Last week was an interesting week at work. A multimillion dollar project I’ve been working on had a cock up to end all cock ups last week. I’ll give you a little back ground on this project without going into too much detail (I hope). A little over a year and a half ago the company I work for was given a contract for a small portion of the project. Four other companies were also given contracts for various other phases of the project. As you may imagine, there was some overlap in the responsibilities and requirements for each contract.
At the time I was involved in other projects and wasn’t assigned to this one. A female co-worker of mine was given the task of putting together our submittals to the government agencies for review. Our boss took the lead on this project, went to all the meetings where decisions were made, and mostly excluded my female co-worker from these meetings.
Her exclusion from these meetings were for a variety of reasons. My boss is a bright, articulate guy, who just happens to have an inferiority complex and little man’s disease. My co-worker was a unhappy, waspish, morbidly obese, divorced woman who thought she was smarter than all the ‘idiots’ around her. Like most of the women I’ve worked with, she did good work as long as she wasn’t asked to go outside of her comfort zone and/or forced to find a creative solution. When she was asked to stretch herself you’d think the world was coming to an end. She’d spend more time fighting against breaking out of her comfort zone then it would have actually taken her to complete her task. My mind used to boggle at her actions, it doesn’t anymore.
A little over a year ago, my co-worker was laid off and I was asked to take over. This wasn’t as big a deal as it could have been. The project had received approval from the government agencies, but when push came to shove the total cost was more than the backers wanted to spend. All of the consultants were asked to come back with ideas to reduce cost. What ultimately happened was the original project was scrapped and we all got to restart at the beginning. A second pass through this project wasn’t going to cost as much as the first time through because some tasks would not need to be redone, and because after getting approvals once, we knew where all the skeletons were buried, so to speak.
Somewhere between the first approval and the second a key item was missed. By us, by all the other consultants, and by the reviewing government agency. This was discovered on Friday afternoon the week before last. I called a meeting of all the consultants and the owner for first thing Monday morning. As it was last minute, the meeting ended up being held Monday afternoon.
At the meeting, my boss decided to take the lead. There was some discussion on whether or not the regulations applied to this project as it didn’t fit the standard definitions as written. Do we need to contact the government agency? Do we need their review? How long would this delay the project if the agency review is required? Ultimately, my boss directed two of the consultants to look into these questions and provide the answers. We were assured by both consultants that they could have an answer by Tuesday morning.
Tuesday morning…no answer. Lots of back and forth via email. As you can guess. The two consultants fell on opposite sides for the resolution of said questions. One wanted to bring it to the government agencies attention, the other did not. One said the regulations applied and even added a few more code sections, the other argued that they did not apply. This went on for three days and we were no closer to an answer.
By Thursday afternoon my boss was looking to me to solve the impasse. Fine, if no one wants to be lead dog and be responsible, then I will do it. I called the government rep and explained the situation and that the item had been missed on the resubmittal. I requested a sit down meeting for the following day. He was available. Next I notified the two consultants and asked them to show up. One of them agreed to be there.
The meeting on Friday morning with the government rep went well. Yes, the regulations in question do apply. As a result, a minor redesign would be required. By the end of the day Friday I had the answers we were all looking for, I had directed the two consultants on what would be expected from each of them and when I wanted it delivered, I had completed my portion of the submittal and I had provided each of them with a copy.
Here’s the reason I have related this story. Men are predisposed to accept a leader and to be followers. Who that leader may be depends on varying factors. Respect, authority, knowledge, strength…the list is long and situational. When I was in college we had to watch The Flight of the Pheonix (Not the remake) for one class on group dynamics. The professor used that movie to make the above point about leadership. Sometimes it takes a real world example for the lesson to really take hold. In my case, the other consultants were willing to accept my role as lead to fix the cock up. Once someone was willing to step up and be the leader, the answers fell into place quite quickly. Before that happened, we were just spinning our wheels.
