True or false? Large or small construction company owners should be focused on the same top priorities as successful leaders of major Fortune 500 corporations. Rather than staying focused on top priorities, most construction company owners get stuck focusing too much time on estimates, contracts, customers, project schedules, field production, project management, equipment logistics or collecting money.
What are Your Top Priorities?
Look at your calendar. Where you spend your time is your real focus. To improve your business, achieve great results and become the best leader you can be, what will provide the highest return on your time and energy?
When you spend your time doing too much yourself, you don’t focus on what’ll produce high results. As I like to say: “Your business is currently designed to produce the results you’re currently getting!” Results are the outside indicator of the inside problem and are determined by what you focus on and do during the day as the leader. By doing what you always do, you get the same results you always get.
Consider these challenges you might face:
- Not enough high-margin loyal customers? Perhaps your focus on building customer relationships, marketing and sales is less than needed!
- Not enough profit? Perhaps your systems and processes aren’t standardized, followed or enforced by you or your managers!
- Jobs coming in over budget? Perhaps your job-cost tracking and production scorecards are not monitored or in place!
- Company profits less than desired? Perhaps you don’t know and watch your numbers like you should!
- Can’t find any good help? Perhaps you aren’t focused on finding, attracting, paying, motivating and retaining the best talent available!
- Business struggling? Perhaps you haven’t taken the time to update your business plan, strategy, structure, systems, targets and goals!
Are You Afraid to Be a Leader?
Most business owners know what they need to do to achieve better results. But they don’t do what they need to do, and then make lots of excuses why they can’t. The number one reason poor leaders fail is FEAR! Fear of failure, making bad decisions, trusting others, letting go, hiring the wrong people, losing money or taking a risk. This results in the inability to build a strong management team, delegate, hire, fire, hold people accountable, implement systems, try new markets, find new customers or say no.
Leader: Person in charge of a company who leads, directs, coordinates, inspires and influences others to achieve expected results. Leaders establish and share their clear, focused vision and picture of targets, goals, strategies, systems and processes. They motivate and inspire the team to follow by providing coaching, feedback and statistics to keep the team on track headed in the right direction.
The company leader is 100% responsible for results: sales, profits, growth, quality, customer service, people, management, etc. Poor leaders blame stagnant results on circumstances beyond their control. Ineffective leaders wait for a customer to call, something good to happen, trained people to apply for work, or some other miraculous event, while they don’t do anything different. In other words, they watch it happen rather than make it happen.
Leaders Change Themselves First!
Achieving great results is the main indicator of the leader’s vision and performance. Real leaders have to try new ideas, change their behavior, change their markets and do something different. Over 90% of employees rate their company leadership below excellent. The top 10% of companies have leaders who continually look for new ways to improve and be different than their competition.
Seven Priorities Leaders Focus On!
Fortune 500 company CEOs and presidents are paid to lead and achieve expected results. As company leaders, they stay primarily focused on what matters to create business success. Their top leadership vision always includes these priorities:
- Profitable sales revenue growth
- Winning strategy with written enforced systems
- High net profits
- Grow equity and business value
- Find, train and retain top talent
- Seek, obtain and retain high-margin customers
- Stay ahead of future economic and business trends
Lead and Decide What to Focus on First
Which of these seven top company leader priorities do you need to focus more time, effort and energy on? To start, decide where your company needs to improve.
- Customers: Seek customers and projects awarded via negotiations or by being the low bidder against too many competitors.
- Projects: Seek easy-to-build jobs with lots of competition versus high barrier-to-entry difficult customers and complex projects.
- Field Productivity: Allow your foremen and supervisors to continue working without job-cost labor targets, goals and feedback, or implement weekly job-cost tracking, accountability production meetings, scorecards and performance-based incentives.
- Systems: Run your business without enforced procedures and systems, or develop and enforce a company-wide written playbook with clear standards everyone follows without exceptions.
- Core Values: Enforce your business principles or let your people decide if they will be team players with or without positive attitudes, respect and fairness.
- Equipment: Keep buying equipment you don’t get full and efficient use out of or focus on pro-actively managing and buying equipment that’s used and maintained properly and provides a positive financial return.
- Innovation: Decide to postpone and not invest in the latest technology or make it your priority to be the first to implement and upgrade to the current fully integrated software to enhance your knowledge and ability to win and manage high-margin, high-profile projects and customers.
- Future-Think: Don’t stay in touch with current industry and future economic trends by continuing to act like the boom times will never end or start planning and thinking about what happens if there’s a slowdown in the near future.
- Growth: Continue to expand, hire and win more work than you can properly manage or lead your company with what you can handle well at the utmost profit margin and efficiency.
Being an effective leader starts with discovering your role. Your role as the leader is to transform your company into the best it can be and achieve fully available potential results. The key is focus! What will you focus on to become a great leader and build a better business?
George Hedley, CSP, CPBC, helps contractors grow and profit as a professional business coach, popular speaker and peer group leader. He is the author of “Get Your Construction Business to Always Make a Profit!” and “Hardhat BIZSCHOOL Online University” available—on his website. Visit www.hardhatbizschool.com for more information.
