The construction business is a hard way to make money. There are 5,141 things that are out of your control and can go wrong on every project daily. For example, you can’t control who shows up for work, if equipment will break down, whether the plans are complete and accurate, whether you will get paid or encounter unforeseen problems, whether materials will arrive when needed, or the weather. On top of this, you have a guaranteed price to perform a scope of work with no guarantees that anything will go as planned. This creates conflicts and challenges for contractors to overcome and handle every day. This leads to the following questions: What should be your primary focus, what should you handle, and what should you delegate to other team members?
Contractors struggle daily to handle emergencies, put out fires, and get everything done no matter how hard they try. Why? You’re simultaneously juggling multiple activities and responsibilities. To manage and lead your company towards the desired results, including profitable growth, building a strong management team, implementing sound systems, performing quality workmanship, creating a safe workplace environment, and a winning team, you need four separate talents to succeed. This group has the specific abilities, strengths, and skills required to manage and lead your company. These roles are visionary leader, managing manager, support team, and the player.
Without all four key positions filled with the right people and talent, your company will stay stuck and never reach its full potential. To make it worse, many business owners think they are the ones to perform all these functions. Business owners tend to be good leaders but are often poor managers and weak accountants. In fact, most people excel in one specific talent area, such as estimating, sales, project management, or supervision. When the owner tries to handle all four areas of responsibility, they have a tough time delegating, letting go, growing their company, holding people accountable, hiring the right employees, maintaining regular meeting schedules, enforcing company standards or systems, and maximizing the bottom line.
Visionary leader
The visionary leader is usually the business owner who founded the company. They have positive attitudes, which inspire people to follow their leadership and vision, and they are extremely passionate about the future and where the company is going. Typically, these people are dreamers and creators of business vision, mission, and focus and have lots of energy. They are the inspiring motivators and head coaches and get excited about where the company is headed and what it can become. They love new ideas, challenges, innovation, and change. The leader-coach has many new ideas, makes quick decisions, is impatient, doesn’t like details or follow-up, and has trouble staying focused on organizational systems and procedures. They also have trouble holding people accountable, tend to tolerate poor performers rather than demand results, and don’t like to fire or discipline their employees.
Managing manager
The managing manager acts as the general operations manager who directly supervises people or oversees operations, departments, or teams. They are very organized and systemized and detail-orientated team builders who hold regular meetings, enforce company standards and systems, hold people accountable, ensure tasks are done accurately and on time, and take charge of every situation or challenge they face. They like to use checklists, scorecards, systems, and agendas. They always follow up on details and tasks required to be completed by their staff and hold people accountable and responsible for meeting timelines and deadlines. They focus on their direct reports by monitoring and reviewing the progress on achieving expected results, schedules, and budgets. Their desk is organized and neat, and everything is in the right place. Managing managers also don’t have difficulty mentoring, coaching, helping, and encouraging employees; delegating tasks; letting employees know how they’re doing and being direct; and warning or firing poor performers.
Support team
The support team is responsible for managing company support functions, including finances, accounting, and administration. They oversee and keep track of financial matters, results, performance, accounting, payables, and receivables. Administrators manage and organize the company systems, procedures, checklists, files, paperwork, human resources, insurance, technology, and office management. They manage and handle the responsibilities and tasks required to keep the company running efficiently and smoothly. They like to present reports to the leaders of their company. They are organized, multi-taskers, and like detail, while they sweat the small stuff and are the glue that keeps the machine running.
Player
Players are the people who do the work, and every person has a unique area of talent, skill, or responsibility to perform. Most players are the best in the area in which they excel. Talented players can be good workers in sales, estimating, project management, field supervision, safety, equipment, production, customer relations, quality control, craft trades, accounting, technology, or many other work areas. Workers fail when they stray from their area of talent and handle tasks not within their strengths, gifts, or skills. For example, estimators are not usually good at sales, superintendents are not generally good at numbers or managing job costs, bookkeepers are not typically good as project administrators or office managers, and business owners are
not generally good at managing people or details.
You can’t play every position and win
In football, specific coaching and playing positions are required to build a winning team. You wouldn’t have the head coach order supplies or manage the travel and equipment requirements. You would never put the safety in as the center or the quarterback as a kicker. In construction, you wouldn’t have the owner schedule crews, hire field workers, or order materials. Everyone has specific gifts and talents they are born with. Each player should do what they do best and not take on responsibilities they aren’t built for in order to grow, make a profit, and win the game.
Growing businesses struggle when owners try to wear every hat and juggle all the plates required to lead and manage their company. Sometimes, owners think they’re the best at every talent and skill needed to run the entire company, from pricing, ordering, negotiating, selling, contracting, supervising, scheduling, approving invoices, hiring, managing equipment, setting salaries, or setting systems. When someone thinks they’re good at everything, they don’t let go of decisions or delegate, do too many tasks, and delay hiring the right players to make the company a better organization.
An owner with the role of visionary leader sees the big picture and keeps everyone focused on a better future. You’re also likely the best motivator, innovator, creator, negotiator, presenter, and salesperson in the company. However, you’re likely not the right person to manage and supervise people, projects, or details. As a stubborn company owner, you try to organize and hold people accountable to no avail, which escalates problems and reduces results. As things worsen, results slip below expectations, and the best people often leave for better opportunities or working environments—all because you didn’t realize you shouldn’t do all the work. As things deteriorate, you lose control, frustration continues, and you aren’t sure how to improve the company’s condition. To survive, you continue doing too much yourself and stay stuck as the barrier to overall improvement progress.
What positions do you need to fill?
When construction business owners attempt to handle activities and accountabilities they’re not talented in, they fail. Suppose your talents are estimating and your weakness is managing and holding people accountable. In that case, you’ll have to find a responsible manager who’s better at handling the people part of your company. You need great managing managers to oversee their direct reports in estimating, project management, field supervision, finances, and administration. Decide which management position you need to fill and then promote or hire. The key is to focus on your talent and what you should do to build a great company. You must decide to be the visionary leader, selling and winning more work by finding and developing profitable customers. Let go of the areas you’re not talented in or don’t want to handle, and find great people to allow your business to grow. Some think they can’t afford to hire top talent but will never make enough money by doing all the work they shouldn’t be doing. Without the right people in the correct positions, your company will stay stuck and
will continue to struggle. Stop wearing too many hats and stop doing too much yourself.
George Hedley, CPBC, is a certified professional construction business coach and speaker. He helps contractors build better businesses, grow, profit, improve estimating and field production, and get their companies to work. He is the best-selling author of Get Your Construction Business To Always Make A Profit, available on Amazon.com. To schedule a free introductory coaching session, get his monthly Hardhat Hedlines Biz-Tips e-newsletter, download his template package, or watch his webinars and online video courses, visit ConstructionBusinessCoaching.com or email GH@HardhatBizcoach.com.
