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As you know, all roads lead to the frontline worker when delivering outstanding projects. Your frontline workers, no matter if they’re self-perform or subcontractors, are the ones who install the work, and their decisions can make or break your success.
With hundreds of decisions daily, ensuring that your frontline workers make decisions that help you deliver safe, profitable, high-quality projects can be challenging.
Ultimately, you must trust your field crews. You can’t stand behind them moment-to-moment telling them how to do their job. You need to trust that they’ll make decisions that lead to the project’s and your company’s success.
But suppose they don’t have the information and knowledge they need to make successful decisions? In that case, you’ll see your costs go up, you’ll do more rework, you’ll have more safety incidents, and your reputation will suffer, opening the door for another contractor to come in and take your work.
So, how do you influence your field workforce when they don’t work in your office, you have to rely on a chain of command to get information to them, and you can only train them in person periodically. How do you help them perform their best work?You steer their decision-making by influencing how your workers orient themselves to the situations they face.
Airforce Colonel John Boyd coined the OODA loop, which stands for Observe, Orient, Decide, and Act. It’s a mental framework we use to interact with our environment. Think of it like crossing the road. You observe your surroundings, orient yourself to the situation, decide whether it’s safe to cross and act accordingly.
Boyd identified six factors that influence how we orient ourselves to our observations: knowledge, skills, experience, values, motivations, and culture. By actively influencing these factors, you can steer your frontline workers’ decision-making and ensure success.
This is where MindForge comes in. MindForge is a software platform that helps you easily connect with your field workers and provide them with the information, skills, and experience they need to succeed. MindForge lets you broadcast your values, expectations, and “how you work” to influence how your field crews decide to perform their work.
No doubt, your success is in the hands of your frontline workers. By influencing their decision-making through knowledge, skills, experience, culture, motivation, and values, you create a win-win for crews, your clients, and your company. Trust them, guide them, and give them the tools they need to make good decisions. And if you need a tool to help you do it, look no further than MindForge.