Failure is a Potent Teacher

Failure is a very potent teacher for construction contractors if:

D. Brown Management Profile Picture
Share
Leadership Tools: Failure is a Potent Teacher.
  • You don’t define failure just as CATASTROPHIC events that seriously damage your business.  
  • You define failure broadly as ANYTHING that is not adding value to the customer or slowing your progress.  
  • You embrace failure as part of the learning process diving deeply into the Root Cause Analysis (RCA). 
  • You develop a culture and systems so that everyone on the team thinks about the business as a series of interrelated cycles.  Consider all the interrelated cycles from the installation of a light fixture in the field to to the monthly project review meetings to the annual business planning process.  
  • Your whole team views each cycle as an opportunity to improve (PDCA)
  • You have developed structured processes for continuously updating your Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) as your team learns then rolling them out across the company improving the whole team’s capabilities.  

Book Resources:

The Five Elements of Effective Thinking

Thinking in Bets

Related LinkedIn Posts:  

Churchill - Failure is NOT Fatal

Fail 9 Times to Succeed




Levels of Productivity
Making major improvements to labor productivity for contractors starts at the company level and must be rigorously managed all the way down to the individual steps in each task.
Definition of Sustainability
How sustainable is your construction business? Not your ability to build sustainable buildings, but the true sustainability of your business.
Technology Integration - Critical Inflection Points and Streamlining Workflows
Construction technology can no longer be treated like a “Project” with a beginning, middle, and end to the implementation. There are now hundreds of specialized technology tools that can be implemented by contractors and each add individual value.