Rework – Can the nuclear industry really learn from a small software company?

Of course the answer is YES!  “Rework” is an easy to read book from the people at 37signals, a small business (ok not so small anymore) that creates project management software.  Their products are designed to enable us to more easily work together.  So when they write a book to challenge established business norms and suggest their own brand of small business acumen with such theories as “Ignore the real world”, “Planning is guessing” and “Good enough is fine”; should we listen to this stuff?

As you can probably tell, I really did enjoy this book.  It is fun read and even though you won’t likely agree with all their wisdom, there are many things that just plain make sense.  I read this book about a month ago now and I find myself quoting from it in conversations quite often.  The question is – does this small business wisdom really apply to large businesses?  And my response is – in many cases – why not?  Time to question the status quo and see if we can simplify how we do things.

The two themes that I find myself quoting most are:

1. “Emulate Chefs”.  The authors go on to say that we all know our favourite chefs because they share everything they know.  They show us how to make their favourite recipes on TV and publish them in cook books, yet they don’t fear that we will take these lessons, open a competing restaurant next door and put them out of business!  The message is – be open with your customers.  “As a business owner, you should share everything you know too.“

Now of course in the nuclear industry we seem to be continuously pre-occupied with IP.  Yet in this digital age and with the magnitude of growth of the industry in the east, protecting the IP is likely an exercise in futility.  The only true way to stay ahead is to innovate more than anyone else so customers keep coming back – and of course provide top notch service so customers like working with you.  As it says in the book “Businesses are usually paranoid and secretive.  They think they have proprietary this and competitive advantage that.  Maybe a rare few do, but most don’t.”   I can assure you of one thing, if your customers “have no choice” but to come to you, first chance they get to run, they will.

2. “Learning from mistakes is overrated”.   Maybe it’s the engineer in us all, but we love to explain what went wrong and then claim we learned from these experiences.  Now of course, we do learn, but as stated in the book, it is much better to demonstrate success.  As stated in the book, “What do you really learn from mistakes?  You might learn what not to do again. But how valuable is that?  You still don’t know what you should do next.”  It goes on “Failure is not a prerequisite for success.  A Harvard Business School study found already successful entrepreneurs are far more likely to succeed again.  But entrepreneurs whose companies failed the first time had almost the same follow on success rate as people starting companies for the first time…..”

The biggest example in our industry of late is the ongoing issues with First of a Kind (FOAK) projects.  As we all know these projects are difficult and recent performance has been less than stellar.  However, while we are learning from these experiences, we have not really learned until we get to the next project and actually demonstrate success.  As I have heard earlier in my career – good project managers explain what went wrong – great project managers get it right!

In fact in my own seminars I give to at the WNU one week course “Key Issues in the Nuclear Industry Today” on “Structuring Projects for Success”, I always note that we seem to spend an inordinate amount of time focusing on who takes risks when things go wrong, yet not nearly enough time on planning how the project should proceed to succeed.  After all, what we really want are successful projects and that means working together towards that end, not setting up a good model for blame when things ultimately fall apart!!

So back to the book. Full of gems like these two.   A really good read and fun too.  I highly recommend it.  Read it and let me know what you think.