The Risks of Vision and Strong Leadership

The strongest leaders at all levels in construction have a clear vision of where they are headed and are relentlessly focused on achieving their goals. They align their teams tightly around the vision, goals, and strategy. This may introduce risks.

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Leadership Tools: Tunnel Vision and Strong Leadership equals Failure. Example: The 1978 United Flight 173.

This is absolutely the leadership required to bring a project out of the ground, set up a new department such as prefab, enter a new market, launch a new branch office or found a contracting business.  

As a contractor grows the leadership styles must also adapt along with the entire team dynamics. The airline industry has learned this through many failures including United Flight 173.  

It would be too easy to blame the captain, but similar incidents had occurred in the past. Root Cause Analysis pointed to deeper cultural and training issues. There hasn’t be an incident like this since.  

Our mission is to help contractors build stronger businesses for the next generation. We spend a significant amount of our time helping prepare leadership teams for succession and have learned many lessons along the way.  

Every failed succession we have seen has been a failure of talent not being properly aligned and not a failure of available capital or deal structure.  

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Definition - Discipline
Consistently Doing what needs to be done even when you don’t want to do it. Motivation is doing what needs to be done when you want to do it – related to desire.
Jack Welch - Any Jerk Short-Term Earnings
The ultimate measure of a leader is how well their business unit performs AFTER they are gone. With the construction industry talent shortages leaders must focus on building other leaders at an accelerated rate just to maintain market position.
Strategic Foundations: What Is Unlikely to Change?
Like construction projects, construction businesses are only as strong as their foundations. Build your strategies around things that are unlikely to change in the long-term (10+ years).