#141 Problems on the Jobsite
Hey guys, welcome to another episode of the construction corner podcast. The show where we try to bring you hot topics of the day for everything in and around our wonderful industry of construction. We talk about the things that most people won't talk about. We bring up problems, we bring up solutions and we hope you appreciate it and enjoy it.
Today's going to be a little bit different of an episode than the normal. Uh, obviously I've never done an intro of myself. And there's probably a good reason for that. However, uh, my co-host Dylan is not feeling so great today. So we decided that I would take on a solo episode and we're going to see how it goes.
This is something that we talked about, uh, way back when I first came on the show and, uh, we just never had a real opportunity or reason to do it. So we figured why the heck not give it a shot now? Stay tuned, bear with me. And we're going to have a little bit shorter of an episode today than normal, but it's a, it's a topic that I think is pretty important.
So before I get started, uh, as usual, we do not charge any fees. We do not do any advertising. We're not trying to sell you guys anything. All we ask is that if you get any shred of value from this podcast, from this or any of them, any little bit of that. Yeah. If you just share the show around for us, give us a, like, give us a share, tell a friend who you think might like it.
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So guys recently I was a guest on another podcast. Uh, I'm not gonna. Drop the name quite yet because they haven't released the episode yet. And I don't want to, I don't want to jump their guns and steal anybody's thunder, but I did want to kind of bring up one of the questions that they asked me. One of the topics we talked about was a pretty interesting one, and I think it ties in with a lot of what Dylan and I talk about here, um, quite frequently.
And, you know, we, we get into culture and core values, a ton in this show, and there's a reason for it. Cause it's. Fricking important. Right? I harp about it all the time on the show. I talked about it in my own business. I talk about it with my family, with my kids. So it's really just something that's ingrained into me.
And I truly feel that it is, it is the one of the many secrets to running a successful business in, in this or in any other. So anyways, excuse me, the question came up. Um, it was somewhere along the lines of when a subcontractor is having a problem with one of my employees. So my superintendent let's say, or, or project manager, what should that sub do?
Should they contact me or this individual's direct, um, superior, you know, should they bring it to light? Should they ignore it? Should they try and handle things on their own? And it was brought to light. You know, the question was kind of framed in that there's a lot of subs out there who I guess are nervous that there'd be repercussions from something like that.
So it was directly asked to me, you know, if they came to me and they, they told me that they were having a big problem with one of my guys, uh, one of my people that I wouldn't believe the sub and would instantly just kind of cause problems. And, and basically, you know, what could have the propensity to make this person's life a living hell on any given project?
Admittedly, I was a little taken aback by the question. I mean, it wasn't directed. At me specifically, you know, from a, from a previous instance or anything like that, it was more just a, a theoretical question. But, but regardless to me, that whole idea is preposterous. The idea that a sub couldn't come to me or to my business partner and say, Hey, you know, superintendent X is on this project and he's doing.
Something that's making me uncomfortable or he's doing something that it isn't working and it's causing problems. And I wanted to bring it to your attention to think that there would be people out there, business owners out there who would disregard that sort of honesty, disregard that, that courage that it takes to, to have that conversation in the first place and then go a step further and, and try to.
Make the situation bad or worse for the person that actually came to you to think people will still do that sort of shit is kind of mind numbing to me. It, it shouldn't happen obviously. And it's just, it's a Bismal to, to think that that is a legitimate concern of people today. Um, you know, I've never witnessed that sort of thing, so maybe I'm just naive, but the way I look at it, And the way I answered the question when I was asked, is it all comes down to core values and culture, right?
I mean, if, if we preach, excuse me, if we practice our core values, as much as we preach about them, that in and of itself should not allow a bad apple to hang around rotting on the tree for, for very long, right? That's the whole point of, of what we do. That's the crux of. It's it's the way we guide ourselves and, and guide our business.
And it helps us make decisions and it helps us create this team that we're building. And it helps keep that team of the same mindset. So, you know, if a sub has a problem with one of my, my folks, I would always say, just rip the damn bandaid off and, and come and talk. Call me, meet me for lunch. You know, whatever it may be a beer or something and just get it out in the open.
And you know, I'm a pretty reasonable guy. I, I can see things from a lot of different sides of every story. I'm going to have the conversation with, with you the sub. And I'm going to hear you out, listen to your concerns, listen to your complaints. And you know, I'm not just going to immediately take your side.
Or take the subside and throw my one of my team members under the bus. That's that'll never happen either. However, I will absolutely take your concerns, uh, under advisement and I'll give it some serious thought. I want to hear what's going on. And after that I will absolutely go and have a similar conversation.
Whichever of my employees is the subject of this, this conversation, this topic. Um, you know, I, I put a lot of weight in my team, our immediate team here, but that doesn't mean that people don't do stupid shit. That doesn't mean that, you know, people might be acting one way when I'm around and acting a totally different way when I'm not around.
And. To be quite candid. Uh, we went through this, this exact same situation, um, earlier this year and I talked about it on the show. We, we did a, uh, almost a full episode just on this, this incident. So I won't hash up the past two months, but basically I, I had hired, uh, a superintendent that I thought was a great asset to the company that I thought was going to be really, uh, uh, fixture.
In our future as a construction company. And, um, the long story short, it turns out that I had overlooked or, or neglected to, to see some, some pretty striking, uh, um, differences in, in our value system. And our core values between us as, as Shaffer construction and, and between this individuals. And, you know, it reached a point where I started seeing it more than.
After a, roughly a year of, of kind of letting things slide and, and, you know, pushing things to the back burner because of a few different reasons. But the point in this, this long kind of rant and ramble here is that, you know, I did have a couple people come to me, especially towards the end. I had a couple of my subs come to me and sit me down and say, Hey, you know, we didn't talk this guy.
This individual is. You know, he's, he's causing stress and chaos on the job site. It's not working out well for anybody. He's, he's talking shit about you. He's talking about the company and all sorts of stuff that as an owner, as a, as an employer, you don't want to hear, you don't want to hear this about your team.
And especially me, you know, my ego doesn't want to hear that either. Cause I hired the guy and I had a couple options, a couple of opportunities where there were. I probably could have, and probably should have removed him from, from our team earlier than this, but I just didn't. So, you know, it's, it kind of comes down to the fact that my subs are very trusted partners to me, just like my employees and when I'm not there on a job site, which I can't be on every job site all day long every day, it would be.
Uh, counterproductive when I'm not there. I rely on both sides of that spectrum to be my eyes and ears in the field. I rely on my people, my direct reports to tell me, you know, honest assessments of what's going on out there. What's happening with the subs what's happening with the project. But likewise, I also expect and rely upon my subcontractor partners to do the same.
And if something's not going according to plan, if something's not right, if something looks fishy, I have built relationships with a lot of our subs to where they will come to me or where they at least they've. They absolutely should. Now on the flip side of that, I can say that after I did finally remove.
Particular individual from, uh, his position with us at the company. I had even more people come out of the woodwork, frankly, and, and tell me things like, oh man, you know, he was, he was this and that. And I'm so glad you made that decision and blah, blah, blah. And you know, things were just bad and stressful and chaotic when he was around.
And I kind of took a step back with a few of these guys through these individuals and said, listen, you know, that's bullshit for you to come and tell me that. I wasn't looking for a pat on the back or reassurance that I did the right thing. I knew I did the right thing because I, I knew that my partner and I, we don't make those decisions lightly.
And, and there was, there was a lot of evidence and a lot of facts and a lot of discussion and quantitative reasoning that went into it. But what pisses me off is that you now are coming to me and saying, well, yeah, it really was horrible. This guy made everybody's life worse and he made projects, this, that, and the earth.
That doesn't do anybody any good. So again, just rip, rip the damn bandaid off, because it's easy for me to put on blinders. And if I don't hear a specific thing, a specific complaint, I'm not going to go looking for a problem necessarily on something like that, especially on, on, you know, uh, almost an, a human resources related type thing.
But if I hear about it, I will absolutely take care of it. And maybe had more of my guys, more of our subs come to me sooner. Maybe I would have taken care of it sooner. Maybe I wouldn't have, who knows, but at least it would have kept that communication line open. So I did have this conversation with. Uh, numerous subs that we use quite frequently and just said, listen, just be honest with me, rip the bandaid off.
If there's something going on, don't, don't worry about repercussions because here's the biggest thing. If, if I ever found out that, you know, not let me back up, not every one of these offenses is, uh, worthy of terminating someone's employment. It's just not. So if I hear of somebody doing something on a job, That I don't personally agree with that.
I don't like that that's causing problems with, with our subs. I'll go talk to that employee and have the conversation and just say, here's, what's going on. Here's what I'm hearing. You know, we, we need to have a chat and then we need to change some things and I'll send them on their Merry way. Now, if I ever heard ever that that individual, that employee was then going out.
You know, almost, almost finding the whistleblower and trying to make their lives even more difficult because they brought up this topic to me, to their boss. Well, that would be, that would be grounds for immediate removal in my mind, that would break almost every single one of our core values here. And I wouldn't tolerate it.
So it's a long story, but it it's, it just goes back to what Dylan and I talk about so frequently. There's gotta be open and honest communication across all ranks in this industry. And in any given project at any given job site, you have to be able to have the tough conversations because without it, you just lose efficiency or, or worse.
So that would be my, my long answer. That would be my suggestion to, to my guys, to my team, to my subs, and to anyone else out there listening, just have the game, have the hard conversations. Don't be afraid. What might happen, frankly, you should be more afraid of what might happen if you don't say anything.
And that I could probably stop right there, but that's kind of the story of the day, you know, be more afraid not of what would happen if you open your mouth, be more afraid today, especially of what might happen if you. I don't want to get off on a tangent and change, change the format of the show while my buddy Dylan's, uh, not here, cause that wouldn't be too fair, but there's a lot in that statement.
I just made be afraid of what might happen if you don't open your mouth. So kind of jumping into a different topic, um, different, but related. I recently, uh, last early last week took a few days. Took my, my wife and boys up to the, what we call the thumb in Michigan. Um, over at the tip of the thumb on the shores of lake Huron, we took a few days and just, just got away as a family to, to spend some quality time, relax a bit decompress.
Um, you know, kids are starting school here. Uh, very soon. My, my eldest son, uh, starts high school somehow on Tuesday. And we just needed some time off and some time away from the, the kind of the monotony of, of everyday life. So that's all fine and good. And everybody should do that. What's unique about this instance for me is that I truly think this was the first time ever since I've been a business owner of some sort, um, that I took an actual pseudo vacation and I left my laptop at home.
I didn't even bring it. And every time we would get out of the truck, we spent a lot of time on the beaches and we spent a lot of time exploring, you know, lighthouses and things like that along the coast. Uh, but every time I get out of the truck, I would make sure my wife had her phone, you know, in case we needed something, but I would lock my phone up in the console in the truck.
And I can tell you, it was an absolutely liberating. It allowed me to truly engage with my family and I wasn't dicking around checking email or texting or, or dealing with, you know, any, any job-related issues that, that frankly I wouldn't normally have, have done. So it was great. We enjoyed the time immensely.
It was refreshing. My wife and kids all separately, noticed it and mentioned it to me, which kind of hit me in the gut that, wow, you were actually present on this one. Dad. That was pretty cool. So that speaks to a lot of different things psychologically, but, but one of the ones that I'm going to touch on now, and that kind of ties in with what we've talked about here earlier is this, this value of culture and core values.
This team that I'm building. And at our construction company, I trust him hands down. And this is the first time that I've ever actually sat back and realized that that, wow, I was able to leave. I was able to completely unplug. There was almost no way they could have gotten a hold of me and, you know, unless it was an absolute, absolute emergency.
I wasn't worried about. I wasn't sitting there all anxious, wondering what was happening without me there. And I realized that this team I'm building, they're the ones that drive this ship, but they can keep the boat moving in the right direction without me, at least for a while. And that's a truly fantastic feeling to have.
It's good for your soul. It's good for my soul. You know, you need to take time off, you know, Time away from, from work and spend it with family and friends, but to be able to actually do that and not be nervous was really eyeopening for me. It really made me think that, you know, while maybe, maybe some of the stuff that I'm always running my mouth about here on the podcast, maybe it's actually true and it's it's coming true.
You know, it works. It's not just fluff and there's no, maybe. It does work and I'm, I'm proof of it. And I'm, I'm living that life now. And it's really, really a great place to be. So, you know, you, you have to trust people, you have to trust that they'll make mistakes. Of course they will. Everybody does, but you got to give them the power to make those mistakes and then to make decisions on their own, to handle them and handle the issues that might come up, you know, emergencies have.
From time to time, but even with an emergency, I'm confident that my team would have been able to address it appropriately, at least to the, to the manner of they could, they could stop the bleeding, so to speak until I was back or until I was able to respond. Now in the past that never has been the case.
That's never happened. I went on vacation last year. Uh, we took a week off and went to Florida. And I sat on my phone or my laptop for at least a chunk of every single day we were there. And I could tell it made my family upset and it made me upset. You know, it, it, it just was a, a shit place to be. And I was getting called.
Multiple times a day with the same, the same issues coming up at a job site and, and, you know, yelling and screaming and all the, all the stress and chaos that shouldn't be involved in the project to begin with, let alone when you're on vacation. So, uh, I feel I'm rambling and I probably am, but just, uh, it's something to take under advisement.
You know, the stuff that we talked about here, this woo fluffy type stuff. It's not. It is, it is honest to God, the key to running a company, the key to building a team. And it's, it's the key to success. You get in, you get out of it, what you put into it. There's a lot of books written on these topics.
There's a lot of philosophy that goes into this by people, way smarter than I'll ever be, but that's really the gist of it. You get out what you put in and if you truly want. This sort of lifestyle, you truly embody your own core values and you truly care about the culture of your organization. You won't go wrong, you won't go wrong.
So I've got some other notes on here to touch on. Uh, but to be honest with you guys, we've gone about 20 minutes with nobody talking, but me and hopefully it hasn't completely sucked. Uh, let us know, drop some comments. Like I said, if it, if it's not terrible, give it a share, let people know about it. Uh, and maybe we'll do it again.
Maybe Dillon an IO. We'll each drop a solo episode here and there. Or maybe we can get on some guests, people to, to do the same. But anyways, thank you for listening. Thank you for tuning back in. Thank you for the support. You continue to give us here on the construction corner podcast. I hope you have a fantastic rest of your.
And we'll see you guys next week.