Timing - It's Now or Never

Every four years or so the grade school calendar and Christmas allow for about 10 days of Christmas vacation before Christmas Day.

My wife and I decided to "go for it" and packed-up in the minivan with our five kids and drove to Disney World to enjoy the parks at a special time of year when they are decorated beyond the extraordinary standard Disney is known for achieving and avoiding the "Christmas rush."

Granted, there were alot of reasons to keep us from going, the expense, the craziness of traveling with five young children, etc... Never again though were all five children going to be at a "magical age" for Disney - 11 years old, 9, 6, 4 and 2 1/2.

It reminds me of one of the 80/20 principle "top 10" high-value uses time. If it's "no or never," it's always a high-value use of time.

We were rewarded with very special memories, especially a journal we kept of our 21-day, 4,200 mile journey together (by the way, after driving from Dallas to Orlando, we drove to see my wife's father for Christmas in Sturgis, Michigan and then back to Dallas).  

Successfully Integrating Gen-Y and Millennials into Your Organization

Constructech Magazine, September 2011


Successfully Integrating Gen-Y and Millennials into Your Organization by Choosing Integrated Project Delivery (IPD) as Your Culture

By Darren Smith

We’ve all heard it from our colleagues. “Those recent college graduates expect to be given a shot at the CEO’s chair within five years. Gen Y and Millennial team members think they know everything.”

Is that really what Gen Y and Millennials are communicating? Maybe we should think deeper about this…. Maybe they only want their intuition acknowledged and to be included in collaborative efforts.

Consider this:

Gen Y is the first generation to grow-up sharing files, video games and knowledge… their mindset is collaborative. Their mindset is "we" instead of "me." This shift in mindset is well portrayed by how our relationship with automobiles has evolved in just the last decade:

- Car ownership (Baby Boomers and Gen X) – www.gm.com to

- Ride sharing (Gen-Y) – www.zimride.com to

- Car sharing (Millennials) – www.zipcar.com to

- Person to person car rental (The Next Generation) – www.whipcar.com

In addition, collaboration is not only the mindset of Gen-Y and Millennials, collaboration is the future of business (including architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) business). IPD is a collaborative behavior standard. Choosing IPD as your culture helps you successfully integrate Gen-Y and Millennials into your organization as well as evolve the way your organization does business. IPD is “how” AEC organizations can collaborate and evolve.

If we are going to use IPD to support collaboration in our organizations, then we need to define IPD and how it can help us.

What an IPD Culture Is and Is Not

What an IPD Culture is:

- Mindset – we all wear the same uniform. We are all on the same team.

What an IPD Culture is Not:

- It is not LEAN – LEAN is about deleting wasted movement from a work process. For example, when swimming (freestyle), you could turn your head as far as possible out of the water to take a breath. Another option is to only turn your head slightly until your lips are just above the water line to take the same breath. Choosing the second option deletes wasted movement from the process of taking a breath while swimming freestyle.

- It is not Partnering – In partnering, the best interest of the project is not the focus. The focus is on the interests of the members of the partnership. These are two completely different focuses.

- It is not “what you’ve been doing for the last 20+ years.” There are many organizations that have IPD behaviors scattered around inside their culture anecdotally, but not in an organized manner captured on a piece of paper. If an organization’s culture is based on IPD, then those behaviors need to be on paper, or it’s not real.

How IPD can help integrate Gen-Y and Millennials as well as other generations present or yet to come:

• First, install channels for collaboration. Here are a three ideas:

- Know Everyone’s Personality Type – this is a basic idea that works and always will work with every person in the organization. You don’t have to be perfect. You just need additional success collaborating with those around you. Knowing personality types and how to work more effectively with each other to win a few extra “yeses” goes a long way.

- Know How Your People Feel Appreciated – not everyone likes a thoughtful gift. Some prefer words of encouragement, a caring handshake, a helping hand or some quality time together. You may have thought a gift card was the perfect way to acknowledge someone for the extra effort on the last project. In reality, that person may have found more value in a breakfast meeting, during which you discuss their professional development and deliver feedback.

- Know What Type of Communication Works – examples are monthly reflection surveys, annual town hall meetings and shared learning from previous projects.

• Next, introduce IPD behavior standards. Behavior standards include:

- Powerful Questions – they are the fuel of meaningful conversations. Questions help you talk with someone instead of at someone. Questions project a conversation on the other person, which is always positive. Everyone’s favorite radio station is WIFM radio (what’s in it for me) and they never tire of it. The more questions we ask, the more the other person hears their own voice and the more we learn. When we make statements, the focus is on ourselves and we hear things we already know.

- Listening – Here’s a quick listening tool kit – 1. Echo listening, 2. Reflective listening, 3. “Tell me more” listening and 4. Turnaround listening. Echo listening is repeating the last few words of what the other person just said and nodding your head for them to continue. Reflective listening is refraining from saying anything as to avoid interrupting the other person. “Tell me more listening” is using this phrase to prompt the other person to continue talking once they have come to a natural stopping point. Turnaround listening is redirecting the onus to speak. Someone invites you to speak first and you graciously ask them to go first using the same words they used to invite you.

- Coaching Skills – Follow a coaching model in your conversations when appropriate – establish an objective for a conversation, co-create a strategy to reach the objective, identify obstacles to reach the objective (and what needs to be done to remove them) and create helpful accountability's to support movement forward towards the objective.

- Skill with People – after food and water, what people CRAVE the most is respect. Skill with People creates ample respect. Learning how to set tone, critique and win more “yeses” are three examples of IPD behaviors in an IPD tool kit of standards. These behaviors are easy to incorporate and can become as natural as breathing (with some practice). Similar to learning how to ride a bike, you learn how to reach an IPD behavior standard and you never forget.

In closing, everyone agrees it takes more to compete and win in business today than a few years ago. Competition used to be you and your idea against the other person and their idea. That's not good enough anymore. Now, you must combine your idea with the ideas of others (including Gen-Y and Millennials) to beat the other person and their idea. That collaboration between team members in different parts of your organization as well as different generations is now a necessity.

Choose IPD as Your Culture, Not Just One of Your Delivery Methods.

Value of Permanent Behavior Change

It takes up to a year for an adult to make a permanent behavior change.

I support collaborative project teams by helping them replenish the well of resolve they draw from to keep collaborating over many months filled with challenging situations that sap their resolve.

I also help them with their collaborative awareness, values, skills and behaviors. If they have collaborative awareness and values, but no skills and behaviors, they can't act. If they have awareness, skills and behaviors, but no values, they don't care to act and if they have values, skills and behaviors and no awareness, they don't know to act.

By helping collaborative project teams marshal their collaborative skills and behaviors to create expanding pools of meaning, they can make mole hills out of collaboration-flattening mountains of challenge that can suddenly appear.

Prepare to be prepared to solve challenges with collaboration.

Lack of trust costs money. Just look at our costs for insurance, contingency and man hours doing paperwork.

We Can’t See the Collaborative Forest for the Integrated Project Delivery (IPD) Trees

As seen on http://www.ipdchannel.net/, October 2011
Written by Darren Smith, CEO, Cima Strategic Services

Has someone, acting as both judge & jury, ever proceeded to sentence you to the island of “You Don’t Know What You’re Talking About?”

A colleague tried this on me recently. My colleague thought he knew enough about IPD to certify (figuratively speaking) those who claim to know something about IPD. Well, who’s certifying this certifier?

Once a definition is established (in this case IPD), we tend to become dangerously stuck on it and fail to see the collaborative forest for the IPD trees. Our industry may be at that point.

Let me explain. The Wikipedia definition of integrated project delivery is “a collaborative alliance of people, systems, business structures and practices into a process that harnesses the talents and insights of all participants to optimize project results, increase value to the owner, reduce waste, and maximize efficiency through all phases of design, fabrication, and construction.”

Can anyone reading this article explain to me what this definition means? I still don’t know what I’m going to receive if I use IPD as my delivery method. In other words, some sort of upfront costs (at least extra work) are clear and the benefits (at the end of the project) are vague. If I’m an owner, it sounds like more risk on the face of it.

My colleague referenced above believes this Wikipedia definition of IPD is the standard. Anything else is wrong.

I propose the construction industry use a more practical definition of IPD, one that is not construction-related at all, one that more people (owners, construction professionals, suppliers and users) can relate to and act upon easily. The Wikipedia definition is technical, product and process-focused in the vein of BIM and LEAN. IPD is none of those. IPD is simply a behavior standard.

This Wikipedia definition of IPD flies in the face of something a colleague of mine, Alan Weiss, and I agree on and he wrote about recently:

Cutting to the Chase

People don't want to have to interpret a strange language. ("We operate in the sales space, focusing on connectedness and authority with subordinated client needs.")

People want to know what’s in it for THEM. This is not a bad philosophy for social, civic, and family relationships, as well. But it is vital and essential for business.

Practice being both concise (taking fewer words) and pithy (using powerful words) to convey your meaning. Understand that others are adults, and are capable of asking questions if they need more information.

Start at the conclusion, you’re not a mystery novel. Tell me what you can do for me quickly and cogently and enticingly. Then leave it to me.

The current definition of IPD is strange language. It is not concise or pithy and it doesn’t convey what’s in it for the reader (i.e WIFM – what’s in it for me). Up to now, I’ve used anecdotes to define IPD because I’ve not been able to find language that satisfies. Now, before your eyes I will make a death-defying leap over the cadre of certifiers I’ve encountered and define IPD.

Here it goes:

IPD translated from construction language to simple English means collaboration.

Collaboration =

a collaborative environment (autonomy, mastery and purpose)

+ demonstrated collaborative skills and behaviors

(skills include powerful questioning, critiquing and listening)

(behaviors include demonstrating respect towards others by using their names, setting tone and speaking in terms of how what you want helps the other person get what they want)

+ trust

(trust begins with familiarity of team members through past experience or familiarity with their body of work)

Whew, I did it.

The three elements that propagate a collaborative environment come from Daniel Pink's book, “Drive.” He states that creative people simply want latitude (autonomy), the opportunity to do something really well (mastery) and the opportunity to be part of something greater than self (purpose).

You’ve heard some in construction casually state “you only need trust” in an IPD project. This assumes trust is something you can simply turn on or off like a light switch. Well, trust is organic and grows over time.

Before you can have trust, though, you need to show you can collaborate by demonstrating collaborative skills and behaviors that don’t come naturally and must be learned by most people. But, before this you need to design and build a collaborative environment consisting of the three elements listed above in this definition of IPD (autonomy, mastery & purpose). To top things off, some type of integrated form of agreement can make IPD more effective though it is not a requisite.

The output of collaboration (the WIFM) is everyone acts like they are on the same team and wears the same color uniform. Creativity is uncorked, or churned-out from unexpected places, to achieve project goals such as removing large chunks of waste. An example would be waiving all claims among team members and eliminating redundant and excessive project insurance costs expended by all parties. That’s the value of IPD.

Working From the Inside-Out

Lastly, in this definition of IPD, there is an operating phrase for creating collaboration (specific manner and sequence) called “working from the inside-out.” Currently, owners are not buying-in to IPD as quickly as expected for several reasons, one being, the AEC community is mostly selling IPD from the “outside-in.” What do I mean by that? The AEC community is out there selling IPD and when they stumble upon an opportunity, they turn-on the trust light switch with whatever firms they will be working with. They whip-together an “IPD project team” and then they might make some effort to string together existing IPD elements in their organizational culture to support the project team (whatever that means). All this happens with the expectation that things will work out. Sound familiar? While owners may not be able to verbalize it or put their finger on this truth, owners feel something is not right. Hence, they do not buy-in to IPD. It feels riskier than current options.

What we need to do is work from the inside-out. Here is the suggested path:

● IPD has to help you achieve your business strategy

● Win support from senior management

● Choose IPD as your culture, not just one of your delivery methods

● Choose an IPD champion

● Complete an IPD readiness assessment

● Design and execute training on how to behave at an IPD standard

● Use a large amount of carrot and some stick

● Pilot an IPD project

Can we now see the collaborative forest for the Integrated Project Delivery (IPD) trees?

My goal for this article is to shift the definition of IPD and reset it to propel owner buy-in and help in the revitalization effort of the construction industry. Who says the current definition out there is correct? It’s sort of like the old political joke “he’s a crook, but he’s our crook.”

Darren Smith produces the IPD Academy, which includes the annual IPDAssured Program for collaboration training (eLearning version also available). Darren can be reached at darren@cimastrategic.com .

College Sports and Thought Leadership

If you want a model on how to become a thought leader faster, look at the Creighton University. They have 4,000 undergraduate students and no sports tradition and they want one. If they decided they wanted to compete in football at the national championship level, they'd have to fight their way through 112 other schools that include Ohio State, Notre Dame, Alabama.... that have years of tradition, name recognition and significant funding.

What has Creighton done? They've chosen to focus their resources on a very thin slice of college sports where they have a better chance of winnning a national championship - men's soccer

Accept the Circumstances You Find Yourself in and Picture Yourself Winning the Race

I spend a lot of time with senior executives and over the last several years there is something I’ve observed. When they find themselves in challenging circumstances, they tend to look around themselves - "do we have the right people" or "what if we were better capitalized" or "we need to improve our processes." What would happen if they first looked in the mirror for improvement opportunities? Wouldn’t most agree it’s best to work from the inside-out instead of the outside-in? If so, you should start with yourself. I’ve noticed one opportunity that stands-out from the rest: sustained focus.


Here is a five step process to attain/regain it.

1. What does success mean now? The reason you are reading this article is to raise the bar on your effectiveness, but what exactly does that mean to you now? Is it the same as before? Does it mean spending a certain amount of time per month on succession activities, closing one more deal per quarter or establishing yourself as a thought leader? Whatever you decide, you need to visualize it.

2. Visualize it. It’s always easier to be successful if you are clear on what success looks like. Great runners (both sprinters and long-distance) close their eyes and visualize winning before each race. It’s a ritual, it’s a process and it works. While the runner may not win the race, even after visualizing it, they are more focused and perform better with visualization than without it.

I can remember preparing for a proposal meeting by visualizing how it would unfold, anticipating reservations throughout and figuring-out how I would help the client work towards satisfactory answers. The proposal had an A, B and C option. While I wanted them to choose the C option, because it was the most complete solution and required a larger financial commitment, they chose the A option. We both still won, even though the client didn’t choose C.

3. Add detail. The more detail you add to the vision you are focusing on the better. Detail adds propulsion to visualization. When preparing for the proposal meeting I thought about how I would keep the focus on the client. I planned to ask some key questions I had written-down to insure they would do most of the talking during the meeting. I thought about the meeting in three parts:

The beginning – has anything changed since we last met?

The middle – is everything in the proposal as you understood it?

The end – when do you want to start?

4. Look for someone who has been successful incorporating something new. Most athletes can readily tell you who they grew-up emulating or whose style made an impression on them as they progressed
in their career. The same opportunity exists with personal effectiveness. If someone sustains long-term effectiveness, it is because they have evolved over time. We all need to have someone like this we look towards in our professional lives. Someone who has done what we want to do in a manner that aligns with our morals and ethics.

I’ve been following the same consultant for the last eight years. One thing I've

learned from him is that goals shouldn’t necessarily be numerical. For example, reducing labor intensity, adding as many high-quality clients as possible or writing more articles than last year are actually more valuable.

5. Tell others. Finally, share your goals with everyone you know, if it serves you.

I’m a soccer player and I remember weighing 145 pounds at the end of my junior year of high school. My friends, who played football, wanted me to play football. I happened to declare that I would play if I weighed 160 pounds before summer workouts began in mid-July. You are only allowed one guess at what happened… To my dismay, I weighed over 160 pounds by mid-July. There was no turning-back. I had to follow-through on what I publicly stated.

The same thing is true in regards to business. I’ve written articles for years and I’ve never written a book. I decided not only to declare I was writing a book, I started telling my clients. To go one step further, I’ve interviewed my clients to include their anecdotes in the book. Do you think there’s sufficient motivation now to write this book? What happens if I don’t?

Challenging circumstances don’t automatically require wholesale changes to move things in a satisfactory direction. Just because a solution doesn’t involve consuming large amounts of resources or taking a big risk doesn’t mean it couldn’t be the most impactful option you have to choose from. Avoid linear thinking. A+B doesn't always = C.

All team members and the decisions they make within an organization are important. At the same time, each team member’s decisions differ in regards to how they impact the organization financially. A 2% improvement in the decision making of a cadre of project managers in a business unit is valuable and is an example of where senior executives like to go first for solutions (outside-in approach). Contrast that scenario with a 2% improvement in the decision making ability of a senior executive of a multi-million dollar organization, which is a higher leverage step that can also be taken (inside-out approach). Get the picture?

So What - "Catching Someone Doing Something Right"

Everyone has a story like this to use as an anchor they can rely on to catch someone doing something right.

I coached a 9 year-old boys soccer team this past fall. It was joyous to shout-out to one of the unsure, lesser-skilled players - "hey, you ran to an open spot and asked for a pass. Do it again!" It was most interesting to see how much a few words propelled a player like this into repeating a behavior. This player in particular went from loathing soccer to "just wanting to be on the field wherever needed."

Inversely, think about how much confusion, inaction and loss of confidence you have to untangle, remotivate and rebuild because of a lazy, selfish moment of using negative words.

Adults in the workplace are kids with more experience.

This thought process works with 9 year olds as well as 40 year olds.