A great team will make a plan come together
During my recent trip overseas, I got to witness first-hand how many people are truly involved in making a processing plant come together. Vendors and suppliers sometimes forget how everything interacts together. It was a great way to see how individual strengths come together to achieve a goal.
Among this group were specialists in finance, engineering, safety, construction, regulatory, and so on. At one point, our group contained approximately 25-30 people. What was even more impressive was the leadership used to organize this group. One person was not in charge of every item, but rather, specialized experts were used to ensure the plant as a whole would be successful with one person acting as moderator.
This goes to show you don’t have to be an expert in everything when it comes to managing a project. In fact, this can be detrimental to progress. If you already know everything, how can you be open-minded enough to learn something new? A cross functional team allows for multiple viewpoints. Each person has his or her own interests in mind, so when they are discussed, all respective issues can be surfaced. This is advantageous as one group may not be thinking about potential decision impacts to other groups.
I bring this up to show that if you can surround yourself with the right people, amazing things can happen. This example involves a processing plant, but it can be anything. There are experts and consultants you can use to grow your knowledge base. Focus on what you can do best. It’s good to have a basic understanding of those things in which you are not an expert. For other topics, team up with experts aligned with your goals who are willing to help you achieve greatness.
