Leading Growth through Building People

Southwest Airlines disrupted the airline industry by a relentless focus on building their people around a culture of fun, hard work, and hands-on leadership.

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The contractors who truly have that same level of focus on their people and culture will dominate the industry tomorrow. 

Leadership Tools: Leading Growth Through a Focus on Building People. Quotes by Mikel Bowman, General Manager and Safety Specialist at Turner Mining Group and Herb Kelleher, Founder of Southwest Airlines.

Mikel Bowman from Turner Mining Group in an excellent video by Aaron Witt commented:

“We are more of a people company that does mining services.” 


Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan in the book Execution comment that:

“Leaders need to commit as much as 40 percent of their time and emotional energy, in one form or another, to selecting, appraising, and developing people.” 


You can see through the daily posts by leaders like Keaton Turner what spending this kind of time on people really looks like. These posts aren’t marketing fluff and can’t be faked. There is no way that doesn’t translate into long-term sustainable growth.  

We are at a major inflection point in the industry, including a major shortage of talent along with evolving project delivery methods and rapidly accelerating technologies.  


How much of your time did you spend on developing people last week? What’s your plan this week?




Stop Doing Things - Peter F. Drucker
The tendency as a leader’s role evolves is to keep adding things to their list of responsibilities and to their team. What’s important is to regularly pause and reflect about what you can STOP doing to allow for new ideas if they are really better.
OpEx (Benchmarks, Trends, Forecasts, and Predictions)
Operational excellence including financing and financial outcomes along with critical internal functions like supply chain, virtual construction (BIM), fabrication, and technology.
Process Improvement and Cycle Times
When contractors grow inefficient processes usually get substantially more inefficient dramatically changing the Return on Investment (ROI) model. Saving a few minutes over 1,000 cycles per month means $60K+ potential savings over a couple years.