Think about the last time you cut a corner. Did anything bad happen? Probably not. Maybe it was so benign that you started routinely skipping that step, and still the world didn’t end. Fast forward a few months, and maybe you omitted another SOP with no repercussions, inadvertently creating a new normal.
Over time, these skipped checklist items take us away from the rigid examples set by our mentors. The FAA calls this “operational drift.” Commercial pilots go through training routinely to battle decay by addressing it, acknowledging it, and instituting antidotes to combat it. Unfortunately, operational drift is human nature.
In custom installation, operational drift can manifest in many ways, and there are some relatively easy fixes to arrest it. We’ll never prevent it entirely, but we can follow these steps to slow it down:
Buddy Checks
Imagine a salesperson handing off a project scope of work to a system designer or building it themselves. Before it gets sent to a customer, they should do a buddy check with a third party who had nothing to do with building it. Maybe it’s the sales manager or another leader in the organization. That buddy check will invariably uncover system design flaws, pricing issues, and a host of other elements, including sales technique, talking vs. listening, and more. Just a simple role play before a proposal goes out the door helps prevent operational drift and helps new salespeople acclimate faster.
We often hear, “We don’t have time to do that, we’re slammed.” I’d challenge that thinking. We never seem to have time to do it right the first time, but we always find time to fix it. Imagine taking 10–15 minutes to do a buddy check and uncovering a $10,000 to $20,000 mistake or margin miss. That short investment becomes worth 10–15x its cost in both time and dollars.
Project Handoffs
The handoff from the salesperson to the project manager and then from the project manager to the installation team is another area where slowing down matters. By taking a little extra time, the project manager can demand and expect a complete set of documents from sales and design. Without those, the job can’t be scheduled, creating a healthy tension that ensures preparedness.
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Once everything is in place, the project handoff meeting can occur. The project manager can then lead a walkthrough with the installation team, keeping the salesperson in motion, maximizing their selling potential. During the walkthrough, the project management and installation teams can challenge each other on design, logistics, and scheduling. The project manager then follows up daily or weekly to ensure objectives and goals are met, acting as a proxy for the customer.
A good project manager is the CI business’s closest thing to a police department’s internal affairs. There should be a professional but sometimes tense relationship between project managers and installation teams, as the project manager holds the team accountable for milestones and goals to ensure the job is delivered on time and under budget.
Service Department Commissioning
The final handoff happens when the installation team transitions the job to the service department, where it will live until its next upgrade 3–5 years out. A strong service manager uses this as an opportunity to sanity check the project, run through the checklist, and confirm that everything meets quality standards.
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Across all three phases are opportunities to be diligent or to pencil whip the process and rob each other of learning. At the end of the day, this all boils down to culture. Who are the cheerleaders in the organization leading the charge? Is there a culture of attention to detail and knocking the cover off the ball? Are we playing not to lose vs. playing to win?
It all starts with leadership. The fish rots from the head. What are you doing to prevent operational drift in your organization?
Stay frosty, and see you in the field.
