My group recently conducted a survey on some topics and received some very pointed comments from several of those who were surveyed.  We knew we had some gaps in the areas they brought forward but leadership still felt a bit taken back by the harshness of some of their comments.  My response to them was “Apathy is the enemy of excellence”.  If we want to raise up to the desired level of excellence in those areas, we should be happy to hear that our employees are so passionate and so engaged and so comfortable providing that type of feedback.  I worry more when I hear that employees are just numb to change or issues that make their work more difficult because you never know their true level of engagement in their work products.  I often make the statement “you can’t check quality into the work.” The individual(s) executing the work products must have the right aptitude and attitude (engagement) to produce the desired results. Many things in our industry make it tough to accomplish the desired level of engagement from our workforce. 

First, we have an ever-widening experience gap as our aging demographic continues to pull more and more talent over the retirement cliff.  Those retirees had a different perspective, experience and work ethic in their earlier years than most of our incoming employees.  The newer employees by and large, have a healthier and more sustainable balanced approach to their desired work/personal life ratio.  They also have less tolerance for inefficiency and are happy to voice their opinion.  They are used to super speed apps on their latest model mobile phone and are disappointed when anything takes longer than 30 seconds to load.  They have high expectations which is great for improving things.  Apathy sets in when they are bored with the inefficiencies.

Second, we don’t offer the right career and growth paths for the changing demographic. We often stifle the newer employees with artificial ceilings based on old business rules.  “you can’t be this until you have had this many years doing this and this” which turns them right to being apathetic as they wait their time out in an industry that is not nearly as sexy as many other industries their peers are getting into elsewhere.  This also may explain why we have such a dip in STEM kids.  That only appeals to certain kids and that pool is shrinking.

Lastly, we tend to put too much bureaucracy in place with endless policies, procedures, etc. to attempt to corral everyone into what we desire based on our current knowledge and preference for doing things.  That often suffocates innovators and problem solvers by putting a fence around everything until they become apathetic.  Nobody wants to be like everyone else.  Everyone wants recognition but not necessarily for conforming but more likely for taking things to new levels.

This is not an easy fix for our industry.  We tend to continue to do the same things again and again no matter the outcomes.  We can’t say we are taking great leaps in areas like earned value or sanctioning project estimates because we see them fail time and time again due to known gaps. We need to begin an era of enabling and empowering our employees to allow them to take their incredible knowledge and innovate and build upon the strong foundations that have existed but have not been perfected. 

To do this we must enable them with the abilities to learn quicker and in different environments such as simulations, since I also say “you can’t train experience” and as the aging experienced workforce retires they must be prepared to take the reins. Mentoring can be an effective tool as well.  Having experienced people walk alongside less experienced people can yield better results if the mentor is willing to encourage the mentees and not lead them to ways of the past that have not been effective.     

We must also enable and encourage innovation. Innovation is exciting and can lead to much better engagement with the new generations of project controls professionals.  Innovating is what really began my re-engagement with this industry after several years away being involved in entrepreneurial ventures because it allowed me to bring something new to the industry.  I dove into fixing the numerous gaps in earned value approaches. I looked at gaps such as performing out of sequence work or meaningless work to get enough credit to mask work delays or inefficiencies. That had troubled me for years and I was so excited when I figured out the corrective measures and changes needed. That fueled my fire and pushed me to write my first technical paper.  It was not great writing but a very well-respected reviewer from the AACE Technical Board who was known to be very tough on paper reviews provided me a great deal of encouragement about my new approach. His words engaged me and made me want to do better.  Then another AACE legend read my published paper and provided me with even more encouragement which spurred me on to join the technical board. Later as we implemented my approach on more and more projects I continued to modify and add to the original innovation.

This experience rejuvenated me to deploy more of my ideas into how I managed and led my staff.  I became passionate about improving how we lead our staff and project teams.  I became a servant leader who now enables, encourages and empowers. I provide my teams the resources, systems and tools to do their work more effectively. I work at this every day passionately in order to improve everyone’s experience at work while still having enough guiderails installed to protect the business.  We have such a large and diverse business that leading and improving is a constant demand.  I am lucky to have leadership above me that has allowed me to implement my approach across our project delivery business. They now hear and see the results and that fuels my fire even more.  I want to rid the business and our industry of our common enemy “apathy” and move us all towards excellence. Having an enabling, encouraging and empowering leadership approach is key to realizing that goal.