Chapter2,Question 5

Chapter2
Question5
Write a one to two page summary of an article about the importance of top management support for the successful information technology projects.

Article title: A Short Primer onLeadership
This is an article that has been done under the guidance of prof: R. Ravi Kumar Ph.D. Indian Institute of management, Banglore by Praneet Tiwari published Sun, 7th may 2006 16:49:16-0700. this is an article that examines the relation ship of a leader with the organizational culture, motivation and diversity.
People on the top management are the key stake holders in the projects. They are the person who guides the whole team into the right direction. Their commitment will lead mangers to lead projects. Yukl G. Says that “ A leader is one whose main task is influencing objectives and strategies, influencing commitment and compliance in task behaviour, influencing group maintenance and identification of ways to influence the culture of an organization “ Thus by saying this he mean that the leader are those that gives the vision of their project to the system participants. What to do and not to do is all guided by the leaders, thus tracking the subject in the right decision and towards the right path which will lead to the success of the project. One of the important responsibilities of the top management is to create win-win relationship between stakeholders both internal and external to overcome or bridge the gap that exist between the supplier, customers and employees. Top management create new ideas in the project and circulate it to different staffs that will help project flow more swiftly and smoothly. Top level management builds up team spirit in their members, inspire them, and motivate the staffs providing them different opportunities and rewards. Top management are the role model for those who work under them. They help in checking the deviation of the project done till date and suggest the corrective measure and action. They motivate their staff toward their work by promising rewards for good performances, recognizes accomplishments exchange of rewards for performance. They provide the sense of mission, instills, pride, generates trust and respect and communicate the high desired expectation. They promote intelligence, rationality and calculated risk taking. They give personalized attention to team thus team members are always in favour of their leaders. They coaches, advices and mentors the project. They are like a guardian to the team members, team member when feel that they are lost their top level members are there to guide them and they are those on which the team members can rely and have trust. Top level staffs are committed and supportive in the project. Some times there are some unspecified needs seen in the project so to fulfil these uncalculated needs the top management can help the project managers to get those in the timely manner without delaying the project. They are like the brain in the body of the project members. They have cooperation from even the people of other parts of the organization thus there is an easy flow of information from different parts through the top management to the project team. They set standards for the team mangers thus they can go accordingly and succeed. They are always ready with the contingency plans for the project. They are dreamers and transform their dream to their project teams. They make the project team aware of the risk that the project can face during its processes thus making them aware initially will help the team to prepare for the worst. If sometimes there are some critical cases in the project the top level staff takes the responsibility and helps the team to unit and face the critical situation. In other words they anticipate the barriers and take strategic initiatives balancing strategy and people.
Thus this article describes about what are the power and authorities of the top level management and how their presence lead the project toward the success.
References
:http://blogs.sun.com/praneet/resource/Leadership.pdf