Construcciones Yamaro: Inside construction teams that overachieve
What drives high-performing teams in construction? Dr Gretchen Gagel points to purpose, culture and strategy.
During my career helping corporations such as General Motors, Intel and Procter & Gamble deliver billions of dollars’ worth of construction in the most effective way, I have worked with hundreds of teams and organisations. I have experienced the good, the bad, and unfortunately the ugly. I have advised teams that delivered construction projects ahead of schedule and under budget, and teams that ended up in litigation.
These experiences, along with knowledge gained through senior leadership positions and my work advising leaders in construction, energy and mining, helped me identify the most important elements of leading overachieving teams and organisations. I elaborate on these elements in the fifth part of my book, Building Women Leaders: A Blueprint for Women Thriving in Construction. Here are the highlights of the first three foundational elements.
Purpose, goals and objectives
I have found that people want to know three critical things: Why does our team or organisation exist? What are our key goals? What measurable objectives help us understand whether we are achieving these goals? Defining these is not as simple as it appears, and I’ll share a relevant example to explain why.
My team was asked to help a large corporate group deliver a $3 billion multi-site construction program on time and under budget. We began our work with the seven project executives – from the client, the construction management firm and the lead engineering firm. I asked each of these seven gentlemen to define what “on time” meant and received seven slightly different answers to the question.
We took the time to define, in language everyone could understand, what “substantial completion” meant and the corresponding dates for each site, removing any ambiguity. Had we not done that, the various organisations within the project team would have been operating with different goals and objectives in mind. Not effective.
Sometimes we, as leaders of teams and organisations, have defined our purpose, goals and objectives so clearly in our minds that we assume that everyone understands. Not necessarily the case.
In another example, we helped an energy company that was underspending its capital budget by an average of 14 per cent a year to reduce that gap to less than 1 per cent. As we began meeting with the team, we quickly discovered that each construction project manager believed the goal was to execute the project below budget. In fact, the goal was to accurately budget and forecast so that each project was delivered at budget and the expectations of Wall Street were met for that year’s overall capital spend.
Taking the time to ensure that everyone on the team or in the organisation understands our purpose, our goals and our measurable objectives is critical.
Organisational culture and values
Rarely have I consulted with a team or organisation facing a challenge where addressing some aspects of culture and values was not imperative to the success of our improvement efforts. That energy team I mentioned earlier is a relevant example. We could not have helped them without addressing a culture that lacked accountability, and I chose to study organisational culture during my PhD for this very reason.
One of the greatest outcomes of those studies was meeting – and being coached by – world-renowned culture and leadership expert Dr Edgar Schein. Ed taught me that there are many types of cultures: team cultures, organisational cultures, occupational cultures (think marketing versus engineering), geographic cultures, and more. This, in part, makes team and organisational culture so challenging to understand.
Your challenge as a leader is to understand the current culture – which aspects reinforce behaviours that support success, and which do not. Understanding culture is challenging, and surveys help, but it is the observation of behaviours that is most critical in defining a team or organisation’s culture.
It is not enough to put values up on the wall. The behaviours of everyone on the team need to support those values. That leads to alignment, which in turn leads to overachievement.
Your role as a leader is to consistently reward the right behaviours, address the wrong ones, and remove those members who do not respond to coaching.
Strategies and tactics
The next important step in leading teams and organisations that overachieve is ensuring that the right strategies are in place to achieve the goals and objectives, and that concrete business plans outline the tactics – or actions – necessary to succeed.
During my PhD studies, I became quite familiar with the work of Dr Christopher Worley and his colleagues in defining what makes business teams nimble. In his agility framework, it begins with agile strategising. What differentiates this type of strategising is a deep understanding that the identity of the team or organisation – the enduring purpose – remains consistent, while the intent – how that identity is achieved – morphs over time.
Core strategies are how your team or organisation will achieve its purpose, and they need to be clearly understood by every person involved. Only then can the tactics – the daily actions – be focused on the top priorities that move the ball forward.
Defining the purpose, goals, and measurable objectives of each team and organisation – and ensuring that the behaviours of all team members align with these critical performance elements – provides the foundation for achieving outstanding results.
In the next edition of Inside Construction, I will continue to explore how to lead overachieving teams and organisations by focusing more on the people aspect of leadership. This will include how to hire the right talent, establish team norms and social contracts, and keep teams nimble in the face of ever-changing business conditions.
Dr Gretchen Gagel, GAICD, is the former chair of Brinkman Construction (US) and a member of the Risk Committee for GHD Engineering, the National Academy of Construction (US), the Construction Industry Culture Taskforce (AUS), and the Associated General Contractors (AGC) of America National Diversity and Inclusion Committee. Gretchen is passionate about leading change in the construction industry and developing our future leaders. You can hear more from Gretchen on her Spotify podcast, Greatness and her book, Building Women Leaders: A Blueprint for Women Thriving in Construction, is available now on Amazon. Find out more at gretchengagel.com
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