Create a Performance "Wish List" - and The Blind Spots Afflicting Contractors
We shared my friend Donald Cooper’s blog with some colleagues a few weeks ago, and it spurred an interesting exchange. Donald’s article recommended creating informal “wish lists” for your top employees and offered an excellent illustration of how it might be utilized to improve the performance of an underperforming CFO. One of our colleagues emailed us stating “It’s hard to believe the owner couldn’t grasp the CFO’s performance prior to creating his wish list.” That got us started on blind spots.
Please tune in this week as Wayne shares part of Donald’s article, discusses four reasons why blind spots may exist for contractors especially when it comes to people and accountability issues and adds two more blind spots identified by our own Mike Concannon over the course of his construction career. We all have blind spots. Which ones have you most observed among contractors? Please email your thoughts to me at [email protected].
Seats are filling up fast for our upcoming class of The Contractor Business Boot Camp. We are more than half full. Grab this opportunity and enroll them to this one-of-a-kind career development program where they will learn the skills needed to run a successful construction business from industry experts and peers alike. The class starts in Feb 2026 in Dallas, TX. Contact Charlotte today at [email protected] to find out more.
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WAYNE RIVERS: Hi everyone. This is Wayne Rivers at Performance Construction Advisors, where We Build Better Contractors.
This week I want to talk about creating a performance wish list in blind spots. It's kind of a two part vlog, you might say. Before I do that, don't forget about Boot Camp, Dallas, Charlotte, Salt Lake City, and Dallas again next year. Contact Charlotte and she'll get you all the information that you need.
So this comes from Donald Cooper's newsletter. You've heard me talk about Donald a few times. He really comes up with some great... In fact, he sent one today that I'll do in a future vlog that was really insightful. But this is kind of two vlogs and I'll explain that as we go.
What about this is important to you? Well, you've got to have the right team, of course. But people change over time. And you've got to make sure that as people, as the job changes, as your company changes, as you grow, that people evolve with the job, and holding them accountable is a key part of that.
So let me just read you this and it'll help you explain. So then again, from Donald Cooper, I'm sharing a tool you can use. One of my clients had a chief financial officer who was a CPA and also had an MBA. And Donald advised that this customer create a wish list for this particular employee. And I'll explain that in a second. Now this CFO makes $200,000 a year and is asking for a raise. But having said that, she had not come into the office since 2020. And listen to the wish list that his customer came up with.
I want her to work in the office four days a week. I want her to get more done. I want her to come up with better ways of doing things in her department and do them more efficiently. I want her to show much more initiative in everything. I want her to make specific business recommendations to improve profitability. CFO, come on. I want her to be less emotional when dealing with other team members. I want her to connect with me better, not just wait for me to move things forward. And I want her to hire better people.
So when he evaluated the person's capabilities and performance against that wish list, he rated her a three out of 10. What does that tell you? Three. I mean, that's not good. So she either needs coaching to improve in these areas, or more likely, she's not meeting the standard and maybe he needs to look for a new CFO.
This is a useful exercise. This is something you probably should do with your people regularly. This is not a job review. This is you sitting down and thinking through, "How does my direct report perform relative to my wish list of how I think they should perform?"
So we got an email from one of our colleagues and he said, "Oh man, it's just hard to believe that the chief executive couldn't grasp the CFO's poor performance prior to this." And my COO wrote back, "You'd be shocked. You'd be shocked at how bad some contractors are at evaluating their senior employees' performance."
And so, in this case, in the case of Donald Cooper's customer and the case of a lot of our contractors, they have blind spots. So maybe there are four different things. Maybe it's a true blind spot, maybe it's a family business issue. If the CFO is your wife or your daughter or your cousin, then maybe it's harder to hold that person accountable because of the family ties and the sensitivity.
Maybe there's a simple resistance to change. A lot of contractors like things the way they like them. It's been this way for 10 years and they're reluctant to change, because change is scary and creates unknowns and unknowables. And then finally, some people are just conflict averse. And the idea... The hardest thing in business is to let people go. I have to just say that. I have to admit that. That is the hardest thing to do, whether you're letting an employee go or letting a customer go. It's emotionally gut-wrenching. And some people just don't want to get into a conflict situation, which by definition is what you're in when you're considering letting somebody go.
So we talked about blind spots. We all have them in our personal lives. We all have them in our business lives. And Mike Concannon, one of our consultants came up with a couple of other, common to him, blind spots that affect contractors.
The first, he said that almost all contractors celebrate an award before the contract is actually signed. And he said, "Politics can change that. Competition is relentless. Just because you've got the nod doesn't mean they're going to stop their business development efforts during the period when you're waiting for the contract to be signed." And he said, "There's always sort of backroom conversations going on."
I remember one of our clients in reading the biography of their founder, which was a wonderful book, but it seemed like in the book they were always finishing second, and the founder had this miraculous gift of going back to the project owner and finding a way to turn that second into first. It was really remarkable. It was almost like they wanted to finish second. I'm sure that's not the case, but anyway.
The second blind spot that Mike said is that contractors have the assumption that their best performing employees are happy and will stay and will continue to perform at that level. And he said, "That's a big risk that you're taking. If you're not lavishing extra attention, whether it's compensation or, more likely, just recognition on those employees, they're just as much of a flight risk as anybody else." Just because they're not complaining doesn't mean that they're happy and fulfilled in their jobs. Don't wait for them to complain because it might just be too late. And let's face it, your competition is looking to pick off your best people every single day. So you can't be complacent in any aspect of your business, but especially when it comes to your super talented people.
So what do you think? I mean, do you see, what are the common blind spots that you recognize among contractors and what would you say about evaluating employees with a kind of a personal wish list? You can email me at [email protected].
This is Wayne Rivers at PCA where We Build Better Contractors.
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