Crossrail at its peak has been the largest infrastructure programme in Europe. The Crossrail East team completed track upgrades and station improvements from Central London heading east to Shenfield and Abbey Wood. For an infrastructure programme of such national importance, the leadership recognized that they needed to understand potential risks, perceptions of risk, and team dynamics for the project to come to successful completion.
Getting a consistent message from a leadership team to the delivery team is paramount in creating an effective team. On this project I had the pleasure of working with a talented, tight-knit leadership team who communicated well with one another. When we tested individual assumptions about risk, we found that even amongst this leadership team they were vastly different. People had differing perspectives, past experiences and information. Unchecked, one member will assume that their perception is the same as the other – why wouldn’t it be? Taking the time to understand each other’s perceptions at the leadership level enabled a great level of understanding and clarity of single message to be cascaded to the team.
Edward Moore