Stop Promoting People Into Failure with Andrew Amrhein

Reece and Andrew Amrhein of Precision SME talk about why builders struggle to turn strategy into real execution, and why the missing layer is often management.

Andrew breaks down how contractors can connect numbers to meaningful action, avoid promoting good people before they are ready, and use projects instead of hope to test future leaders. He also goes over levels of work, why managers need to translate vision into priorities, and how better systems can keep teams from repeating the same mistakes.

precision-sme.com
app.precision-sme.com
Email: andrew@precision-sme.com

Show Notes:
00:00 Intro
01:37 Meet Andrew
05:53 Management Gap
10:37 Numbers To Strategy
12:13 Work Levels
17:36 Projects Before Promotions
21:05 Meaningful Metrics
25:01 Manager Value
33:35 Testing Future Leaders
39:26 Decision Ownership
44:00 Fix The System
48:10 Connect With Andrew

Find Our Hosts:
Reece Barnes
Matt Calvano

Podcast  Produced By:
Motif Media

Transcript

0:00

It's connecting numbers to strategy in a way that's meaningful for the person doing the work. You've got a visionary leader, we're going to do all these great things, and six months later nothing's done, but no one's translating the vision into actionable steps. Welcome to Builders, Budgets, and Beers. I'm Reece Barnes, and I started this podcast to have real conversations about money in the building industry, the wins, the mistakes, and everything in between. I believe builders deserve to feel confident about their finances, and that starts by hearing from others who've been through it too. This industry can be slow to change, but the right stories and the right tools can make profitability feel possible. Let's get into it, I Alrighty, Andrew, mics are hot, we're rolling. Thanks, thanks for jumping on the old builders budgets and beers, sir. Yeah, man, you got it, Reece. Thanks for having me. It's great to join you. Yeah, of course, it's been a long time coming. It's been a long time coming. It has. It's been a long time since that first webinar, where I asked tons of questions. I'm pretty sure somebody in the audience was like, if somebody has lots of questions, can they call after ready to be done? This guy's that was a year and a half ago, I think. Yeah, yeah, yeah, we got, we got a good little history here, but we'll unpack that. But first, for the audience, Andrew, give them a little, give them a little intro, a little background on yourself, who you are, what your professional background is, what you're passionate about, just some of the basics. Yeah, sure. So it's been such a crooked line to getting where I am today, so grew up in Virginia, graduated from Penn State, spent three years being a golf professional, decided I did, yeah. In what sense? Golfing, like you, we were golfing, you went to go play, I worked at clubs, so I worked at Mink, Iran, and Mink's awesome favorite course. I'm really going to cause some controversy because I think Iran and make is better than Marion. Oh, okay. Done, done, done. Somebody in the audience is gonna go crazy. So, yes, spent three years in the golf business, decided working when everyone else is playing wasn't fun, so, but I love coaching and teaching my family. I come from a long line of teachers and educators, so I got into sales. Why not? Because I love, right? Because that makes sense. So, got into sales, had had an affinity or comfort zone with construction. So, I worked for Pella Windows for a while, then I worked for a paint contractor in Phil. This was, I was living in Philly, found a consulting company that I really liked, and started doing sales training with them. Worked my way up, so I ended up working there for 18 years. Wow. Okay, so spent a lot of time doing things like this, podcasts and things. Yeah, so helping at the time it was over 500 companies that I had worked with. So when somehow went from I got out of college, which was a success in itself, got to golf, went into sales, started training, started learning business, went back to school, got an MBA from Penn State, started working with people on financials and connecting financials to goals and mapping things out, rather than just sort of haphazardly going about things. Ended up working for one of my customers the last year and a half. I worked for one of my customers, they brought - they wanted, needed somebody full time, and my family - we were my wife, I got six kids, we were looking for an adventure. So, yeah, how about that? Yeah, love that. For now, six for now. Mike, you never know, yeah, you never know. So we wanted an adventure, so did that. That was how I came across adaptive. Fell in love, so to speak, you know, with it, with adaptive. And as of two months ago, I actually decided to get back into consulting, so I joined Precision SME Group as an equity partner with them. Joined there, it was a startup organization, and so now back helping contractors and other small businesses just get better at getting better. Really, what it comes down to, I mean, that kind of sounds like the general theme. That's pretty career path. Yes, helping people to get better and get better at getting better is a theme throughout. Yeah, yeah. Okay, and you're in your consulting background, you work exclude. With contractors, or was it with, like, a variety of different businesses, a variety, but the vast majority were contractors. Yeah, in the contracting world. So, my, I, my mom's side of the family was a contracting family. Her father was Mason GC. The brother took over the business. My dad worked in construction as well. My wife's father worked in construction, he's a general contractor, so it's a place of it's a, it's an affinity. Yeah, of course, construction world. Yeah, I was just, I was just at a panel about AI and construction with Shaman Design and Construction, big firm out in Boston, and there was a comment that was made, is like, once you get construction in your blood, there's no egg, you get it out, you're just kind of locked it. Yeah, that's awesome. Yeah. Um, okay, cool. So, um, tell us a little about Precision SME. What is SME, subject matter expert? What does that stand for? It stands for a lot of things, yeah, small to medium enterprise. No, it officially it stands for strategy management and execution. Okay, so I like to say that when strategy isn't being executed or everyone's executing on their own strategy, the missing part is management. Sure, and I think that's part of what we're going to talk about today. Yeah, we were talking about before we hit record. Yeah, so yes, we from from every level, we help people get better at getting better at every level of that. The biggest need we see is the part people least want to talk about, which is management and being managers. We want to talk a lot about strategy. We'll talk a lot about execution, and execution doesn't happen, or everybody's executing on their own strategy, because there's no managers. Managers translate, sure. Okay, so management is learning how to manage. Yes. Well, and that's like, I think, going to resonate exceptionally well, and I'll ask you a question after this, but I think the management piece, especially in construction, is going to be a great conversation, because just the nature of the industry, right, you have a lot of, you know, a lot of salt of the earth folks, a lot of really hard, honest work, there's a lot of manual labor that goes in this. You really have to earn your stripes, right? And there's a lot of people that I feel like just carry the mentality of why can't they just do it this way, right? This is the universal question. I think there's a lot of opportunity to help people in across the world, but in construction specifically, that's why do good people get promoted and fail. Yeah, so as consultants, you end up subscribing to schools of thought, so like Austrian economics, that's a school of thought. So we are huge into lean and bringing lean six sigma into construction as a way of teaching managers how to manage. We're also big into levels of work, or also called requisite organization, which was developed by a guy named Elliot Jacks. He was a professor at the University of Toronto, and really starting back in the 50s, he started studying organizations, worked with the US Army, worked with some mining organizations, but studied organizational growth for over 50 years, and asked this very question, Why do people get promoted just to fail, and so in construction, there's a lot of, you have to know the trade in order, in order to oversee it, but at some point getting better at building a building doesn't help you run a business better, right, and so Elliot actually defined eight levels of distinct work. Okay, that knowing more at the layer below doesn't help you for the to the layer above, and levels one, levels one and two are exist for work, and and overseeing the work supervision, but at some point, like I said, getting great at building a building doesn't prepare you for the next level to be an operations manager or GM, or it's a completely different skill. Yeah, and so one reason why we exist is to help prevent that, to help. Okay, I'm just like, like, okay. So, there's eight levels, right? Yeah, but like, you're totally popular, there's a name for it. You've heard of the Peter Principle? You get promoted until you fail, that's the Peter Principle. It's such a problem, there's a name for it. Yeah, wild. Okay, and I mean, that's exactly like that's essentially what I was trying to explain, of like, saw. Of the earth, hard work, trades, years, expertise, right, all this stuff, but it's like just because you can build a fantastic custom home, right, or you're the best at building highway infrastructure, right, doesn't mean that you're going to be the guy that can run that, and I think that's kind of like a blank area in the space, so we could definitely touch on that, but I think the question that I would ask you is, is like, and this might have already been answered, so just confirm it if it has, but what is the one conversation, in your opinion, that you think that you think needs to be had more in construction that isn't being had in construction, so I think a I would answer that this way, certainly, based on what I know and what I see, so relevant to my world. Other people would answer this differently, but, of course, I think it's connecting numbers to strategy. But okay, for those of those in the audience that just rejected that answer, because we attach revenue to strategy all the time, it's connecting numbers to strategy in a way that's meaningful for the person doing the work, and you mentioned, like you reiterated earlier, the eight levels of work, yeah, there's eight levels of distinct work, and only, like, America is level eight, yeah. Okay, the biggest idea, and each level gets more and more conceptual, so the language between each layer changes, so so people don't speak each other's languages. Yeah, so you've got a visionary leader who's who's casting a vision, and we're going to do all these great things, and six months later nothing's done. Yeah, that's that's management, but no one's translating the vision into actionable steps. Okay, okay. So, in that, in that situation, How do we connect numbers? How do we up and down the organization at each level, how do we connect the numbers we're looking at in a meaningful way to the individuals doing the work? How do you like, how do you do it? Yeah, first is understand levels of work and go over them. What are the levels sync needs? Sure, so do a Google search for a guy named Elliot Jacks, Elliot, is that J A C K S? He's Canadian, so there's no C J A J S, oh Jacques, yes, I pronounced Jack's Elliot J S, okay, okay, so and then I'll also talk about a mentor of mine, Tom Foster, who is a disciple of Elliot Jacks. Okay, I just typed it, just to make sure. Yes, there is no C, and it's.. it is pronounced Jacks. Okay. Okay, so he's not French, he's Canadian, but Tom Foster, look up managementblog.org Tom. Foster. They talk all about this. So, level one is the level of quality and real work you're using, physical tools, that's also true for not just trades, but computers and designers and coders, that whatever real tool they're using. Level two, you or you know you're at level one when you're making decisions about either or. I can, I can do this or I can do that. Okay, but level two is about an accumulation of knowledge that over time I've learned how to do the work and I can help other people do the work. I know I'm at level two when I'm using checklists. There's also an aspect of level two where you're, you're making sure the work gets done, so a professional trader career would often automatically be at level two, because a surgeon, a brain surgeon, is doing the work and at the exact same time making sure the work gets done right, so a lawyer, a doctor, but also a senior craftsman is not only doing the work but making sure the work gets done right. Sure. Okay, so you know you're at level two when you're starting to coordinate, so and, and, and, and do this and do that. Okay. Level three, which these three layers comprise the building blocks of our departments. Level three is the is the first level that becomes separated from the work itself. And now I'm designing the context which by which people work. I'm designing the systems within which people live, so level three creates the checklist, level two uses the checklist, level one does the work that that's on the checklist, and that's depending on the size of your organization, sometimes that's all one person, right? Right, level four is so thus far we've gone vertical, understanding one department. Level four is about integration, and so now we've got we're going horizontal, that we're integrating the different departments together, and level five now is starting to look external to the company, that there's vision values, our place in the market, branding level five type work, and none of those layers, none of the layers below prepare a person for the layer above, so getting really good at a trade doesn't prepare you for coordinating tasks between crews level two, sure, and sure, getting really good at following checklists and knowing procedures, making sure the work gets done. None of that prepares you to get good at root cause process mapping efficiency within a department, and getting good at that within a department doesn't prepare you to look horizontally across all the different departments and understand that if this is happening in sales, then this can't happen in operations. I have to make that horizontal connection. Sure, okay. And getting good at that doesn't prepare you for visioning and market analysis and positioning and price levels, and yeah, it starts to get clear. It's like lean, once lean and waste, once you, the two fit together very well, but once you see it, you can't unsee it, and you know John is a fantastic staff accountant. I mean, he comes in, he does work, and he makes to steal from Tom Foster. He makes the best potato salad at the company picnic. Everybody loves this guy. He's been around forever, of course. He knows everything. So, let's make John the controller. Yeah, six months later, stuff counts aren't reconciled, stuff's not getting done, communication isn't happening. Yeah, because nothing at level one or level two prepared him for what was next, and we just think, well, he's he's good at this, he'll be good at that, he'll be good at the next level, and so we promote people into failure. Sure. Okay, go ahead, keep going. Well, so if we just last thing, if we, if we keep riffing, so this gets to your question, I think, and connecting numbers in a meaningful way to people, not just broad things. I love to say projects, not promotions. Okay, when Jack Welch was leaving GE, he had at one point, I think he had three people doing his job. I know at one point he had two people that were already doing his job, and then they picked who the CEO is. Interesting. Okay, so in the audience, I would say think about the last time you promote with hope. I promote and hope. Promote, yeah. I hope he does a great job. He'll learn, he'll pick it up. Let me see what happens. He'll pick it up. We'll, we'll see what happens, then we'll see, and then we'll look again, we'll, and we'll see what happens. Yeah, and we'll see if he's picking it up. Do not promote people without at least three project confirmations. Okay, so at the very basic level, you know, this is this is the the foreman for a day. If you're on the type of work that you know you can, you can let somebody be foreman for a day. Let's see how they do. Yeah, we'll give them feedback or letting other people run meetings. Yes, how they do giving um giving a process improvement, or or charging a couple of people with getting better at something, you come back with an idea, and you know you go to a conference, or you, or you go somewhere, and you have this idea, and you appoint three people, you guys figure this out, let's talk about it. Come back to me. But now I've given them a project. Now I have evidence of whether the person can do the work at the next level or not. And so the tool is the project. So checklists, yeah, if you got somebody who wants to be a supervisor, say, all right, make me a checklist. Yeah, are they thinking at that level? Are they? Can they make a detailed checklist for how a process ought to work, and then they can go oversee other people. Yeah. So now the connections, what is our growth? What, where are we going? What projects are we, are we putting into place for this year? Step back, make a staffing plan. What people do I need to be where? Who's my, who's my next foreman promotion? Is anybody ready for a supervisor or superintendent or project manager promotion? So, by June we need this person to be at a place where they're ready to be a project manager. Those are all measurable numbers. Where we are going to achieve $30 million in revenue, we did 19 million last year, we're going to do 25 this year, we're going to do 30 or 32 next year, Reese. Because of that, I need you to be ready to be a project manager by June. Yeah, or you're going to be part of a group of people we're going to train now. The numbers just got meaningful. Maybe, maybe you know that's these are we're coming up with examples on the fly, but yeah, now that number just got meaningful to you, right? What's okay, we're doing, we're doing $30 million in revenue. What's that mean to me? So I read a, I read an Inc magazine article many, many years ago that I wish I could find, and I can't find it, but I've remembered it ever since people want four things. Where are we going? How are we going to get there? How can I help? What's in it for me? Yeah, and we, we talk a lot about strategy. Where are we going? How are we going to get there? We're gonna, we're going to 30 million, and we're going to do it by remodeling work, and we're going to expand our territory. Great strategy. Where's the management? Where are we translating strategy into, like, tell, like, what's that mean to me? Yeah, we talk a lot about maybe what's in it for me, and how can I help? Like, you're going to be our sales rep, you're gonna go sell, and you're gonna have to go do business development, and you'll get a 10% commission. Yeah, if you're in roofing, or maybe it's eight or 10% commission, or whatever industry you're in, but nobody's translating that into the strategy. Why is that important? And I know, so Reese, I'm boy, I've really said some controversial things. I'm just listening, I'm soaking it in. Keep going, you're fine. I'm drawing a blank on the first thing I said, which was, oh, Iran, amenk is better than Marion. A whole bunch of people in the audience just like rolled over, some people rolled over. Yeah, Ronna makes better than Marion. The a controversial thing, maybe. Reese, I have never met one person who came to work purposefully to do a bad job. Yeah, no, no one starts the job with that intention. No, I know a bunch of people in the audience made me just laugh. I've had people laugh at me like you don't know who we work with. Yeah, I know a lot of people that have no idea why they're doing what they're doing. Totally, totally, and that takes translation because you, you're casting vision, which is level five. You're skipping over level four and level three, and we're preaching it to level two and level one, right? Which, by the way, I'll not to get sidetracked, but I will say clarification. So, Reese, if you go to the Grand Canyon, what do you see? A huge hole in the ground, huge hole. And on the side of the Grand Canyon, as you look down, what do you see? Bunch of ridges, bunch of layers and ridges. See layers. Are any of those layers any more important than the other layers? No, they're just, they're all layers, they're all equally. All the layers in an organization are equal, so that's why Elliot actually called them stratums, not levels, because he didn't want people to rank them and hire. They're all important, so we're talking strategy and casting vision, but it's level four and three, the actual management level that people, people often hate. They don't talk about why. Do we need managers? We, it's just a waste of money, but no one's translating, excuse me, broad concepts into tangible action. Yeah, and then, so then it just stops. So, there's there's very little strategy. We just do quarterly execution meetings. All of a sudden, we've, we've left Spain, and we have no idea if we're going to Florida or Massachusetts, right, right, right. Going, so ever, we're executing every strategy. Yeah, it's that layer of, of management that requires. Translation. Why is that? Do you think that we'll just call it level three and four, that they just get overlooked? I would say, like, initially, that's the, that's the hardest. They don't do work the way the way we work. They're the first layers that are connecting strategy in a meaningful way to numbers that's relevant for that particular individual. Yeah, but they're, they're not doing work, so this is where lean comes in. So, you know, teaching people leader standard work, and how to audit, how to track numbers, looking for patterns. So, I'm not, I'm not putting nails in the wood. A man, as a manager, I'm not. My job is to make everybody else better. They also think managers are, are, are hammer holders. They, in other words, it's just command and control. Yeah, they're not on the shovel. I'll just boss people around. That's not a manager, a manager in this context, the is based on value. Now, sometimes command and control is is needed. Somebody breaks their leg, like command and control. I'm not, I'm not using a democratic style leadership when somebody breaks their leg, but right, why have managers? Why have why are these layers needed? Because they bring value to the layers above and below it. So, what's the way that level three and level four bring value to the organization? It's by prioritizing. Never make your people prioritize on their own, help them prioritize. Yeah, so you're on a beach, I'm really going off on the analogies. You're on a beach, okay? And the tide goes out, the kids are like, 'Sweet, look at all these shells, it's going way out. Yeah, look at all these shells, and the parents are on the beach, and they're looking around, like, okay, it looks fine. I don't see any sharks. How do you know whether that's low tide or a tsunami? Yeah, they look the same from the beach. It's the guy, it's the lifeguard, it's the guy in the chair. Yeah, the guy with perspective, or gal with perspective. Managers have perspective, so we only have one boom lift. Who gets the boom lift? You don't make project managers argue over who gets the boom lift. A manager needs to make that decision, so the manager is responsible for the output of other people. What makes a manager a manager is being responsible for the output of other people. If I'm going to get great output from other people, number one, I need to bring them value, answer their questions. That doesn't mean I make them dependent. There's a balance there, but I'm prioritizing, I'm making decisions when tough decisions need to be made, so that it's, it's on me, not them. I'm connecting vision to execution, correct, in a meaningful way. Okay, and that goes back into connecting the numbers to strategy to answer numbers, bear execution, crooked line to answering your question. Yes, is meaningful way connecting strategy to the individual. Okay, now I do. This is that's a manager's role. Translating is a manager's role. Okay, and the reason why people. well, we can just talk construction here, like primarily what you've seen. The reason why construction can lack in management, or that can be the step that's overlooked, or not emphasized, prioritized, is because it's not seen as like a value producing task, but when really, like, that's where almost all of the value is created because without it you're not mapping the vision to execution. Yeah, who's making the process better? Yeah, who's designing the systems by which people work? Yeah, so in a small business this is tough because the owner has figured this out, they've they've worked their way up, so and so. Sometimes it's hard when other people can't do what we think is easy, right? I would also say the details of the work and the complexity of the work often dictate what the person can do in the role, so if I was to say to you, Reese, great mania, let's go hang out in Denver, and let's fly, and you would say, all right, great, I'll get the tickets, boom, done, but I was to say, dude, road trip, man, let's take a road trip to Denver, whoa. Oh, all right. Everything just got a whole lot more complex. Yeah, I can measure, I can measure that complexity. Yeah, so how long would it take you to get plane tickets? Two seconds, certain amount of time. Yeah, how long would it take you to plan a road trip to Denver? Three weeks. A much, much longer. Yeah, yeah. All right, so, so the longer the time span of a project, the more complex it is. Yeah, and that complexity is going to demand my attention totally. So, translating vision into execution, this, this piece. well, why are we assigning particular jobs to particular crews? Like, why should that crew get that job? I would assume, because, like, you have reason to believe that they could do it better, because they're just next in line, or sure, because we know they've done these projects before. Managers make sure it's the right crew with the right job at the right time, with the right materials, with the right equipment, so a foreman might say, "Hey, I got a broken ladder, and a field supervisor might say, "Are there any other broken ladders? A manager says,"How do we never have a broken ladder again? Yeah, the details of the field supervisor's job are going to pull that role down to a place where they're not going to think about that process, right. So it's very much the role that dictates the action, not the person. I think this is this, this is a key point that it's about the role, not the person, and having that role defined, and the buy-in from leadership to emphasize that role is the important piece. Yeah, I think it's hard not to ask people to do things that are above their time span, that are above their, their level of work. I mean, when you're when you're asking people to do things and it's not getting done, step back and say, all right, am I am I asking someone to do the work, am I asking someone to make sure the work gets done, or am I asking someone to design a process and fix a reoccurring problem? Those are three very distinct types of work that three very different brains execute on totally, and so some of that is cognitive maturity. So I'll give a shout out to my friends at People fit.com that talk a lot about CIP, cognitive information processing, and the brain matures at a predictable rate, where higher levels of work can be done, so this, this is part of experience. You start at the bottom, you move to the top. I mean, these are very organic, observable things. It's not levels of work isn't isn't rocket science. Yeah, but to apply it can be very tough. Yeah, so you, you have the older you get, eventually you crest, but yeah, the older you get, the more your brain matures. So these are three very different types of process of cognitive information processing, so doing the work, making sure the work gets done, level two, level three, root cause process analysis. designing the work by which we do. How do we do this better? Okay, analysis improvement root cause, that's level three work. I'm curious, like, because you mentioned, like, how do you, how do you prepare, you know, the level two person and to the level three person, right? You give them projects, right? Bingo, dude, you're a good listener. Yeah, projects, not promotions. So you say, hey, I want us to have a better shop process. I want the two of you guys to get together, or gals, and make me a suggestion. Design me, monitor the process, and design me a better way for foreman to return unused equipment and materials to the shop, and then they go out and do it, and it might be bad, it might be terrible, but it might be, might be awesome, it might be bad, but they thought about, and they've proven that they can do a level three task and analyze root cause and design a process, but then you also said, okay, so I definitely, okay, so I'm tracking on the project side, but then you mentioned I think it was between level three and four and five, like level four and five isn't really reliant on the hammer swinging, right? We'll just call it the hammer swing, like you don't. In order to be an exceptional, the command and control, yeah, I think is what you're getting at. Yeah, yeah, it's.. I have four is. Integration piece, and then five is the external envision, and like, so then, How do you like, is like, you see these people that are like, you know, accelerate through their careers, right? Or like, even in a construction company, like, you're thinking about who are the high slope people, right? They might not have the experience, but are you essentially giving them projects from an integration standpoint, and an external vision standpoint, that you're like, I don't need this guy to be like a great hammer swinger, I just know that they're gonna be like going up into the right. I'm essentially trying to figure out, I think, I think people would agree that the best craftsman is not the best supervisor, and the best supervisor is not the best operations manager. Yeah, the best sales rep is not the best sales manager. Yeah, Michael Horton is not going to make a great coach. Totally, Larry Bird could only do it for three years, and then I'm out. Yeah, Magic Johnson's never even tried. I mean, the best players are rarely the best supervisors and managers. Yeah, so what's the minimum? We need to define a minimum of what they need to know, it's still very difficult to bring someone completely from the outside, but if, if someone understands the skills of management, I mean, I've seen a lot of people go between trades, back and forth between different trades, and do different things, there's a ramp up period, but if you're attracted, a person will continue to gravitate up towards the level of work that challenges them, so if you have people that are are giving you suggestions about how to improve, engage that person. Yeah, do you find that in the construction space we'll call it the four or five level people, do you see that happening often, or do you see in construction that being a more resistant concept of like engaging people, because I see it all the time, I think people are trying, I think honestly I think people have tried, it's failed, and they've, they've, they've either given up, or maybe, maybe it was the wrong person, they've been burned, they've tried these things. Construction is, is a safety-heavy environment. I can't just put anybody out there, and I have to be careful with the product, so that's why that goes back to projects, not promotions on job sites, on anywhere in sales, you know. I don't, I don't give a new sales rep a huge bid to do their third day. I slowly build them up into doing bigger and bigger things. So, no, I think in earnest people have tried this, and this is where I mean, for us at Precision, we love stepping in and helping people design better feedback systems and improvement systems. How do we integrate these ideas? How do I capture them? And how do I know? How do I know before I give a person a project or a job, something in work, I give them a promotion or a project, meaning work that I know they can do it. I've seen it happen at big companies and small companies. $30 million remodeler gave a job to a supervisor, the PM. The PM was good, but supervisor was the first time they'd ever done something like this, they knew, and there were certain things that had to happen for to adapt. Some, some people have done those things, some people just give it to the supervisor and can't understand why they can't figure it out, right? Other people, so we just gave someone a project that's more complex than they've demonstrated capability for, so I shrink my time span. I check in with them more frequently. These are things we, we do. Some are very natural to do, but I think people have tried, and it's hard. It's hard to get it right. It's hard, you know. It's scary to share vision and to share, you know. Is this person just going to go start their own company? It's scary. There's ways of doing it. There's ways of doing it appropriately. Yes, you're going to get burned, but you got to keep trying. The role of management is to is to first bring value to the organization. Yeah, you do that by translating vision into tangible action, helping people prioritize making the tough decisions. We're at an airport and it's snowing, and there's two planes that need to take off. One plane has ice, the other plane needs a new wheel. Yeah, there's only one extra plane. Who gets the plane? Well, the pilots don't want to make that decision. Yeah. So that's the manager, somebody got to step up and make the decision and be accountable for the output of other people. Make a decision, somebody gets the plane. Here's, here's another example that I like to give. When people don't speak up at meetings, yeah, if you find yourself in a meeting and nobody's speaking up, immediately say anything that goes wrong is my fault, team, I need your feedback, and I need your honest feedback on a decision I'm going to make. The decision, and if it will be my fault, I've said this to people at at the previous company, consulting company I was at, we were working on a project, yeah, and people were struggling, and I said, "Guy team, let's.. if this goes wrong, it's.. it's my fault. What I need from you guys is to work hard, yeah. I'm gonna make the decision that.. and they've ever.. you could see it in the room, everybody just relief. Yeah, just relax. I'm gonna.. it's my decision. I need your feedback. And it took a second, but I started getting honest feedback. We should not do this, or we should do this. I just see what happens. Yeah, just if people are afraid to speak openly because they're afraid it's going to be their fault, right? One reason that's not every reason, but if you're, if you find yourself in a meeting and nobody's speaking up, whoever's the leader needs to stand up and say this is my decision, it's my fault. Then you get the feedback. I'm going to make the decision. I need everybody here to give me their honest feedback. Yeah, a lot of times it's well, we went with Bob's idea, it was his idea, you know. We, and all of a sudden, now Bob's not going to participate anymore. Yeah, exactly. So, a primary way managers bring value. So, in the, in the absence of managers, you have nobody participating in meetings, you have people pointing fingers at each other, nothing, nothing can get, can get solved. Everybody's who got who gets the plane, who gets the boom lift. Yeah, you have vision that doesn't get executed on, yeah, because no one's attaching vision in a meaningful way to the people. Yeah, this is great, so now I can't help but bring up lean, and I would say people in the audience look up leader standard work, and now take that discussion and turn it into a checklist, so for example, a sales manager, if I'm going to be a sales manager, I have to step out from individual leads, and I have to look at how long is it taking leads to get through the system. Do we have enough leads for to hire a new sales rep? What's the quality of my pipeline? Do I have how big does my pipeline need to be in order to sell what we need to sell? How fast are leads turning over? How can I? How can I? How can my team get to leads faster and faster in a better way? How can I increase throughput while reducing inventory and reducing operating expense? Yeah, it's easy to do one of those, but to do all three, that that's what the manager is figuring out. So, the numbers I look at are going to be very different as a sales manager than as a sales rep. Totally, totally. This, this was great. I, there was, there was a lot of, a lot of listening, but I think that I think you answered the question perfectly, of like, what is the conversation that needs to be had that isn't being had enough, and construction, you had a lot of really great examples, and tying back through the different levels, and why management gets slept on. I'm just curious, like, do you have any, like, closing thoughts? Thank you for your compliment. I, the, this is a topic respecting people and fixing systems is something I'm very, very passionate about. So, sometimes we people need training and leadership, we lead people, we fix systems. So, how do we, how do we make doing the wrong thing impossible. How do we make doing the wrong thing impossible? Yeah, if you go to a gas station, it's impossible to put a diesel pump in your gasoline car. How do we make.. how do we design systems? Yeah, so that doing the wrong thing is impossible. Yeah, that's respecting people. So ask them for their feedback. Ask them, how do we go about making this job better when mistakes happen? Don't ask whose fault it was. Ask, how did the system allow this outcome to happen, and what do we need to do? So, you know, an example, an example in manufacturing is we design systems that, you know, all the bolts are coming down a conveyor belt, and there's a little arm that flips all the bolts over, so that they're all facing up. Well, you know, in sales you make, you do confirmation calls. Yeah, I, I do a confirmation call to make sure that the owner is going to be there, and I, I catch owners that have forgotten before I get out there. Yeah, so I'm error proofing. Yeah, I'm going out to bids, and people aren't there. It's happening way too many times that people have forgotten. Yeah, we error-proof what I don't. I fix the system, I send emails, reminders, calendar appointments, confirmation calls. So, instead of asking blame, how do we ask? How do we make doing the wrong thing impossible? Yeah, I love it. I love it. Your wealth of knowledge, Andrew. I think this truly.. I think I think this.. this is a topic that we haven't touched on, and I think it's like massively applicable in terms of what we generally talk about, which is like construction accounting, right? And the reason this is applicable is because I think everyone's like, oh, like, what's the process here, like, oh, would you get burned on, or how do you do this, whereas this is mapping to your earlier comment of, yeah, we have plenty, we have plenty of strategy, we have plenty of execution, we map revenue to our goals all the time, and it's like, but no, like, the missing layer of getting that strategy to the execution is the management conduit, if you will, in their role. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, I think there are there are people out there that need help learning how to manage. They've got the capability, they've got the experience in the industry, but they've never encountered leader standard work or root cause analysis or a five whys exercise, or a process diagram, and understanding bottlenecks, and how to, how to exploit the constraints in a system, so that it works evenly. Totally, I mean, that's that's all the stuff that makes everybody else better, so the first value that a manager brings, or the first purpose that a manager brings, is to bring value in decision making and problem solving to the people below. So don't expect the people below you to prioritize, help them prioritize. So the lifeguard in the chair, the lifeguard in the chair is the one that has perspective. Yeah, and I can help parents prioritize. Hey, you should go down the beach. We got a - there's a riptide coming, and you guys shouldn't go there. You should go over here. Or why don't you do this first and that second? Yeah, help your team. Don't make your team prioritize on their own, because you, you're a manager, brings that longer site to help them see what they can't see, totally, totally. Andrew, how do people find you? Sure, so new website, we're getting rebrand, we're doing a whole rebrand with me coming on board, so you can check us out. There's a.. so you're there's a.. there's an under construction site, Precision Dash sme.com precision.sme.com You can also jazz, not dot Precision Dash sme.com I'm here for Ash, I'm here for you, so in lean, that's that's called Poké Yoga. So you, you just get, you just corrected, you prevented me from doing it the wrong way. You, yeah, here we go. You fixed it, was that a test? It was, it was. You passed, you passed. Yeah, these are the droids you're looking for. Yeah, so precision dash sme.com You can also check out our planning app at app a pp dot precision dash sme.com to learn more about lean and levels of work planning, how it works. Okay, so thanks for letting me make that plus shameless plug. I appreciate, yeah, of course. No, and the reason I said is because I think, like, candidly, I think there were, there was enough tactical in here, definitely enough analogies to get people's gears turning. And I think this is, I'm sure I'm sitting here, I'm like, we could have done, like, a three hour episode on this, because there's just like the compounding discussion that comes through, like the projects, the people, the identification, the outcomes. How does all this work? We could do three hours just on pay for performance programs, and why they create the behaviors you don't want. Yeah, they're doing the exact, they're creating. Exact conditions you don't, you're trying to prevent, yeah, with pay for performance programs. This is why people need to know how to find you. Yeah, email Andrew at Precision Dash sme.com Fortunately, we bought both domains, so it doesn't matter. Yeah, they feed the same place, Precision Dash sme.com Reese. I met you a year and a half ago, and dude, it's.. it's.. you've come a long way from, from webinars to podcasts to however many.. you guys have tons of clients now, so I'm excited for you, man. Yeah, yeah, I appreciate that. It's.. it's been.. it's been a fun ride, and you know what makes it fun, Andrew, meeting people like you, nah, there, this industry is full of them. It's full of them. There's just, you know, that's that's the whole intention here. We just want to, we want to get, we won't get the word out for the fine contractors. Yeah, say that to all the ladies. Yeah, we don't mean it. Actually, I think this is the first time that I've ever said that. You're very good, great to be with us, actually, though. So, okay, cool. Well, we'll go ahead and put a plug in this, and certainly doesn't mean we can't catch up in the future, but I appreciate you. Wish you the best at Precision SME, found at Precision Hyphen sme.com currently under construction. But keep these guys on, keep these guys on your radar again. This is, this is a classic Midwestern goodbye, you know? Just like it takes forever to sing, you know. But no, I appreciate you, sir. And we'll close it out here. Appreciate it. Thanks, Reece.