Strategy and Fighting the Fewest Battles

Nothing will have a bigger impact on a contractors business over the next decade than putting in a very rigorous process for strategy development and execution.

D. Brown Management Profile Picture
Share

The industry is changing rapidly due to technology, a massive shortage of management talent as well as major trends in project delivery and geographic expansion.  

Leadership Tools: Strategic Planning. A General does not plan how to win every battle; they plan how few battles they need to fight to win the war.

Strategic decisions along with the operating rhythms and the feedback mechanisms that ensure execution are the most highly leveraged decisions in the business. 

This is an area where an experienced 3rd party can add significant value.  Find someone that resonates with your team and has experience relevant to your company.  Change the facilitator every few years for fresh ideas. Unless they are really bad don’t change them every year so you have some continuity.  You might consider overlapping facilitators having the outgoing facilitator sit in on your side of the table providing additional continuity.  

Consider bringing in some of your key customers, vendors and subcontractors as part of your strategic planning process.  Whatever you do; don’t underestimate the value of this process.   

Learn More




Finding Joy in Your Work
What do you love doing so much that you would practice until your fingers bled while loving every minute of it? Do you think this is realistic to achieve with your career? With the careers of your team members?
Shifting Locus of Control
Technical skills stand on a foundation of behaviors that ultimately determine how effectively those skills are applied. Accelerating behaviors include:
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.