All Group Projects Are Not Created Equal

By Veronica Baginski

One of the things college never prepared me for was the process of getting a project done. This is incredibly ironic because most of college is group projects. You have a set of instructions, you delegate the roles, you show expectations of deliverables, and they are to be done by a certain date in order to receive a grade. Your grade determines whether or not you pass the class. In the real world, you have to do group projects and rely on other people for certain pieces of your project. But what no one explained to me, the idea of a deadline for someone who’s working on your project doesn’t always have the same level of magnitude as it did in college.

When you were in college, everyone was in it for the same result. Everyone wanted a good grade, or at least that’s what you hoped for. In the real world, not everyone ranks projects with the same level of importance. I was talking to a colleague the other day, and I had mentioned that most projects can be completed in a very short period of time if people blocked several hours off of their calendar and just buckled down and did it. Like college or that late night study session, you could all get together, do a serious amount of work in a very short period of time, and submit the project on time. But in the real world, it doesn’t work like this. There is a plethora of projects, a diverse group of priorities, and different roles that require different KPI’s. You can be incredibly organized and create the most stringent timeline while giving yourself leeway for certain delays, but you can still be met with a dilemma and not have all the information you need on time to submit your project.

I would be curious to know if people would respond differently to group efforts if the result was the same for every member of the team if the project was not delivered on time. In a small business, everyone is expected to contribute to the greater good. There are times when you wear many hats, but the result is the same. We all need to contribute to ensure everything continues to run in an orderly fashion. While college prepares you for many things, it does not prepare you for people’s indifference to items outside of their to do list.