Embracing a New Common Sense for Project Work
Embracing a New Common Sense for Project Work
Few leaders in the AEC industry will claim that a majority of their projects could be categorized as “successful.” Sure, as an industry, we accomplish great things all the time. Our industry is responsible for designing and building the facilities that move the world forward, from state-of-the-art pharmaceutical plants, microchip factories, and AI datacenters, to manufacturing plants, infrastructure, housing and energy production to serve the needs of the next generation. Builders, designers, managers, and leaders are doing good work and accomplishing great things every day.
Room for Improvement
But how much better are we as an industry, really, than we were 20 or 30 years ago? Have we eliminated the health risks, stress, and fatigue of this work? Have we slashed the project delays, cost overruns, and contentious culture that plagues so many projects? Have we created an environment that invites new participants to join us in search of rewarding work and fulfilling careers?
Statistics show that while many industries, from farming to manufacturing, have made dramatic improvements, the AEC industry is surprisingly stuck in the past. We continue to rely on dated command-and-control management structures, prescriptive and restrictive procurement and contracting methods, and a general mindset based on mistrust, skepticism and defensiveness.
As an industry, we’ve known for a long time that we could do better, and there are signs of hope for a better tomorrow. While IPD and lean construction practices, when robustly applied, are creating positive results, the cure to our stagnation lies not merely in new practices, but more fundamentally in adopting a new common sense. I’m always puzzled when I hear someone from the industry declare that the solution is just “common sense.” Afterall, our current common sense tells us we can manage work through contracts, control risk by passing it to the party with the least control and influence, and improve outcomes by holding onto secret contingencies, protecting ourselves from others and building up our defenses. If we want to make real change, we need to adopt a new common sense!
A New Common Sense
The good news is that a proven model for this new thinking already exists, and in fact, has been around for decades. In 2004, Greg Howell, Hal Macomber and others wrote about this philosophical transformation in their IGLC paper, Leadership and Management: Time for a Shift from Fayol to Flores.
In his article, Greg is asking us to “reconsider the nature of work in projects,” to recognize that made. However, people are not the problematic units that, as Henry Ford theorized, need to be planned, organized, commanded, coordinated and controlled. Instead, people are autonomous, historical beings, who are capable of achieving amazing things in concert with others. So what’s the key to leveraging the incredible power of people, and more specifically, teams of people working on projects?
The shift that Greg spells out is based on Fernando Flores’ concept of making and keeping reliable commitments. This language may be familiar to many of you familiar with lean construction practices, however, we’ve seen this concept misapplied in practice more often than not. The problem is that when this concept is applied through the common sense lens of command-and-control leadership, it becomes a tool for coercing compliance, assigning responsibility, and keeping people on track - not so much different from Henry Ford’s top-down approach to management.
Focus on Trust
This outdated thinking misses the primary shift that Flores and Howell were advocating. The practices that lead to clear requests and reliable commitments are not primarily implemented as a way to ensure compliance with a schedule or achieve a specific task. Instead, the primary purpose is simply this: to build trust.
Trust is the key element ignored by contracts, schedules, operating procedures and plans.
Without trust, these are tools that live between parties, used for each individual’s purpose, and typically divide rather than unite us as a team. We’ve all seen what happens when there is little trust among team members, and most of us have seen what’s possible with high trust. While most leaders accept that teams with high degrees of trust perform dramatically better, there is little understanding of how to create this elusive trust in a practical, reliable way. Many think it’s a matter of luck, or chemistry, or maybe team building over bowling and beer. This may sometimes be the case, but that does not provide a reliable, proven approach needed for a new leadership paradigm in project work. This is where Flores comes in!
Our experience on projects of every size, in every industry, and utilizing every type of delivery method around the world shows that building and maintaining trust is not only possible, but it can be done predictably and quickly on every project. We’ve seen it over and over again, and have systematized the approach as part of the Midion Method. It’s the new common sense that leads to high-performing teams and unprecedented outcomes on every project!
Reliable Commitments
The key is to apply the concept of making and keeping reliable commitments at all levels of the project, and build the idea into every projects’ Structure, Practices, and Skillset. The approach is simple, and you can see a team begin to shift even as they make and keep the smallest commitments - showing up for meetings on time, providing information when promised, and admitting mistakes. These small moves build trust, and lead to more significant commitments - sharing real budgets and costs, working collaboratively in the best interest of the team, and exposing scope gaps and schedule busts while there’s still time to do something about them.
Building a powerful team around this system is not hard once you shift your common sense, and quickly transforming a struggling project becomes a real possibility. To see the power of this new paradigm for yourself, try it on for a couple days. On your current project, look at the challenges and bottlenecks through the lens of trust. What would happen to those biggest roadblocks if your team had more trust in each other - or even just in you? How would your team be planning for the future, anticipating problems, and raising expectations for their own performance if there was more trust? It’s easy to imagine how a project could be transformed if you could even move the trust needle just a little bit.
Now, think about one small commitment you yourself can make to start building more trust. Start by making an offer to one of your internal customers on the team, someone who needs you to perform. Make your commitment specific and clear. Check back to validate that you’ve kept your commitment and that it’s served the needs of your customer. In this simple step, you’ve started something that could change the future for your entire project team.
Embracing a New Common Sense for Project Work
Few leaders in the AEC industry will claim that a majority of their projects could be categorized as “successful.” Sure, as an industry, we accomplish great things all the time. Our industry is responsible for designing and building the facilities that move the world forward, from state-of-the-art pharmaceutical plants, microchip factories, and AI datacenters, to manufacturing plants, infrastructure, housing and energy production to serve the needs of the next generation. Builders, designers, managers, and leaders are doing good work and accomplishing great things every day.
Room for Improvement
But how much better are we as an industry, really, than we were 20 or 30 years ago? Have we eliminated the health risks, stress, and fatigue of this work? Have we slashed the project delays, cost overruns, and contentious culture that plagues so many projects? Have we created an environment that invites new participants to join us in search of rewarding work and fulfilling careers?
Statistics show that while many industries, from farming to manufacturing, have made dramatic improvements, the AEC industry is surprisingly stuck in the past. We continue to rely on dated command-and-control management structures, prescriptive and restrictive procurement and contracting methods, and a general mindset based on mistrust, skepticism and defensiveness.
As an industry, we’ve known for a long time that we could do better, and there are signs of hope for a better tomorrow. While IPD and lean construction practices, when robustly applied, are creating positive results, the cure to our stagnation lies not merely in new practices, but more fundamentally in adopting a new common sense. I’m always puzzled when I hear someone from the industry declare that the solution is just “common sense.” Afterall, our current common sense tells us we can manage work through contracts, control risk by passing it to the party with the least control and influence, and improve outcomes by holding onto secret contingencies, protecting ourselves from others and building up our defenses. If we want to make real change, we need to adopt a new common sense!
A New Common Sense
The good news is that a proven model for this new thinking already exists, and in fact, has been around for decades. In 2004, Greg Howell, Hal Macomber and others wrote about this philosophical transformation in their IGLC paper, Leadership and Management: Time for a Shift from Fayol to Flores.
In his article, Greg is asking us to “reconsider the nature of work in projects,” to recognize that made. However, people are not the problematic units that, as Henry Ford theorized, need to be planned, organized, commanded, coordinated and controlled. Instead, people are autonomous, historical beings, who are capable of achieving amazing things in concert with others. So what’s the key to leveraging the incredible power of people, and more specifically, teams of people working on projects?
The shift that Greg spells out is based on Fernando Flores’ concept of making and keeping reliable commitments. This language may be familiar to many of you familiar with lean construction practices, however, we’ve seen this concept misapplied in practice more often than not. The problem is that when this concept is applied through the common sense lens of command-and-control leadership, it becomes a tool for coercing compliance, assigning responsibility, and keeping people on track - not so much different from Henry Ford’s top-down approach to management.
Focus on Trust
This outdated thinking misses the primary shift that Flores and Howell were advocating. The practices that lead to clear requests and reliable commitments are not primarily implemented as a way to ensure compliance with a schedule or achieve a specific task. Instead, the primary purpose is simply this: to build trust.
Trust is the key element ignored by contracts, schedules, operating procedures and plans.
Without trust, these are tools that live between parties, used for each individual’s purpose, and typically divide rather than unite us as a team. We’ve all seen what happens when there is little trust among team members, and most of us have seen what’s possible with high trust. While most leaders accept that teams with high degrees of trust perform dramatically better, there is little understanding of how to create this elusive trust in a practical, reliable way. Many think it’s a matter of luck, or chemistry, or maybe team building over bowling and beer. This may sometimes be the case, but that does not provide a reliable, proven approach needed for a new leadership paradigm in project work. This is where Flores comes in!
Our experience on projects of every size, in every industry, and utilizing every type of delivery method around the world shows that building and maintaining trust is not only possible, but it can be done predictably and quickly on every project. We’ve seen it over and over again, and have systematized the approach as part of the Midion Method. It’s the new common sense that leads to high-performing teams and unprecedented outcomes on every project!
Reliable Commitments
The key is to apply the concept of making and keeping reliable commitments at all levels of the project, and build the idea into every projects’ Structure, Practices, and Skillset. The approach is simple, and you can see a team begin to shift even as they make and keep the smallest commitments - showing up for meetings on time, providing information when promised, and admitting mistakes. These small moves build trust, and lead to more significant commitments - sharing real budgets and costs, working collaboratively in the best interest of the team, and exposing scope gaps and schedule busts while there’s still time to do something about them.
Building a powerful team around this system is not hard once you shift your common sense, and quickly transforming a struggling project becomes a real possibility. To see the power of this new paradigm for yourself, try it on for a couple days. On your current project, look at the challenges and bottlenecks through the lens of trust. What would happen to those biggest roadblocks if your team had more trust in each other - or even just in you? How would your team be planning for the future, anticipating problems, and raising expectations for their own performance if there was more trust? It’s easy to imagine how a project could be transformed if you could even move the trust needle just a little bit.
Now, think about one small commitment you yourself can make to start building more trust. Start by making an offer to one of your internal customers on the team, someone who needs you to perform. Make your commitment specific and clear. Check back to validate that you’ve kept your commitment and that it’s served the needs of your customer. In this simple step, you’ve started something that could change the future for your entire project team.
Embracing a New Common Sense for Project Work
Few leaders in the AEC industry will claim that a majority of their projects could be categorized as “successful.” Sure, as an industry, we accomplish great things all the time. Our industry is responsible for designing and building the facilities that move the world forward, from state-of-the-art pharmaceutical plants, microchip factories, and AI datacenters, to manufacturing plants, infrastructure, housing and energy production to serve the needs of the next generation. Builders, designers, managers, and leaders are doing good work and accomplishing great things every day.
Room for Improvement
But how much better are we as an industry, really, than we were 20 or 30 years ago? Have we eliminated the health risks, stress, and fatigue of this work? Have we slashed the project delays, cost overruns, and contentious culture that plagues so many projects? Have we created an environment that invites new participants to join us in search of rewarding work and fulfilling careers?
Statistics show that while many industries, from farming to manufacturing, have made dramatic improvements, the AEC industry is surprisingly stuck in the past. We continue to rely on dated command-and-control management structures, prescriptive and restrictive procurement and contracting methods, and a general mindset based on mistrust, skepticism and defensiveness.
As an industry, we’ve known for a long time that we could do better, and there are signs of hope for a better tomorrow. While IPD and lean construction practices, when robustly applied, are creating positive results, the cure to our stagnation lies not merely in new practices, but more fundamentally in adopting a new common sense. I’m always puzzled when I hear someone from the industry declare that the solution is just “common sense.” Afterall, our current common sense tells us we can manage work through contracts, control risk by passing it to the party with the least control and influence, and improve outcomes by holding onto secret contingencies, protecting ourselves from others and building up our defenses. If we want to make real change, we need to adopt a new common sense!
A New Common Sense
The good news is that a proven model for this new thinking already exists, and in fact, has been around for decades. In 2004, Greg Howell, Hal Macomber and others wrote about this philosophical transformation in their IGLC paper, Leadership and Management: Time for a Shift from Fayol to Flores.
In his article, Greg is asking us to “reconsider the nature of work in projects,” to recognize that made. However, people are not the problematic units that, as Henry Ford theorized, need to be planned, organized, commanded, coordinated and controlled. Instead, people are autonomous, historical beings, who are capable of achieving amazing things in concert with others. So what’s the key to leveraging the incredible power of people, and more specifically, teams of people working on projects?
The shift that Greg spells out is based on Fernando Flores’ concept of making and keeping reliable commitments. This language may be familiar to many of you familiar with lean construction practices, however, we’ve seen this concept misapplied in practice more often than not. The problem is that when this concept is applied through the common sense lens of command-and-control leadership, it becomes a tool for coercing compliance, assigning responsibility, and keeping people on track - not so much different from Henry Ford’s top-down approach to management.
Focus on Trust
This outdated thinking misses the primary shift that Flores and Howell were advocating. The practices that lead to clear requests and reliable commitments are not primarily implemented as a way to ensure compliance with a schedule or achieve a specific task. Instead, the primary purpose is simply this: to build trust.
Trust is the key element ignored by contracts, schedules, operating procedures and plans.
Without trust, these are tools that live between parties, used for each individual’s purpose, and typically divide rather than unite us as a team. We’ve all seen what happens when there is little trust among team members, and most of us have seen what’s possible with high trust. While most leaders accept that teams with high degrees of trust perform dramatically better, there is little understanding of how to create this elusive trust in a practical, reliable way. Many think it’s a matter of luck, or chemistry, or maybe team building over bowling and beer. This may sometimes be the case, but that does not provide a reliable, proven approach needed for a new leadership paradigm in project work. This is where Flores comes in!
Our experience on projects of every size, in every industry, and utilizing every type of delivery method around the world shows that building and maintaining trust is not only possible, but it can be done predictably and quickly on every project. We’ve seen it over and over again, and have systematized the approach as part of the Midion Method. It’s the new common sense that leads to high-performing teams and unprecedented outcomes on every project!
Reliable Commitments
The key is to apply the concept of making and keeping reliable commitments at all levels of the project, and build the idea into every projects’ Structure, Practices, and Skillset. The approach is simple, and you can see a team begin to shift even as they make and keep the smallest commitments - showing up for meetings on time, providing information when promised, and admitting mistakes. These small moves build trust, and lead to more significant commitments - sharing real budgets and costs, working collaboratively in the best interest of the team, and exposing scope gaps and schedule busts while there’s still time to do something about them.
Building a powerful team around this system is not hard once you shift your common sense, and quickly transforming a struggling project becomes a real possibility. To see the power of this new paradigm for yourself, try it on for a couple days. On your current project, look at the challenges and bottlenecks through the lens of trust. What would happen to those biggest roadblocks if your team had more trust in each other - or even just in you? How would your team be planning for the future, anticipating problems, and raising expectations for their own performance if there was more trust? It’s easy to imagine how a project could be transformed if you could even move the trust needle just a little bit.
Now, think about one small commitment you yourself can make to start building more trust. Start by making an offer to one of your internal customers on the team, someone who needs you to perform. Make your commitment specific and clear. Check back to validate that you’ve kept your commitment and that it’s served the needs of your customer. In this simple step, you’ve started something that could change the future for your entire project team.
Embracing a New Common Sense for Project Work
Few leaders in the AEC industry will claim that a majority of their projects could be categorized as “successful.” Sure, as an industry, we accomplish great things all the time. Our industry is responsible for designing and building the facilities that move the world forward, from state-of-the-art pharmaceutical plants, microchip factories, and AI datacenters, to manufacturing plants, infrastructure, housing and energy production to serve the needs of the next generation. Builders, designers, managers, and leaders are doing good work and accomplishing great things every day.
Room for Improvement
But how much better are we as an industry, really, than we were 20 or 30 years ago? Have we eliminated the health risks, stress, and fatigue of this work? Have we slashed the project delays, cost overruns, and contentious culture that plagues so many projects? Have we created an environment that invites new participants to join us in search of rewarding work and fulfilling careers?
Statistics show that while many industries, from farming to manufacturing, have made dramatic improvements, the AEC industry is surprisingly stuck in the past. We continue to rely on dated command-and-control management structures, prescriptive and restrictive procurement and contracting methods, and a general mindset based on mistrust, skepticism and defensiveness.
As an industry, we’ve known for a long time that we could do better, and there are signs of hope for a better tomorrow. While IPD and lean construction practices, when robustly applied, are creating positive results, the cure to our stagnation lies not merely in new practices, but more fundamentally in adopting a new common sense. I’m always puzzled when I hear someone from the industry declare that the solution is just “common sense.” Afterall, our current common sense tells us we can manage work through contracts, control risk by passing it to the party with the least control and influence, and improve outcomes by holding onto secret contingencies, protecting ourselves from others and building up our defenses. If we want to make real change, we need to adopt a new common sense!
A New Common Sense
The good news is that a proven model for this new thinking already exists, and in fact, has been around for decades. In 2004, Greg Howell, Hal Macomber and others wrote about this philosophical transformation in their IGLC paper, Leadership and Management: Time for a Shift from Fayol to Flores.
In his article, Greg is asking us to “reconsider the nature of work in projects,” to recognize that made. However, people are not the problematic units that, as Henry Ford theorized, need to be planned, organized, commanded, coordinated and controlled. Instead, people are autonomous, historical beings, who are capable of achieving amazing things in concert with others. So what’s the key to leveraging the incredible power of people, and more specifically, teams of people working on projects?
The shift that Greg spells out is based on Fernando Flores’ concept of making and keeping reliable commitments. This language may be familiar to many of you familiar with lean construction practices, however, we’ve seen this concept misapplied in practice more often than not. The problem is that when this concept is applied through the common sense lens of command-and-control leadership, it becomes a tool for coercing compliance, assigning responsibility, and keeping people on track - not so much different from Henry Ford’s top-down approach to management.
Focus on Trust
This outdated thinking misses the primary shift that Flores and Howell were advocating. The practices that lead to clear requests and reliable commitments are not primarily implemented as a way to ensure compliance with a schedule or achieve a specific task. Instead, the primary purpose is simply this: to build trust.
Trust is the key element ignored by contracts, schedules, operating procedures and plans.
Without trust, these are tools that live between parties, used for each individual’s purpose, and typically divide rather than unite us as a team. We’ve all seen what happens when there is little trust among team members, and most of us have seen what’s possible with high trust. While most leaders accept that teams with high degrees of trust perform dramatically better, there is little understanding of how to create this elusive trust in a practical, reliable way. Many think it’s a matter of luck, or chemistry, or maybe team building over bowling and beer. This may sometimes be the case, but that does not provide a reliable, proven approach needed for a new leadership paradigm in project work. This is where Flores comes in!
Our experience on projects of every size, in every industry, and utilizing every type of delivery method around the world shows that building and maintaining trust is not only possible, but it can be done predictably and quickly on every project. We’ve seen it over and over again, and have systematized the approach as part of the Midion Method. It’s the new common sense that leads to high-performing teams and unprecedented outcomes on every project!
Reliable Commitments
The key is to apply the concept of making and keeping reliable commitments at all levels of the project, and build the idea into every projects’ Structure, Practices, and Skillset. The approach is simple, and you can see a team begin to shift even as they make and keep the smallest commitments - showing up for meetings on time, providing information when promised, and admitting mistakes. These small moves build trust, and lead to more significant commitments - sharing real budgets and costs, working collaboratively in the best interest of the team, and exposing scope gaps and schedule busts while there’s still time to do something about them.
Building a powerful team around this system is not hard once you shift your common sense, and quickly transforming a struggling project becomes a real possibility. To see the power of this new paradigm for yourself, try it on for a couple days. On your current project, look at the challenges and bottlenecks through the lens of trust. What would happen to those biggest roadblocks if your team had more trust in each other - or even just in you? How would your team be planning for the future, anticipating problems, and raising expectations for their own performance if there was more trust? It’s easy to imagine how a project could be transformed if you could even move the trust needle just a little bit.
Now, think about one small commitment you yourself can make to start building more trust. Start by making an offer to one of your internal customers on the team, someone who needs you to perform. Make your commitment specific and clear. Check back to validate that you’ve kept your commitment and that it’s served the needs of your customer. In this simple step, you’ve started something that could change the future for your entire project team.
Embracing a New Common Sense for Project Work
Statistics show that while many industries, from farming to manufacturing, have made dramatic improvements, the AEC industry is surprisingly stuck in the past.
Embracing a New Common Sense for Project Work
Few leaders in the AEC industry will claim that a majority of their projects could be categorized as “successful.” Sure, as an industry, we accomplish great things all the time. Our industry is responsible for designing and building the facilities that move the world forward, from state-of-the-art pharmaceutical plants, microchip factories, and AI datacenters, to manufacturing plants, infrastructure, housing and energy production to serve the needs of the next generation. Builders, designers, managers, and leaders are doing good work and accomplishing great things every day.
Room for Improvement
But how much better are we as an industry, really, than we were 20 or 30 years ago? Have we eliminated the health risks, stress, and fatigue of this work? Have we slashed the project delays, cost overruns, and contentious culture that plagues so many projects? Have we created an environment that invites new participants to join us in search of rewarding work and fulfilling careers?
Statistics show that while many industries, from farming to manufacturing, have made dramatic improvements, the AEC industry is surprisingly stuck in the past. We continue to rely on dated command-and-control management structures, prescriptive and restrictive procurement and contracting methods, and a general mindset based on mistrust, skepticism and defensiveness.
As an industry, we’ve known for a long time that we could do better, and there are signs of hope for a better tomorrow. While IPD and lean construction practices, when robustly applied, are creating positive results, the cure to our stagnation lies not merely in new practices, but more fundamentally in adopting a new common sense. I’m always puzzled when I hear someone from the industry declare that the solution is just “common sense.” Afterall, our current common sense tells us we can manage work through contracts, control risk by passing it to the party with the least control and influence, and improve outcomes by holding onto secret contingencies, protecting ourselves from others and building up our defenses. If we want to make real change, we need to adopt a new common sense!
A New Common Sense
The good news is that a proven model for this new thinking already exists, and in fact, has been around for decades. In 2004, Greg Howell, Hal Macomber and others wrote about this philosophical transformation in their IGLC paper, Leadership and Management: Time for a Shift from Fayol to Flores.
In his article, Greg is asking us to “reconsider the nature of work in projects,” to recognize that made. However, people are not the problematic units that, as Henry Ford theorized, need to be planned, organized, commanded, coordinated and controlled. Instead, people are autonomous, historical beings, who are capable of achieving amazing things in concert with others. So what’s the key to leveraging the incredible power of people, and more specifically, teams of people working on projects?
The shift that Greg spells out is based on Fernando Flores’ concept of making and keeping reliable commitments. This language may be familiar to many of you familiar with lean construction practices, however, we’ve seen this concept misapplied in practice more often than not. The problem is that when this concept is applied through the common sense lens of command-and-control leadership, it becomes a tool for coercing compliance, assigning responsibility, and keeping people on track - not so much different from Henry Ford’s top-down approach to management.
Focus on Trust
This outdated thinking misses the primary shift that Flores and Howell were advocating. The practices that lead to clear requests and reliable commitments are not primarily implemented as a way to ensure compliance with a schedule or achieve a specific task. Instead, the primary purpose is simply this: to build trust.
Trust is the key element ignored by contracts, schedules, operating procedures and plans.
Without trust, these are tools that live between parties, used for each individual’s purpose, and typically divide rather than unite us as a team. We’ve all seen what happens when there is little trust among team members, and most of us have seen what’s possible with high trust. While most leaders accept that teams with high degrees of trust perform dramatically better, there is little understanding of how to create this elusive trust in a practical, reliable way. Many think it’s a matter of luck, or chemistry, or maybe team building over bowling and beer. This may sometimes be the case, but that does not provide a reliable, proven approach needed for a new leadership paradigm in project work. This is where Flores comes in!
Our experience on projects of every size, in every industry, and utilizing every type of delivery method around the world shows that building and maintaining trust is not only possible, but it can be done predictably and quickly on every project. We’ve seen it over and over again, and have systematized the approach as part of the Midion Method. It’s the new common sense that leads to high-performing teams and unprecedented outcomes on every project!
Reliable Commitments
The key is to apply the concept of making and keeping reliable commitments at all levels of the project, and build the idea into every projects’ Structure, Practices, and Skillset. The approach is simple, and you can see a team begin to shift even as they make and keep the smallest commitments - showing up for meetings on time, providing information when promised, and admitting mistakes. These small moves build trust, and lead to more significant commitments - sharing real budgets and costs, working collaboratively in the best interest of the team, and exposing scope gaps and schedule busts while there’s still time to do something about them.
Building a powerful team around this system is not hard once you shift your common sense, and quickly transforming a struggling project becomes a real possibility. To see the power of this new paradigm for yourself, try it on for a couple days. On your current project, look at the challenges and bottlenecks through the lens of trust. What would happen to those biggest roadblocks if your team had more trust in each other - or even just in you? How would your team be planning for the future, anticipating problems, and raising expectations for their own performance if there was more trust? It’s easy to imagine how a project could be transformed if you could even move the trust needle just a little bit.
Now, think about one small commitment you yourself can make to start building more trust. Start by making an offer to one of your internal customers on the team, someone who needs you to perform. Make your commitment specific and clear. Check back to validate that you’ve kept your commitment and that it’s served the needs of your customer. In this simple step, you’ve started something that could change the future for your entire project team.
Embracing a New Common Sense for Project Work
Statistics show that while many industries, from farming to manufacturing, have made dramatic improvements, the AEC industry is surprisingly stuck in the past.
Embracing a New Common Sense for Project Work
Few leaders in the AEC industry will claim that a majority of their projects could be categorized as “successful.” Sure, as an industry, we accomplish great things all the time. Our industry is responsible for designing and building the facilities that move the world forward, from state-of-the-art pharmaceutical plants, microchip factories, and AI datacenters, to manufacturing plants, infrastructure, housing and energy production to serve the needs of the next generation. Builders, designers, managers, and leaders are doing good work and accomplishing great things every day.
Room for Improvement
But how much better are we as an industry, really, than we were 20 or 30 years ago? Have we eliminated the health risks, stress, and fatigue of this work? Have we slashed the project delays, cost overruns, and contentious culture that plagues so many projects? Have we created an environment that invites new participants to join us in search of rewarding work and fulfilling careers?
Statistics show that while many industries, from farming to manufacturing, have made dramatic improvements, the AEC industry is surprisingly stuck in the past. We continue to rely on dated command-and-control management structures, prescriptive and restrictive procurement and contracting methods, and a general mindset based on mistrust, skepticism and defensiveness.
As an industry, we’ve known for a long time that we could do better, and there are signs of hope for a better tomorrow. While IPD and lean construction practices, when robustly applied, are creating positive results, the cure to our stagnation lies not merely in new practices, but more fundamentally in adopting a new common sense. I’m always puzzled when I hear someone from the industry declare that the solution is just “common sense.” Afterall, our current common sense tells us we can manage work through contracts, control risk by passing it to the party with the least control and influence, and improve outcomes by holding onto secret contingencies, protecting ourselves from others and building up our defenses. If we want to make real change, we need to adopt a new common sense!
A New Common Sense
The good news is that a proven model for this new thinking already exists, and in fact, has been around for decades. In 2004, Greg Howell, Hal Macomber and others wrote about this philosophical transformation in their IGLC paper, Leadership and Management: Time for a Shift from Fayol to Flores.
In his article, Greg is asking us to “reconsider the nature of work in projects,” to recognize that made. However, people are not the problematic units that, as Henry Ford theorized, need to be planned, organized, commanded, coordinated and controlled. Instead, people are autonomous, historical beings, who are capable of achieving amazing things in concert with others. So what’s the key to leveraging the incredible power of people, and more specifically, teams of people working on projects?
The shift that Greg spells out is based on Fernando Flores’ concept of making and keeping reliable commitments. This language may be familiar to many of you familiar with lean construction practices, however, we’ve seen this concept misapplied in practice more often than not. The problem is that when this concept is applied through the common sense lens of command-and-control leadership, it becomes a tool for coercing compliance, assigning responsibility, and keeping people on track - not so much different from Henry Ford’s top-down approach to management.
Focus on Trust
This outdated thinking misses the primary shift that Flores and Howell were advocating. The practices that lead to clear requests and reliable commitments are not primarily implemented as a way to ensure compliance with a schedule or achieve a specific task. Instead, the primary purpose is simply this: to build trust.
Trust is the key element ignored by contracts, schedules, operating procedures and plans.
Without trust, these are tools that live between parties, used for each individual’s purpose, and typically divide rather than unite us as a team. We’ve all seen what happens when there is little trust among team members, and most of us have seen what’s possible with high trust. While most leaders accept that teams with high degrees of trust perform dramatically better, there is little understanding of how to create this elusive trust in a practical, reliable way. Many think it’s a matter of luck, or chemistry, or maybe team building over bowling and beer. This may sometimes be the case, but that does not provide a reliable, proven approach needed for a new leadership paradigm in project work. This is where Flores comes in!
Our experience on projects of every size, in every industry, and utilizing every type of delivery method around the world shows that building and maintaining trust is not only possible, but it can be done predictably and quickly on every project. We’ve seen it over and over again, and have systematized the approach as part of the Midion Method. It’s the new common sense that leads to high-performing teams and unprecedented outcomes on every project!
Reliable Commitments
The key is to apply the concept of making and keeping reliable commitments at all levels of the project, and build the idea into every projects’ Structure, Practices, and Skillset. The approach is simple, and you can see a team begin to shift even as they make and keep the smallest commitments - showing up for meetings on time, providing information when promised, and admitting mistakes. These small moves build trust, and lead to more significant commitments - sharing real budgets and costs, working collaboratively in the best interest of the team, and exposing scope gaps and schedule busts while there’s still time to do something about them.
Building a powerful team around this system is not hard once you shift your common sense, and quickly transforming a struggling project becomes a real possibility. To see the power of this new paradigm for yourself, try it on for a couple days. On your current project, look at the challenges and bottlenecks through the lens of trust. What would happen to those biggest roadblocks if your team had more trust in each other - or even just in you? How would your team be planning for the future, anticipating problems, and raising expectations for their own performance if there was more trust? It’s easy to imagine how a project could be transformed if you could even move the trust needle just a little bit.
Now, think about one small commitment you yourself can make to start building more trust. Start by making an offer to one of your internal customers on the team, someone who needs you to perform. Make your commitment specific and clear. Check back to validate that you’ve kept your commitment and that it’s served the needs of your customer. In this simple step, you’ve started something that could change the future for your entire project team.
Embracing a New Common Sense for Project Work
Few leaders in the AEC industry will claim that a majority of their projects could be categorized as “successful.” Sure, as an industry, we accomplish great things all the time. Our industry is responsible for designing and building the facilities that move the world forward, from state-of-the-art pharmaceutical plants, microchip factories, and AI datacenters, to manufacturing plants, infrastructure, housing and energy production to serve the needs of the next generation. Builders, designers, managers, and leaders are doing good work and accomplishing great things every day.
Room for Improvement
But how much better are we as an industry, really, than we were 20 or 30 years ago? Have we eliminated the health risks, stress, and fatigue of this work? Have we slashed the project delays, cost overruns, and contentious culture that plagues so many projects? Have we created an environment that invites new participants to join us in search of rewarding work and fulfilling careers?
Statistics show that while many industries, from farming to manufacturing, have made dramatic improvements, the AEC industry is surprisingly stuck in the past. We continue to rely on dated command-and-control management structures, prescriptive and restrictive procurement and contracting methods, and a general mindset based on mistrust, skepticism and defensiveness.
As an industry, we’ve known for a long time that we could do better, and there are signs of hope for a better tomorrow. While IPD and lean construction practices, when robustly applied, are creating positive results, the cure to our stagnation lies not merely in new practices, but more fundamentally in adopting a new common sense. I’m always puzzled when I hear someone from the industry declare that the solution is just “common sense.” Afterall, our current common sense tells us we can manage work through contracts, control risk by passing it to the party with the least control and influence, and improve outcomes by holding onto secret contingencies, protecting ourselves from others and building up our defenses. If we want to make real change, we need to adopt a new common sense!
A New Common Sense
The good news is that a proven model for this new thinking already exists, and in fact, has been around for decades. In 2004, Greg Howell, Hal Macomber and others wrote about this philosophical transformation in their IGLC paper, Leadership and Management: Time for a Shift from Fayol to Flores.
In his article, Greg is asking us to “reconsider the nature of work in projects,” to recognize that made. However, people are not the problematic units that, as Henry Ford theorized, need to be planned, organized, commanded, coordinated and controlled. Instead, people are autonomous, historical beings, who are capable of achieving amazing things in concert with others. So what’s the key to leveraging the incredible power of people, and more specifically, teams of people working on projects?
The shift that Greg spells out is based on Fernando Flores’ concept of making and keeping reliable commitments. This language may be familiar to many of you familiar with lean construction practices, however, we’ve seen this concept misapplied in practice more often than not. The problem is that when this concept is applied through the common sense lens of command-and-control leadership, it becomes a tool for coercing compliance, assigning responsibility, and keeping people on track - not so much different from Henry Ford’s top-down approach to management.
Focus on Trust
This outdated thinking misses the primary shift that Flores and Howell were advocating. The practices that lead to clear requests and reliable commitments are not primarily implemented as a way to ensure compliance with a schedule or achieve a specific task. Instead, the primary purpose is simply this: to build trust.
Trust is the key element ignored by contracts, schedules, operating procedures and plans.
Without trust, these are tools that live between parties, used for each individual’s purpose, and typically divide rather than unite us as a team. We’ve all seen what happens when there is little trust among team members, and most of us have seen what’s possible with high trust. While most leaders accept that teams with high degrees of trust perform dramatically better, there is little understanding of how to create this elusive trust in a practical, reliable way. Many think it’s a matter of luck, or chemistry, or maybe team building over bowling and beer. This may sometimes be the case, but that does not provide a reliable, proven approach needed for a new leadership paradigm in project work. This is where Flores comes in!
Our experience on projects of every size, in every industry, and utilizing every type of delivery method around the world shows that building and maintaining trust is not only possible, but it can be done predictably and quickly on every project. We’ve seen it over and over again, and have systematized the approach as part of the Midion Method. It’s the new common sense that leads to high-performing teams and unprecedented outcomes on every project!
Reliable Commitments
The key is to apply the concept of making and keeping reliable commitments at all levels of the project, and build the idea into every projects’ Structure, Practices, and Skillset. The approach is simple, and you can see a team begin to shift even as they make and keep the smallest commitments - showing up for meetings on time, providing information when promised, and admitting mistakes. These small moves build trust, and lead to more significant commitments - sharing real budgets and costs, working collaboratively in the best interest of the team, and exposing scope gaps and schedule busts while there’s still time to do something about them.
Building a powerful team around this system is not hard once you shift your common sense, and quickly transforming a struggling project becomes a real possibility. To see the power of this new paradigm for yourself, try it on for a couple days. On your current project, look at the challenges and bottlenecks through the lens of trust. What would happen to those biggest roadblocks if your team had more trust in each other - or even just in you? How would your team be planning for the future, anticipating problems, and raising expectations for their own performance if there was more trust? It’s easy to imagine how a project could be transformed if you could even move the trust needle just a little bit.
Now, think about one small commitment you yourself can make to start building more trust. Start by making an offer to one of your internal customers on the team, someone who needs you to perform. Make your commitment specific and clear. Check back to validate that you’ve kept your commitment and that it’s served the needs of your customer. In this simple step, you’ve started something that could change the future for your entire project team.
Embracing a New Common Sense for Project Work
Few leaders in the AEC industry will claim that a majority of their projects could be categorized as “successful.” Sure, as an industry, we accomplish great things all the time. Our industry is responsible for designing and building the facilities that move the world forward, from state-of-the-art pharmaceutical plants, microchip factories, and AI datacenters, to manufacturing plants, infrastructure, housing and energy production to serve the needs of the next generation. Builders, designers, managers, and leaders are doing good work and accomplishing great things every day.
Room for Improvement
But how much better are we as an industry, really, than we were 20 or 30 years ago? Have we eliminated the health risks, stress, and fatigue of this work? Have we slashed the project delays, cost overruns, and contentious culture that plagues so many projects? Have we created an environment that invites new participants to join us in search of rewarding work and fulfilling careers?
Statistics show that while many industries, from farming to manufacturing, have made dramatic improvements, the AEC industry is surprisingly stuck in the past. We continue to rely on dated command-and-control management structures, prescriptive and restrictive procurement and contracting methods, and a general mindset based on mistrust, skepticism and defensiveness.
As an industry, we’ve known for a long time that we could do better, and there are signs of hope for a better tomorrow. While IPD and lean construction practices, when robustly applied, are creating positive results, the cure to our stagnation lies not merely in new practices, but more fundamentally in adopting a new common sense. I’m always puzzled when I hear someone from the industry declare that the solution is just “common sense.” Afterall, our current common sense tells us we can manage work through contracts, control risk by passing it to the party with the least control and influence, and improve outcomes by holding onto secret contingencies, protecting ourselves from others and building up our defenses. If we want to make real change, we need to adopt a new common sense!
A New Common Sense
The good news is that a proven model for this new thinking already exists, and in fact, has been around for decades. In 2004, Greg Howell, Hal Macomber and others wrote about this philosophical transformation in their IGLC paper, Leadership and Management: Time for a Shift from Fayol to Flores.
In his article, Greg is asking us to “reconsider the nature of work in projects,” to recognize that made. However, people are not the problematic units that, as Henry Ford theorized, need to be planned, organized, commanded, coordinated and controlled. Instead, people are autonomous, historical beings, who are capable of achieving amazing things in concert with others. So what’s the key to leveraging the incredible power of people, and more specifically, teams of people working on projects?
The shift that Greg spells out is based on Fernando Flores’ concept of making and keeping reliable commitments. This language may be familiar to many of you familiar with lean construction practices, however, we’ve seen this concept misapplied in practice more often than not. The problem is that when this concept is applied through the common sense lens of command-and-control leadership, it becomes a tool for coercing compliance, assigning responsibility, and keeping people on track - not so much different from Henry Ford’s top-down approach to management.
Focus on Trust
This outdated thinking misses the primary shift that Flores and Howell were advocating. The practices that lead to clear requests and reliable commitments are not primarily implemented as a way to ensure compliance with a schedule or achieve a specific task. Instead, the primary purpose is simply this: to build trust.
Trust is the key element ignored by contracts, schedules, operating procedures and plans.
Without trust, these are tools that live between parties, used for each individual’s purpose, and typically divide rather than unite us as a team. We’ve all seen what happens when there is little trust among team members, and most of us have seen what’s possible with high trust. While most leaders accept that teams with high degrees of trust perform dramatically better, there is little understanding of how to create this elusive trust in a practical, reliable way. Many think it’s a matter of luck, or chemistry, or maybe team building over bowling and beer. This may sometimes be the case, but that does not provide a reliable, proven approach needed for a new leadership paradigm in project work. This is where Flores comes in!
Our experience on projects of every size, in every industry, and utilizing every type of delivery method around the world shows that building and maintaining trust is not only possible, but it can be done predictably and quickly on every project. We’ve seen it over and over again, and have systematized the approach as part of the Midion Method. It’s the new common sense that leads to high-performing teams and unprecedented outcomes on every project!
Reliable Commitments
The key is to apply the concept of making and keeping reliable commitments at all levels of the project, and build the idea into every projects’ Structure, Practices, and Skillset. The approach is simple, and you can see a team begin to shift even as they make and keep the smallest commitments - showing up for meetings on time, providing information when promised, and admitting mistakes. These small moves build trust, and lead to more significant commitments - sharing real budgets and costs, working collaboratively in the best interest of the team, and exposing scope gaps and schedule busts while there’s still time to do something about them.
Building a powerful team around this system is not hard once you shift your common sense, and quickly transforming a struggling project becomes a real possibility. To see the power of this new paradigm for yourself, try it on for a couple days. On your current project, look at the challenges and bottlenecks through the lens of trust. What would happen to those biggest roadblocks if your team had more trust in each other - or even just in you? How would your team be planning for the future, anticipating problems, and raising expectations for their own performance if there was more trust? It’s easy to imagine how a project could be transformed if you could even move the trust needle just a little bit.
Now, think about one small commitment you yourself can make to start building more trust. Start by making an offer to one of your internal customers on the team, someone who needs you to perform. Make your commitment specific and clear. Check back to validate that you’ve kept your commitment and that it’s served the needs of your customer. In this simple step, you’ve started something that could change the future for your entire project team.
Embracing a New Common Sense for Project Work
Few leaders in the AEC industry will claim that a majority of their projects could be categorized as “successful.” Sure, as an industry, we accomplish great things all the time. Our industry is responsible for designing and building the facilities that move the world forward, from state-of-the-art pharmaceutical plants, microchip factories, and AI datacenters, to manufacturing plants, infrastructure, housing and energy production to serve the needs of the next generation. Builders, designers, managers, and leaders are doing good work and accomplishing great things every day.
Room for Improvement
But how much better are we as an industry, really, than we were 20 or 30 years ago? Have we eliminated the health risks, stress, and fatigue of this work? Have we slashed the project delays, cost overruns, and contentious culture that plagues so many projects? Have we created an environment that invites new participants to join us in search of rewarding work and fulfilling careers?
Statistics show that while many industries, from farming to manufacturing, have made dramatic improvements, the AEC industry is surprisingly stuck in the past. We continue to rely on dated command-and-control management structures, prescriptive and restrictive procurement and contracting methods, and a general mindset based on mistrust, skepticism and defensiveness.
As an industry, we’ve known for a long time that we could do better, and there are signs of hope for a better tomorrow. While IPD and lean construction practices, when robustly applied, are creating positive results, the cure to our stagnation lies not merely in new practices, but more fundamentally in adopting a new common sense. I’m always puzzled when I hear someone from the industry declare that the solution is just “common sense.” Afterall, our current common sense tells us we can manage work through contracts, control risk by passing it to the party with the least control and influence, and improve outcomes by holding onto secret contingencies, protecting ourselves from others and building up our defenses. If we want to make real change, we need to adopt a new common sense!
A New Common Sense
The good news is that a proven model for this new thinking already exists, and in fact, has been around for decades. In 2004, Greg Howell, Hal Macomber and others wrote about this philosophical transformation in their IGLC paper, Leadership and Management: Time for a Shift from Fayol to Flores.
In his article, Greg is asking us to “reconsider the nature of work in projects,” to recognize that made. However, people are not the problematic units that, as Henry Ford theorized, need to be planned, organized, commanded, coordinated and controlled. Instead, people are autonomous, historical beings, who are capable of achieving amazing things in concert with others. So what’s the key to leveraging the incredible power of people, and more specifically, teams of people working on projects?
The shift that Greg spells out is based on Fernando Flores’ concept of making and keeping reliable commitments. This language may be familiar to many of you familiar with lean construction practices, however, we’ve seen this concept misapplied in practice more often than not. The problem is that when this concept is applied through the common sense lens of command-and-control leadership, it becomes a tool for coercing compliance, assigning responsibility, and keeping people on track - not so much different from Henry Ford’s top-down approach to management.
Focus on Trust
This outdated thinking misses the primary shift that Flores and Howell were advocating. The practices that lead to clear requests and reliable commitments are not primarily implemented as a way to ensure compliance with a schedule or achieve a specific task. Instead, the primary purpose is simply this: to build trust.
Trust is the key element ignored by contracts, schedules, operating procedures and plans.
Without trust, these are tools that live between parties, used for each individual’s purpose, and typically divide rather than unite us as a team. We’ve all seen what happens when there is little trust among team members, and most of us have seen what’s possible with high trust. While most leaders accept that teams with high degrees of trust perform dramatically better, there is little understanding of how to create this elusive trust in a practical, reliable way. Many think it’s a matter of luck, or chemistry, or maybe team building over bowling and beer. This may sometimes be the case, but that does not provide a reliable, proven approach needed for a new leadership paradigm in project work. This is where Flores comes in!
Our experience on projects of every size, in every industry, and utilizing every type of delivery method around the world shows that building and maintaining trust is not only possible, but it can be done predictably and quickly on every project. We’ve seen it over and over again, and have systematized the approach as part of the Midion Method. It’s the new common sense that leads to high-performing teams and unprecedented outcomes on every project!
Reliable Commitments
The key is to apply the concept of making and keeping reliable commitments at all levels of the project, and build the idea into every projects’ Structure, Practices, and Skillset. The approach is simple, and you can see a team begin to shift even as they make and keep the smallest commitments - showing up for meetings on time, providing information when promised, and admitting mistakes. These small moves build trust, and lead to more significant commitments - sharing real budgets and costs, working collaboratively in the best interest of the team, and exposing scope gaps and schedule busts while there’s still time to do something about them.
Building a powerful team around this system is not hard once you shift your common sense, and quickly transforming a struggling project becomes a real possibility. To see the power of this new paradigm for yourself, try it on for a couple days. On your current project, look at the challenges and bottlenecks through the lens of trust. What would happen to those biggest roadblocks if your team had more trust in each other - or even just in you? How would your team be planning for the future, anticipating problems, and raising expectations for their own performance if there was more trust? It’s easy to imagine how a project could be transformed if you could even move the trust needle just a little bit.
Now, think about one small commitment you yourself can make to start building more trust. Start by making an offer to one of your internal customers on the team, someone who needs you to perform. Make your commitment specific and clear. Check back to validate that you’ve kept your commitment and that it’s served the needs of your customer. In this simple step, you’ve started something that could change the future for your entire project team.
