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| Team Time : Team Building Takes Energy
and Commitment, But It Works Leave the cynicism at home. Tembuilding and partnering takes energy and commitment, but it works to make design/build projects a better experience for everyone. Turnover, or the time when a new facility is completed and ready to be given over to the user for occupancy, should be the most satisfying moment in the life of a design/construction project. For a lot of facilities managers, however,turnover is filled with anxiety. In too many construction projects, this is the moment when the user first gets to see the product and find out just what has and has not made it into the final design. And, as FMs know, things don't always go well. Projects that have not been designed collaboratively - which there's been no effort to build a team, encourage partnering among the project participants, or include the end user in the decisionmaking process-can be an unpleasant surprise. It's not uncommon for a finished facility to look very different from what the user had imagined based on initial programming. Spaces or equipment the user thought would be there might be missing, required adjacencies might have been unsatisfactorily rearranged in the design development process, and specified materials and custom details might have been deleted without the user ever having been told. The result? Accusations, acrimony, and a project whose final completion is too often left in a state of limbo. Unfortunately, many FMs react with pessimism to any talk of "teambuilding" or "partnering." Especially in large organizations (universities, corporations, public agencies) where turf wars are common and intramural competition for resources is tough, concepts that stress trust, frankness, common goals, decision making by consensus, and the negotiated resolution of disputes can seem unachievable. FMs face everything from longstanding, adversarial relations with other departments to having too little input in the selection of designers and contractors. It's easy to appreciate their cynicism about the collaborative process. The FM, however, plays a pivotal role in most design/construction projects, and therefore, often bears the greatest responsibility for a project's success or failure. If the FM won't take the initiative to try to reform the adversarial, combative attitudes that undermine too many projects, who will? Team in training Of course, a formal partnering approach may not succeed if top management isn't supportive. In some organizations, therefore, the FM's first order of business is to do everything possible to persuade his or her supervisors that teambuilding strategies really work. This will greatly reduce the risk of soured relations (and, possibly, litigation), as well as facilitate on-time/on-budget projects that satisfy their users. Even when top management is on board, however, teambuilding is difficult work. It means developing mutual trust and a commitment to honest communication-qualities that are often in short supply on design/construction projects. It requires getting rid of many misconceptions and incorrect assumptions about what it takes to negotiate successfully. And it involves replacing those counterproductive myths with techniques that promote cohesiveness and effective communication, that enable you to understand and accurately assess other people's interests, and that help you to "separate the person from the problem." An organization in which the teambuilding/partnering approach has never been followed may find it helpful, at the inception of a project, to bring together all participants to attend a one- or several-day-long training workshop on teambuilding skills. During the first part of the training, you won't talk about the upcoming project; rather, the facilitator will lead the group through a series of exercises including role-playing - designed to help everyone grasp the ground rules of consensual decision making and resolving conflict through negotiation. While this process may seem naive and idealistic, these exercises are, in fact, eye-opening. Participants are alerted to attitudes, assumptions, and habits of thought and behavior they may not even know they have. Meanwhile, trust and understanding are being established within the group. Generally, the second part of the workshop is given over to a discussion of the specific tasks facing the team. At this point, the team focuses on developing a set of common goals for the project, establishing lines of communication, defining authority and responsibility, and specifying the rules and protocols by which everyone will abide to accomplish the goals. Teambuilding and partnering are realistic, realworld strategies, not wishful thinking. Making decisions through consensus does not mean unanimity within the group must be achieved before a step is taken; it allows room for dissent, while ensuring that dissenters' concerns are fully addressed. Necessary compromises are worked out before moving on. Likewise, making a commitment to resolve conflict through negotiation doesn't mean that insoluble conflicts won't arise, or that negotiations won't break down. But it does require that each side have a clear idea of what the best alternative to a negotiated agreement (BATNA) is before deciding to abandon negotiations. Knowing what lies ahead can spur the parties to go the extra mile, since such alternatives (expensive litigation, say, or the time-consuming transition to another builder if the contractor is fired) usually are not enticing. A bigger pie Partnering takes time, of course, and FMs often balk at what they see as a cumbersome process. The problem is, the alternatives are counterproductive and even lengthier. If decisions are made unilaterally, someone may end up very unhappy. (And even where decisions are made by majority vote, the project may turn out badly if the dissenting voice is that of the facility's user.) If team members choose not to partner, the project may not have the commitment of key players. The only way to ensure people cooperate is by threatening to sue, but this will inevitably create an adversarial relationship and a series of unresolved disputes that will continually build, creating delays and cost overruns. But framing partnering in wholly negative terms - "if you don't partner, you're in for trouble" - misses the point. The truth is, partnering can immensely improve a project and increase the satisfaction of all parties beyond what is achievable using traditional, hierarchical models (even in the rare instances when these models work reasonably well). For example, too often project participants enter negotiations with a "your-gain-is-my-loss" attitude - as if they were opponents battling over the size of their respective slices from a single, fixed pie. As the accompanying graph shows, however, the size of the pie is not fixed. When partners pay attention to one another's interests-and look for ways of achieving these goals-the pie actually grows.
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