Can’t we all just get along?

These last few weeks have been very telling for our country. I live in Connecticut and we had the shooting in Newtown. Then this last week we had Congress departing because they couldn’t figure out how to solve the fiscal cliff problem and everyone wants to blame each other. It seems everywhere that people cannot figure out how to get along.

Interestingly, getting along with people is a core tenant to working on programs because there are so many stakeholders and team members. Successful delivery of programs is directly related to the people on them and how well they get along towards a common goal. This requires an investment in time from the Program Managers as well as good facilitation, influencing, negotiation skills.

I think the problem is that people are not willing to negotiate or view themselves as “on the same team.” Everything does not have to have one winner and one loser and people need to figure out how to negotiate and collaborate better. Otherwise we won’t be successful at our programs and we will continue to have problems in our world too. Lets start locally and see how that goes.