Collaborative Decision-Making on the Job...
As
I was reflecting on my own experiences with collaboration and getting to
resolution in the process of decision-making, I am
All
of us make decisions every day, and in my role as a buyer for the F-35
production program, my decision also have financial ripples to the overall cost
of our program. My decisions that I make
professionally affect more than just my normal scope of responsibilities, as they impact our budget,
affect our suppliers and our relationship with our suppliers, and they even contribute to our quarterly earnings or losses. Some are small, routine and take place with
barely a notice by anyone. Other decisions
can have disastrous effects on our program, or to small groups or larger groups
– the point being that professional decisions can impact the organization beyond
the limitations of our views or understandings.
Some decisions are so profound they must be made in a shroud of secrecy
for fear the decision will be derailed before it has a chance to be executed at
all.
Having
said this, one decision I have been working on for about 10 months is reaching
a Master Repairs Agreement to implement cost savings strategies as well as
improve my systems overall process time to ship out my part and have it diagnosed,
repaired, and returned. As part of the
process, I have gone back to work with my sustainment team to analyze and
compile a financial history of our repairs based on the levels of effort
completed, and the averages by specific component parts that were repaired
through the process. I work with our
quality team members, our engineers, and even reached out to our supplier to
make sure I had all of the necessary data to formulate my proposed values and
needs, as I was going to forecast the next three years of anticipated
repairs.
I
have also collaborated with our contracting team, to ensure my Master Repairs
Agreement flowed down the required contractual language per the latest
Corporate Documentations, Quality Requirements, and even rules set forth by the
Federal Government. This process to
build this contract should end this year, but I have been working this effort
since April of 2015 – coordinating between various teams and team members
across Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman, my supplier.
My
contract is currently under the Price Cost Analysis stage, getting even deeper
cost comparison and analysis, then my counterparts on the Sustainment Team and
my production teams will hammer out our pre-Negotiation steps to ensure our
pricing strategies are in line with our desired outcome, while also taking into
consideration the required outcomes of our supplier and partner in this process.
Some
of the successes we have already seen have already led to improvement to our
repairs process, and more so as we have been clearly defining the levels of
work, and their approximate cost. We
have also been able to collectively work together as a team, even though both
our companies are competitors outside of this repairs contract. As I was thinking about this, I reflected on how
this echoes our discussions this past week, on creating a vision of what
resolution will begin to look like. Levine
(2009) presents the first two questions about: Does the preliminary vision fit
everyone’s view of the outcome, and does the preliminary vision take care of
all specific concerns in the situation? In this case, both of our
companies were seeking alignment to work towards defining our resolution in the
best interest to both teams. We were
aligning our efforts, through our discussions and negotiations to ensure both
sides would gain the win and see the benefits affecting both teams and their
metrics.
At
the same time, I have been engaging with our Senior Leadership to ensure we
follow the correct processes to ensure we go through all of the contractual obligations
needed to get final approval. This meant
also working to ensure we have not missed something along the way, as well as
finding ways to improve existing positions, aside from getting approval for our
repairs process going forward. There is
the potential to have our efforts delayed if we both of our team do not also
work to “massage management” in the new processes by stressing the cost savings
and the benefits to both our companies.
Seeking
the input from Senior Executives on the repairs responsibilities is crucial to
the next phase where we build Lay-in Materials contracts, to support the
repairs process – and these are $10 Million Plus efforts, which only validates
preparing the foundation of the master contract right now. The roles and responsibilities, also known as
missions and functions helps create the foundation for this entire
process. But, we did not only use our
own personnel, we got the organizational alignments from our business
partnership at Northrop Grumman and sought the buy in of their Senior
Management as well.
Finally,
today we had a meeting that brought the key players together and we have set up
a series of meetings to take us through the rest of the process. This establishes milestones and sets us up to
work towards signing our contracts, and pushing our partnership to new levels
of agreement.
This
road has not been without its challenges, and road blocks. The problems started with the poor
implementation of a plan of action and levels of effort needed to ensure each
repair met contractual guidelines, as well as cost savings. The process has been painful, but there have
been important lessons learned along the way.
One such lesson I have learned is in the importance of being able to ask
for help when I became overwhelmed by my work load and these preparations –
being able to miss shortfalls and setbacks with fresh eyes and ears, and hands
is the opportunity for change…and that does not mean you don’t think it through
– you share it more to get the best solutions from different experiences
collectively. Decisions about processes
need to be taken into consideration and identify who will do what. This was not done effectively earlier on
during the process and has had negative ramifications that almost stalled and
ended our efforts.
When
writing any type of repairs contract, while it is a good idea to use examples
from other systems that have worked across our organization, the government’s
Office of Personnel Management have guidelines as well for company working
towards building these types of contracts, as we must also protect their
interest as well.
Another
important lesson I have learned is in the need to include more people as
internal stakeholders in the process.
Having more than only our customers buy-in helps leverage our efforts
with support across our program. Seeking
stakeholders for their agreement to fund the project has proven crucial to getting
needed executive decision makers on board.
We were given several tasks to complete by the leadership in our
headquarters and completing those tasks, much of the work was “greased” through
the process. Finally, finding the
experts in the areas we need to have help us build the final package and move
it through the approval process has been very enlightening. Our projection is we will have our contract
signed in the 2 to 3 months.
References:
Goleman, D. (2013). Focus, The Hidden
Driver of Excellence. New York: Harper Collins.
Levine, S. (2009). Getting to resolution:
Turning conflict into collaboration (2nd ed.). San Francisco,
CA: Berrett-Koehler Publishers.
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