From chaos to systematicity. 7 main elements from the 7CI Group company

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How to move the Ukrainian construction business from the "Let's go" stage to the "Bloom, or System Development" stage

Today, 93% of Ukrainian companies, and not only those from the construction business, are at the stage of their development, which Yitzhak Adizes (Dr. Yitzhak Calderon Adizes is one of the world's leading business consultants. — Editor's note) calls "Come on."

Characteristic features of this stage are running, doing things immediately, for yesterday, working in chaos and getting results due to individual strong personalities.

The danger of this stage is that it cannot be scaled, the company dies with the exhaustion of the vital forces of its leaders.

"The main element of a great company is extremely simple: good old-fashioned hard work, commitment to self-improvement and continuous construction in the name of the future as the key to a long and happy life"

Jim Collins, Jerry Porras "Built Forever"

And only 5-7% of companies move to the following stages of development — "Youth" and "Blooming" according to Adizens. We call this next stage "System Development". And this stage is characterized by systematic, stable growth and prosperity of the company.

Our company 7CI Group, relying on world experience and our own practice, has derived 7 elements, without the implementation of which it is impossible to move from the "Let's go" stage to the "System Development" stage.

Olga Gavura and Natalya Deren, founders of 7CI Group

1 item

Having a vision!

This means understanding the purpose of your company.

Answer the following questions:

  • Why do we exist?
  • For what?
  • What global goals do we want to achieve?
  • What are the key values ​​for our company?

This is the guiding star that can lead the company to success and keep it in a successful state for decades!

The Sony company, for example, defined its mission as early as the 50s: to bring Japanese products to the level of the highest quality products in the world! And this is when goods marked "made in Japan" were considered a symbol of bad tone in the world market.

For our company 7CI Group, we have defined such a global goal — to be an innovative leader in the construction market.

Our mission is to implement investment and construction projects at the highest level, which will significantly increase the attractiveness of Ukraine for foreign investors.

Our core values:

  • Customer
  • Structure
  • Innovativeness
  • The usefulness of our product
  • Efficiency

2 item

Formation and preservation of strong teams!

It is the team that is able to implement the most complex projects.

The team is able to develop and scale the business.

The team is capable of self-development and self-improvement.

A team is an invaluable phenomenon, which is very difficult to achieve (form a team), but it is even more difficult to preserve it!

The most effective and highly developed organizational structure of the company is the project structure. Which consists of project teams.

Our company 7CI Group switched to a project management structure in the summer of 2017. And here are the results we achieved: the volume of sales of our company in 2018 exceeded our sales volume in 2,5 by 2017 times, and the operating profitability of the project portfolio in 2018. exceeded operating profitability by 20% in 2017.

Now our company consists of the following teams: Project teams (5 project implementation teams); Engineering team (design team); Support team (business support team); R&D team (research and development team); PMO team (project office team).

3 item

Employee training!

All great companies knew one secret: the best employees are employees who grew up within their company. For example, Jack Welch is CEO of General Electric. He managed GE for 20 years, and during the years of his management, GE became the most expensive company in the world. But Jack Welch worked at GE for another 20 years before becoming its CEO. And it was Jack Welch who founded the training institute for GE managers.

Here we are not distinguished by originality. At 7CI Group, we constantly train our employees. We train ourselves, attract consultants, coaches, send employees to the best Ukrainian business schools — kmbs, MIND PRO and others.

The best employees are employees who grew up within their company

And in October 2017, the founders of 7CI Group, together with Leo Consulting, became co-founders of the construction project management school PRO PM Construction. In this school, we also train our project managers on the CPM ("Construction Project Manager") program and our project administrators on the CPA ("Building Project Administrator") program.

4 item

Business systematization!

The level of maturity in the company can be determined by the workload of the CEO with operational activities.

In order to free the CEO from operational activities, it is necessary to have a management team and a mature system of business processes. Business processes that are not only described in the company, but also actually working, managed and continuously improved.

For example, in our company we created a team of RMO (Project Management Office). The main goal of this team is to create, implement, transform, support and improve business processes and standards in the company. Accumulate and systematize experience and knowledge in the company. New employees will be trained in corporate standards.

The presence of a management team and a mature system of business processes will free the CEO from operational activities

For example, after the completion of each project, our RMO team helps project teams to form Lessons Learned: what happened in the project and why, what problems arose and how they were dealt with, what should not be done in the next projects, and what must be repeated and to improve And most importantly, the Lessons Learned data are distributed among all project teams so that they can exchange useful experience and learned reflective knowledge.

 

5 item

Business automation!

The 7 CI Group company rightfully considers itself a leader in the Ukrainian construction market in the implementation of an automated project management system.

We are the first construction company in Ukraine to implement Microsoft Project Online.

Today, all employees of our company work in a single Microsoft Office 365 cloud system.

Automation not only increases the speed of the entire system and reduces the number of errors, but also frees the team from tedious operational work

And we are one of the few Ukrainian companies that have implemented a full-fledged project portfolio budgeting system. We did this in a separate block, independently created by our analysts and developed by our programmers on the basis of the 1C software complex.

Why do we consider automation a necessary element for the sustainable development of the system? Because automation not only increases the speed of the entire system and significantly reduces the number of errors, but also because automation frees our valuable team from tedious operational work and frees up the time of our specialists for creativity and development.

6 item

Implementation of Lean in construction!

For the next 2019, we set an ambitious goal for ourselves - to implement Lean in the work of our entire business system. Implement production without losses and the principle of continuous improvement at the level of each of our employees - from the CEO to the auxiliary worker at the facility.

And, of course, after receiving a successful case of this implementation, we will be able to scale these ideas and practices in our school of construction project management PRO PM Construction to many Ukrainian companies.

 

7 item

System integration of functioning and development in business!

The most important final element of the company's transformation, the transition to the "System Development" stage, is the ability to function effectively and at the same time continuously develop.

How will this be done? To do this, it is necessary to implement all the previous elements - train employees, create teams, free individual specialists and entire teams from exhausting operational work, automate processes.

And the main thing is not to demand all this from employees at the same time as they perform urgent and important operational tasks.

Functioning and development must be spread over time or between different specialists

Release employees capable of creating and implementing new operational activities.

Give them time, space and resources for development!

So, 7 basic elements, 7 details necessary for the systematic development of the construction business.

The introduction of these elements is the secret of the success of our company 7CI Group.

Some elements have already been implemented and are working successfully, bearing fruit, some elements we have just started to implement, but we already know exactly when they will be implemented, how we will do it and in which teams.

Perhaps, many of you will say: you have not discovered anything new for us.

It's true, everything is as old as the world, but there is the main detail - for success you need not only to know what you need to do, but to take it and do it!


"God is in the details"

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe