It Really Is All About People!
In order to build and sustain highly successful organizations, leaders must focus relentlessly on taking care of and investing in their peoples’ success – and it must be done on a more or less continuous basis. Without a team of great players, even the most driven contractor will hit a wall.
Watch Digging Deeper this week as Dennis emphasizes the importance of people-focused leadership in today’s “what have you done for me lately?” world. We’d love to hear what steps you’re taking to hire, train, and retain talented people in your organizations. Please share with us in the comments below. Thank you!
There will never be a better time to invest in developing your NextGen leaders. Give them the opportunity to learn the business of construction from industry experts and peers alike. Enroll them in FBI’s Contractor Business Boot Camp today. The next class starts on Jan 27, 2022 in Raleigh, NC. Contact Charlotte at ckopp@familybusinessinstitute.com to learn more about the program and the limited time early bird pricing.
Good morning, everybody. Dennis Engelbrecht, The Family Business Institute, Digging Deeper.
You know, it occurred to me over the last week or two, I've always known this, but it sort of hit me in the face over the
last week or two, is I see unemployment numbers and the difficulty everybody is having getting good people in their
organization, that it really is all about people. So when you start your day and you're going to work, and you're thinking
about what you're going to accomplish today, you better have people on your mind, because as leaders in your
organization, there just is nothing more important than your people.
Having good people, the right people, a great culture, a great team environment, collaboration in and of its own sort of
multiplies the ability of your individual people and create something special. So, make sure as a leader, you're thinking
about people. You just simply can't grow your business if you don't have a great place to work. And that's really the basics. And oftentimes as leaders in construction, we go into work and we're worried about the job we're going to get, or we
think we need to get, and we're worried about the job that's going on and the customer who called and how is project
manager A doing on his job? Is he falling off the wagon a little bit? Does he need support? All of these things that we come
to work with and end up taking our time, but maybe divert you from the importance of people.
So make sure in your day-to-day leadership, you're setting aside time to look at your organization, make sure you've got
the right people, the right people in the right places, make sure you're developing your people, make sure you're out
there, always recruiting. And I've seen this come back and haunt a couple of organizations just recently. They stop
recruiting for a while, and then something happens. They lose a key person or two for whatever reason, and now they're
caught short because they didn't keep that pipeline going. Got to keep that pipeline going.
Be thinking about how you can improve the culture of your organization. I'm going to say fully no less than 35% of your
time as a leader should be all about getting the right people, making sure they're happy, making sure the organization is
working well together, looking for the next folks, and bringing those next folks on board.
One other thing, CEO involvement, if you are recruiting and getting people, you're the leader. No one can have more
impact on recruiting people, getting the right people on board, than you can. I recently had the opportunity to help a
company in an interview process for some senior team members, and in asking them why they were interested in the
company, each of the people I talked to mentioned their time meeting the CEO and what he had to say about the company
and what just he represented. And so, if you think about it, it's just so important. It is not a job you can delegate, getting
the right people on the bus. So as leaders, step up, spend time working on your organization, working on your people.
Again, Dennis Engelbrecht, Digging Deeper.
