Business Building: What's Your Role As Leader?

True or false? Large or small construction company owners and presidents should be focused on the same top priorities as successful leaders of major Fortune 500 corporations. Rather than staying focused on top priorities, most construction company owners and managers get stuck spending too much time on estimates, contracts, customers, project schedules, field production, project management, or scheduling crews and equipment.

What are your top priorities?
Look at your calendar. Where you spend your time is your real focus. To improve your business, achieve great results, and be the best leader you must become, what will provide the highest return on your time and energy? I recently conducted a leadership survey of fifty of my construction business coaching clients. The results indicate business owners have a tough time staying focused on their top priorities. Here are their responses:

1. What’s our biggest challenge holding back profitable results?

• Job profit margin fade and labor over budget.

• People not following company systems and missing deadlines.

• Me! I micro-manage and need to replace myself.
  
  

2. To improve our company’s results, I need to:

• Focus on my leadership priorities versus doing too much myself.

• Spend more time improving my business and systems.

• Dedicate time to generating higher-margin customers and contracts.

• Coach, mentor, and help people improve and hold them accountable.
  
  

3. What should I delegate, let go of, or stop doing?

• Estimating, project management, or running projects.

• Scheduling crews and equipment.

“Your business is currently designed to produce the results you’re currently achieving!”
When you spend your time doing too much yourself, you don’t focus on what’ll produce higher results. Consider these challenges you might face:

A. Not enough high-margin loyal customers?
    - Perhaps your commitment to building loyal customer relationships is next to none!

B.  Not enough profit?
    - Perhaps your systems aren’t standardized, followed, or enforced by you or your managers!

C.  Jobs coming in over budget?
    - Perhaps your job cost tracking and crew production scorecards are not up to date or in existence!

D.  Company profits less than desired?
    - Perhaps you don’t know or watch your numbers like you should!

E.  Can’t find any good help?
   - Perhaps you aren’t focused or spending any time to find, attract, hire, motivate, train, or retain top talent!

F.  Business struggling?
   - Perhaps you haven’t taken the time to draft or update your business plan, organizational chart, job descriptions, or systems!

Are you afraid to be a leader?
Most business owners and managers know what they need to do to achieve better results. But they don’t take full responsibility or initiate improvement programs. The number one reason poor leaders fail is FEAR! Fear of failure, making bad decisions, trusting others, letting go, hiring the wrong people, losing money, or taking a risk. Fear results in the inability to build a strong management team, delegate, let go, hire, fire, hold people accountable, implement systems, try new markets or customers, get out of the comfort zone, or say ‘no.’ The result of being afraid to lead is low profits, slow revenue growth, unaccountable managers and employees, low-margin customers, overbudget projects, unsigned and unpaid change orders, and overall poor results.

Leader - The person in charge of a company or team who leads, directs, coordinates, inspires, and influences others to want to achieve results at a higher level. Leaders establish, set, and share their exciting, focused vision of their targets, goals, strategies, systems, and processes. They motivate and inspire their team to follow by providing coaching, information, feedback, and scorecards to keep the team on track and headed in the right direction. Like the head coach, the company leader is 100% responsible for all results - sales, profits, growth, quality, customer service, talent, organization, management, etc. Poor leaders blame poor or stagnant results on circumstances beyond their control while they don’t do anything different or change. For example, ineffective leaders accept poor performance, hope customers call with bid opportunities, wait for trained people to show up and apply for work, or expect some other event to fix everything. Weak leaders also do too much themselves and don’t trust their people to perform.

Leaders change themselves first!
Achieving great results is the main indicator or report card of the leader’s performance. Real leaders make quick, decisive decisions to improve and change how they do business. Effective leaders must have the courage to change themselves first, try new ideas, change their behavior, change their customers and project types, do something different, innovate, try new methods, and go against the grain. Top companies have leaders who continually look for new ways to improve, innovate, upgrade, install new systems, hold managers accountable, and seek ways to be different from their competition.

Seven priorities leaders focus on!
Fortune 500 company CEOs are paid very well to lead, manage, and achieve top results. As company leaders, they stay primarily focused on what matters to create business success, a positive future, and bottom-line results. Their top leadership focus always includes these priorities:

1. Profitable sales revenue growth.
2. Winning strategy with written enforced systems.
3. High net profits.
4. Grow equity and business value.
5. Find, train, and retain accountable top talent.
6. Seek, obtain, and retain high-margin customers.
7. Stay ahead of future economic and business trends.

Lead and decide what to focus on first.
Which of these seven top leader priorities do you need to focus more time and effort on? To start, decide where your company needs to improve. Being an effective leader starts with defining and doing your role. Often, hands-on managers find it difficult to transition to become a leader after spending so much time running projects and doing work versus leading. Your people were hired to run projects, estimate, supervise, order materials, award subcontracts, and keep track of the finances for you. Your role as the leader is to transform your company into the best it can become and achieve high results. The key is focus! What will you focus on to become a great leader and build a better business? About the author: George Hedley CPBC is a certified professional construction business coach, consultant, and popular speaker. He helps contractors build better businesses, grow, profit, develop management teams, improve field production, and get their companies to work. He is the best-selling author of “Get Your Construction Business To Always Make A Profit!” available on Amazon.com. Watch his educational videos on YouTube. To get his free e-newsletter, start a personalized BIZCOACH program, download online courses, or utilize his contractor templates, visit www.HardhatBizcoach.com or E-mail GH@HardhatBizcoach.com.