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O P I N I O N
The next time you have a critical project or important concept to communicate, forget the jargon and consider telling a story. Tell a story, build a better project
S ince biblical times, when parables communicated religious philosophy, stories have been used to engage audiences and help them comprehend even the most difficult or esoteric of concepts. More recently, fables have been used to communicate management principles. For example, The Goal by Eliyahu Goldratt, uses the story of a manufacturing plant manager to teach about strategic capacity planning and constraint management. The Five Dysfunctions of a Team , by Patrick Lencioni, tells of another fictional company as a way to learn about work team dynamics and improving team performance.
Clay Harrison
For decades, Lean principles have been used in manufacturing to minimize waste, improve operations, and enhance productivity. Lean has also been applied in construction, but often less successfully and to a much lesser extent than in manufacturing and other industries. One reason Lean has seen more limited adoption in construction is because the effort typically initiates at the top of the organization chart, via the executive leadership team, and then filters down into the field where front-line practitioners (superintendents, foremen, tradespeople) do the tangible work of construction. In the face of pressing project deadlines and competing
priorities, this information can feel intimidating, overwhelming, and easy to ignore in favor of what’s already known and comfortable. Also, the value of Lean practices is often inarticulately or ineffectively conveyed, and superintendents can find it difficult to connect the dots from academic, theoretical Lean philosophies to the immediate relevancy in their daily work. Recently, one of my colleagues at Skiles Group, COO Keyan Zandy, partnered with another construction professional, Joe Donarumo of Linbeck, on a project that uses the age-old
See CLAY HARRISON, page 12
THE ZWEIG LETTER JUNE 1, 2020, ISSUE 1347
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