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




The Four Traits of Successful Executives
There is a lot more to success than being charismatic and extroverted with a perfect track record. The ghSMART company conducted research on over 2,000 leaders, correlating detailed notes from the candidate screening process with their results as leaders.
Definitions for The Business of Building
Building a project requires knowledge and skill in using thousands of construction specific definitions, acronyms, and metrics. Building a business including the development of people has its own vocabulary that forms the foundation of communication.
Appearance and Experience of Management Control
As your career develops and you grow into roles of greater responsibility, one of the biggest challenges is what Jennifer Garvey Berger calls “The paradox of the appearance of increasing control and the experience of decreasing control.”