Using a Vision to Create Desire and Context for Tasks

The one thing that holds a growing contractor together and accelerates performance is the company’s vision and mission.

D. Brown Management Profile Picture
Share

There is a whole lot of work involved in building projects and building a construction company. It is easy to get mired down in endless to-do lists, processes, and problems. The one thing that holds this all together and accelerates performance is the company’s vision and mission.

Quote: If you want to build a ship, don't drum up your men to collect wood and give orders and distribute the work. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea. Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Vision and mission are the tip of the pyramid.

It is not enough to only have them written down. A company's vision and mission have to be embedded so deeply into every person on the team that they taste victory for every win and feel the pain of every delay or potential defeat.

This is not just for the owner of the business or project. Each team down to the individual must have total clarity of their vision and mission.

----------------
If the vision and mission for your company is not clear to you:

  1. What have you done in the last month to help make them clearer?
  2. What will you do today?

----------------
If you are leading a team of people or are the lead person on the project:

  1. What have you done to set a vision and a mission for your team?
    • Vision Example: We will be the “Delta Force” crew within our company.
    • Mission Example: 2X more productive than any branch rough-in crew.
  2. What have you done to share this with the team and build excitement?

 




Reflections on Learning to Ski - 8 Core Principles for Learning a Completely New Skill
While I am learning every day, it has been a very long time since I’ve put myself in the position of learning something completely new. That has now changed, as over the last couple of weeks of 2019, I learned to ski.
Diffusion of Innovations Curve - Leading Change
The contractors that dominate tomorrow’s market will be those that have built strong capabilities for identifying opportunities or problems and then rapidly making lasting changes throughout the organization.
Strategic Foundations: What Is Unlikely to Change?
Like construction projects, construction businesses are only as strong as their foundations. Build your strategies around things that are unlikely to change in the long-term (10+ years).