Real Life Lean 034

Happy Monday lean construction family and welcome to another edition of Real Life Lean. This weeks newsletter will be a little different, as I am returning from LCI Congress in Detroit, and want to share the top 5 takeaways I had from an amazing week.

Today's Summary:

• Relationship Between Risk And Failure

• Become A Storyteller

• Clear Vision

• Takt Planning Perfection

• Partners Over Contracts

Relationship Between Risk and Failure

The opening session of LCI Congress featured a keynote session from Bran Ferren. If you are unfamiliar with who Bran is, as I was, he is an interesting human. Bran spent his a small chunk of his storied career at Walt Disney where he was the President of Creative Technology as well as the President of Research and Development. He then went on to found his own company, Applied Minds, where he consults with companies and governments worldwide. Bran’s message for LCI Congress - Innovate or Die.

His session captivated the audience and I found myself taking notes at a rapid pace. His overall message was around our industries need to adapt to the world at hand, and the need to innovate on our current ways of doing work. To him, the way to do this for the construction industry is to implement lean practices and tools.

A main takeaway that I had from his talk was - “You Don’t Drive Down Risk By Thinking About Something Forever. Failure Is Okay.” This quote, while not something inherently new to me, struck me as inspiring, because I think perfection is a major hurdle we need to overcome as an industry if we want lean construction to thrive. We need to stop waiting until we are experts at these lean tools to implement them. Our teams should be implementing small changes daily that are moving themselves (and the industry) forward. If you want to implement the Last Planner System, then you should! Don’t wait until you have every single “what if” figured out, just start. Make sure you take a step back and review your work, see what changes are needed, and make these changes. But just start. Don’t let perfection keep you from starting. Failure is okay, as long as you don’t let it stop you.

Become A Storyteller

My second major takeaway also came from the keynote session from Bran. To be honest, I could probably write a couple separate newsletters on my takeaways from that session. But this will be the last one in this newsletter. This second takeaway is “A good leader must become a great storyteller”.

The world of construction is full of uninspiring leaders that can’t articulate their vision, if they even have one. Sorry to say, but that is the sad state that most of our industry is in. There are great, inspiring leaders out there that do this very well, but they are not the norm. In an industry that is staring down the barrel of a labor crisis, we need to make a change. Lean leaders must learn the art of storytelling and help inspire their people to get onboard with lean construction. Lean is a different change for our industry, as it is not something that can be forced on people like many other things can be. We need people to want to be better, want a change and feel inspired by lean tools and methods. To do this, lean leaders must learn the art of storytelling. Being able to clearly articulate your vision to the your people is the only way you can get true buy in. Don’t let perfection stop you on this (as we learned above). Share your vision for where you want to take your people, and update them along the way as you learn and grow. Be vulnerable.

Clear Vision

Takeaway number three came from a panel discussion from owners. These were owners that had implemented lean construction on their projects and major companies such as Johnson and Johnson, Meta and San Francisco International Airport. They shared how lean practices have improved and changed the workflow at their companies, and how they plan to implement them moving forward. A major takeaway I had was “You cannot change people in the middle of a project”. While the speaker did not mean people can’t leave your project in the middle of it, she was reffering to peoples hearts and minds. Leaders must have a clear vision of where they are taking the project, and you must get people bought in from their first time onsite.

This quote made me think of the importance of the on-boarding strategy a team has in place. We know the team you start a project with is not the team you end with (most of the time), so how to you capture the vision and mindset that the team has at the beginning and ensure team members on-boarded in the middle and end of the project understand that same vision and mindset? You have an on-boarding process that shares it.

Team members that join the team later in a project lifecycle should have the same understanding of the project vision that the team had when the project started. This goes for craft workers in the field to executives joining the project. They should all understand the why.

Takt Planning Perfection

Takeaway number four comes from session I attended on Takt Planning. During this breakout session a team shared their success in using Takt Planning for successfully completing a large, complex biopharma project. The main takeaway that stuck out to be was “The plan is not perfect for everyone, but it is perfect for the project”.

This quote stuck out to me because it shows the level of commitment and team buy in that is necessary for lean projects to be successful. The takt plan is not going to be perfect every day for every trade, however, (with practice and learning) it will be perfect for the project. Your team needs to get onboard with this mindset and overall goal of making the project better. The general contractor that is using takt needs to know they will be in a battle agains the mindset of “I only care about my team/trade” and be ready to share the vision of why the team is using takt planning.

Partners Over Contracts

The fifth and final takeaway from my week at LCI Congress came from a breakout session I attended on Creating a Well Oiled Team. The takeaway I had here was “Find the best partner, not the best contract style”. This quote stuck out to me because I think it is really important to focus less on the contracts and more on the team you are bringing to the project. Having a shared vision of success, alignment on the project goals and an overall true partnership will make the contracting portion of the project much easier.

When we focus on relationships with real people and between real companies, we will find true success. Contracts are an extremely important part of the project, but don’ let contract style hold you up. The panel that was sharing their story was telling the audience about how their successful project utilized different contract styles based on the needs at the time. In some instances, they utilized a T&M contract, while other times, they brought partners into the overall IFOA contact. They focused less on what contract was needed and more on selecting the best partner for their vision.

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