analysis Factor Analyses

• Leader Characteristics
• Leader Behaviors (19 items, ? 0.97)
• Our leader communicated the projects goals
• Our leader communicated the teams values
• Our leader aligned team members goals with
  the projects goals
• Measures from previous research
• Identification (6 items, ? 0.77 Mael
  Ashforth, 1992)
• When someone praised this project, it felt like
  a personal compliment
• Project Image (4 items, ? 0.77 Luhtanen
  Crocker, 1992)
• In general, others respected this project

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Dependent Variables

• Perceptual measures of project performance
• Perceptions of Project High Performance
• To what extent do you think your project,
  overall, was a high performance project?
• Perceptions of Team High Performance
• To what extent do you think your project team,
  overall, was a high performance project team?
• Objective measures of project performance
• Cost Growth (Actual Total Cost - Initial
  Predicted Cost)
• Initial Predicted Cost
• Schedule Growth (Actual Total Duration -
  Initial Predicted Duration )
• Initial Predicted Duration

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Results of Regression Analyses
Significance Tests p lt .01 p lt .001
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Discussion What predicts high performance in
project teams?

• Qualitative interviews of team members
• Team / Member Characteristics, Leader Behaviors
• Surveys - perceptual measures of outcomes
• Team Identification
• Leader Behaviors
• Image
• Surveys - actual cost growth
• Leader Behaviors
• Image
• Surveys - actual schedule growth
• Team Identification

Qualitative
Outcomes
Objective
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Study Limitations

• Limitations of research methodology
• We have identified cross-sectional associations
• We cannot prove causality
• We have conducted surveys of naturally-occurring
  teams
• We cannot control for many threats to internal
  validity
• Limitations of research sample
• Interviews were primarily of members high
  performance teams
• We may have restriction in the number of themes
• Surveys were exclusively of members construction
  industry core teams
• We may have limited external validity

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Summary

• Predicting High Performance in Project Teams
• Team Identification, Leader Behaviors and Image
  impact perceptual measures of project team
  performance
• Leader Behaviors and Image impact cost
  performance
• Team Identification impacts schedule performance
• Contributions to Practice
• Based on these results, a toolkit for the
  selection and training of project team leaders
  has been developed
• Contributions to Theory
• We have a grounded (field) study to support
  further theoretical investigation
• We have evidence for some discrepancies between
  anecdotal beliefs and actual predictors of team
  performance