Three Ways Transparent Communication Boosts Project Success

A large part of working with EMC’s labor partner network involves having conversations with you, our valued partners. Some of those conversations center on great successes while others focus on challenges we face. Both are important in developing a shared understanding of how we can best serve our customers.

While it’s easy to celebrate the successes, conversations about challenges are naturally more difficult. None of us enjoys giving or receiving difficult messages, but we all benefit from being able to discuss matters as transparently as possible. Maintaining open lines of communication means we can address issues as they arise and constructively work together on improvements that increase the quality of what we are delivering.

There are key points in our processes when hand-offs occur that provide important opportunities for transparent communication. Here are three:

Project Kick-off Meetings. There are any number of challenges that may be on the table for discussion during these meetings and some may not be presented in the clearest ways possible. This is an opportunity for you to provide transparent feedback to the project manager that something is missing in our communication to you. Without that feedback we may miss a key opportunity to clarify important points, which can then lead to issues when the team begins their work onsite.

RFQ Responses. The survey responses from first quarter suggest that EMC provides a lot of good information in this process, but we know we aren’t perfect. As you know, it is critical that you understand what you are responding to within the RFQ process. It is also the time for transparent feedback to the EMC team about the RFQ, the time to share your questions and comments about information provided about site conditions, additional photos, hang point or access issues and more.

We may not have immediate answers, or the ability to adjust processes quickly, but your input about needed improvements in this critical communication activity helps us refine what we are doing when we engage with you in this process.

Project Scope and Alignment with Your Capabilities, Capacity and Coverage (CCC). Building a business means taking some risks to challenge yourself to grow and enhance what you bring to our partnership. However, while we encourage you to stretch, we don’t want you to overextend.

We will always ask and expect that when you accept a scope of work that you have assessed your CCC condition. Let us know if you can’t take something on. We need that transparency from you to help ensure success for you and our customers. There will be other projects.

These are just a few examples of the transparent communication we want to encourage with and in EMC’s Labor Partner Network. I am sure you can identify more opportunities and I encourage you to think about and act on them. It is the only way we can successfully build and strengthen our working relationship and continue to deliver industry leading results.

Reach out to me anytime you would like to discuss how we can more effectively work together.

John Loheit is EMC's Director of Labor Partner Development. In this role he oversees the Labor Partner Network and Field Quality Assurance. He has been in the lighting industry for 15 years, and holds a bachelor’s degree from Augsburg University in Minneapolis, MN.