Lead a 'Best in Class' Construction Biz

best-in-class.gifStan is the owner of CompassContractors, specializing in electrical work on office building projects. They primarily work for general contractors as a subcontractor. Stan struggles finding enough time to get everything done and keeping multiple commitments to demanding customers. He finds himself juggling his time between working on bids, estimating, ordering materials, scheduling 25 field workers, making sure the right equipment is on job sites when needed, constant phone calls with foremen asking for advice, and daily job site visits to meet with his foremen and project superintendents. To make matters worse, customers demand he cut prices to win work, cash-flow is tight, his bookkeeper doesn’t get him job cost reports until months after projects are finished, he works over 65 hours per week, and he isn’t making much more money than he pays his top foreman.


This sounds like a typical construction business owner who has reached the limit of what he can handle by himself. He wants to grow, make more money, and do better, but he’s stuck and doesn’t know what to do next. Think back to when you started your company or accepted your new position. You had a vision of what you wanted to achieve. Most business owners want to own an organized and systemized business that’s in control, run by a management team, has plenty of loyal customers, makes a lot of money, and allows for significant downtime and freedom. In order to make this dream become a reality, owners must step up to leadership and quit doing things that bog them down, like doing the work of getting projects built. Effective leaders delegate day to day roles and responsibilities to the right people who are in the right positions, make them accountable to hit the desired targets and results, and focus on growing their business and maximizing their bottom line.


To transition from doing work to leading a great company, you must start thinking like a winning head coach. You don’t see top coaches out on the field playing the game. They’re on the sidelines providing leadership and vision, strategizing with assistant coaches, calling plays, putting the right players in the game, providing motivation and discipline, and removing players when they aren’t performing. What else do great coaches do? They have a written game plan and play book they follow. They have excellent assistant coaches to delegate different parts of their responsibilities to. They hold regular meetings after every game to review the results, such as what worked and what didn’t. They develop a winning strategy for the next game. They meet with individual players to discuss their performance, good or bad. And they hold practice to teach their players techniques required to become the winning team on the field.


Winning coaches keep their jobs by putting the best teams on the field, winning more games than their competition, meeting their overall team goals, and are recognized as the leader of one of the best teams in the league. And in turn seats stay filled, customers are happy, the team achieves its financial targets, and the best available players want to play for a winner. As the head coach of your business, are you creating a winning team? Should you keep your job as the head coach of your company? 

What are CEOs of large public companies responsible and accountable for? RESULTS! Only the best survive the rigorous job of leading a large company. Average or mediocre results are not tolerated. CEOs are required to lead their companies and ensure they make very high net profits for their stockholders in order to keep them satisfied with their performance. No excuses! What other results must effective leaders achieve? GROWTH! The value, net worth, or equity of their companies must grow. Also the company’s revenue must grow every year or the CEO will be replaced.