Construction as craft and as a business has been around for thousands of years. Contractors build and maintain the infrastructure that enables society to grow. That history comes a lot of pride. It also brings a lot of difficult to change habits.
“Life favors the specific ask and punishes the vague wish.” - Tim Ferriss
Excellent advice from the book Tribe of Mentors that can be applied to the hiring and management process for contractors.
Every construction project team has seven basic objectives. Expand on these to build great evaluation, development, and troubleshooting tools for your business.
Identify then eliminate your #1 bottleneck. This seems so incredibly obvious and simple but in reality it is very difficult to do for all but the smallest and simplest of contractors. Let’s dive into this a little.
If morale on your team is low then it’s probably your fault. Those words sound harsh but let’s unpack them a little bit and see if we can improve team morale.
Be like water - an amazingly simple and powerful piece of wisdom from Bruce Lee. As the construction industry continues to get more complicated sometimes it is important to back up and look at simplicity.
Talent development is often slowed down because people don’t know how to give productive feedback. The skills of giving, receiving and acting upon feedback can be developed.
A significant number of contractors will be going through an ownership transition during the next decade. These transitions impact many people, especially the owners and the management teams.
Great leaders build an incredible degree of cohesion, skill and sheer determination in their teams. What is critically difficult is striking that balance between helping and helping too much.