Project Maverick: what’s that all about? 5 questions to Program Manager Natasja Munne-Soekhoe
1. What is Project Maverick and where does the name come from?
“Project Maverick is a change process initiated by Circet Operations Belgium. It was commissioned by Bart Faber, Head of Operations. We want to significantly improve the way we work across the organisation. The name is a nod to the film Top Gun. We compare Circet to flying an airplane: we have to keep it in the air (keep our company running), while working on the engines in the meantime. All that without causing any inconvenience to the customer. A maverick is also someone who pushes boundaries and goes a little bit further than the competition - that’s what we try to do with Circet.”
2. Why are we going to work in customer value chains (CVCs)?
“During our strong growth in recent years, we continuously created new business units (new customers). Customer expectations and speed always took precedence over structure, work processes, the right digital tools, and so on. In order to grow in a healthy way, we want to do things differently going forward: we are defining our services in a customer value chain, which is a chain of steps to fulfill customer expectations. By streamlining all processes, we’ll work more efficiently. The fact that the machine runs smoothly also benefits our image.”
“By fully standardising and by developing workflows. We are pooling the knowledge and expertise of our colleagues to create, for example, scripts, templates, checklists, and clear work instructions for all actions and projects. This ranges from the way a site is set up to drawing up an invoice. It allows us to reduce our risk of errors, estimate costs better, etc. We also get more insight into the conditions for our success. We discuss our joint targets and results in team meetings. We look back: what could we have done better? But also ahead: do we have enough work to keep us busy in the coming weeks? We also discuss ways to keep improving as a team.”
4. How does Maverick help Circet colleagues move forward?
“It makes us all more efficient. We improve our collaboration with other teams and gain more insight into our performance. By standardising our way of working as much as possible, we avoid duplication of work and create clarity about roles and responsibilities. Each team will perfectly know what their duties entail in the big picture. This will enable us to gradually optimize our way of working. Such a uniform approach will also help attract new talent.”
“Project Maverick is the opportunity to leverage the knowledge and expertise of our operational and technical heroes. We will therefore set up the structure together with your colleagues. You will soon be able to read on the Sharepoint which team members are involved in which CVCs. In addition, there is a project team that manages this project. But otherwise, the method we are setting up belongs to all of us. Anyone can make suggestions to improve work processes, from technicians to management. You can submit your ideas through a CVC team member. We need everyone’s support to become the ‘employer of first choice’ whose business is running like clockwork.”
How does the new way of working help Circet colleagues move forward?
You will find out in the next newsletters!