Significance of client participation in contract R&D
Team meetings are a mundane activity of every professionals life. Most of us find them usually dull and boring, mostly time consuming and almost always a waste of time. It was with this general expectation that I entered the conference room for my weekly group meeting.
I was surprised by the outcome of this one is the least I can say. This meeting fell in the category of interesting meetings, an unusual occurrence at workplace. I actually learnt a valuable lesson from this one. Not just for my work life, but also for effective living. To begin with, my note of appreciation for leadership qualities of a certain individual.
The meeting started on a fun note. We were asked to group ourselves into teams and make houses from playing cards. A deck was somewhat evenly distributed between teams of unequal sizes, the team leader purposefully playing alone. There was abundance of enthusiasm, creativity, team work, sharing and most other positive stuff compared to most other team events.
Well, racing against the time line, we all got down to work. It was haphazard, experiments in design, creativity, a little bit of bickering but all forgiven for the greater good, to secure the winning position for your team.
Although the exercise was for a share from the office candy bowl, it was fun and It
taught me not to assume things. The lesson is extremely valuable for any contract R&D professional.
When we started playing, like any other project, we had a clock ticking. This led to our first mistake. We hastily started building houses of cards, trying different permutation and combinations as we went along, not thinking about a strategy or our group capabilities. A common mistake made in most research projects. A strategy meeting at the beginning and at various stages of the project is important as it helps in accessing the progress made, optimum skill and resource utilization. It also gives a chance for review and correction and changes needed to accommodate the scope of the problem. So strategize.
“If I had an hour to solve a problem and my life depended on the solution, I would spend the first 55 minutes determining the proper question to ask, for once I know the proper question; I could solve the problem in less than five minutes.”
- Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955) Physicist & Nobel Laureate
Almost of all of us were too busy to ask any question about the play. We just took our cards and started. No questioning why the team leader was just overlooking the entire exercise and not playing with us. He was in the game, remember! Well at the end of our time, all teams proudly displayed their accomplishments, varying lengths of single story house. Some had during the course of these 12 minutes (yes we bargained and got 2 extra minutes… a characteristic learnt at school and often practiced at work) had managed to build a couple of storied but as greed never did good to anyone, it invariably collapsed. So end result – single stories for all.
The team leader evaluated everyone’s projects, took out a stash of folded cards from his pocket, laid it down in a chain on the table and won!!
This brings us to the second lesson- ask questions and define problems. We had not stopped for a moment to think and ask whether or not we could spoil the cards? Could we use glue or adhesive tape? I have seen a number of good projects suffer because of ill defined problem statements. Also in a research projects, especially contract R&D project, just like the team leader, client also might have very valuable project related information that has not been shared with you. Before approaching a contract R&D organization, companies usually try to solve the problem in-house. The results may be bad and deterring, but, as a R&D professional, it is important that you extract this information from the client. Also, do not hesitate to request clients for utilizing their resource. Always keep in mind; the success of your project depends on many other things apart from your capabilities. And defining a good problem statement tremendously increases your chances of success.
What played most significant part in our failure to win was assumption- assumption as to facts, assumptions as to rules of the game and assumption as to the whole exercise itself. The entire team started this exercise based on certain assumptions like not spoiling the cards, it being a team building exercise of sorts. We being a group of scientists and engineers, this is not surprising at all. All problems solving techniques in this world begin with certain assumptions and hypotheses. So, in our defense, we also started with some basic assumptions. Is that wrong?
Well, if you statistically look at success and failure rates in your organization, you will find assumption to be the culprit for failure in most cases. In my case, I have found assumptions, rather incorrect assumptions to be the root cause of all heartache for most of the projects that I have undertaken and those of the entire company. Contract R&D business and also most joint R&D or collaborative R&D projects involves a lot of trust. This is true for both inter as well as intra- organization (inter department) collaborative projects. Therefore, to secure your position and promote healthy collaboration do not assume anything. Lay the groundwork, question the other side or partners before establishing assumptions and communicate it to the other side at the very beginning of the project.
This was the most important lesson I learnt while building a house of cards to win a share in office candy bowl!
The opinions expressed are those of the author only and not of any organization with which the author is affiliated.
No comments:
Post a Comment