Competency and Compensation

A large part of sustainable growth for contractors is being able to effectively leverage people with a narrower set of skills to still deliver the same level of value-add to the customer.

D. Brown Management Profile Picture
Share

This support structure is called “Enabling Bureaucracy” and is a combination of management time, control systems, QA/QC, workflows, training, etc.

Leadership Tools: Graph representing Value-Add and Compensation with Quantity of people in the workforce, ability to manage ambiguity, and skill level and execution.

As contractors grow they need to refine their organizational structures, workflows, job descriptions  and their talent processes to support this growth.

These support structures must be built over time and integrated with the contractor’s growth strategy.  Once effectively in place these support structures will produce a more scalable organization that can actually deliver the same value-add to the customer at a lower total cost providing a competitive advantage. 

These systems are slow, painful and costly to put into place.  The recruiting focus of a contractor must be in alignment with the levels of support structures they have in place.  Netflix defines this quite well in their culture slide deck and book.  

Are your support structure capabilities and recruiting in alignment?  

If not there will be excessive stress on the team combined with lower profitability.  This just means you are at one of the inflection points on the business growth cycle.




Incentive Compensation for Contractors - Alignment
One of the most challenging aspects of incentive programs is communicating demonstrated success in such a way that every functional group believes they have direct impact on their incentive outcome and that it is fairly applied across all stakeholders.
Ownership Transition - Key Buyer Risks
While different, buyers of a construction business have just as many risks as sellers. Deeply understanding the risks for both parties is a great start to creating the foundation of a deal.
Incentive Compensation for Contractors - Audience Question: When?
While an incentive program won’t turn around a completely bad culture, there is also no such thing as a perfect culture. There are are important prerequisites to have in place before getting started with an incentive program.