While visiting with a contractor the other day, he mentioned sharing one of our recommendations for improving field performance to a friend and fellow contractor.

His friend shook his head and replied “I would never do that. Share the budgeted time with the crews? I’d never do that. If they realize they’re moving faster than the allowed time, they’ll slow down. I want them working as hard as they can.”

Wow.

I had forgotten how common that belief was among owners and project managers.

These people simply do not understand human behavior. A worker is FAR more likely to miss a deadline or budget because he was left in the dark than he is to dial it back when he’s ahead of the budget.

Heck, which hurts worse? Hitting the budget when we MIGHT have beat it by 10% or running 10% over budget?

If you only take one piece of advice from Guy and I make it this:

Tell your employees EXACTLY
what their performance targets are.

That one action alone will reduce costs, improve on-time performance, increase customer satisfaction and – believe it or not – improve employee satisfaction.

Never, ever keep your employees in the dark about the outcomes you need them to deliver.

Glad you found us.

Moving our blog to www.ContractorsBusinessCoach.com is the first domino that had to fall in order for us to activate the new site under www.FilthyRichContractor.com.

We will leave the old blog posts up on FilthyRichContractor.com until we replace its content with the membership site platform.

If you have bookmarked specific pages on the other site, the content is exactly the same on this site so just go find the pages you bookmarked and re-tag them.

For future reference, this site will be used to market our contractor coaching services. www.FilthyRichContractor.com will be used to market and host our online how-to solutions, systems, tips, etc.

www.GrowConsulting.net will be used to market our non-contractor services such as keynote speaking, assistance for manufacturers and distributors, etc.

Well, gotta run. Back to setting up the new content site.

Take care and hope you have a great week.

Ron & Guy

We wish all our readers that celebrate happy holidays. Whether you celebrate or not please take a minute and answer our previous blog post on strategy.

Guy and Ron

In a future  newsletter we are going to address three phases of business. Every day tasks, crisis management and strategy. You probably spend most of your time on the first two.  Don’t neglect strategy! It is the important road map of where you want your business to be in the future. It is often underrated. Just ask contractors who have plans for good times and not so good times.

We are interested in hearing from all of you contractors out in there in cyber world about how you use strategy to create advantages in your marketplace. What works best for you? How do you monitor and revise your strategic direction? Share some success stories.

For those of you who have not really done much planning we’d like to hear from you too. Why haven’t you created a strategic plan? What would you need help with if you decided to create one? Let us know so we can help you!

Don’t hold back!!! I expect a lot of feed back over the next few weeks. Let’s hear from everyone!

Guy and Ron

So started my interview with Bill Miller, founder of Building Erection Services of Olathe, KS. The interview will be available to members of our upcoming Private Club (we can actually see the finish line).

Bill shared a ton of great advice. Thought you might enjoying reading the catchiest piece. Bill’s manner of stating an owner’s need for timely reports was classic and perfect:

“I don’t like to read an autopsy.  You want to know want happened right when it happened, not six months after it happened. You’re not looking for what killed it. You’re looking to keep it alive and keep it healthy.”

As I discovered during our interview, Bill has a passion for job costing and has used job costing to keep Building Erection’s field efficiency high and its field costs down.  Their cost competitiveness has been their secret to keeping 120 union crane operators busy day in and day out (prior to the current economic implosion).

Take a look at the reports you receive daily and weekly.  Do they cover the performance of each and every factor that controls your business’ health? Things such as:

• Field productivity
• Billable hours
• Sales leads and/or bidding opportunities
• Cash spent and cash received
• Overhead expenses
• Aged receivables and payables

If you are going to avoid reading an autopsy (either as a year end financial statement or project-end cost report), you best have a system of report generation that lets you track and monitor everything that matters.

We’ll be back soon.

Until then, wishing you much success.

Your friends and champions,

Ron & Guy

Do Clock Watchers Ever Take Ownership of Their Jobs?

While visiting with a friend over lunch the other day,  we got to talking about a lady we both know and the strange – to us – conflict between her work ethic and her clock watching.

The clock watching in this case wasn’t that she sat around counting down the minutes until she was off. It was the other type of clock watching.

Salaried Clock-Watchers Rarely Stay Past 8 Hours.

She had the mindset of an hourly worker. She wasn’t paid by the hour. She was on salary. But she kept close track of her hours. If she worked late one day, she took off early the next.

What threw us off was that  she made sure her employer got their money’s worth for 40 hours a week. She worked hard and was more productive than several of her peers that put in longer hours for the same pay.

All in all, her employer was getting great bang for the buck – with her. Yet, it brought to mind the three different mindsets workers have.

1. Hourly
2. Salaried
3. Owner

The “hourly” employee figures he is being paid for 40 hours a week. That is true for employees who are LITERALLY hourly. Not so true for salaried employees. Most front line salaried employees think like hourly employees. Some front line supervisors do also.

The “salaried” employee figures he is being paid to do his job, whatever the volume of tasks and the time they take, he has been assigned with.

Employees who think like  “owners” go above and beyond. The only reason they keep an eye on the clock is to meet important deadlines. They strive to make the company successful.

We all thirst for our company to be staffed full of “owner” minded employees.

That’s difficult to pull off – not impossible – but difficult. Naturally, we know how. That’s why our clients hire us.

You need to keep your eye out for  salaried employees who think like hourly employees.

Very, very few of them are like the lady I described. Most are modestly productive at best. Most are true clock watchers. You’ll rarely turn a true clock watcher into a highly productive, owner-minded employee.

Food for thought as you try to grow your business.