Collaborative thinking

MEASURING SUCCESS

There are a multitude of advantages to all parties in working collaboratively, which the white paper lists as:

• Fewer mistakes
• Improved efficiency
• Improved morale
• Improved customer satisfaction
• Improved internal reputation
• Improved external reputation

The benefits are clear, but how do you go about measuring success? According to the report, achieving collaboration begins by defining key objectives – with every contributor to the supply chain sharing values and working towards a common goal, which helps create a benchmark.

Explains Farrell: “You can use indicators and check if you’re meeting all those hard measures; including safety, compliance, equality, customer satisfaction etc. But unless we’re all agreed on what we’re trying to achieve and collaborating for and to what extent this could be done better or differently, how can collaboration move beyond just those hard measures?”

“By way of example, I did a piece of work with one of our customers’ as part of a team managing the design and construction of a blue light facility which was bringing three services together into one new site. We did a lesson learned session at the end determining, ‘what was the objective, what were we trying to achieve’?

“From the contractor’s point of view, we were trying to create and maintain a multiuse service. When you asked the end user, ‘what was the objective?’ it was ‘we want to deliver a better service to the public’. You could argue there was actually a misalignment of objectives as people didn’t agree the overall objectives.

“That blue light project was to simply enable three organisations to work from the same building, but what the end user wanted was to deliver a better public service and to integrate those services not just in a facility but in the way that they work. Good collaboration means getting under the skin of what the organisation is about, what’s our part in it and how do we deliver that? That’s hard to get to, but when you’ve got it, all your decisions flow towards that purpose rather than just contractual obligation.

“For us we like to think the work we do is more than just keep things working, so for instance at Whiston Hospital(iii), their approach to everything is ‘one team for the patient’, and tapping into that common purpose and common goal is absolutely essential.”

KEEP TALKING

One of the key threads that flows through the white paper is on the importance of maintaining good communications. The survey revealed however, that regular meetings and interactions were carried out by only half of the respondents. While the results suggested collaboration was strong at the outset of a project (including supplier selection, jointly agreeing a common purpose or goal, agreeing targets and KPIs) it was less frequent throughout the lifecycle of a project.

Farrell suggests a rethink on how communications are organised:

“Instead of holding meetings with copious actions etc we should aim to change this to make meetings action focused. This means you don’t have to sit down for an hour, but hold short action orientated briefings where everyone has the same understanding of what the meeting is about.

“For example, at VINCI Building Solutions(iv) we were looking at how the project team interacted on a daily basis, as the site manager would hold a progress meeting during the day but people would also go in and out of his office throughout the day asking questions.

“We tilted this and asked, ‘how much time are you spending in those little interactions – what if we got all of the supervisors together for 20 minutes in the morning to deal with all of that in one fell swoop’? When they switched to daily stand up meetings, it was very focused about what they were trying to achieve, who was meant to do what, and which individuals were responsible for which action. This meant all parties were given an update at once.”

Unfortunately, maintaining good communications can only have got more difficult since going back into lockdown, so how can contractors, customers and partners ensure ongoing communication in such difficult circumstances?

Says Farrell: “If we can get people communicating in the same way in shorter more focused ways via [Microsoft] Teams calls we can apply the same principle but it is a damn sight harder. I believe a key part of emotional intelligence is understanding the pressures people are under. This means if someone can’t be there, we’ll recommend you record calls and make use of messaging to keep people updated. It’s a bit trial and error as none of us have been through a pandemic before but together we can find the right answer.”