Magic Happens in the Big Room

On a recent trip to White Horse, Yukon, I was tasked with delivering a half day workshop on "the Big Room." Having recently wrote a blog article titled "Trust me I am the Expert" I was confident that I could put together a worthwhile 4 hour workshop related to this highly publicized lean work space.

My first thought was Why do they call it “the BIG ROOM”? For anyone involved in lean project delivery the answer is easy. We need a room with enough wall space for all of the phase plans, the 6 week look ahead schedule, constraint and issues logs +++. For most projects a double wide trailer will have enough wall space to setup “the BIG ROOM”.

But ... Why go to all that trouble of setting up a Big Room?

Upon pondering this question, I quickly came to the conclusion that it needs to be much more than a place to hold a bunch of detailed plans. We have a system called the Last Planner System to manage schedule predictability. We have a system called Target Value Delivery to manage cost certainty.

What System do we have to foster Good TEAM Behavior?

So if we subscribe to the notion that the BIG ROOM needs to be much more that large space where people gather to look at the collaboratively developed plans what is it then? Is it more like a locker room where players need to learn how to function as a team?

Well I am starting to get that now! So I guess that it a place where a team like the Las Vegas Knights, develop and execute plans to get to the Stanley Cup in there first year in the league. A place where a team gets beyond the Forming, Storming, Norming stages of team development and ramp up to performing very quickly.

High Performance Teams are built in the Big Room

Creating a high performance team is the single most important aspect for delivering a championship performance for any sport or project. It involves building trust, enabling healthy conflict, establish a collaborative work environment, implementing lean project systems (#theProjectPlayBook) and executing work plans that enable the team to deliver an exceptional performance each and every week. It also involves measuring results and continually improving the process with practice and hard work.

When we achieve these essential elements in the BIG ROOM, "the Team" will deliver a highly successful project. In traditional project delivery, individuals work in silos this is a barrier to building the level of trust and collaboration needed to achieve much higher levels of performance. On Lean Projects team players need to co-locate in the Big Room. The process begins with building a solid foundation base upon trust.

1. Start with building Trust

In the Speed of Trust we learn that building a team based upon trust is the most effective way to get to the performing stage. For this to occur, "the Team" needs to be get to know each other personally so that they can learn each others principles, values and see that person as someone that has a life outside of work. A good place to start is to take the team out for a dinner with the only thing on the Agenda is to get to know each other as human beings.

For the Okanagan College project at our first social outing we played a game. Tell me something about yourself non project related that nobody in the room know about you. People learned that Murray has been addicted to windsurfing for 30 years and has been leading the Wind Dance ceremony at Elbow Saskatchewan. A ceremony that involves dressing up in crazy costumes, dancing around the fire and reciting the Iliad a prayer to the wind gods.

When you get to know something about a team mate outside of work, it helps to built the trust needed to have the tough conversations that are sometimes needed to align project teams so that everyone is rowing in the same direction.

2. Commit to Collaborative Team Work

A good way to get the team rowing in the same direction is send them to boot camp to learn the production systems that are dependent upon team work. We practice collaboration during pull planning sessions and learn that it takes planning and commitment to systematically move the team forward towards key milestones.

Once the team understands the level of commitment and type of behavior that is needed for team success, you need to need clearly define this in a document called the Conditions of Satisfaction (COS) that everyone signs in blood or with ink. It will contain 5 to 15 statements that define this new type of work ethic like …

· My company understands that this project is different and that we need to commit and provided resources to ensure work flows in accordance with the collaboratively developed plans will be developed using the Last Planner System. This requires attending weekly and daily coordination meeting and working to making all of my commitments with no excuses for non-performance.

· Our team will attend bi-weekly focused design sessions in the Big Room and collaborate with the team to deliver a best value design to the target cost.

The COS document is posted in the Big Room as a reminder of the teams commitment to a new way of working together.

3. Commit to utilizing the Systems

The team needs to commit to using lean production systems. Target Value Delivery to develop a best value design. The Last Planner System to plan and get work done. The systems need to be facilitated by practitioners that know how to engage and motivate the team to give their best work effort. The key to achieving this is to meet regular to ensure that the whole team is committed and delivering on commitments.

4. Promote Heathy Conflict

The team also needs to have the crucial conversations needed to transcend often perceived conflict. Knowing that only 10% of people will take the steps needed to address conflict, we need to create a safe environment for this to occur and engage the team in the sometimes tough conversations that are needed to keep a project on track.

· Why did you not complete your weekly work plan commitment, you said 4 men 4 days, I only saw 2 men for 3 days?

· Really, why do you need 4 days for that work, could you figure out a way to do it in 2?

· Why does this alternative cost so much can we prefab it off site and get the costs down by 25%?

The team need to have these types of conversations on a regular basis or the project will never be optimized to achieve tough targets like winning the Stanley Cup in the first year of a new project teams existence.

5. Measure Performance

Finally, we need to adopt a Plan-Do-Check-Act process of continuous improvement and make any necessary adjustments to the plan. (Cost, Schedule, Performance, Keeping Commitments). This needs to be on a weekly basis as lean projects have tight cost and schedule constraints that cannot afford the luxury of deviations in planned performance.

The BIG ROOM is a System

So having successfully delivered a first Big Room work shop based upon the IDEA that the Big Room is a System for managing "the Team" to deliver exceptional performance by setting high expectations for what Good Behavior looks like, I leave you with these final thoughts.

Our industry is fraught with Bad Behavior that is a by product of forcing good people to do work with a broken system. The goal then of the BIG ROOM is to liberate and engage these very talented people to do their very best work. When we eliminate the barriers as noted in “5 Dysfunctions of a Team”, teams will deliver exceptional results.

The BIG ROOM then is a BIG place to host all of the teams plans and systems, but more importantly is a place to build trust and commitment to working as a high performing team.

I

f you are interested in building a High Performance Team Shift2Lean can provide workshops, Integrated Designs has the experience on 10+ projects implementing the Systems.

Murray Guy ... mguy@i-designs.ca ... @Lean_tobe_Green

[1] The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, Patrick Lencioni