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?  




Project Delivery - Design-Bid-Build
The Design-Bid-Build (DBB) method of project delivery is easily the most familiar to owners, architects, and contractors. No contractor should ever lose their ability to compete, win, and build profitable projects using this method of delivery.
Laws Control the Lesser Man
Growing construction businesses need processes and accountability systems the same way society needs laws, police, courts and jails. As a contractor starts growing leadership needs to put some processes in place to keep things running smooth.
Focused Resources = Maximum Results
Contracting is a relatively low-margin and high-risk business. Contractors can’t afford to spread out their resources on projects or in their businesses. Leaders must put maximum resources behind their biggest bottlenecks or opportunities.