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One Key Person Missing From a Meeting. Hundreds of Millions Lost.
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The meeting had everything. An agenda. A board pack. Senior people. Weather conversations. Possibly biscuits. Coffee and tea. Potable sandwiches during the break. But… What it didn’t have… For years… … was the person appointed to protect the public interest. A chair. Welcome to one of my favourite PPP horror movies. Metronet. The company responsible for upgrading and maintaining large parts of the London Underground under a PPP. The issue is that Transport for London appointed a Partnership Director to promote good governance and help the parties work together. Probably not their original idea… very likely they had to pay an expensive consultant to tell them so… Anyway, it sounds like a person you’d want in the room where Metronet’s direction was set. Right? Well… that person wasn’t invited to its main board until 2006. The problem? Operations started in 2003… And when that person finally was there a few years later, he could attend only as an observer. What can get wrong? By July 2007, Metronet was in administration. Oups… The UK’s National Audit Office estimated the direct loss to taxpayers during the shot of this terrific PPP movie at £170 - £410 million. Beautiful. I’m not going to tell you that the excess of biscuits and sandwitches because of one missing invitation caused Metronet to collapse. No… a little more complex than that. But, as we say in Spanish, “todo suma”… or small details also matter. The people at the table had interests. The person appointed to challenge how those interests affected the project had no seat at the main table for years. A meeting can feel productive… especially in the last 25 min before lunch… and more especially while everyone agrees with everyone else. That’s usually when I start worrying. There is a very expensive mistake in a PPP meetings. You invite the people who could approve the decision. But, you forget the person who could tell you why it was a terrible idea. I’ve put together The TOP 10 Errors During Meetings That Kill Your PPP Deal for people who cannot afford to discover these mistakes in an inquiry report five years later. Link to the course below. But for the time being… Check the attendee list before your next meeting. Use this information at your own risk. PD 1: If you liked this email, don't keep it in secret and forward it to a friend. They will thank you enormously one day. PD 2: If somebody has sent you this email and you want to receive emails like this yourself, visit vicentevalencia.com PD 3: If you want unsubscribe, click the link below. |
Vicente Valencia
Weekly insights on how to perform when it matters | High-stakes decisions. Real situations. No BS. | 👇JOIN +2k readers 👇
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