Are you the delivery manager or project director on a major road, rail, mine or other construction project in Australia? Have you been hearing about how Lean Construction techniques may be able to significantly help your teams on site improve the way they do things?
Are you sceptical Lean Construction sounds like a BLACK BOX solution
I WAS!
Have you heard about it from several people who’ve not been able to “Pinpoint” exactly what it is or how and what it might do for you on your project? Does it seem to you a lot like TQM or other improvement methods you may have experienced across your career?
Lean Construction or LPD explained in one paragraph.
Lean Construction is a process to change the way workflows occur on projects so they are more predictable and reliable. On every construction site there are wasted resources e.g.: People standing around at times doing nothing, too much inventory sitting around on site, machinery not being used but being paid for etc. On work sites the average work complete each week verses that scheduled by teams sits at 40 to 60%. In other words most weeks work teams should have achieved 40 to 60% more productivity BUT THEY DON’T.
This results in project finish dates and budgets that continuously blow way over what they should be in costs and time.
Lean construction is a set of tools that enables major projects to streamline workflow reliability and predictability on sites. Its core focus is around optimising the project not the individual pieces, and it does this through making changes to the way project managers, superintendents, engineers, designers, procurement teams and others do some of the following:
Schedule using new methods
To increase performance
Have meetings that work
Track and monitor project costs
Use metrics on site that motivate
Lead in a new way
To collaborate with all teams
Spend (or not) spend time at sites
See the value of integrating supply chains into their processes
Use Continuous Learning Methods
Use continuous improvement in construction
Map value streams in to improve fabrication methods
Capture and transfer learnings through technology
Quality check without paper
Use CAD & BIM in new ways
Having spent time with some of the Co-Founders of Lean Construction in 2011 I became intrigued by how easily major projects can benefit by training their teams in these methods. This is not a one size fits all methodology but is one where almost every single project can find benefits.
Hunter with Greg Howell one of the Co-Founders of Lean Construction.
I have not yet in this post mentioned the actual tools that have made Lean Construction famous like Pull Planning, Last Planner, Weekly work plans etc. Over the coming months I will be writing about the Lean Construction tools and Lean Project Delivery on projects in order that more people can benefit from this work.
If you are interested and or are a sceptic like I was, then now may be the time to start researching this field.
How do Pat Cash’s comments on Roger Federer’s tennis style changes help your teams performance?
How do you transfer knowledge within your business? Its funny I had a client the other day who was speaking about how some people in the organisation were no good at learning.
In fact you could spend serious time with them in specific situations and they would come back the next day having not retained a thing.
I had read some days before an article by Pat Cash on Roger Federer: Pat was commenting on how Roger had made some significant changes to his tennis style, here is some of what he said:
Roger is ”Now hitting the ball earlier and stepping into a more advanced position on the court. He is hitting his shots harder, courtesy of his fantastic racket-head speed. That’s a great bonus here in Melbourne because this year the court surface is sticky, which makes the balls fluff up quicker than normal and consequently sees them coming more slowly onto the racket.”
So how does this effect the way you are training your people to perform. Well what I like about Pat’s description is that he really breaks down some of the things, most people would have no clue about what so ever. Things that are crucial to Rogers performance, in fact it was only a couple of weeks after the article was written that he won the Australian open again.
In your business how are you transferring the knowledge that is crucial to the success of your highest performers. Do you have the ability to break the crucial things down to a level that actually anyone could understand them?
There are many different ways of training like:
On the job training
In front of a room
Being tested via online tests or surveys
Getting the individual to be buddied up with experts on site and having them work together then be tested afterwards by the same or other people.
Knowing, what you need to break down how and why can be a big link the chain of success.
Pat goes on to say about Roger:
“By taking the ball earlier and hitting it harder he’s in effect shortening the length of points. Also, by playing that little bit further into the court, he’s not covering so much ground. Somebody such as Nadal who plays way behind the baseline might need seven or eight paces to get from one extreme to the other but being more advanced to take the ball almost on the half-volley a lot of the time lessens the effort.”
Consider the following scenarios:
1)You are a project manager and have no idea how to bring up the topic of continuous improvement with your team.
2)You work on a project where you continuously see one of the team produce more output then three others put together.
3)Your team on the factory floor have one member who is able to produce more than 200% more than the others.
What questions might you ask the performers, how would you then record those things, to get significantly better results from the changes you then have to make?
How can you bring it to life so that as performers get better this new knowledge is captured?
What process could you use to transfer this knowledge?
How might you educate the masses?
Where would you store the data?
There are very good answers to all these things, some of which lie in the technology. Others need to have been thoroughly designed as business processes which then become part of the “Way things are done around here”.
I so often get this question by people I work with and it’s a great one. The fact is a qualified YES absolutely.
BUT ONLY IF THEY WANT TO!
and
In my opinion, we are a product of everything we have modelled and learnt all our lives. Therefore if we have been smashed around in a rough background and the way we dealt with that is to treat others in the same kind of way, then chances are why would we bother to change?
unless…
There are some really compelling reasons for it – Like What You Say???
Well you might be willing to change certain parts of your personality if you were about to loose your job, or that you knew you were hopeless in social situations and if you did not change you’d never make it to where you wanted to be. If your partner was about to leave you because you never left the house and they loved having coffee at cafes by the waterfront, you might be swayed to change certain parts of your personality in order to live a better life.
I personally when I started out in business, was hopeless at calling people to arrange meetings; I did not like it and had never done it. As all my clients now know, I’ll pick up the phone and call anyone we need at any time to get the result we need.
In fact in Australia one of the biggest department stores is Bunning’s and in a Sales workshop on “Getting New Business” presenting in front of 40 people I made a cold call, completely impromptu on speaker phone for the entire room to hear, and booked an appointment with the international head of operations. The feedback was great, I’d called on behalf of my own business of course, but Bunning’s were one of their biggest prospects.
You can change specific areas of a person’s personality if the person sees an absolute need to change; it may or may not be your role to create this need. The person may come to you and explain what is holding them back, if you can ask them all the questions needed for them to build up the motivation for the change, and then help them to implement it. In most cases you’ll be their friend for life.
I have seen people go from being complete introverts to complete extroverts
Very gentle people become tough as nails
People with a focus on the big picture and strategy get very good at the finest of details
Those who cant speak in front of 2-3 people to speaking in front of 1000’s
Check this out for food for thought!
Where could you or someone in your team change to get better results in yours or their lives?
There are almost certainly some people in your business who if you were to loose them you are just not going to cry about it. There will however be others who are the life blood of your business perhaps in Project or Executive roles and when they go, it will be a big problem!
In many businesses, succession planning for high performers and talent management is done through a process like making sure you have where possible, at least one off site a ¼ then having drinks with those people you’re a little worried about, to find out what the true story is around their ambitions
The problem with this kind of process and it may not look exactly like this, as it might be a six monthly thing, or you might get one of your team a person you know really well to find out things for you.
Consider four ways of ensuring you know exactly where people are up to on your team, so you don’t get nasty surprises.
Setup agreements with your people so that you’ll let them know if you were ever going to make a move somewhere else with some decent notice and be specific. Ensure in this moment that they also commit to letting you know if they were getting itchy feet or wanted new opportunities, and make sure they commit to giving you the same notice period.
When new people start after 4-12 weeks consider having an up front “Performance Management” style type meeting, this is not to tell them they need to pull their socks up, but more to set the scene for the future, and yes you might even address some tiny niggles early.
Keep the dialogue open between all your team members and understand where your market is at. Are there many opportunities and head hunters calling daily in order to try and snap up your best people. Or is the market really quiet in your neck of the woods.
Find out what your best people value most and make sure you are delivering them what they value. In Sales environments part of this might be about money, but ironically often it may be more about recognition, and often people miss this, until it’s too late.
Have a look at what Jack Welch from GE says about the treatment of people, and just have a think about whether
1) You Agree
2) If you do, is your business treating its people like this? If you don’t, do you have a process that’s really working?
If you are in a business where you often have your people leaving and whether they are good or bad start to look more carefully at what you are and are not doing to mentor your people.The true cost of most team member losses is hidden in many monthly financial reports, why is this?
Well in the past financial reporting has not been smart enough and even today is not able to track the “True cost” of losing a person. Below are some things to consider, the numbers are rough but start to have a think, if you are losing people its probably costing you far more than you imagined! Below the salary is only $70K and being conservative true costs might look like.
If we were to track the true cost to the business of people leaving you would need to consider things like:
Person Leaving Average Salary $70K = $6K per month
Recruitment Costs
- Cost $8K
The time it took to get them to full competency (4 months)
- Cost $24K
Time other people “Internal Trainers” spent to get them confident
- Cost $15K
The time peers in the business spent with them (2 months)
- Cost $12K
All the Managers time $120K Salary spent (2 weeks across a year)
- Cost $5K
Loss of productivity from down time while you the role filled
- Cost $10K
HR Team member costs
- Cost $10K
Total Cost $84K
Now that’s only on the outgoing person who may have only stayed 12 month’s to two years, you will now need to incur all these same costs on retraining the new recruit and if you get it wrong again…
I was speaking with a client the other day about how an organisation he knew needed to better understand its existing values prior to moving forward. There is model that has been used by hundreds of thousands of organisations globally. It’s called Spiral Dynamics and looks at how values affect groups. Working on a series of levels, this 5-minute video gives you a serious look at your own business population and what your people value. Is your organisation at Level 1 to Level 5 or Level 7 – have a look and consider. Almost certainly there will be attributes that cross the levels, and certain tenancies will also be rife – ENJOY.
I thought I’d pen a few thoughts on this topic. I think there are at least five key things to consider:
Do you know what values currently drive your people & how would you find this out? One way is to use a values survey or values measurement tool or group session on understanding how people feel the organisation treats them and what’s driving their current behaviours.
How do you change them? If the current values are different to what you thought they’d be, how do you then change them? This is where things start to get interesting. Suppose you spend 4 hours in a room with your top 5 execs coming up with “SEVEN KEY ORGANISATIONAL VALUES” and then post them all over the place. Can and does this work?
Involve the masses, but make sure you have a strategy to narrow down the results! If you use a survey as suggested above, rank the areas people have rated as “Most Important” and then look more into how these match the organisation. A specific intervention might take the form of a workshop where significant numbers of people (or an example population) go through the results and are asked for feedback on any extremes.
Bringing “values” to life! Don’t just rest on your laurels once you have some traction. Have your managers consider how those values in every area of the business will and do affect them and what this means. E.g. Integrity is a great word, but what does it mean in the context of your business unit and how might it affect your internal talent management strategies?Often I see execs performance managing team members for taking too much sick leave or annual leave at crucial times, and then a week later they execute a key change management piece and take the following off because it had been “planned for ages”.
Be congruent and vigilant about what you do. As you co-create the values in your organisation with your people, be careful of the behaviours you and your exec team exhibit in the business on a daily basis. Have a complete congruency between sets of values and the specific behaviours you and your teams display, ensuring they all link back.
By following the above five points, you create a continuous process of improvement around what’s valued inside your organisation. Check out Jim Collins, author of Good to Great & Built to Last in a 2-minute Video brief on the power of values here. Ensure that at the centre of any intervention are things like performance management & change management processes & implications have been fully thought through.
I had a conversation with a client the other day about how they were dealing with different personalities in their business. I knew it was one of those chats where I had to get a specific message across.
Thinking about it afterwards reminded me of how I like to be communicated with. This is at times different to how others like to be treated. I’m the kind of person who likes the straight-shooting approach. Coming originally from New Zealand where there are fewer people and the “Fishpond” is much smaller, I’ve grown up with the greater tendency over there to be told exactly what is needed in black & white.
When I’m being mentored or led by someone else, what works is for me to be told what the specific tasks are and results needed. Then, if you leave me to my own devices, I’ll do the research, set up the plan and roll it out with only a small amount of help or encouragement. Keeping an eye on me and/or having a coffee with me is useful at times, more for the social and innovative ideas that come from it than for any need for “help”.
This person I was speaking with was not like that at all. They needed to be spoken to with gentle gloves and much encouragement. It was one of those conversations where I needed to be very supportive and enabling.
It really got me thinking about a model I have used personally for many years. It is a simple reminder to us all to think about what the other person needs from us prior to rushing in and the telling them what we want or must have.
The model is the Situational Leadership Model. Please note I’m not saying you should only ever communicate with people using one of the four steps outlined below. However, personally I’ve found them to be a real help when thinking through tough conversations where results need to occur in short timeframes.
This model looks at the world of leadership inside of 4 simple styles as follows:
Style 1 – Directing
The person leading provides a specific direction & closely monitors task accomplishment.
Style 2 – Coaching
The leader makes sure they direct & closely monitor things, but also explains decisions, elicits suggestions, and provides support where needed.
Style 3 – Supporting
The leader uses a facilitative & supportive approach toward the achievement of tasks using the shared-responsibility decision-making principle.
Style 4 – Delegating
The leader turns over the responsibility for decision-making and problem-solving to the person and/or team in question.
Here’s a short presentation by Ken & Scott Blanchard about how using Situational Leadership II can make a huge difference to the conversations you have with your people. If you get your leadership working with their direct reports in a powerful way that encourages talent-management processes and continuously increases performance, then you tend to keep your people for longer periods.
Have a think about your own business unit and or company. Do you use a variety of styles when working with your people, or just one over and over? Who are the people you find tougher to work with and why do you think this is? How flexible are you with regard to communicating and getting results in your own teams? Consider changing your leadership style when you are working with certain team members.
Have a think about your own business unit and or company. Do you use a variety of styles when working with your people, or just one over and over? Who are the people you find tougher to work with and why do you think this is? How flexible are you with regard to communicating and getting results in your own teams? Consider changing your leadership style when you are working with certain team members.
Have a think about your own business unit and or company. Do you use a variety of styles when working with your people, or just one over and over? Who are the people you find tougher to work with and why do you think this is? How flexible are you with regard to communicating and getting results in your own teams? Consider changing your leadership style when you are working with certain team members.
Good technology rollouts really count. Many people I have worked with over the past few years often face the tough experience of having to make decisions around new technology that will fundamentally affect business results. In the past 18 months, I have noticed many clients have been pushed into situations where things must be upgraded urgently (due often to a merger).
Often this technology is something like a new platform, a best-of-class project management system or a set of core capabilities the business has never had. At times, these needs arise from a system that was put into the business 20 years ago and since then the IT team have been building bolt-on solutions. Eventually it reaches the point where there are so many workarounds for the users that everyone just considers the system a massive handbrake. Organisational change has to occur, as the focus for increased performance is greater than ever.
A good example of this kind of new technology is Oracle’s Seibel CRM product. AFG Group, one of Australia’s largest brokers, used this product with great success. They use it to source products, lodge applications, generate leads & manage clients, all from a single point of entry. Check out the video below – at 3 mins 9 secs, it shows how they are now using this technology to manage their teams and other overseas business development activities. This project has enabled AFG to stay ahead of the game in an extremely tough market.
The general solution is to spend up to hundreds of millions of dollars on new technology to consolidate workflows, reduce time taken to get information, or find the right information etc.
What often actually happens though is this:
The project goes way over time and budget and the change management process fails
Only specific users get the new technology right and they were the high performers anyway
The strategic planning done prior to implementation was nowhere near robust enough & so major gaps appear with the implementation & rollout to users
The final product offers only 60% of the capability promised and the system workarounds continue
If these were the only blocks faced after implementation, funnily enough the situation would actually not be too much worse. The problem is that this is only the start. What then seems to happen is that while the implementation occurs, sales and/or service levels drop significantly and sales managers start to get punished for their lack of results.
Many users get disillusioned and they start to either leave or look seriously for jobs in competing businesses in the same vertical. This causes increases in staff turnover and a need to then recruit more people at a time when training and reducing the time to competency for new team members is not the highest priority. Finishing the implementation and knowing the systems core capabilities actually collect “all” of the data accurately and can be used to get results is the priority.
So what’s the answer? Consider the following:
Who is on the rollout project team and why are they there?
Who is missing that should be there? E.g. possible managers of users who know what functions have to keep on going not matter what
Have you looked at who your absolute best talent is and how they can add value to the project?
What kind of mini pilots have you or are you intending to run prior to getting serious about the rollout?
If you have gathered groups of high performers to do the testing, have you then ensured these people are trained in knowledge-transfer and work-place training techniques to get your population back to its core results capability ASAP? How is this behaviour change actually going to occur on the ground?
What kind of knowledge-capture processes do you have around the more “tacit” or informal smarts the high performers have? How do these apply in the “New” technology platform or world? How are these to be transferred? How is your talent management process taking this into account?
Making sure you have covered off the above at the very least will enable you to keep leveraging your best people to transfer their results across populations. Sometimes you may need to bring in technology providers you have never thought of prior to the project. In fact, this might not become apparent in any of the project design phases and might only be discovered during implementation.
The general solution is to spend up to hundreds of millions of dollars on new technology to consolidate workflows, reduce time taken to get information, or find the right information etc.
What often actually happens though is this:
The project goes way over time and budget and the change management process fails
Only specific users get the new technology right and they were the high performers anyway
The strategic planning done prior to implementation was nowhere near robust enough & so major gaps appear with the implementation & rollout to users
The final product offers only 60% of the capability promised and the system workarounds continue
If these were the only blocks faced after implementation, funnily enough the situation would actually not be too much worse. The problem is that this is only the start. What then seems to happen is that while the implementation occurs, team performance levels drop significantly and project managers start to get punished for their lack of results.
Many users get disillusioned and they start to either leave or look seriously for jobs in competing businesses in the same vertical. This causes increases in staff turnover and a need to then recruit more people at a time when training and reducing the time to competency for new team members is not the highest priority. Finishing the implementation and knowing the systems core capabilities in order to actually collect “all” of the data accurately often is the priority.
So what’s the answer? Consider the following:
Who is on the rollout project team and why are they there?
Who is missing that should be there? E.g. possible managers of users who know what functions have to keep on going not matter what
Have you looked at who your absolute best talent is and how they can add value to the project?
What kind of mini pilots have you or are you intending to run prior to getting serious about the rollout?
If you have gathered groups of high performers to do the testing, have you then ensured these people are trained in knowledge-transfer and work-place training techniques to get your population back to its core results capability ASAP? How is this behaviour change actually going to occur on the ground?
What kind of knowledge-capture processes do you have around the more “tacit” or informal smarts the high performers have? How do these apply in the “New” technology platform or world? How are these to be transferred? How is your talent management process taking this into account?
Making sure you have covered off the above at the very least will enable you to keep leveraging your best people to transfer their results across populations. Sometimes you may need to bring in technology providers you have never thought of prior to the project. In fact, this might not become apparent in any of the project design phases and might only be discovered during implementation.
The general solution is to spend up to hundreds of millions of dollars on new technology to consolidate workflows, reduce time taken to get information, or find the right information etc.
