Good to Great – “First Who… Then What”

I recently read the book Good to Great by Jim Collins and was surprised how so much about how a company can go from good to great, can be applied to BIM.  This is the first part of a multi-series project where I will analyze portions of the book and relate my thoughts towards Revit and/or BIM.

Good to Great – “First Who… Then What”

“People are not your most important asset.  The right people are.”

Jim Collins goes on to explain 3 simple truths that great leaders understand:

• If you begin with “who” rather than “what”, you can more easily adapt to a changing world.
• If you start with the right people, the problem of how to motivate and manage people largely goes away.
• If you have the wrong people, it doesn’t matter if you discover the right direction; you still won’t have a great company.  Great vision without great people is irrelevant.

If you are struggling with Revit implementation, then you probably started with “what”, rather than “who”.  You decided that it was the best thing for the firm to transition to Revit but did you stop to think about who you should have on the project team?  If you created the greatest implementation strategy but the individuals going onto the project fight the disruption in their typical process, you will not see any benefit to using the software.  All you will hear are complaints about what “Revit cannot do.”  If instead, you find a few individuals who are passionate about change, about new ways to work and you create a plan for implementation then you will create a group of peers that are championing Revit to their co-workers.  Make your first project a success, not a failure.

If you have the wrong individuals on a team,  it will probably bring down the moral or efficiency of a team.  If this is the case, then make a change to the staffing.  “All the time and energy spent on the wrong person siphons away from developing and working with all the right people.” (Good to Great – Page 56)  BIM is a team effort.  Having one less individual on a BIM team is many times better than someone who is continually creating issues in the model, complaining about how it is Revit's fault the work is not done and creating additional work for other team members.

If you liked this post, then check out the entire book.Click on Book to purchase from amazon

Comments

[Lance Cayko]

My business partner are smack-dab in the middle of this book. Great read.... great recommendation Mr. Grant! And great top 10 post... all these are excellent topics!