Network Rail: Building tolerance

Do you think a) He must be having a bad day? b) Rude so-and-so? or c) It’s just because Derek’s task-focused that he forgets the niceties when he’s got a project on?

If you and Derek are part of a new team, chances are it will be option b. A little sore of resentment will begin to fester, when in fact, the real reason is probably c.

Martin Chambers, CIOB president, is taking no such chances with his team for the redevelopment of New Street station in Birmingham , where he is programme director.

The Network Rail team is preparing to select organisations that will join them to form the ‘nerve centre’ that will design and oversee the delivery of the project. And Chambers wants organisations that will fit in not only with the team’s working practices, but its mentality. ‘If you are selecting someone to work with, you need to work out what their corporate culture is, and do their guys actually “walk the talk” and live the corporate values. It’s about organisational fit,’ says Chambers. ‘But how can you do that before you have worked out what makes your team tick?’

So in July Chambers took his team for an intensive, personally challenging, and at the same time thought-provoking two-day team building session in York. Rather than hearty outdoor activities, however, the event kicked off with a day-long session in specialist profiling firm TMS Development International’s (TMSDI) UK, Europe and Middle East headquarters that covered an analysis of individuals’ and the team’s behaviour, work preferences and team members’ approach to work – so-called ‘soft skills’.

Day one started with a great deal of nervous trepidation across the team. Everyone was asking the question: ‘What on earth are the TMSDI profiles going to say about me?’

The profiles were gleaned through online questionnaires completed before the event. TMSDI’s Team Management Profile and Opportunity Orientation Profile tools reveal a person’s strengths, development areas and how they like to work.

‘Mine were absolutely spot on,’ says Moffatt. ‘My profile really fits me to a tee, the type of work I do and the way I approach my work – at least that’s what the wife said when she read them.’

Independent consultant Jayne Mallon, who facilitated the two-day event, favours TMSDI’s development profiles over other psychometric tests because as she puts it, ‘they reach the parts that other tools don’t’.

‘The Opportunity Orientation Profile tells us what people’s attitudes to risk are whether they see opportunities or obstacles,’ says Mallon. ‘And it measures their level of optimism, as well as whether they are fault finders by nature.

‘If you are working with someone who has a very high fault-finding score and you have a very low one, you may think they are being very picky, when in fact you simply don’t have the same attention to detail.’

Moffatt picked out this opportunities versus obstacles rating as particularly useful. He came in with a relatively low score compared with the others. He’s 1.7 times more likely to see opportunities rather than obstacles which is right for a planner, says Moffatt. Chambers imaginative, future orientated and enjoys complexity, according to the analysis – is 5.1 times as likely to see opportunities.

While psychometric testing wasn’t new for many of the team it’s quite commonplace in recruitment and in management training the idea was to discuss each other’s profiles to improve communication and tolerance.

‘It was extremely helpful,’ says Ian Johnson, head of contracts and procurement. ‘It gives you an awareness of where particular styles work well and where you need to be cautious in the way you talk to people.’

Each person’s profile fits one of eight categories , which fall into four different aspects of management– they will either be explorers, organisers, advisers or controllers. A well-balanced team will have a good spread of types. As well as producing individual profiles, TMSDI also creates a team map showing the spread of roles for the team as a whole.

The Network Rail team looked at the four aspects advise, explore, organise and control and equated them to phases through the life cycle of a project. Within their group, six of the eight categories (‘major roles’) were covered, with Controller-Inspector and Upholder-Maintainer unrepresented. However, when secondary characteristics (‘related roles’) were taken into account, all the bases were covered.

The second day was what many would consider to be a more conventional team-building day with the activities built around two tasks. First, to find 50 snickelways (a small passageway) around the city of York. Chambers and Mallon set the challenge at 5pm on the first day with a 10am deadline the next day the morning after the team dinner.

Did they do it? Of course they did. The collective determination of the team to succeed came right to the fore. The requirement was to visit a list of snickelways and bring back photographic evidence, with bonus points available for the collecting a number of locally sourced articles, including a ‘fat rascal’ (a local pastry). The group turned up with an indexed, mounted presentation and every one of their bonus point earning prizes. ‘It was first rate, absolutely awesome,’ says Mallon.

Each team member then had to carry out a self-assessment of how they thought the team had performed against criteria used during the previous day with TMSDI. Each member scored separately and then they came together as a team to mediate a group decision. ‘It was all a lot of fun,’ says Mallon. ‘But the idea was to give them experience of assessing teamwork for when they come to use it in the procurement process further down the line.’

The final task was a two-and-a-half-hour ‘future mapping’ session looking at the obstacles and opportunities that could occur on the project between now and 2013 when the station redevelopment is due to be completed. They considered issues such as the Olympics and what impact it might have: would it mean a worker shortage, more rail users, a demand for better links?

For Moffatt and Johnson the link between the second and first day was not immediately apparent. But Mallon contends that because the individuals now knew how the others tended to operate, this exercise was more open and easy than it could have been 36 hours earlier. ‘It’s about trying to value diversity and building tolerance,’ she says.

What they both did highlight was the benefit that the exercise will bring when they come to recruit other team members and suppliers. ‘Some clients can be a bit arrogant. They assess other people [in soft issues] and don’t even know themselves,’ comments Johnson. ‘We are potentially going to offer our profiles out so that bidders know what sort of animal they are dealing with.’

For Chambers, the event was a huge success, and the first step towards his team recognising the huge potential which he believes it has.

‘Over the years I have worked with some world-class individuals and teams, but never before have I been as convinced as I am with this team that they can be world-class. I have no doubt that the achievements of this team will be recognised across the industry in the future. This team now knows what it needs to do to “walk on water” and they now know they can do it!’ cm