How Many Hours Per Week Do You Spend on These Nine Leadership Tasks?

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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 ask you a question. How many hours per week do you spend on these nine leadership tasks? This comes from Donald Cooper, my friend, Donald Cooper's newsletter. And if you follow Arlin's newsletter, you know that Arlin loves Donald Cooper's material and uses it very regularly. So, I'm going to jump on that bandwagon this week. This is from a May 14th newsletter that he did, and he actually had 14 questions in his, and I've reduced it for time down to nine for the purposes of our blog this week.

Now, what about this is important to you? Well, you're either a leader in a construction company or a rising leader in a construction company. And leadership has certain requirements. Sure, you've got tasks that you have to do. There are actions that you have to complete. I understand that, but that tends to be lower on the totem pole of importance when you become a leader. In other words, to be a leader in a construction company, ultimately you have to focus less on tasks and more on people. And the more you can focus on people and improving their performance, that will lift you up as a leader. Your value as a leader is directly related to how much you can inspire the people working with you to produce better, more efficiently, whatever.

Okay, so question number one, are you creating and sharing a clear vision? You could say mission. You could say values. Any one of those three things, are you creating and sharing? So, one of the tasks of a leader is to be boring and repetitive in a manner of speaking, because I don't think you can talk about mission, vision, and values enough. We talk about it every single week in our organization. I'm going to put my folks to the challenge here. If you are contacting one of our coordinators or you're interacting with one of our facilitators, ask them, what's your mission? What's your vision? What's your values? And if they can't tell you, let me know immediately. Every single person at PCA has to know these things and has to be able to recite them at a moment's notice because it's important. It's bigger than us. That's why we're here. It's bigger than us, and that's what it's all about. So, have you created that stuff and are you sharing it on a regular basis?

The second thing is, are you planning and executing your strategy? Number one. But more important or just as important, are you executing that strategy consistent with your mission, vision and values? Very important for your organizational DNA.

The third thing is, are you attending to your finances to support your strategy and growth? What are finances? When I say finances, most of your minds probably go to accounting. Are we getting timely reports, income statements and balance sheets and job cost reports and things like that? I'm not talking about that. That's history. Right? You can't affect that. We booked it. June 30th, boom, that period ended. We booked it. It's not changeable now, except maybe for the accountants making end-of-the-year adjustments for taxation. I'm talking about finances. I'm talking about looking forward. Where are you going to be at the end of this year? Where are you going to be in 2026 and 2027? What do your finances look like? What do you need to get from your lending partners? Is your line of credit sufficient to allow for the growth that you have coming in ‘26 and ‘27, et cetera? What are your finances? Let me make it simple. Accounting looks backward and its history. Finances look forward. I'm talking about finance. 

Number four, are you soliciting feedback and are you listening to your team? Are you asking your folks questions? And then asking them questions is important, but I think it's a lot more important to listen to their answers. You can get so much valuable feedback. Now, is it true that people won't always be perfectly honest with their supervisors or their leaders? Yes, of course. They may say some things they think you want to hear, but still, asking the questions. And if you think they're just saying things that you want to hear, dig deeper. You're smart enough to do that. You're insightful enough to know when somebody's leading you around.

All right, the fifth thing, are you delegating tasks and projects and are you following up to hold people accountable? What's this saying about following up the people that follow up rule the world or something like that? Right. First of all, are you delegating? If you're not, eventually you're going to run into that brick wall. You've got to delegate. And then once you delegate, you've got to hold your people accountable. It's as simple as that.

Number six, big for us, are you showing appreciation to other people? Are you thanking people for what they do? And it's not just the big things, it's the little things. The other day, Claire saw some mail that I had put on Karen's desk. It wasn't urgent, and Karen was out that day, so the mail was going to be delayed 24 hours. She jumped on it and no need for that to wait. She felt a sense of urgency to get that out the door, and I gave her a big thank you for that. She didn't have to do it. Actually, there was no urgency, but the sense of urgency to get things done is what I was applauding, to not let things lay around, to not let things wait. The sense of urgency, there's something I can do, boom, I'm doing it. That's what I think was wonderful. So, the little things in your organization are often just as important as the big things.

Number seven, are you evaluating customer satisfaction? Every week when I come in, every Monday, there's a stack of quality assurance reports on my desk. This time of the year, it's usually one report per week, but other times I've been going through six, seven quality assurance reports each week. So, we're getting written feedback from our members what they think of us and what they think of our program. That's really important to have. Why wouldn't you ask those questions? People say, "I'm not hearing any complaints." That's not good enough. By the time you hear the complaints, it's too late. You need to be proactively soliciting your customer feedback and measuring their customer satisfaction.

Number eight, are you championing your culture and are you working to improve it? Why would you do these things? Well, to retain the people that you have and to attract even better people in the future, you've got to work on your company culture. You may not care. You might be that kind of contractor that just wants to build stuff, and you put your head down and you work 80 hours a week, and it may not be important to you, but I guarantee it's important to some swath of your organization. And I guarantee that it's important to people that are looking for the right construction company where they can fit perfectly and contribute. Culture is more important now than it ever has been. And if you're not thinking about it, your competitors are, and that may make them more attractive just landing spots for that talented person that you wanted.

Number nine, are you thinking about succession for all your key roles? People think about executive succession, "Oh, the CEO is going to retire in two years. We've got to do something." That's important. Boy, that's really important. But what about those great equipment operators you have that, gosh, they just somehow do more and get more? The estimator that you have that can process more information than anyone else and create better, more accurate bids and all the things that go into successful business development. Thinking about all your key roles in your company, what roles do you have to make your company go, and what are the timelines for those people? Another question is, what if lightning strikes and suddenly one of your key people isn't around anymore? How are you equipped to handle that? Contractors run lean and they don't like to have people sitting on the bench twiddling their thumbs. Understand that, but at the same time, life happens and thinking about succession is a good exercise for leaders

It's harder than task and projects, but leaders make and invest the time in these kinds of activities. It's easier to just go backwards and say, "I'm going to manage projects again." That's fine, but if you really aspire to be a leader in construction or any other industry for that matter, you've got to be focusing on the things that make good leaders good. What do you think? Email me at [email protected]. This is Wayne Rivers at Performance Construction Advisors, where We Build Better Contractors.

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