Lead to achieve

“.....On a project that I was a part of (many years ago now !), a new contract agreement was negotiated and was about to be signed and implemented. The deliverable on my organisations part was one, simply of compliance. Quality of monthly report. Issued on time. Grammar and spelling correctness. Issuance of project procedures against plan (irrespective of schedule requirement). Nothing to push the project along. No quantity commitments. No quality commitments. And certainly, no commitments towards safety. However, the client org had recently mobilised a new CEO, who reviewed this about-to-be-agreed contract and immediately pulled it and demanded that the wider programme delivery team (client team included) develop a new agreement that was founded on a culture of delivery and achievement as opposed to one built solely on compliance.

You will note the words, “built solely on compliance”. This is to say that the CEO understood that compliance was still a requirement....but this would be a by-product of successful delivery and not the other way around. Performance would not be a slave to process.

Powerful leaders recognise the difference.

The CEO, mentioned above, was very clear in his vision for this project. It was made, abundantly, clear what the goal was and that all intermediate goals were to be established with the sole purpose of achieving one thing.....successful delivery. In an industry that delivered in months or quarters, successful delivery now had a date......in fact, it had a specific time on that date. And everyone stepped in line to deliver to that date (oops) time. The CEO had not only presented a very clear and precise vision, but they had also discussed why it was important to the wider client goals, goals that sat neatly inside the wider national goals for trade and connectivity. The vision was now very compelling to all concerned.

......Everyone had a deliverable. Everyone knew the predecessors and successors to their deliverable. And no-one was afraid to raise concerns if another deliverable may impact their ability to deliver. The project was moving from a culture of compliance and inspection to one of initiative and actual delivery.

Once the project understood the “what”, as laid out by the CEO, each of the individual component parts, contractors, sub-contractors and individuals alike, went and worked on the “how”. How would the vision be broken down into key deliverables over the next three years ? What were the dependencies and successors ? What help might be requested ? But everything was with the final delivery in mind. The project was no longer passively following. The CEO now had an organisation that were actively leading. They were climbing the leadership ladder and were telling people what they were doing or what they had done. As opposed to seeking permission or asking what should be done next. Everyone was leading to achieve.....”