Oversight of the rebuilding of the World Trade Center after the 9-11 terrorist attack fell to Steve Plate, the Port Authority director of construction. It was a massive, complex project fraught with thousands of political, emotional, and logistical challenges and very much done in the public view.
While it would have been easy for Plate to become overwhelmed with all that had to be coordinated, he boiled down the construction metric to its essence. Once the work began, his staff reported to him “on the half hour, every half hour” first with updates on how much steel had been poured and later, how many glass panels had been installed. He opted for an extremely simple measure, performed with extreme frequency to understand how the project was progressing.
The next time you are involved with a complex undertaking, take a lesson from Plate and make your oversight as uncomplicated as possible. You may benefit from receiving updates more often, but if you’re hearing about the right measures you don’t need to drown from receiving too many of them.
Source: America’s Tower: One World Trade Center by Josh Sanburn, Time Inc. Specials, 2014
