Implementing IPPD introduces challenges to leadership because of the cultural changes required when people and integrated teams are empowered and decisions are driven to the lowest level appropriate. Effective and efficient communication mechanisms are critical to timely and sound decision making in the integrated work environment. Once an integrated work environment is established and training is provided, mechanisms to handle empowerment, decision making, and issue resolution also need to be provided to affect the timely collaboration of relevant stakeholders required for IPPD.
In an IPPD environment, it is particularly important that clear channels of responsibility and authority be established. Within the projects and the organization, issues can arise when individuals or integrated teams assume too much or too little authority and when the level at which decisions are made, or who owns what decisions, is unclear. Organizational guidelines that scope the degree of empowerment for integrated teams serve an issue-prevention role. Best practices promote documented and deployed organizational guidelines that can preclude issues arising from empowerment and authority misinterpretation.
Empowerment does not necessarily mean that every decision in an IPPD environment must occur at the lowest level, that it must be done collaboratively, or even that it must reflect consensus among all integrated team members or project participants. Decisions on the style and procedures for leadership and decision making for projects and among integrated teams need to be made in collaboration with the relevant stakeholders. In establishing the context for decision making, the various kinds of issues are described and agreements are reached on the decision type that will be used to resolve each kind of issue.
Some examples of decision types include:
For many issues, a command decision may be adequate. For issues that require several different areas of expertise or that have far-reaching consequences, collaborative decisions may be more appropriate. Defining decision types and the authority of those entrusted to make decisions enables efficient operations.
Mechanisms that grow leadership talent enable lower organizational unit delegation, which, in turn, enables faster, better responses to changing customer needs, technology, and environmental conditions.
Leadership characteristics cannot be viewed as solely embodied in the manager/leader. When leadership characteristics are evident in more than the leader, individual group members lead decision making and activities that heavily involve their areas of expertise. This flexibility can result in improved group efficiency and effectiveness.
Even with well-intentioned empowerment, leadership, and decision making, issues will arise that cannot be resolved at the same level. An organizational process for issue resolution can form the basis for project- and integrated-team-specific procedures and help ensure that basic issue-resolution avenues are available to projects and integrated teams when unresolved issues must be escalated. An organizational process for issue resolution can serve both issue-resolution and issueprevention roles.