Project Success -- People Over Numbers

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by Davide Costella

Having worked in the supply chain field in big organizations for quite some time, I have heard a few times how number-driven we are, how we trust metrics, lean six sigma methods over an empathetic, listening and coaching approach.

I can counteract this argument with an authentic success story, a story of people over numbers.

It is January. It is raining. It is cold and foggy. The holidays are just over and a big project meant to improve the warehouse operations of our third party logistics is assigned to me. It is the kind of project that has a huge scope, resources still unknown, challenging timelines and tons of traveling involved. Sound familiar? Well, it turned out to be one of the greatest personal experiences and most successful projects I have ever worked on. And you know what made it such a masterpiece? People. Yes, you heard that right: People.

So what made it so different from any other supply chain project? What did we do to make people more significant than the usual key performance indicators (KPIs)?

1. Giving Transparency. As a master practioner in NLP, I have studied how the brain works. I know how inclined we are to delete, generalize and DISTORT information. It follows that the more details we give, the less of an opportunity people have to play their own movies and operate out of the amygdala part of the brain.
   
2. Co-create over dictating. Let's say you buy a house and move in with your partner. Would you allow your partner to decide everything about the apartment? Or would you prefer co-creating and designing the future together?
   
3. Belonging. It does not matter how much technology we have created, we are still animals with primitive needs and the need of belonging it is one of the strongest. This is why, after co-creating, you want your team to feel a strong sense of belonging. After all, we fundamentally still work in tribes..
4. Consistency. Anthony Robbins mentions Certainty while describing the Six Human Needs. Your team needs to know that they can trust you and that this trust comes with consistent behaviours
5. Open Questions. We all talk about it, but very few of us actually ask them. Asking open questions takes time, but these questions empower and give ownership and - most importantly -  sustainable results.
   
6. Empathy: I often hear colleagues saying that business is different from normal life. They say that in business we should not talk about being a family, that patience has a limit, that we already gave someone a chance, etc. But let me ask you: would you show empathy if a member of your family needed help? Would you want some empathy from your beloved? So, what makes business interactions so different?
7. Show results. We are visual animals and we all need to see our contribution and progress. By showing the team the progression of the project, they feel energized with the resulting boost of Dopamine (a natural result -- and the most addicting chemical in our body). Hey, this is not black magic! It is called Neuroscience.
8. Recognize achievements,publicly. Ever wondered why you feel so good when a crowd claps hands at your speech or when you get a "like" on your Facebook post? This is because of your friend, Seratonin, that chemical that flows in our body when we are being recognized. Powerful!
9. Listen and observe. Learn! Getting feedback through listening and observing is a powerful exercise that you want to do throughout all the stages of the project. Learning comes from asking what they liked, what they are excited about, what they are anxious about, what they want to rethink and what the next steps are.
10. Leaders Eat Last! Like Simon Sinek says in his book of that title, our teams need to know that we have got their back. This feeling of support gives them Oxytocin, the relationship chemical, and will avoid Cortisol, the stress chemical.This type of response has them be capable of doing things they could not do if they were afraid or stressed.
    

None of these are magic tricks. They are things that will work only if you truly believe in what you're doing.. If you do not, it is better you do not practice them at all or you will likely cause the opposite effects.

If you strongly believe in people over numbers, share this post as many as you can. Let others be inspired as well!