Failure is a Potent Teacher

Failure is a very potent teacher for construction contractors if:

D. Brown Management Profile Picture
Share
Leadership Tools: Failure is a Potent Teacher.
  • You don’t define failure just as CATASTROPHIC events that seriously damage your business.  
  • You define failure broadly as ANYTHING that is not adding value to the customer or slowing your progress.  
  • You embrace failure as part of the learning process diving deeply into the Root Cause Analysis (RCA). 
  • You develop a culture and systems so that everyone on the team thinks about the business as a series of interrelated cycles.  Consider all the interrelated cycles from the installation of a light fixture in the field to to the monthly project review meetings to the annual business planning process.  
  • Your whole team views each cycle as an opportunity to improve (PDCA)
  • You have developed structured processes for continuously updating your Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) as your team learns then rolling them out across the company improving the whole team’s capabilities.  

Book Resources:

The Five Elements of Effective Thinking

Thinking in Bets

Related LinkedIn Posts:  

Churchill - Failure is NOT Fatal

Fail 9 Times to Succeed




Different Heights Require Different Skills and Gear
As contracting businesses grow the leadership focus, strategy, org structure and processes must change. Think about building a business the same as you would hiking up a mountain with each different phase requiring different skills and different gear.
Incentive Compensation for Contractors - Prerequisites
From Stephen Covey’s top selling book, “Seven Habits for Highly Effective People,” Habit #2 is to “Start With The End in Mind.” This principle applies to organizations in general and incentive programs in particular.
Aligning Career and Company Trajectories
Alignment of the people and job roles within a contracting business is what creates the synergies (1+1=3). Alignment of career and business trajectories is what makes both sustainable.