Cranium Over-Communicates for Project Success
September 27th, 2002 by HalA few weeks ago I wrote about Patrick Lencioni's Leadership Trilogy. In his book Four Obsessions of an Effective Executive he proposes two must-have disciplines:
..create organizational clarity
..over-communicate organizational clarity
One company, Cranium, profiled by INC Magazine Inside the Smartest Little Company in America attributes their success to these disciplines. They've done it by developing their own vocabulary.
Why am I writing about a toy company? To show the power of the principles. Cranium is a product development company that relies heavily on their ability to innovate. As such they are always doing projects. To my knowledge they are not using a lean approach. However, they are working with a variety of people on an always-distributed basis for getting their new products to market.
The founders came from Microsoft. That's right. And they brought the MS way of product development with them. One of the hallmarks of MS is the attention given to communicating the goal. (A computer on every desk and in every home) Cranium's goal: to create moments in a game where every player can shine — appearing smart and funny in front of their teammates. Cranium took this one step further. They created a vocabulary so everyone associated with a project would know just how to act. They call it CHIFF: clever, high quality, innovative, friendly, and fun. They go all out making sure every employee and every partner understands the goal and the guiding principles. By over-communicating just these two things Cranium now sits at the top of the heap. And the odds of any new game surviving, let alone making it to the top, are a long shot.
So, what could we be doing? I often see teams go to the step of setting a goal and agreeing to guiding principles, but then fail to take it the next step: over-communicating. "How many times do I have to say…?" is a project managers lament. When it comes to communicating the goal and the principles (or standards) we can't say them enough. Put that in your cranium.
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