“Three things you described, not paying attention, someone skipping a step, or someone too lazy to double-check, it sounds like a motivation problem,” I said, “but, you describe it as a skills problem?”
“Yes,” Addison replied. “I assume everyone comes to work each and every day with the full intention to do their best. And, yes, sometimes, their best isn’t good enough. But it is not because they don’t want to perform at a higher level, it’s because they don’t know how.”
“But, not knowing how, points to some sort of training response on your part. And, yet some people return from training and the underperformance persists?”
“I think,” Addison thought out loud. “Maybe our focus in training misses the mark. We think that training is all about technical information. We train on our sequence and standards, but our failure points are not because we don’t have a process or standards.”
“Where do you see the failure points?” I asked.
“It could be something as simple as flexibility. We have a process, but each project introduces some nuance that is not part of our process. If we don’t pay attention to the nuance, because we are not paying attention, or we aren’t looking for the nuance because we are following a rigid checklist, we are then surprised by a failure point. But, we don’t train flexibility.”
“Is flexibility a skill that can be trained?” I pressed.
“If we can break it down, yes,” she said. “Let’s take safety. We have a safety protocol we follow on every project, it’s a checklist and it’s a hard checklist. No compromise. But, it doesn’t cover everything. We have to be flexible. The height of a project makes a difference, confined space makes a difference, flammable materials make a difference, the depth of a dig makes a difference. We have to be flexible, to make adjustments to rules to accommodate differences. We don’t train flexibility.”