It was the third day in kindergarten and I finally got the Building Blocks station. Now, at last, I could build the biggest block castle our class had ever seen. 15 minutes later…Crash!!!! is all I heard as the blocks come tumbling down. I don’t remember much from kindergarten, but one thing that Miss Doughty taught me really well was that it’s ok to make mistakes. Just pick up the blocks and try again.
I kept this experience in mind as we were embarking on our innovations journey. We decided to perform a SWOT analysis on the status of innovation at Syska Hennessy. Following the analysis we compiled goals for ourselves. The first was “Build a culture to foster communication, collaboration, and comfort with intelligent failures.” When I heard “failure” my mind went right back to Miss Daughty’s classroom. “Yes!” my brain said. “It’s still ok to make mistakes.” But unfortunately in most cases for construction it is not.
Let’s start with how failure cascades in our industry. I noticed that most engineers have a fear that is programmed into them when they are designing. The fear might be “don’t miss any scope,” “make sure everything is coordinated,” or “don’t make any errors.” If these fears materialize in reality, they lead to change orders, which lead to owners asking for design firms to pay for them, which, in turn, can lead to lost clients or to protracted legal battles.
Wow. The big picture sounds intimidating. Nevertheless: Although a careful approach is a good thing, too much fear can have adverse effects on the industry. For example, it discourages people from trying anything different. You do what you did on the last job because you know it worked. On the other end of the spectrum, some engineering firms and engineers strive to protect themselves by placing more scope than necessary on their drawings/specs. to trade off change orders with contractors’ scope they know we can live without.
This is why, following the SWOT analysis, we focused on “intelligent failures.” These differ from straight failures in that intelligent failures are quick and cheap, and they allow us to move on and learn from the process. Intelligent failures also involve taking risks in areas that have limited amounts of uncertainty. Taking a risk with too much uncertainty is by definition not intelligent.
You can see that there’s a delicate balance. Our job is to make our internal team aware of when and how we can try new things. Where risk can be tolerated and where it can’t. What additional protocols that need to be put in place when we do.
We also need to deliberately separate as many innovation-style activities from production-style activities. When it comes to innovation, it’s good to get up from your desk, change your clothing, put on some music, engage in a walk & talk brainstorming, or go to a designated innovations lab area.
It is clear that innovation cannot succeed in a fear-stricken environment. Our Innovations team is seeking to remove this obstacle from our projects by engaging with clients early on. If our clients are serious about hitting ambitious targets that cannot be achieved with typical commercially available products that have a five-year proven track record, the clients need to share the risk. The end results are better designs, motivated teams, and better outcomes. And speaking of sharing, that’s another thing we learned in kindergarten. Thank you Miss Daughty!
