Teams are rising in the rankings, teams are falling in the rankings, with the range of improvement large. By inspection the most spectacular rises amongst the top twenty in the rankings are: AECOMmanders up 39 places; MMB1 (Mott Mac Bentley) up 26 places; CurtLUSH (Curtins) up 24 places; Sweco Solihull up 19 places; Easy as ABV (Black and Veatch) up 17 places; and MOTTly Crew ( MOttMac) up 15. These movements reflect the range of improvement in the performance score which has a high of 26% achieved by KBR's Highwaymen. So good improvements are possible with the average of positive improvements being over 14%. The standard deviation of positive improvements of 7% indicates the great range of performances. Amongst the top six there are two newcomers, two improving their position and two slipping a little.
This analysis indicates great turbulence in the performances. This suggests that not all teams may not be as disciplined as they could be. There will be more significant changes to come in the remaining rounds.
The tutorial helps guide teams on their decisions and deals with the mechanics and the calculations and the relationships between the various factors. These must be understood. There are too many for each team member to deal them all in the time frame, but with tasks allocated amongst each team member they should have clearly defined responsibilities. The team members must be an expert in their area of responsibility. In other words, the team member is an individual specialist. The individual team member needs to understand all aspects of the input to the decisions for which they are responsible.
At the Board meeting, when taking decisions, the team members (ie Board Directors) need to present clear proposals with good sound reasoning, which the Board needs to synthesise. The CEO and Board should interrogate each Director to test that their recommendations are soundly based and have not been arrived at on a casual basis. In this way, the quality of each suggested decision is evaluated.
The eventual decisions may well be compromises. The test is the common, good not an individual Director's own position. This is teamwork in action. This all requires leadership. The question raised before is whether your leadership is strong enough to ensure that each team member is making a good contribution. Is teamwork happening? Is each decision interrogated and tested? Are the final decisions sound and well understood? No decision should be taken without the consequences and the risks being understood. These are the key lessons from the MERIT experience: disciplined decision making; teamwork and leadership, they all go together. Anything less will not succeed and will make the road ahead very bumpy.
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The Sponsor's Award for Sponsors with three or more teams entered has its own league table currently the rankings are Atkins India, KBR, Sweco UK, AECOM, Atkins UK, Fluor, Kier, Mott MacDonald, Arup, Taylor Woodrow/Vinci, Wood and Capita. With only 10% separating the top ten.