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Why Continuous Improvement Requires Practice
- August 23, 2024
- Posted by: Tom Richert
- Categories: Leadership Alignment, Project Performance
No CommentsHigh-performing organizations do not improve through occasional breakthroughs alone. They improve through consistent habits that strengthen learning, problem-solving, and execution over time. This article explores why continuous improvement should be viewed as a conditioning discipline rather than a one-time initiative.
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Making Hidden Work Visible
- July 16, 2024
- Posted by: Tom Richert
- Categories: Project Performance, Workflow Reliability
Many project delays originate in administrative and coordination processes that remain largely invisible to project teams. This article explores how process mapping helps make hidden work visible, reduce cognitive overload, and improve workflow reliability across project organizations.
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Case Study: Recovering a Nine-Week Delay Without Extending Completion
- June 24, 2024
- Posted by: Tom Richert
- Categories: Case Studies, Project Performance, Workflow Reliability
A healthcare renovation project lost nine weeks due to permitting delays yet still achieved its original completion date. This case study examines how workflow reliability, collaborative planning, daily management, and rapid decision-making helped the project team recover more than 25% of the available construction duration.
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Why Owners Must Define How Projects Are Delivered
- June 11, 2024
- Posted by: Tom Richert
- Categories: Leadership Alignment, Project Performance
Most owners define budgets, schedules, and safety expectations but leave project delivery methods to the project team. This article explores why owners who establish clear performance standards and operating expectations can significantly improve project outcomes, reduce friction, and create more reliable delivery systems.
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Five Leadership Systems Behind High-Performing Capital Projects
- April 29, 2024
- Posted by: Tom Richert
- Categories: Leadership Alignment, Project Performance
Large capital projects require leadership capabilities comparable to those of midsized enterprises. This article explores five integrated leadership systems that help project teams improve alignment, workflow, decision-making, situational awareness, and continuous improvement.
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Why Owner Decisions Are a Project Team Responsibility
- March 28, 2024
- Posted by: Tom Richert
- Categories: Leadership Alignment, Project Performance
Project teams often blame owners for slow decisions, yet many delays originate in the decisionmaking process itself. This article explores why owner decisions should be treated as a project workflow and how project teams can create systems that support faster, higher-quality decisions.
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Why Workflow Design Matters More Than Schedule Detail
- March 27, 2024
- Posted by: Tom Richert
- Categories: Project Performance, Workflow Reliability
Many capital projects rely on increasingly detailed schedules to manage uncertainty. Yet complexity often makes those schedules less useful over time. This article explores why workflow design and modular planning provide a more effective approach for managing uncertainty and accelerating project delivery.
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Designing Workflow for Faster Project Delivery
- January 16, 2024
- Posted by: Tom Richert
- Categories: Project Performance, Workflow Reliability
Most projects are planned as thousands of interconnected activities that become increasingly difficult to manage as uncertainty grows. This article explores how modular planning and workflow design help project teams reduce duration, improve adaptability, and deliver projects more quickly.
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Planning Projects as Systems Instead of Activities
- January 2, 2024
- Posted by: Tom Richert
- Categories: Project Performance, Workflow Reliability
Traditional milestone plans often become increasingly difficult to manage as project complexity grows. This article explores how organizing projects into loosely coupled plan modules helps teams simplify coordination, adapt to uncertainty, and improve project performance.
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Why High-Performing Organizations Learn Differently
- August 25, 2022
- Posted by: Tom Richert
- Categories: Leadership Alignment, Project Performance
In 2017, we met with a group of artists for three days to develop an understanding of Lean practices from their perspective. What we learned applies to work more generally, and not just in a Lean context.
