Plan Ahead, Adjust Early, and Accelerate Recovery

Construction in any given industry sector or geographical area is a cyclical business.

D. Brown Management Profile Picture
Share
Leadership Tools: Plan ahead, adjust early, and accelerate recovery.

There are four major levers a contractor can pull to ensure the business performs well throughout all economic cycles. 

  1. Diversifying across several counter-cyclical industry sectors and/or geographies.  
  2. Focus on cross-training core team members so they are agile enough to move between types of projects and even geographies as the market changes.  
  3. Develop aggressive and effective business development capabilities to be able to swim upstream like a salmon.  
  4. Build strong forecasting capabilities to be able to see a market softening well in advance and to act upon that quickly.  

Developing the people, processes, tools and discipline required to forecast out 18-24 months always makes teams stronger.  Exercising teams to really think through what would happen if either their business doubled or halved in the next 18-24 months it makes them more prepared for either. 


Schedule a meeting with our team to learn more about how we help contractors accelerate profitable growth  




Levels of Improvement: Start with the Foundation
Every process in your business including field productivity will go through three levels of improvement: From predictable to productive to scalable. Trying to skip levels is the surest way to slow down improvements across the company.
TOOL: Model Your Business, Prioritize Improvements, and Execute
Contractor Business Model template you can customize to represent the current and future state of your business. Use this model to identify bottlenecks and constraints to your growth. Learning guide for your team based on The 4 Disciplines of Execution.
Progressive Levels of Business Development
The most important first step for a contractor is to find a customer who will pay for a project. With continued growth, the process of business development becomes progressively more complex including how it is integrated with strategy and operations.