Ace, hard working estimator/PM, came storming into my office
exclaiming, “Those idiots in the shop screwed up again. I told them we needed 24 connection plates fabricated
and they built 48. I might as well sub my
project out, any other shop could do it right.
You gotta make ‘em stop screwing up my projects.”
The best “tip off” that someone is not telling me the whole story is
when that someone starts telling me what I should do to fix his or her problem. Is there really a problem? At this point what should I do?
One of the most effective actions is to
simply say, “OK, Ace, lets you and I go to the shop.” This simple call to action removes 50% of the
issues. Why? Because few tactics are as efficient at
exposing the truth of a situation as face to face, person to person, antagonist
to antagonist communication. And, about 50%
of the problems we face in business are emotional not factual, consequently, by
quickly taking action to bring opposing sides together several things can happen:
- If someone is just “venting”, blowing off steam, often the last thing they want is a face to face confrontational meeting, consequently the call for a face to face session reduces many mountains back to much smaller mole hills.
- When face to face, it’s surprising how many people become reasonable. Especially if there is someone of higher authority calling for the meeting.
- And, face to face creates excellent teaching opportunities for people to learn how to become better, more effective . . . listeners.
- Finally, here is the real gold. After listening to the issues confronting the shop, Ace now sees what will be required of him to orchestrate his projects differently in the future so that the “problem” simply never occurs.
In this instance, Ace learned that two unique piece part marks were, in
fact, identical steel plates, just called for at different progress points in the
project. The shop was trying to be efficient
in fabricating both plates at the same time.
Ace also learned that if he follows up any verbal directions with
written directions, such as red lining the changed count number on the drawing sheet, it
makes the shop’s job much easier. But in the end, it was face to face communication that yielded solutions.
Face to face communication, it works.
When a conflict arises, an immediate face to face meeting can solve problems
quickly, while teaching everyone better listening skills, and often the meeting
uncovers vital information to make future operations smoother.
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