Solving the Critical Communication Problem

Sharp Resources has teamed up with Board Advisory Services to solve the communication problem (or the lack of communication) that is causing great ideas, innovations or reports of problems not to get the desired responsible people.

The history of this project goes back to 2007. The catalyst for change was the growing legislation, worldwide, that holds executive officers and some board members personally liable for things they "should have known" but didn't. Sharp Resources, which is led by senior industry executives who have held both line and board positions in major industry organizations, began to look into the issue and found that it is true for both the good and the bad.

A senior executive is responsible to the shareholders for both profitability and governance. We found that senior executives lament they cannot hear all the good ideas from employees, just as much as they are concerned that bad acitivites do not come to light until a crisis.

Clearly executives cannot be expected to process hundreds of ideas or individual reports - we still need to digest the information and summarize it in a way they can act upon it. We needed a way to test the veracity of issues - and perhaps most importantly a way to continue dialog with the originator, even if it meant their identity had to remain anonymous throughout the process. Few, if any current systems and processes in place allow for this. It would need an anonymous conversation vehicle coupled with an artifical intelligence engine to produce viable reports, all integrated into workflow so that the right reports go to the right people.

How many of us remember the GE "Workout" process where a senior executive sat in a room of employees and over the course of 30 - 45 minutes had 60 seconds to decide yes or no to employee ideas. It was very effective, but why did it get to this in the first place? We all know how organizational issues restrict the flow of ideas and information - it is a by-product of everyone being busy in a complex organization. It's nothing sinister, but we need to get beyond it.

One CEO recently commented - "I wish I could find out what they really want to tell me when I visit the cafeteria".

We're developing a solution for just that and we need your help. Please post ideas to the blog, attend our free webinars or comment on the Aviation Integrity group on LinkedIn.

Project Effectiveness

We've been undertaking a study of project risk in airlines and airport projects. Not unusual you might say, however we're not looking at the specific risks of given projects - rather the nature of identifying systemic risks and how to identify them while you're in the project.

One of our findings is that the reporting chain from project members up to the project sponsor is a key cause of information not getting up to the sponsor. A process inhibiting exactly what it was designed to do! You're not shocked? No, we've all been there haven't we.

When looking at the phenomenon more closely, we found it has very little to do with wrong doing - intentionally hiding critical information. Most often, it's the summary reports and project reviews themselves that limit the effectiveness of risk assessment.

In one very clear case, we found a project review included twelve groups - and this was a very well-managed project. Each group understood their tasks, deliverable and due dates, dependencies of work among participants and the overall plan. However if one group was behind their own schedule, they didn't report it because they 'knew' another group in the chain would be hitting a delay and they'd have more time. What happened in this project was that when the final deliverable was going to be over 6 months late, a project audit found out that over 180 items was behind schedule and each of the 12 groups had significant delays.

We're working to develop a method to get objective reports from the entire project staff and help reduce this phenomenon substantially. We would be interested in any of your views?