Leadership on the Bottom Line
Leadership Strategies by Constructors for Constructors

Everyone is talking (and writing) about leadership, so why is everyone not doing something about it.  Unlike the weather, we can do something about leadership, but only a few companies really do commit themselves to improving the leadership skills of their employees, the leadership reputation of their companies, and the leadership status of our industry. More importantly, many of us fail to improve our own leadership skills.

The reasons generally come down to two critical issues - time and money. We subscribe to the procrastinator’s motto: “Today is the first day of the rest of my life, but whose worried about it? So is tomorrow!” We always figure there will be more time “tomorrow” to improve so long as we can get through today, but tomorrow, especially one with more time, never comes. 

Money as a reason not to invest in leadership skills presents a more challenging and different dilemma for many contractors, particularly the small business owners who represent a large part of AGC's membership. Those of us who serve on the AGC’s Construction Education Committee agree that “if you think education is expensive, try ignorance!”  Still, this is an industry with a very “mobile” workforce. Many of us recognize that training our workers may improve the industry but not necessarily our own companies. Of course, there is one thing worse than training or educating our employees and then losing them, and that is not educating them and keeping them.

Based on the two reservations of time and money, the AGC’s Continuing Education Subcommittee has taken a four criteria approach to leadership development:

1. Leadership has to go to the bottom line.
2. Leadership has to be sustainable and stay in the bottom line.
3. Leadership needs to be less expensive than continuing status quo.
4. Leadership improvement has to fit within the whitewater schedule of
     constructors.

We also believe the most effective education for constructors is by constructors. Certainly there are many good and valuable programs among the multitude of seminars, books, and tapes available on the subject of leadership.  Many are inspiring and thought provoking, but almost all become what I consider the “Chinese food” of seminars—enjoyable, but you are hungry too soon afterward.  Implementing fun and games learned at seminars becomes pointless in the real life of crisis management most constructors return to after being away at a seminar.

Albert Einstein said, “Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results is the definition of insanity.” No doubt we are insane if we think the crisis management of our projects will disappear if we do not make some significant change. Improved leadership is that change. In the AGC’s Leadership in Construction Workshop, we stress that leadership is not restricted to race, gender, ethnicity, age, family ties, education, training, position, or a host of other preconceptions. Everyone can be a leader from the first day laborer to the retiring CEO.  How then does such leadership translate to the bottom line? Here are some real examples we have gathered from participants in our programs:

• A newly hired labor foreman took the initiative to save carpenter crews hours of waiting and delay by studying the schedule, the drawings, and the available on-site material to coordinate deliveries to all crews spread over an extremely large site.
• A carpenter recognized an unsafe condition and took immediate action before a structural collapse occurred. 
• An operating engineer “hired from the hall” recommended a new method of laying pipe that saved over 25% off the currently used method. 
• A superintendent empowered his crews to come up with a new method of gang forming and they then saved 40% over budgeted costs and 60% over their former productivity levels. 
• A project manager worked with his mechanical foreman and superintendent to turn a $150,000 recognized mistake in the estimate into a $100,000 profit. 
• A CEO set the goal to expand operations without reducing profit margins, empowered field and office staff with the vision and means, and increased volume fivefold in a decade.

The methods used by the above leaders were not unique to their personal selves or their positions. Their success came because they practiced fundamental principals of leadership that can be learned and developed by everyone. The key, however, is that while one is in the “whitewater” survival becomes the SOP.  Leadership skills development therefore requires an investment of time, as well as money. Both, however, go to the bottom line as the leader not only leads companies and crews to exceed financial expectations, but in the process time saving and productivity for both leaders and followers increases.

Manufacturing production lines turning out “cookie cutter” widget after widget may survive, even thrive doing the same thing and getting the same result. The same is not true in construction. In the construction industry each project is new and different, constructed at an estimated and unconfirmed price under conditions that are often adverse and challenging by people who have probably never worked together before. To expect different results by dong the same thing would indeed be insane. In construction, leadership can mean the difference between exceeding expectations and “same-old same-old” whitewater SOP and crisis management.

By Charles W. Cook
Charles Cook has successfully combined a career furthering the family construction business with an avocation in communications, media, and teaching. Charlie is president of R.S. Cook & Associates, Inc. in Philadelphia, PA. Charlie is an active member of the Construction Education Committee of the Associated General Contractors of America and is currently serving as chairman of the Continuing Education Subcommittee. He also served as Education Committee chairman of the Philadelphia Builders’ Chapter and on the chapter’s board of directors. Charlie is a past president of the Carpenters’ Company, the oldest extant trade group in America.

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