Becoming a Project Leader: Learn on the Job Through Experience, Reflection, and Mentoring

Abstract

Admitting Mistakes and Changing the Organization’s Practices

In the first case, Roy was in charge of a project involving the design and implementation of a new road reaching the top of a mountain 700 yards high, where a new intelligence base was to be constructed in a very short time prior to the retreat of Israeli forces from the Suez Canal.

Roy’s team, which consisted of three civilian engineers hired to design the road and prepare the bidding documents, estimated the cost of the road at 1.6 million dollars. The bid was won by a contractor whose estimate was 1.4 million dollars. However, in spite of the fact that the project was completed ahead of time, the actual final cost was 2.2 million dollars! Roy and his civilian engineering team were baffled.

Roy decided to consult an old friend of his, a very experienced retired contractor. It took his friend 15 minutes to study the documents before he burst out laughing. Roy had apparently been a victim of an old trick of road contractors. The design of an uphill road requires estimating what percent of the way will require simple inexpensive support to establish a stable road and what percent will require building very expensive retaining support walls. In this case the contractor during his initial onsite visit estimated that at least 60% of the road would require expensive retaining walls, while the inexperienced design engineers estimated that only 10% of the way would involve such walls. The winning contractor therefore submitted a relatively low price estimate for the unsupported portion of the road while at the same time significantly increasing the price estimate of the support walls. Since the contractor’s estimate was more realistic (60%), his profits were accordingly much higher. Needless to say, from that point forward, Roy became much more vigilant about contractor estimates. But he went a step further: he told others about his mistake. He made sure his superiors as well as his colleagues learned of his misadventure, and in doing so, saved much money and grief for the years to come. His efforts to make sure the insights he gained became common knowledge led to fundamental changes in the practices of the entire organization regarding hiring consulting engineers.

Combining Work for Different Clients

In his work in IDF, Roy could hire the design engineers directly, although he was not responsible for paying them. All the work with the contractors was conducted through civilians in the Department of Defense (DOD). The rationale was to decouple the army officers from any direct interaction with money exchange to ensure transactions were not affected by bribery.

Once a month, the regional director at the DOD invited Roy and his 12 colleagues to meet and discuss events related to their work in the recent and upcoming months. At the end of the two-hour meetings, all participants usually left, except for Roy who often stayed behind to chat some more at the request of the director. In one of these informal one-on-one meetings, the director raised a major concern. He told Roy that while reviewing the various bids submitted in recent months, one factor had become obvious. Because of the pressure due to the impending withdrawal from Sinai, many of the submitted bids were for very small projects, such as a small medical center at a cost of $200,000. Apparently, small and less qualified contractors are more apt to submit bids for small jobs. The unit cost for these small jobs was much higher than the unit cost of larger jobs. Upon Roy’s request, the director shared with him his data supporting this claim.

Roy used this information to argue with his supervisors that projects for serving different customers (e.g., Intelligence, Communication, Airforce), traditionally handled by different engineering units, should be combined. This was an unprecedented proposal. Yet, using the data from DOD, Roy was able to convince the chain of command to change the traditional work groups, resulting in significant cost reductions.

Stalling a Project

Colonel J., commander-in-chief of the Engineering Corps, had an open door on Mondays at 7 PM for all captains and majors in his units. Very few utilized this after-hours opportunity. Roy was the exception. In one of their meetings, the colonel confided in Roy that a senior major in Roy’s unit was about to leave the unit in three weeks. The colonel suspected that the major was trying to funnel a major contract to a friend of his. There was no hard evidence, but both the colonel and Roy agreed that this contractor was not the best one for the job. Roy used every trick in (and out of) the book to stall the progress of the bid: he raised questions that required preliminary investigations; he presented past examples which indicated the need to investigate the specific contractor more thoroughly; and at the end he even took some ‘sick leave’ which delayed major meetings regarding the selection of the contractor. But it was for the good of the project, the military unit, and the client. His efforts were successful in delaying the final decision regarding the selection of the contractor [3].

“Leadership, like swimming, cannot be learned by reading about it.”

Henry Mintzberg