“No surprises” – How shared values can drive performance

The Concept:

“No surprises…” It was late spring, 1999, and I was walking down the hallway at our company’s corporate offices when one of our most senior program managers stopped me with that proclamation. To my complete amazement, he held up his hands and, imitating quotation marks with his fingers for emphasis, he said, “No surprises, I need to make you aware of a serious problem with my project. He then quickly provided me with an overview of the problem as well as an outline of several possible solutions. We agreed upon a plan of action and he left me with a wink and a smile. It was then that it hit me -- after 11 months of co-leading this 300+ person project management team, our message of shared values was finally taking hold.

Early on in those first 11 months we were given a daunting mission – continuously assimilate disparate project groups (from 14 different disciplines) into one cohesive team responsible for project managing the construction and deployment of a nationwide telecommunications network. We were also informed that there was zero tolerance for failure. Further, in order to meet our aggressive sales targets, we were NEVER allowed to miss a project deployment date. Over 2000 discrete projects running simultaneously, most of which were completely interdependent. I distinctly remember thinking, “What in the world have we gotten ourselves into?”

Once the shock wore off, we quickly set about addressing the task at hand with a simple, straightforward plan of engagement. Our plan had one goal – identify and relentlessly reinforce our team’s shared values . Our reasoning was simple. We realized that it was impossible to micro-manage every single line item in each and every plan. As one of my former bosses was fond of saying, “don’t chase too many rabbits down too many rabbit holes…” So we focused our efforts broadly, with special emphasis on what we expected our project managers to value , rather than dictate exactly what they should do as they went about their day-to-day activities. We believed the key to success hinged on providing our project managers with a framework within which to succeed . It was then up to each of them to develop their own set of tools and techniques consistent with these shared values in order to successfully execute their plans.

Now that we had a plan, it was time to identify our shared values. In order to accomplish this, we established a cross-organizational team comprised of both line staff and management to determine which values were essential in addressing the myriad challenges that faced our project managers on a daily basis. We instructed the team to concentrate on identifying examples of past situations in which individual project managers had succeeded and also situations in which they had failed. Then we asked the team to capture values/behaviors that reinforced our successes and mitigated our past failures.

Here are the values that our team identified:

1. No Surprises - our biggest challenge in managing such a diverse set of critical projects was ensuring that no project was allowed to go “off track” for long. We instilled in our project managers the need to rapidly identify critical issues and bring them to the attention of key stakeholders, including management. In this way, we afforded ourselves the maximum amount of time to solve problems as they arose.

2. Reach left, reach right - the interdependency of our projects presented us with a unique challenge – most of our project managers were reliant on their peers to deliver their projects accurately and on time in order to effectively extend our network. For example, a project manager responsible for deploying a network device is heavily dependent on the project manager responsible for laying the fiber that will connect that device to the network. If either of these project managers identifies something that has “fallen through the cracks” it is incumbent on them to solve that problem, even if that problem is not in their area of responsibility.

3. When you identify a problem, provide possible solutions - With so many projects, our team depended on our project managers to bring forth innovative solutions to the inevitable problems that occurred.

4. Follow the process - When we developed our standardized process, we concentrated on managing major process phases and the individual deliverables required to successfully execute each phase. In keeping with our theme of managing broadly, we were careful not to obsess over detailed process steps . We standardized our work at the process “phase” level and left the details to the creativity of each project manager.

5. Tell the truth - Given the reality of such a high pressure environment, it was very difficult to report that a mistake had been made, yet finding out the truth after the fact was unacceptable. Our project managers realized from the outset that the best course of action was to communicate continuously, openly, and honestly with all stakeholders.

THE RESULTS:

Over the course of 16 quarters, we never missed a deployment or quarterly target. We firmly believe that instilling shared guiding principles in our team was the key to our success.

 

IMPLICATIONS FOR THE EXECUTIVE:

So how does this apply to your organization? Our experience has shown us that any organization can greatly benefit from focusing on the creation of a shared set of values. The advantages for your team are numerous:

1. Create a sense of mission
2. Establish “esprit de corps”
3. Empower staff to solve problems/own solutions
4. Rapidly align staff with your organization’s mission and vision

 

How should you go about developing your organization’s shared values?

 

1. Form a cross-organizational team to identify your organization’s shared values – Use the examples included here as a starting point . While every organization is unique, the values we have provided here will generate sufficient dialogue to get you started.
2. Communicate your values to all stakeholders essential to your success – Ask them to participate and provide you with feedback. Not only will you help them to better understand how your processes operate, but in turn, you will gain a better understanding of how you can help to make their processes more successful.
3. Measure performance and reward staff based on their efforts to exhi­bit behaviors that reinforce your shared values – Capture and com­municate to your management/ stakeholders concrete examples of team members demonstrating your shared values.
4. Conduct “all hands” meetings on a monthly basis, if possible – During these meetings, recognize team members who are effectively de­monstrating the behaviors you have conveyed. Discuss these examples with your team during the meeting and actively solicit feedback from the team.
5. Begin today – Establishing your shared values shouldn’t require significant long-term effort. The key is to move quickly to identify your values and concentrate future efforts on reinforcing them with your team.

 

About the Author:

Jon Windley is a former co-founder/managing partner at NextWave Performance LLC.

©2006 NextWave Performance LLC