Four Steps to Sustainable Growth (10+10=0)

All contractors go through different stages of growth.

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Leadership Tools: 10 + 10 = 0

Growing contractors face an overwhelming amount of problems and opportunities as they move through the different stages of growth. There will never be enough resources to work on all of them, especially with the shortage of talent facing the construction industry.  

"Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe."

Abraham Lincoln

The equivalent for the leadership teams of growing contractors is to spend a significant amount of time truly identifying the #1 bottleneck or opportunity in their entire value stream.  Then breaking it down into an actionable objective with key results that everyone can align around rather than a broad vision.   

This seems simple but in reality is VERY challenging, especially as a business grows. This is an area where experienced 3rd parties can add significant value because they don’t have all the biases that are inevitable with management teams who are looking at the myriad of problems and opportunities every day.  

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Accelerated Development - Closing the Gap
The shortage of critical talent in the construction industry will be 3X worse by 2020 and will continue to worsen through 2030. The only way that we will be able to close this gap is if we focus on accelerating the development of people.
Connecting Metrics to Activities and Outcomes
Outcomes are created through doing the right activities. Data is only a proxy for that activity and a metric is a synthesis of lots of data points. Metrics are valuable, but always have a skeptical view of proxies for performance, especially with growth.
General Mattis - Operations Occur at the Speed of Trust
Retired General Jim Mattis uses the word trust 65+ times in Call Sign Chaos: Learning to Lead.  "Trusted personal relationships are the foundation for effective fighting teams, whether on the playing field, the boardroom, or the battlefield."