How NOT to Get in Over Your Head

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WAYNE RIVERS: Hi everyone. This is Wayne Rivers at Performance Construction Advisors, where We Build Better Contractors. Don't forget about Boot Camp. We've got the 2026 Boot Camp calendar out now. Next year we'll be in Dallas, Charlotte, and Salt Lake City. So, contact Charlotte for your high potential folks and get them enrolled in camp.

This week I want to talk about how not to get in over your head. So a few weeks ago, a few months ago now, we talked about seven tips for getting contractors in the right place so they don't get overwhelmed. And I got a great thoughtful response from Al Petrangeli, from Caroll Daniel Construction. Al is very successful. He's had a great career in construction, and when I get emails from him, I stand up and take notice because they're usually pretty darn thoughtful, and this one is no exception.

So, Al gives us advice on how not to get in over your head. And he starts with number one, always have a structure around your day. Personally, I answer all the emails early in the morning before I head to work. That way when I get to the office, I can address critical issues. I think back in the day, the biggest time management challenge contractors had was how to handle all the paper, all the mail, all the letters, all the correspondence, all the stuff, the faxes, everything that came across your desk.

Technology has eliminated a great deal of that. And so now I think the biggest time challenge that people have is emails. How do you handle the emails? And probably the most intelligent advice that I've heard, which corresponds with Al's, is that handle it during certain parts of the day. Emails create this false urgency that you feel like you have to respond right away. Oh, I'll just get this off my plate right now. And before long you look down and an hour has gone by, and you've responded to 15 emails. So, maybe check your emails as Al does first thing in the morning before you get there. And then maybe before you go to lunch or right when you get back. And then maybe again at the end of the day, allowing for some time to actually handle the emails.

Napoleon had a theory back in the day, obviously, that he only looked at his mail once every three weeks, and his rationale was, if I just ignored a lot of this stuff, which is chaff, it'll get taken care of on its own. And I don't know if Napoleon was a great time manager or not. He was certainly a great general. And so maybe our reaction to email is this false sense of urgency. It used to be phone calls. Every phone call seemed urgent, and now nobody calls anymore, we email or we text. And the phone, which was an original piece of technology that worked pretty darn well for a really long time, is underutilized today in my opinion.

Okay, number two, get organized and don't procrastinate. The problems only get worse. Again, I agree. Dennis always said, run to your problems, run to your problems, because time is your enemy and problems, they do get worse. They compound faster. Problems compound faster than blessings somehow. I don't know why that is, but it just seems like it's true.

The third, don't allow hanging chads. Bring all things to a close. Having a bunch of loose ends is deadly. Again, I agree. The psychological pressure of having 6, 7, 8, 20 loose ends out there is really kind of overwhelming. So do what you say you're going to do and finish the things you start. It'll create so much psychological clarity; it'll be a benefit to you.

Number four, know your productivity cycle. For me, mornings are my most productive. After that, if needed, if's after 5:00 or on weekends when I can have interrupted time. Now of course, we hear talking about work-life balance all the time, suggests that you try not to work weekends if you can, but having that uninterrupted time that he refers to is a great thing.

What's the statistic that executives get interrupted once every four minutes or something like that? So having free time in the office is hard to come by. A couple of things about that. Leave the office. That's one thing you could do. Go down the hall and find an empty conference room and close the door and put your head down and do some work. The other thing is simply closing your door. This whole idea of an open-door policy, I've talked about that before. Close your door and put a sign on your door that says, do not disturb. It's easy to do. And if the people around you see that, they'll respect it. They really will. And you can create systems in your own way to create uninterrupted time as necessary. Never as much as you need, because construction is a hurry-up business. But there are ways to do what Al suggests.

The fifth thing, delegate. Man, holy moly, people are loath to delegate. There's this rationale, by the time I tell other people how to do it, I could have done it myself. That does not hold water. For people in the construction business, for leaders and rising leaders and executives, your time is so valuable. It's really even hard to put a dollar figure on it sometimes.

And if you can't delegate, you're going to hit the ceiling of complexity, another Dan Sullivan concept. You're going to hit the ceiling complexity and bump your head on it time after time after time. You've got to learn to delegate. Now, part of delegating is the next thing Al says, hold others accountable. Too often we're our own worst enemy. So, if I give Karen an assignment, "When can I have that back," I ask, "When will you be finished with that?"

And she says, "Give me two days." Well, it's up to me to follow up with Karen in two days. Not that she ever needs to be held accountable because she's wonderful. But if it's more than two days, maybe that's going to push my project backwards and it's going to have an impact on somebody else downstream. So, hold people accountable.

The seventh thing, love this one. You must have physical activity built into your day, walking, running and working out. Your body is like a tightly wound spring. If you don't provide relief, it will break. You need to release the endorphins that build up due to stress. I don't know endorphins, but I do know that stress builds up, and I think as an analogy of a tightly wound spring is perfect. Construction can be a thankless, it's a hurry-up business.

I always say it's like being an umpire. You have to be perfect on your first day on the job and then get better every day after. That's what it's like being contractor. You can create the most perfect structure in the world, and you leave a switch plate off somewhere and suddenly your name is mud. It can be a very thankless and frustrating business. So get out there and release those endorphins and get some physical exercise.

And then number eight, have John Woodcock as a part of your team. John and Al worked together at Balfour Beatty back years ago, and I think at one time Al was the boss. At another time John was the boss. But anyway, they worked together as a team very, very well and continue to have high regard for each other.

Surround yourself with people more intelligent than you and do it before you need it. Again, I think that is wonderful advice. It certainly makes delegating, which was number five, it makes delegating easier, doesn't it? If you're delegating to people just as smart or just as capable, if not more so than you. My wife always says that hiring people more intelligent than me is really easy, but having John Woodcock and all of our other guys on the team is a real blessing. So, Al is correct in that.

So what do you think? What tips would you offer for not getting in over your head? What could you add to Al's list? Send me an email at [email protected]. There it is. Okay, thanks very much. This is Wayne Rivers of PCA.

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