How to Get Out of the Weeds & Grow Your Construction Business | Leadership & Scaling
Notas del episodio
How do you get out of the weeds as a construction business owner without letting everything fall apart?
In Episode 23 of the Starbuck & Sargent Podcast, Jimmy Starbuck and Herb Sargent tackle two questions that every growing construction company eventually faces: How do you lead from a higher altitude, and when does doing the work yourself start holding the business back?
Jimmy and Herb break down what “altitude” really means in construction leadership, why owners can't completely disconnect from the day-to-day, and how to know when you're spending too much time in the tactical side of the business.
Herb’s key areas to assess when looking at the overall “altitude” of your construction business:
- Workforce
- Culture
- Backlog
- Quality of backlog
- Are there any risks hiding in the closet?
- Pipeline
- What does the market look like?
- What could change that?
- Relationships
- Bonding
- Banking
- Owners / Engineers / GCs
- Crew — how is morale?
- Vendors
- Community
- Internal alignment
- Is management aligned 100%?
- Balance Sheet Strength
- Condition of Assets and Their Ability to Provide a Return
- Accounts Receivable Quality
- Is the money flowing in according to plan?
A useful exercise is to score each area out of 10. The weaker scores show you where your attention needs to go next.
Herb shares how he went from being on every job every day to building a team that allowed him to look further ahead, while also explaining the job preparation process he developed to reduce mistakes, improve communication and give foremen the information they need to lead confidently.
In this episode:
- How to get out of the weeds as a construction business owner
- What “higher altitude” means in leadership
- Tactical vs operational vs strategic work
- Knowing when you're too involved in the day-to-day
- How to develop people instead of doing everything yourself
- When a construction owner should stop operating equipment
- Why strong businesses need strong people
- How better planning can reduce construction rework
- Building job packs and pre-commencement processes
- Giving foremen the information they need to succeed
- How communication gaps create problems on construction sites
- Why systems need to evolve as a company grows
- How to build a construction business that isn't dependent on one person
The goal isn't to completely remove yourself from the business. It's to build the people, systems and communication that allow you to spend more time looking ahead while still understanding what's happening on the ground.
If you're a construction business owner, contractor, operator or leader trying to scale your construction company without becoming the bottleneck, this episode is for you.
Got a question for Jimmy and Herb? Send it through and it could be answered on a future episode.
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