The Joy of Vulnerability

?The Joy of Vulnerability

The other day I found myself thinking back on my career in construction for local government. Although it is three years since I left, I still wonder whether I made any difference. I also wonder why I became so frustrated with the way things had evolved in terms of local government project management, and possibly project management more widely.

I always felt I had delivered a huge number of projects with minimum fuss and maximum common sense and cost effectiveness. I obviously hadn't done it all by myself, so what had enabled such an efficient production line?

It is hard to explain something when you do it without being conscious of what you are doing. Try asking a concert pianist to explain how it is they put their fingers on the right keys.

Although not in that league I felt I must have done something right – and then it dawned on me.

Whilst driving near my home the penny dropped. In my early days supervising area maintenance works I had to meet council gangs and private contractors on site. I was naturally on the shy side but also looked forward to meeting new people.

I had come from the design office where we designed road schemes and prepared contract documents for bypasses, link roads, junctions and road realignments. I had learned how to do survey work and design roads using computer programs. None of that required the buy-in of those doing the work and the scrutiny of others with greater experience. I hadn't learned how to work with people to get the job done and meet all the practical requirements.

When I moved into maintenance that facet became the top priority. When I met the guys on site I would be interested in them and their backgrounds. (my dad also bought me a copy of Dale Carnegie’s – “How to win friends and influence people”, still a good read after nearly 100 years) I would endeavour to know everyone's name so I could discuss matters with the whole site team. I knew that they had far more practical experience than me, so I used to be open and ask how they thought we should go about things. “I’m not sure, what do you think”? “hey guys, what's the best way to do this”? “how would you like to do it”? “Gary, you're good at this, what do you reckon”? That's a belter, just imagine how Gary feels when you confirm his expertise and ask his advice. Of course the ideas have to be tested against the scheme objectives, but it’s always helpful to have a selection of ideas to choose from.

Sometimes I asked quite na?ve questions or made silly mistakes and they would take the rise out of me; I didn’t mind too much and learned not to take myself too seriously. This in turn fostered a level of trust with the teams that soon became the basis of close partnership working. Many schemes were jointly conceived on site and started within days; I can’t recall any catastrophes.

(Interestingly whilst writing this article I listened to Michael Mosley's “just one thing” on radio 4, and his topic was on social interaction; it has been proved that contact with other people, however brief, calms our spirits, reduces blood pressure and helps us live longer without dementia.)

I have touched on vulnerability in recent articles and in my book “leadership for good guys”, but now realise that for me this is when it all started. I was being vulnerable and it worked. I was never seen as a threat and was open to alternative proposals. For over twenty years I delivered schemes with various teams and the style never changed. I owned my responsibilities, delivered my elements and I enlisted the help of those with different disciplines and acknowledged expertise. Site problems became a joy as we would discuss ideas and invariably come up with an agreed solution that worked for all parties and kept things on track with minimal expense. This approach also retained an honesty in negotiations so that we never argued about payments; each party gave an honest assessment of work carried out, delays and difficulties so that a final account could be agreed in no time; there was never a claim or protracted dispute.

This even extended to multi-organisational schemes like the roads around a new Sainsbury store. This was with all new companies and people, yet my vulnerable stance continued. I went to meetings alone and faced numerous engineers, clients, QS’s and contractors. I gave comfort that I was responsible for certain things and that they would be completed on time. I also assured the contractor and QS’s that payments would be made and that work would be assessed fairly. I am proud to say that the relationship blossomed and we all achieved our goals.

When the Highways function was inevitably reorganised this approach was replaced with a far more rigid, risk-based approach with term contractor, designer and LA staff within the same office. The co-location certainly did not, in itself, create harmonious relationships. This arrangement seems to be the modern style and breaks with my tradition of designing and delivering the work with the site team, where we both learn whether we did well or badly and how we might improve next time. We often talk about silos in management discussions and how inefficient they are, yet this is what we’ve ended up with.

The culture is one of - I do my thing without your involvement but I am terrified of making a mistake. This tends to add more people to the production so the blame can be shared if anything goes wrong. Meetings are held ad infinitum to analyse every possible risk. This is invariably months before things get to site where the genuine risks are. Often the perceived risks become so overwhelming that the scheme never gets the go-ahead.

Suspicion plays out at every level and contractors are always the ones who can be trusted the least; heaven forbid that they actually offer a sensible suggestion to build a better scheme or to save money; they must be out for some financial gain.

For young engineers (and even some older ones) starting out, they can be isolated in a computer design office where a millimetre on a screen is the size of a dinner plate and everything looks perfect. All theory is downloaded from the guidance manuals and put into practice in a perfect world. In my experience the drawings are invariably wrong when they meet reality on site and are often binned. The contractor has to redesign the scheme and the designer never learns what he/she could have done better. The contractor will have to fight for every penny of the extra work he has had to do, and so it goes on for the next scheme.

The joy of vulnerability means it doesn’t have to be this way – lets’ admit we don’t know everything and that we can learn from others. Try to follow your actions and see if they worked out, reflect honestly; if they didn’t, try to make it better next time.

Get onto site and experience the practicalities of how to build, not just what to build; this is probably one of the greatest lessons I learned: designing something is easy; how to build something is the tricky part and how to adapt to changing circumstances is the fun part (the engineering part). This is the part that has been lost the most; so much so that scheme costs are built up with great accuracy at early stages, shared at numerous meetings and then completely torn up when the site considerations are included. Get the contractor’s team in early with an open heart!