Investing for Sustainability - Growth Hurts

“I can’t afford to invest more in talent development or process streamlining because we have a bunch of bad projects.”

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This may come from the different levels - for instance a crafts person who is too focused on individual productivity to train their apprentice.  It may come from the Project Manager who is too overloaded with work to train their Project Engineer.

Leadership Tools: Growth Hurts. How effectively are you investing your dollars?

The only way a contractor can truly grow sustainably is to build a culture that is focused on continuous personal-development and teaching others.  Truly great development hurts - it stretches our brains to grow the same way physical exercise stretches our muscles. Most of your team will resist this level of exertion and insist there is an easier way.  Most of your team will rationalize away performance problems and downplay the need for training.  

The management teams of growing contractors systematically lead their teams through extremely rigorous training building them to dominate tomorrow’s construction environment.


Look at your business and the stage of growth it is in.  

Is your team prepared (or preparing) for the next stage of growth?

What pain are you avoiding today that will be 10X worse in the near future?  




Executive Toughness and Focusing on Process
When leading any team to victory, you can’t underestimate the value of strategy or that burning desire to win built deeply within yourself and everyone else on the team. They only represent a small part of what it takes to win consistently.
The 5th Knot - A Lesson in Never Quitting
There are few things that drive success more than simply never giving up. How far are you willing to push yourself to get what you want?
Talent - Sustainably Integrating the 4 Priorities
When assessing the strategic importance of investing in your talent acquisition and development processes at the field leadership level it is important to understand the depth of the talent shortage over time.