Panama, July 7, 2020

Implementing the Thought (CTFAR) Model in a real world

situation.
Miguel´s Case.
By Miguel Bonato

1. Purpose.
The scope of this essay is to expose and analyze how I applied the CTFAR model to a real
work situation and what was its result, to submit it to my peers for their feedback.

2. The Problem
I was the manager of a construction project last year, which had over 120 workers
and one of them was a senior quality control engineer named “Mr X”. The role of any
quality control engineer is to "control quality," that is, ensure that project deliverables
meet the quality required by the legal or customer´s standards. The project had a
contract with severe fines for delays, so any "delay" or something similar,
immediately I considered it, as a hostile (person or situation).
Every time we finished a deliverable and before presenting it to the customer, I had
to submit it to Mr X for quality approval, and then deliver the product to the customer.
Mr X is an old school person, he is especially meticulous during his reviews and
sometimes we cannot move forward on the project until we get his approval, and
time was a resource that we did not have.

3. Thought Model Elements and Rationale

3.1. Circumstances

From the beginning, especially in the engineering phase, the project was carried out
according to plan. When we reached the construction phase, we started to
experience some delays, but nothing out of the ordinary, we were almost 3% behind.
As time passed, we began to notice increases in delays with some consistency,
reaching a delay of more than 10%. After a difficult meeting with the client, he
claimed the increased delay in the project and threatened to start applying the
clauses of the contract, which implied the payment of fines.

Leaving that meeting, I met with the project planning and control leader to investigate
where the bottleneck was that was holding us back in our progress. He immediately
told me: the cause of our continuous delays has a name: Mr X. He showed me a
chart with the time it took Mr X to approve things, once they were delivered to him.
Almost half of the delays were due to quality control tasks.

3.2. Thought

My first reaction to that information was to fire Mr X, but replacing him was going to
mean more delay, and although it was the first time I had worked with Mr X, I had
not heard any complaints from him, from the other project managers. So several
thoughts or "hypotheses" came to mind:

 He is already an older person and you are losing faculties

 b) You want to sabotage the project
 He should know that if I fire him, I would not recommend him for any other
project
 What he does is routine work and he does not realize how late we are and
the consequences of that delay for the whole team
 He wants people see that he has the power to delay a project at his
convenience

3.3. Feel

Mr. X was not my first choice to form the team, he knew it, and therefore, although
our treatment was courteous, it was never a friendly dialogue. Every time I met him,
our conversations were eminently technical, trying to keep them as short as possible
because he talks very slowly and wanted to explain everything he did, situation that
bored me after hearing him 30 seconds in a row.

3.4. Action

So, as a consequence of considering him as an intruder on my project team, he was

a slow-talking person and every time I asked him something, I had to wait for a
response of at least 5 minutes long. I got used to meeting him every two weeks on
Fridays, while with the rest of the team I did it at least weekly and left him late in the
afternoon, in order to see if he hurried and didn't talk as much. Although most of the
time I preferred to ignore him.

3.5. Result
The project had a delay of 15% and no idea how to solve it and I was still wondering
why no one had complained about Mr X.

3.6. Change of point of view

I adopt these actions.

I was surprised by the fact that no one had complained about his performance, so I decided
to change my thoughts and ask myself the following questions:

 Why has no one complained about its performance? Will I be responsible for its
performance?
 2) Have I taken the time to explain what my expectations are regarding your work?
 3) What may be going through his life right now?

By changing questions, I removed my biases and invited him out for lunch after work. He
was surprised when he saw that no one else was invited to the restaurant and he thought
that he was going to fire him (he told me after lunch). At first, we had a polite but not pleasant
conversation, as our relationship had been so far. So, I started talking about the project and
the situation we had regarding delays. At that moment, he said: If you are going to fire me,
do it now, so I pay my bill and go home. At that time, I understood the degree of tension that
we both had and that it was necessary to try something new. I replied that I was not going
to fire him, but I did not understand his lack of commitment to the project, making everything
that required his approval take at least 25% more time than it normally took another
engineer. The tones we used were no longer polite, and he who always spoke slowly began
to speak very very fast.

Then he started telling me about all the things he was going through, since the vehicle for
the inspections was always occupied by other people, he didn't like the place where he had
his desk, he needed to hire more staff until he felt that I did not appreciated him and his
work.

As I saw that, they were all things that he was guilty of in some, in me and in others both,
but in all of them, I could help to solve them. At that moment, I said: wait, I'm going to write
down everything you just told me in this napkin; And I asked: if we find a solution to most of
these requirements, how will your performance at work change? He replied: I promise you
that in 14 days I will recover that delay. I took the napkin, I signed it, I shook his hand and I
said: we have a deal, if I don't follow it and I complain, you can show me this napkin with my
signature and you can tell me, do your part of the deal. Immediately I wrote my points on
another napkin and made him sign them: And I said: I invite you to this same place in this
same place within 15 days to see how we are doing with our "contracts". We enter at the
restaurant as enemies and we leave as partners. Six months after that meeting (*: See the
Post scriptum below), we were able to deliver the project on time and currently Mr X is a
valued member of my team on another project.
4. Conclusion
Knowing and implementing the CTFAR model in real situations allows us to discern between
circumstances and our thoughts, allowing us to act more objectively and fairly. As managers,
it is our obligation to recognize that our egos sometimes sabotage our judgment and the
best way to diagnose that " thought contamination " is precisely by separating the facts from
the opinions.

In summary, the lessons I learned through this situation were:

1) Human beings talk a lot but rarely communicate effectively.

2) There are always two or more interpretations of a fact

3) Although it is difficult to change our point of view, it is always useful to know what the
other person thinks

4) You should never assume information. You need to validate it

I apologize for my level of English. Thanks for reading my essay. I hope you liked it as I liked
writing it.

Miguel Bonato

PS: Although it took Mr X a month to return to the schedule, I did not fulfill the 15 days of
our contract either, but I also honored all the points.