A few weeks after I got to my large construction project in the-middle-of-nowhere New Mexico, I walked into the superintendent’s area and found most of my staff deep in discussion about a process. A functional manager within the company distributed the process dictating – It must be followed! No one on my staff agreed with the process. It was clear that the process was written from the perspective of the functional manager and the perspectives from other functional areas wasn’t considered.
I initiated an impromptu meeting to come up with our version of the process. The men who reported to the functional manager were concerned about not following the dictated process but I told them not to worry about it – my job was to sell our process to the larger group of senior managers and explain why it is better.
I then asked what other processes we needed to look at and boy, did I open a can of worms! I decided to formalize my Process meeting. (more…)