Third essential has to do with an analogy was back to construction. Does every project have a solid foundation? Open homers quote here is very telling and very true. If you've ever watched a big building being built, maybe it's in the urban center, the area where you live. If you ever watched the initial project get underway, a long time goes by, and all you see is shrouding around this big hole in the ground. Recently, there was a 55 storey tower that was being built in the downtown area of city where I live.
And they had a big huge celebration as they came above ground. They had been, I think, 12 to 14 months of working underground and they were now starting to come up above ground. Well, that's a long time before we see anything of actual structure going on. But that just says how critically important it is to get the foundation, right? Because behind the shrouding in this big hole in the ground, what they were working on in that particular tower, where the pilings and the footings and all of the structural elements that that whole tower is going to stand on and of course, the taller the tower, the more critically important the foundation is. And if you've ever lived in a house, where over time you will see cracks in the drywall or door jams shift, and you have to shave doors down so they open and close properly or the windows don't go up and down smoothly or they don't open because the frames around the windows have twisted a little bit.
The problem is usually in the foundation, if you have water in your basement, it's usually a foundation problem. So it's critically important to have a solid foundation in the buildings that we live in in the buildings we build an equally as important that every project stands on a solid foundation. Because if we don't have a solid foundation under the project, you will have big problems really quickly. When we think about the strategic foundation for projects, what are we talking about? Actually simpler than you might think? We're really talking about honest, truthful answers to three basic questions.
Why are we undertaking this project right now at this time? And what's at stake if we don't do this project, or we fail miserably in our attempt? What are the consequences for failure here? And what is the outcome that we seek? What does success look like? If this project is going to be successful?
How would we recognize it? answers to those three questions are critically important that everybody understand, especially the supervisors, because they're getting these questions Why? Are we doing this project from their staff all the time? Now it's your turn, find this worksheet. And I'd like you to think about one major project that's going on, that you're significantly involved with. And I'd like you to outline the foundation for your particular project.
Why are you doing this? What's at stake? If you don't? What is the outcome that you seek? So that's the worksheet I'd like you to just push pause for a moment, have a conversation with your colleagues if you're working with some colleagues, and make some notes to yourself. Okay, my hope is that you've got some good answers to those three questions for your particular project.
Now, here's the bigger question. What can you do to ensure that every project in your organization is built on a solid foundation? Every project needs to have clear truthful answers to those three questions. What could you do to increase the likelihood that all of the projects are built on a solid foundation Tie to your action plan worksheet. Make a note to yourself