The Merry Month : It's the way you tell 'em
Robert Merry, an independent Stone Consultant and Project Manager who ran his own company for 17 years and now also runs training courses on project management, gives his personal slant on the stone industry this month.
The art of comedy is… timing. The art of timing is… good judgment. The art of when to tell the truth the whole truth and nothing but… is judgement. Diplomacy, awareness and… timing.
Making a decision to tell the truth requires an ability to deal with the reaction of others, particularly if it’s not what they were expecting or wanting to hear. Truth is only relevant to the individual. It’s always open to interpretation and mine is different from yours.
So when the Director decides they have had enough of “pussy footing” around the programme issues and gives the client’s Project Manager both barrels about the reasons we are delayed, he didn’t think about the likely fall out. The reasons for the outburst – an unforgiving designer inspection regime prior to delivery, the rejection of stone for natural blemishes previously seen and accepted, but suddenly no longer acceptable, poor build quality on-site, a bad day at the office - all led to this point.
The Director’s truth was unmanageable pressure from the “dark forces” of contracting. The programme had slipped, the stone on the critical path would be late. Three weeks delay he announced. He forgot his project manager had agreed the programme with him and the factory manager a week beforehand and presented it to the contractor, who sent it to the client. His project manager felt exposed, just a bit.
Why was this no longer achievable? What had changed? Well, not a lot really. The stone contractor’s site manager checked the drawings against as-built two days later than he had agreed and issued the cutting sheet a day after that.
The factory manager panicked. Three days manufacture lost on an intricate matching floor on a tight programme, where quality is everything and understanding and patience is in short supply. He suddenly realised what he had signed up for the week before was optimistic and now looked impossible.
The Director hadn’t really taken on board the programme and reacted to what he saw in front of him – a panicking factory manager, a seemingly impossible time frame and a contractor asking if it was going to deliver site this week.
But if he had reframed his truth, then the minor inquisition that followed might have been avoided. The client’s PM and the contractor left the meeting, slightly astonished and certainly irritated that the picture had changed, seemingly over night. But they re-grouped and sent an e mail with an excel attachment, listing every room and asking for detailed dates for all the manufacture, day by day, item by item. A cold response to a hot topic. They wanted control. The task fell to the beleaguered stone project manager to complete. Thank guys.
The reframed truth could have been much simpler. The overall effect on the programme was two weeks delay, which might have been reduced to 10 days or even 5 days with a fair wind and some heavy praying. I was only joking about the fair wind.
Think about this. “We don’t think we can now make this by next week. We had to check the floor measurements twice, because of the build quality on-site. I know we issued a programme last week, but the intricacy of the work, plus the designer inspections, mean we need more time. We have misjudged the timing. We think the overall delay will be two weeks, but we are going to try and reduce this. It would help if we could have more trust from your side by reducing the factory inspections. We need more confidence in the build quality on-site, which is really making life difficult, as we have to keep double checking the measurements. Can you help us?”
Hindsight is a wonderful thing.
There’s nothing wrong with the truth, but as a once famous comedy strap line went….”It’s the way you tell ’em”.