Be As One
When I started out in my career, some 30+ years ago, I assumed from the off that everything you did or said, had to be original.
That using existing ideas or artefacts was what those trapped in grey suits, and morning commutes did. To be a success, you had to be an inspiration. You had to be fresh.
The context to all of this was that I was an inexperienced, white male, with a loud voice and a lot of misplaced confidence. Some folk bought into that, which meant I constantly reinvented the wheel, a report, a thing. Fast forward to today, and I have just stepped out of a meeting where the discussion of the standardisation of reports and dashboards took place.
I was waiting for someone in Leadership to say that we should all adopt a format presented in the room. That we could then pick this up, run with it and standardise our views on progress and/or the issues we are facing.
The challenge we faced was that we were all leaders in the room. All using, no doubt, different reporting formats, plan views or presentation styles. That differ, quite considerably.
So why standardise?
Well, the simple answer is for clarity. At one point this year, I was responsible for overseeing nine projects. If I had nine Delivery Managers producing nine different reports, then I would constantly need to adapt to each, to understand if the information needed me to react, absorb or clarify. If everything is in the same format – yes, even RAG ratings, which we all hate – then I could arrow in and know what to do.
So why do Delivery Managers often start from scratch every time they kick off a project – or – use only what they know, irrespective of how successful each previous engagement has been?
Instead, why not “steal” (as mentioned here) and use a template that already exists. Especially if you know it works in the same client space.
The only caveat to this, is that as consultants, we are often asked to use templates the client uses. Which were created by someone, no longer there, who shared a reporting format with a senior leader, also not there, that liked that style. A company’s reporting structure is based solely on an individual(s) who did it their way.
I am going to contact my fellow leaders on the back of writing this newsletter, and check where we are with adopting/adapting the template shared. To standardise, where possible, all the success stories we need to share.
Sure, there will be some bad news in the reports, but at least it won’t be buried in formatting used, simply because that has always worked.
Or has it?
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