Hungry Gustav - Life Nonpareil

Key jobs in construction?

People keep asking me about the "killer jobs" in these difficult times. Yes, it's quite straightforward if you think. Adjudicators will thrive and so will excellent project managers, construction IT professionals and so on. But I have a problem with this view. It's not the killer jobs one should focus on really. The fact is that during difficult times there will be even more applications for every open position so even if we're talking about the best job one might not get it unless equipped with an arsenal of key skills, the right attitude and personality. First of all, companies will be seeking to reduce costs so you are far more likely to strike the accord if you can prove multiskilling abilities and attitude. Secondly, not matter what position one looks at, it definitely requires project management skills. While best courses on the subject on top of some experience form a good start there is one option that has so far been almost entirely neglected by the industry in general.

Conducting PhD research is at least to me by far the best project management "training" you can possibly get. You've got limited resources, limited time, you need to satisfy rigorous quality standards and research by itself resembles sailing through dense fog in treacherous waters. Yep, it is difficult but hugely rewarding and once you complete your PhD there is almost no limit - you can literally take almost any challenge. Even if you eventually have to hide your title to get a job in the industry it's the project management skills that you gain that matter more than anything else let alone lifetime friendships that you make along the way.

False optimism is dangerous

In a wake of the growing world depression the Prime Minister is calling for optimism. Agree? Should we really rely only on high spirits of hope and bravery? We can but that would be very dangerous. I agree, the spirit of a nation and immense bravery of individuals are essential when a nation is attacked, when someone else is to be blamed for your misery but this is not a war time. On the other hand and no matter how comforting this may be we cannot blame a sub-prime mortgage crisis in the US for what is happening. It is our greed that brought us where we are now, it is life beyond our means, it is borrowing as if someone else will be paying the bill and it is a business model where making money is reduced to a few clicks on a stock exchange button regardless of your skills and abilities that are to be blamed.

So what should we do now? Be brave, optimistic, rely on the nation's high spirit, and continue spending and borrowing or even worse, as Sandy Burnett in today's Scotsman suggests, should people who don't want to buy houses in a current climate be partly blamed for the problem? Excuse me but this would only be false optimism postponing the inevitable for a couple of years to make the problem exponentially worse. Instead we should honestly look into a mirror, change our practices and pay back the enormous debt. We've gone too far this time. If the market would be left to react back in 2003, as I originally thought it should, we would be now talking about the end of a serious recession. Instead and without the facade of false optimism the world is now in a depression that is to linger around for a number of years.

Realistic approach to innovation

I'm still thinking about our recent innovation debate. Should we take a positivistic approach to innovation? Should we view innovation as something that will always work and always generate benefits? Of course not since the whole idea contradicts the core nature of what innovation is. There are several definitions out there but looking more closely you realize they differ in syntax yet point in the same direction. Innovation is thus an idea transformed into some sort of reality for the first time (e.g. change to an existing product, new product, change to an existing process, new process, change to an existing organizational entity, new organizational entity, etc.). The result? Microsoft introduce Windows Vista and new Office with changed user interface (clear innovation) yet people do not buy it because years of exposure to a specific user interface logic has wired brains in a way that now needs complete rewiring and that is a slow process. Time will tell but I know a lot of people who have kept Office 2003 and Windows XP. In the same breath Microsoft admits failing to achieve sales targets so the innovative Vista is not really a success yet nobody can deny its innovativeness. Coca Cola's experiment with a new taste is another example of an innovation with in this case pretty dismal consequences.

So, the reality is innovations do not always bring positive results (i.e. improved competitiveness, increased market share, higher profits, higher revenues, etc.). Should we then have a negative stance towards innovation? The answer is a straightforward NO! Innovations are a result of ideas put forward by individuals or teams who bear with it enormous personal risks of failure. The worst way one could react in is by saying we are not supporting innovations because they can fail. Why? Because people simply won't suggest any new ideas any more and in today's competitive environment that is a suicide. Of course innovations can fail and they will but normally for every 10 innovations a couple of successful ones can bring such benefits that all other failures are quickly forgotten. What we really need is a realistic approach to innovation in the following way:

• all innovations are good (we openly and eagerly accept all ideas although only the best are really turned into innovations)
• many innovations will fail but we do not worry because a minor few will bring benefits far outweighing all the failures

So in summary, innovations are there to stay as they are absolutely necessary if companies are to retain competitive advantage but realistically they are often more likely to fail than succeed. I'm afraid facing this reality is the only key to success.

Debate on innovation

I'm just back from an organized discussion that addressed innovation in long-term capital goods projects and it's really intriguing how one particular type of generalization has managed to prevail in the modern research on the subject. Let me paraphrase some of the ideas that were floating around.

Do clients hinder innovation? Well, the question is more or less meaningless. An analogy would be investigating the structure of a hydrogen atom by viewing a distant star with a telescope. You can try but it is utterly meaningless. You need to use a microscope or some other similar device and study the atom up close and not some distant stars despite the fact that they might be constituted by these atoms. So, coming back to innovation, one needs to study innovation where it happens and it happens in closely knit teams - in heads of individuals and not on some abstract organizational levels. Organizations are entities that exist in a communicative space constituted by individual participating people through their own communicative domains. Therefore, organizations cannot innovate, think and so on. Individuals think, create and suggest ideas, other individuals object, accept or reject these ideas and so on. Now, whether this happens in communities of practice (i.e. closely knit teams) or within a particular hierarchy we are still talking about individuals operating in some specific circumstances. So in this sense talking about NHS as a client organization has no bearing with what innovation represents in reality, a product of individual thinking. Yes, you are not alone in the process, you need other people to work with you if you want your ingenious idea to become an innovation one day. However, it is not an organisation that is doing the thinking along the way but people involved in the process. Would thus building a hospital for NHS Scotland be the same as building it for NHS England or Northern Ireland for that matter? Of course not because we would be exposed to completely different circumstances, surrounded by completely different people and the only commonality we can talk about in this case is situation- or circumstances-centred study of innovation. There is no single personified entity of NHS that hinders or supports innovation. There are people or teams within its structure that are more or less prone to changes, and there are procedural obstacles (e.g. red tape). You may be lucky enough to be able to work with the right type of people though red tape by itself may filter out some of the more radical innovations. Furthermore, all that implies innovation studies need to be centred around a specific team and valid questions to me then are:

• How a team of individuals each with specific characteristics generate innovations in a specific team setting?
• What happens if we change the setting?
• What happens if we replace one individual from the team with another person that has opposing characteristics?
• What if we enlarge/reduce such a team?
• What are the procedural obstacles that may prevent the team to turn ideas into innovations?

To summarize there are two types of generalization out there. On one hand you can look at a client organization like NHS for instance and ask yourself how they impact innovation on their capital goods projects. In this case you will constantly run into trouble because in one project they may hinder innovation yet in another they don't. The reason being that different people will be responsible for different projects. The other option is to generalize by means of studying functional primitive of the innovation process and that is an individual or a team of individuals followed by investigating the impact of individual characteristics (i.e. individual differences) and structural characteristics (i.e. team structure and setting). The most important outcome of this second generalization si replicability or genuine generalization leading to findings that can be applied in any organization, be it client, contractor or any other industry that is. I don't know about you but I prefer the second option as it has far greater chances of producing something that can help improve our udnerstanding of innovation and innovation processes themselves.

Construction 2.0

With the current depression showing the glimpse of its mouthful of teeth it might be the right time to think what construction, my beloved industrial sector, might look like once the economic volcano settles down. One outcome is certain. We shall see far less companies floating around and the survivors will have to change their business model whether they like it or not. Mind you, this is not your typical crisis of 1970's, 1980's or 1990's. We are closing in on the bifurcation point where the system will simply slip into a different state and things will never be the same any more. My view of the construction future, Construction 2.0, thus surrounds the following main changes:

• Multiskilling will once again prevail over current insane specialisation; yes, companies will be forced to optimise their operation and the cheapest way of doing this is by creating an environment where highly committed and motivated people can flourish
• As a result reorganisation into talent-friendly environment will transform Human Resources function; HR people will no longer be hire and fire officers because their will be a real and threatening reality - create a stimulating and supporting environment or face losing your best people
• Contrary to a common belief specialist companies will be hardest hit and the ones that offer complete whole-package in-house service will be much more resilient; it has long been believed that specialist construction companies have better chances in downturns but evidence from the collapse of former Yugoslavia (e.g. Slovenian construction companies) and elsewhere shows that medium size construction companies employing their own workforce, plant and equipment, and delivering a complete-package service in-house are more likely to survive the current depression

The coming years will be a tremendous test for the economy as a whole but for the construction sector in particular. Skill shortage will not ease up considerably during the depression because of the huge deficit of highly skilled and motivated people in construction. The sector is unattractive to top performers, does not collaborate with Higher Education institutions nowhere near the way it should and is appalling at recruiting let alone retaining employees.