Investing for Sustainability - Growth Hurts

“I can’t afford to invest more in talent development or process streamlining because we have a bunch of bad projects.”

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This may come from the different levels - for instance a crafts person who is too focused on individual productivity to train their apprentice.  It may come from the Project Manager who is too overloaded with work to train their Project Engineer.

Leadership Tools: Growth Hurts. How effectively are you investing your dollars?

The only way a contractor can truly grow sustainably is to build a culture that is focused on continuous personal-development and teaching others.  Truly great development hurts - it stretches our brains to grow the same way physical exercise stretches our muscles. Most of your team will resist this level of exertion and insist there is an easier way.  Most of your team will rationalize away performance problems and downplay the need for training.  

The management teams of growing contractors systematically lead their teams through extremely rigorous training building them to dominate tomorrow’s construction environment.


Look at your business and the stage of growth it is in.  

Is your team prepared (or preparing) for the next stage of growth?

What pain are you avoiding today that will be 10X worse in the near future?  




3 Critical Decisions for Success
As you look forward toward the new year, objectively evaluate yourself on the three critical decisions we all must make on a regular basis
Change Order Profit Improvement
A 10% improvement in change order pricing for a $50M per year contractor will add $500K to their bottom line. This is not about simply marking up the change more, but rather, including the many costs that are typically missed or undervalued.
Succession - There is No One Best Way
As systems become more complex (or V.U.C.A.), such as operating a company or succession planning, there is not a single “One Best Way” that will work in all situations.