{"id":3656,"date":"2017-06-15T18:17:07","date_gmt":"2017-06-15T23:17:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/etereman.com\/remanu\/?p=3656"},"modified":"2017-06-15T18:17:07","modified_gmt":"2017-06-15T23:17:07","slug":"building-projects-and-relationships-in-the-dark","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/etereman.com\/remanu\/2017\/06\/15\/building-projects-and-relationships-in-the-dark\/","title":{"rendered":"Building Projects (and Relationships) in the Dark"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\nREMAN U is a place for stories. This post is no exception, but I\u2019m going to go slightly off-script and start by telling you the moral to this story: most businesses hurt their relationships with customers because they don\u2019t apply the same project management skills<\/strong> that they use in the shop when working with them.<\/strong>
\nNow the story\u2026
\nImagine with me for a moment: you and your team are working together to build a project vehicle. Because of scheduling challenges, each of you has to take separate turns doing the work. When your turn arrives, you enter the workspace to find all the parts you\u2019ll need. It\u2019s obvious something has been done\u2026 but it\u2019s not at all clear how far and where your predecessor left off. You spend the first several minutes of your time figuring out what\u2019s been done and then get to work.
\nA bit later your turn comes around again and, once more, work has been done but you need to figure out what and where so that you can begin. This time, it takes longer to figure out and you can do less actual work moving the project forward. In fact, each time you come back to the project you need to spend more time figuring where you should begin and less time actually working.
\nSounds like a nightmare? At a recent staff meeting, I subjected my teammates to this very scenario.
\nEach small group was tasked with building Star Wars Lego vehicles. The catch? I had blacked out all the step numbers in their instructions and had each person close the booklet between turns to assemble. Suffice it to say, no projects got completed and very few even made it past the first third in the time allotted.
\nThen, we did it all again.
\nThis time, their instructions had clear step numbers, and they could leave the book open to their last page. In short, they could tell their teammates exactly where they left off. This time around, several projects were (very nearly) completed and everyone made it MUCH farther along.
\nThese results aren\u2019t shocking \u2013 the most basic elements of project management are to document what\u2019s been done and what\u2019s next to do. But here\u2019s the thing: I\u2019d be willing to bet that there is one crucial place where you ARE still running processes in the dark – customer relationship building<\/em>.
\nDo any of these sound like your recent customer interactions?<\/p>\n