Deep Dive into the Value of Conditions of Satisfaction
An Interview with Jennifer Lacy, Lean Practice Leader, Robins & Morton
We spoke with Jennifer Lacy, Lean Practice Leader for Robins & Morton and next year’s Congress co-chair, about her exciting 2024 Congress session, A Deep Dive into the Value of Conditions of Satisfaction.
Jennifer and her colleagues Kyle Davis and Josh Young of Robins & Morton, and Victoria Navarro of AdventHealth, will share their experiences using the Conditions of Satisfaction (CoS) as a project’s true north. As part of the session, they will facilitate an interactive exercise that demonstrates the importance of alignment and how to achieve it through the collaborative development of CoS.
Join us at the 2024 LCI Congress, October 22-25, in San Diego for this session and many more! Register today for the best available rates.
Jennifer leads her firm’s Building Forward approach, which is focused on Lean principles.
Jennifer is the Lean practice leader for national healthcare contractor Robins & Morton. Jennifer shared, “In my role, I support all our people, projects, offices, and departments. I help lead our Building Forward® approach — which is focused on Lean principles — for the entire company and have been doing this for almost six years.”
This session will show how to create early alignment through role play and an interactive exercise.
“This session is going to be exciting. We are presenting with Victoria Navarro of AdventHealth, a client of ours, along with a senior superintendent and a senior mechanical preconstruction manager. So, we’ll have a little bit of early planning, building, and owner perspectives,” Jennifer noted.
She continued, “The format is very cool. We talk about how we need to overcome obstacles and get aligned — when the owner just wants to get going. So, we are going to do a client and GC role play where we say we need to stop and get aligned early. We will show how to overcome objections real-time. It will demonstrate the dynamic and then flow into a high-level overview of why CoS is important, not just for the contractor side but for trades and owners to have that early alignment.
Session attendees will come away with something tangible. We will walk through a CoS exercise that we do with our clients and trade partners early in the planning process. Everyone in the room will have sticky notes and sharpies, and we will go through the questions to think about to create that alignment early on.”
Key takeaways: It’s okay to have hard conversations and ask what the goals are, and the CoS will help you stay on track throughout the project.
Jennifer noted that, “When people leave this session, we want them to know they are not the only ones having to overcome objections. They’ll see real time that you can have some hard conversations. You don’t have to say yes to everyone and not push back when something is important. It’s okay, when the owner says start, start, start, to push back and say what are the goals.
Also, the CoS will help you stay on track throughout the project. We will reinforce that you need to be looking at the CoS every month, doing assessments, and using it as a stick to measure how you are making decisions. Sometimes things start going in a different direction, which can derail the project. If you always bring it back to the CoS, it puts things in check and it’s not just a good guy and a bad guy. It’s, ‘We did this together, so let’s make sure we’re all still aligned and working towards the same goal.’”
This session will offer value to all Congress attendees.
Jennifer noted that this session “will be valuable for everyone. I say that as someone who came to Congress early in my career to learn. For early career professionals, they will see that at any level or in any role, it’s important to understand why we need to have collaboration early — with trades, field engineers, everyone. We will break down why it is important.
And it doesn’t matter what your position is right now. At some point, you will be working with someone — or they will be working with you — at all levels. If we make sure everyone is learning this, then throughout their career, they will be pulling in these nuggets and pulling in people they bridged connections with to be part of this.”
Lean helps advance our industry and organizations’ goals by putting people first—with CoS and Respect for People.
“Our industry needs people so badly. There is such a gap between the work we have and the people we need to do the building. If we aren’t focused intentionally on recruitment and retention, that gap will get bigger. How do we keep people? It’s more than money. It’s making the culture and environment worth staying for vs. leaving for more money,” noted Jennifer.
She continued, “At the organization level, we must empower our people, give them autonomy and a voice. And not just ask what they think but take their feedback and implement it. Give them some buy-in tied to their purpose and passion. The generation coming in now, and who will be here the next 40-50 years, cares more about their passion and purpose than their paychecks. That’s different and we need to lean into that.
That ties to CoS and Lean principles. It’s grounded on Respect for People first. We have to understand what’s important to them. We now need to ask, what does success look like for you? The answers are different. We need to change what we do internally and let them know they are part of what’s to come.”
Interested in getting started with Lean at your organization? Cultivate leadership buy-in, start small — and learn from your peers at Congress.
We asked Jennifer for some tips to help people get started with Lean. She noted that, “You need leadership buy-in to do something organizationally. One person can’t do it, but we haven’t leaned into this enough — How do we cultivate leadership buy-in? Over the last year, I’ve had more conversations with my peers in roles or creating roles focused on Lean. It’s often about how to go to leadership and show the value of this. We’ll see that in Congress sessions and in what’s shared at LCI Communities of Practice. What can we equip people with to go back to their companies? How are we helping people who want to make that change? It’s a big undertaking. I’d say start small with a project, a team, and organically grow from that.
Lots of firms are sticking their toe in, and they see some success but are not sure how to create one big program. What is that roadmap? There are resources on the LCI site, but it can be very scary. Being able to pull in people who have cultivated those changes and who can share ‘this is where you start’ helps. They’ll get a lot of that at this year’s Congress.”
Jennifer’s favorite part of Congress each year, for nearly a decade: Connecting with her peers.
Jennifer shared, “This is my eighth or ninth Congress and every time, what I most enjoy is being with my peers. In my role, and for a lot of people who do Lean, we are in our own little islands in our firms. We may have a team, but often there isn’t more than one person trying to lead that organizational transformation in a firm. To go to one place and have face-to-face time with multiple people doing similar things, sharing lessons learned, best practices, things that have worked and haven’t, is so valuable. Everyone shares what they’re doing, and they welcome others to take it, change it, and make it even better.
We are also doing a panel presentation with O’Shea Builders on Leading Organizational Transformation. Four or five years ago, I met with their leader, and I said, ‘Here’s our roadmap. How can I help?’ Now they’re at Congress presenting on how they changed their company. That’s momentum. The reciprocal piece we do with Lean is so different from how the construction industry has functioned for so long.”
She continued, “I’m co-chairing next year’s Congress with Keyan Zandy, CEO of Skiles Group, a prominent general construction management firm. Our firms are competitors, but when I got into this role six years ago, he mentored me and that’s continued the entire time I’ve been doing this. That’s the kind of camaraderie we have at Congress. We know if we change the industry, it will help everybody — not me or one firm, but the trades, owners, designers — and they will help everyone else too.”
Advanced Lean practitioners should attend Congress every year for the nuggets, the validation, and the comradery.
We closed with discussing what advanced Lean practitioners get out of Congress each year. Jennifer shared, “There are lots of conferences that are geared towards entry-level people, and you go, and then you’re done. With Congress, you always get nuggets. You may also get validation that you’re on the right track, which is worthwhile. It’s not the same as getting all the new stuff, but at Congress, there’s value in validation of what you’re doing. There’s never a Congress without a takeaway for me — through breakout sessions, networking opportunities, running an idea by someone during a break. There’s always something I go back and implement — even after doing Lean for years and attending multiple Congresses.”
Don’t miss this session and many more at Congress. Explore the program and join your Lean partners in San Diego! Register today.