The longest NBA season in history finished last week, after teams spent up to 95 days in the "bubble" at Walt Disney World's ESPN Wide World of Sports complex. In a recent interview about the experience, Jared Dudley, a veteran bench-warming virtual player-coach was explaining how he came to believe that Rajon Rondo is, next to LeBron James, the highest IQ player in the league. His proof didn't come from what "Playoff Rondo" did on the floor, but rather what he saw Rondo see during film sessions. Dudley explained in detail how Rondo was able to break down James Harden's step-back timing, how he came up with the plan to pressure Jimmy Butler with whoever was closest to him in transition, and how he learned what it would take to effectively contest the three point shot of Duncan Robinson. To figure it all out required Rondo to slow down past games, carefully analyze outcomes and spot patterns, and then communicate that information to teammates with confidence and evidence.

This description reminded me of how the best construction teams carefully study each day's job production plans to learn everything possible before they go out to the job again, but also how that practice is inconsistently followed and insufficiently leveraged. When teams are at their best, I've seen them "watch the game tape" to:

• Refine the actual load factors vs. the expected load factors for a given set of trucks on a particular job
• Identify production incidents that hadn't been created that required further research that led to adjusted plans and continuous improvement action items
• Study the plant's load cadence vs. the schedule to determine where better coordination is required
• Spot plant manufacturing bottlenecks that could be solved by rearranging production timing, production rates, and inventory strategies
• Determine the actual possible net productive cycle time to refine the trucking demand curve
• Review alternative routes taken to find the optimal one to communicate out to drivers
• Better sync the job site production start time with the inbound flow of materials
• Understand the actual impact of train-related stoppages on material flow to determine the probable cost-benefit of adding buffer capacity
• Identify planning error tendencies by planner to see opportunities to increase planning training and buttress planning decision making
• Refine expected production rates using benchmarks
• Find opportunities to choose better supply and dump site locations, and more efficiently dispatch trucks based on their locations and equipment types.

And that list just scratches the surface of what teams learn when they carefully study their work.

Unfortunately, it's all too common for teams to only watch the game tape when there's "a problem" (a.k.a., when the job is losing money). To go back to the basketball analogy, imagine if Frank Vogel, the L.A. Lakers' head coach, only coached when they were losing, and only watched the games in which they were blown out. That would cause his team to play up or down to their competition, not achieve anywhere near their potential, and ultimately be good but never great. Instead, the best coaches study every moment of every game to find what works and what doesn't in the details so that they can refine their game plans in a never-ending continuous improvement loop.

Specifically, we recommend that all teams consider the following practices:

• Meet regularly (up to twice a day!) to review job performance in detail to spot opportunities to refine planning and execution
• Use all of the analytical tools at your disposal (plan monitoring, job history, etc) to study production and supply
• Record your findings in plan comments and incidents so that knowledge is retained and shared with your entire team
• Create job production plan alarms so that you're notified proactively at pre-defined production moments to test hypotheses and make refinements
• Verify assertions using data to avoid over-reacting to anomalous events
• Teach everyone that might benefit from these techniques how to do it themselves

And of course, the XBE team is here to help in any way that we can. While we don't have the field experience of your teams, we've watched a lot of game tape and have seen a variety of approaches! The techniques above work, and they require education and practice. There's no need to delay - you can start today.