What are your vital behaviours?

You have a big project to deliver. How are you going to get people working together?

Should you enforce the contract, or encourage the right behaviours?

I think you need both. Here’s why.

Forget the contract?

I’d be rich if I had a pound for every time I heard it said, “Let’s put the contract in the drawer and just collaborate”.

It’s bad advice.

I learned this the hard way 25 years ago when, as a contractor’s PM, I agreed with the client’s PM to do just that.

The project went well, but cost more than the client’s budget allocation.

Because we’d departed from the terms of the contract – even though it was for the good of the project – we couldn’t use the contract to seek redress.

It was nearly a disaster for me.

Eventually, the project sponsor found the extra money to pay us, but not without a sharp warning.

“Never do that again,” he said. “You need the paperwork in order, and you have to administer the contract.”

Good intentions and a well delivered project don’t always cut it when it comes to getting paid.

Contracts are blunt instruments

So, the contract is insurance, but its usefulness ends round about there.

For getting people to work together, which is the real nuts and bolts of a successful project, it’s a blunt instrument, even if it says things have to be done “in the spirit of mutual trust and cooperation”.

How do you create an actual spirit of mutual trust and cooperation?

It’s a complex challenge that can’t be solved by a 30-page legal document.

Documents, full stop, will not create a spirit of mutual trust and cooperation.

Remember the fad for “team charters”?

I used to help teams produce them. Everyone would sign, and then revert immediately to behaviours that eroded mutual trust and cooperation.

One way to create such a spirit is for an effective leadership team themselves to “do” the right behaviours.

You know the phrase, “The fish rots from the head”? Well, something like the opposite is true, as well.

This is not about behavioural science

I’m not an expert, but behavioural science seems to involve “antecedents” to prime a desired behaviour, and “consequences” to punish “bad” behaviour, however subtly.

To me, it’s a carrot-and-stick approach that treats humans as self-serving automatons to be managed by pain and pleasure.

Do you respond well to that? I don’t.

I think people respond better to being inspired, to having their imaginations fired up by a good outcome, and wanting to take part and help.

That’s the sort of buy-in you need to succeed in something as difficult as a construction project.

Grudging compliance won’t cut it. Grudging compliance leaves room for error and drift.

So, I’m a fan of the concept of “vital behaviours”.

What are the Vital Behaviours?

“Vital behaviours” means the few new things you must never stop doing in order to achieve an ambitious goal.

The idea is attributed to Dr. Wiwat Rajanapithayakorn, a public health official who pioneered Thailand’s response to a serious AIDS epidemic in the 1980s. (He helped the country avert disaster by getting people to wear condoms through a major public awareness campaign.)

What three vital behaviours will keep your project on track?

What if your leadership team articulated them and then started doing them, consistently, all the time, while talking about it – to the point of being a bit of a bore about it?

You might be amazed at what happens.

Basic stuff

What vital behaviours you pick will depend on the particular circumstances of your project. Every project, and project team, is unique.

Here’s an example from a team I worked with some time back:

1. Praise someone every day.
2. Challenge, and ask “how can we do this better?”.
3. Say “please” and “thank you”.

Yes, I know, it’s basic stuff.

But what happens is that when a leadership team practices their vital behaviours consistently, all the time, while talking about it, people notice, get inspired, and start to emulate.

It becomes “the way we do things round here”. It becomes the culture.

This is the kind of thing we challenge leaders to think about during our leadership team development programmes. To get started, check out the Discovery Day.