Situational Awareness - Learning to See

Project teams need to be able to quickly make the thousands of decisions required to keep the project on-track.

D. Brown Management Profile Picture
D. Brown Management
March 27, 2018 2 minute read
Share

It is critical for project teams to develop a complete 5D model of the project in their minds.

Situational Awareness: Learning to See, Perception, Comprehension, and Projection. Book: Learning to See by John Shook and Mike Rother

This is called Situational Awareness and includes three basic layers:

  1. PERCEPTION of data and the elements of the environment.  
  2. COMPREHENSION of the meaning and significance of the situation.
  3. PROJECTION of future states and events.  

If you are training yourself or someone else start at 1st layer and focus on seeing more elements of the environment.  Ask questions that stretch yourself and others to see things. Use checklists to help train. Create drills to improve both the quantity and quality of elements seen as well as speed. 

The lean body of knowledge starts with “seeing waste” in the value stream.  A great book on this topic is called “Learning to See” and Paul Akers has a great talk on this called “Lean is Simple” 

Build Your Most Valuable Asset
There are five main value levers that contractors can pull to truly increase the value of the business as measured in long-term return on capital and valuation during a succession.
Related Article
Accelerating Retirement & Succession
Today, succession planning is more important for contractors than any time in recent history.
Related Article
Definition - Standard
Level of Performance required. May relate to a job role (person), team, company, materials, equipment, facility, etc. Required by business model as part of achieving strategic objectives.
Related Article