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




Observe, Hypothesize, and Experiment
Contractors would run much better, including improved field productivity, if they applied the simple lesson we all learned around middle-school science class: Stop debating and start experimenting.
The Cost of Specializaton
Learn the right balance between specialists and generalists. Specialization is great and is what has allowed all of us to continually experience improved lives for generations. However, when taken too far, specialization can become a liability.
Understanding the Construction Field Day
For a contractor to truly improve their field productivity, they must start with understanding how the time is spent. Depending on the trade, project, and the labor, study the time spent on actual installation ranges from 50-64%.