Why strategy trumps process in pursuing bids

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We’ve all heard it: Belief the method. 

A lot of our work with our building shoppers includes course of improvement and implementation round each aspect of their enterprise. The advantages of utilizing well-documented and totally skilled processes are exhausting to overstate. 

Not solely do uniformly adopted processes constantly result in optimistic outcomes, there’s additionally a big improve within the velocity of recent rent productiveness. When a brand new rent is handed a complete playbook for his or her function, skilled on that playbook and the corporate follows up to verify individuals use the playbook, new hires succeed rapidly. 

One other plus is that when everybody is aware of the method and follows it, veteran workers are freed as much as give attention to progress. That’s thrilling stuff.

Keep away from rigidity

That mentioned, do not make the error of fully swapping out a tradition of particular person decision-making and situational flexibility with certainly one of rigidity and compliance. When the state of affairs requires it, deviations from the method aren’t simply acceptable. They’re crucial and most well-liked.

For instance, we frequently implement a structured go/no-go criterion with our building shoppers to assist resolve which initiatives they need to make investments their extraordinarily useful and restricted preconstruction assets on. 

This course of, which should be fully custom-made to their distinctive firms and frequently reviewed and up to date to replicate present and future enterprise situations, helps contractors spend time on the healthiest alternatives obtainable. 

The method additionally saves time by skipping initiatives that do not match and utilizing that point for extra complete preconstruction efforts heading in the right direction initiatives. The result’s virtually all the time larger seize charges on challenge pursuits and higher margins on the time of sale. 

As soon as this course of is in place, it must be used constantly to offer a dispassionate, goal scorecard for the challenge you might be invited to pursue. The scorecard is there to assist firms make selections. 

Discover that I didn’t say the method makes the choice for them.

It must be as much as the judgment of the sensible, skilled individuals within the enterprise to find out whether or not they may pursue a given challenge. Subsequently, when the scorecard says {that a} challenge is a poor match, that destructive in opposition to taking the job must be thought-about a particularly legitimate knowledge level in a go/no go determination. Nonetheless, I nonetheless encourage firms to make what they consider is the suitable judgment for his or her firm on every challenge whatever the scorecard output.

Think about a state of affairs by which a challenge failed to satisfy go standing based mostly on the scorecard, however this challenge was the primary alternative to pursue a challenge with a high-value consumer. The challenge is barely too small to be thought-about a goal job, the aggressive circumstances are lower than splendid and the challenge shouldn’t be in the popular geographic footprint. 

When the theoretical CEO of this firm calls me to ask if he ought to comply with the method or take heed to his judgment to bid the job, I reply by saying it seems like you have got compelling strategic causes to deviate out of your course of on this one… go for it!

Technique over course of

In different phrases, technique outweighs course of each single time.

Deviations out of your established processes have worth. Whether or not you have got strategic enterprise causes for a deviation, otherwise you merely want to experiment with one other strategy, there’s completely nothing flawed with knowingly deviating from the method. 

However “knowingly” is the important thing time period right here. It’s important that management is aware of the why behind the deviation in addition to acknowledgment of any dangers related to not following the usual. When deviations go effectively, we frequently make new discoveries that enable us to enhance our processes. Nonetheless, if a deviation produces a destructive outcome, as an alternative of casting blame, it may be a strong lesson that reinforces the significance of following our processes. 

It’s a frontrunner’s job to stroll the road between technique and course of, between rigidity and being opportunistic. 

Please doc, practice and actively supervise efficient processes in each aspect of your online business for all the explanations listed above and extra. Simply do not enable your processes to create a rigidity that will get in the way in which of sound judgment, creativity and instinct in government decision-making.