“The course enabled me to look at myself in a different light.”
Doing the First Line Management course was timely for Gordon. Running two functions in his team could spread his time thinly, especially when dealing with team dynamics and potential conflict.
Gordon’s project revolved around Business Intelligence Migration within the Wellington City Council reporting systems. Initial scoping identified over 3,000 live reports, which were reduced to business crucial ones, with a dashboard created to assign tasks to people and identify any secondary information sources or coding restraints. The final stage of the set up included deployment and after-life support.
Gordon managed both internal and external stakeholders throughout the project including council security and infrastructure teams, and the external vendor for the new reporting product.
The course enabled Gordon to manage this project and at the same time helped him identify behaviours that were occurring in his workplace and team, providing him with tools to handle these issues. Gordon says, ‘Kari provided practical examples of different people characteristics and the skills she uses, which helped me a great deal with people management. I was more aware of the kind of key questions that HR ask and respond to. These learnings enabled a structure to be put in place, reducing the impact of a prickly situation disrupting the team’s goals, which in turn resulted in positive outcomes.’
The project team was small. Gordon and two others; a junior and a more experienced senior. Gordon says, ‘Some of the tasks could be handled by the junior and others needed a more experienced person. Naturally, when you’re looking at teams, you look at strengths. And if there are any you require in the team, you seek them out. I didn’t go through a matrix of what skills they had, instead, I let them tell me based on their own comfort levels.
The course also enabled me to look at myself in a different light. I was initially frustrated with progress on the project because I felt like “we said we’d do this, let’s deliver it”. But again, Kari assisted and advised on ways of dealing with my frustration and challenges with another key personality in the team. I basically changed my mindset a little bit and that was beneficial. I received really positive feedback and most importantly the project was a success, so much so that the vendor is using this migration project as an example for their other customers wanting to migrate and upgrade their products!’