Articles
Richard Gedge, director of the consultancy Renuma
“Of course, contracts are only a rough guide!” said a Brazilian contractor with a wry smile during a payment discussion. Anyone who has managed projects in South America will know that the contracting environment there is more “flexible” than in Europe. Corruption weakens the power of written agreements. Knowledge of and strong relationships with your partners are imperative for a project’s success.
I learned my trade as an engineer building glass factories around the world. When I oversaw multiple projects I began to see how relationships between the project management team and partners correlated with success.
The causes of delays and cost overruns can often be traced to poor relationships and communications. Strong relationships between suppliers with trust and transparency will result in more success.
The same principle applies within the project management team. An overbearing leader crushes individual creativity and relational connections. If a project leader understands that one of their key tasks is to provide the conditions for the team to relate well, the relationships create capacity. Investing in the team’s relationships early on means the leader has extra capacity to draw on throughout the rest of the project, especially in a crisis. I have also found that teams with strong relationships are generally smaller.
Over the past few years my colleagues and I have been investigating whether the intentional improvement of relationships in teams can deliver step-changes in performance. We wanted to know whether focused attention on “relational engineering” would deliver results.
We are working with and developing tools that measure the key aspects of relationships between groups of people – power, communication, information, consistency and alignment. Now with case studies across various sectors, including utilities, the NHS and local government, we have found that better relationships are a game changer. For example, we improved relationships in a street-works system between a highways authority, a utility company and a contractor. We measured and analysed the relational dynamics before bringing the three teams together for two short workshops.
The data showed us that there were three key relational blockages. Using data to describe the positive and negative aspects of relationships from the perspectives of all parties gave a platform for honest discussion. Together the teams could then deal with the three issues during the facilitated workshops.
Six months later the improved relationships had done their job. In that short period the teams managed to clear six years’ worth of critical works that had backed-up owing to lack of trust. The change was made without more staff, without greater bureaucracy or better IT, and led to a decrease in fines.
As engineers, we are used to taking care of IT, materials, energy and labour. However, those involved in delivering success either in a stable workplace environment or a project often don’t realise the capacity locked up in their teams or group-to-group relationships.