The Missing Link

 I subscribe to the idea that in any project, anywhere in the world, in any industry/family/community, the biggest problems always stem from communication (or lack thereof). I have been noticing recently, though, that in each situation where I believe communication is to blame for a budget or time issue, the people involved are often relying on information communicated from outside their individual scope of influence. 

So maybe we can narrow down the communication problem.  Maybe the biggest project risks actually stem from the more complex communications required at the interface where information is transferred.  I see it as one big game of telephone where each time the message gets passed a small piece of the information becomes distorted, lost or added.

 A perfectionist or micromanager will try and control the risk of that distortion either by doing everything themselves or by, well, micromanaging.  But neither of those are sustainable solutions in terms of how to structure our businesses. No one person can do it all, and no manager can have full control of all aspects of their team’s work.

One of the biggest troubles I currently see in my industry is that the resources drain is making it ever more difficult to maintain good, solid, communicating, interfaces.

Here in Oz (or everywhere really) we also have a massive skills shortage. So anyone who is anyone is regularly jumping ship for more money, better projects and fancier titles. One of the huge downsides to this is that each time someone moves they take their project knowledge and interface relationships with them – leaving their replacement (if there actually is someone available) to start all over again.

This people movement is also coupled with quick growth.  Back in the old days when someone rang the bell at the same job for 30 years, everyone knew who to go to when the bell needed ringing. Nowadays it is hard enough to even know, for this project, in this hemisphere, within this culture, with this budget, on this schedule, and with this corporate bell-ringing policy, if we even need a bell.  Heaven forbid that anyone know whose responsibility it is to ring the bell when the time comes!  (For a similar rant, see #2 here).

Interface management has direct implications on not only the project costs and schedule, but in my field it seems that a loss of interface integrity puts the integrity and safety of your project at a significantly higher risk of having something overlooked, lost or redone with old data.

But what if we could actively minimise the business risks stemming from these departures?  Would we?  Or would we continue doing what we have done for years, and assume that those positions will get filled, like-for-like, with someone who magically knows the required information to still reach that deadline? 

What if taking care of our employees, through development, team-building and recognition could not only build a strong team, but restrict how much intellectual property we lose each time an interface dissolves and is reborn again as a communication black hole?