“What’s next?” is not the question to ask…if you plan to be a leader.
The question implies being orientated to completing one task and looking for the next task to start. While this is somewhat functional, it isn’t strategic or competitive. What powerful managers do is remove Constraints to the flow of work. They anticipate the work 6+ weeks out and begin to identify what Constraints exists which will inhibit the work to be performed. Constraints can be things like missing information (RFI), lack of authority to proceed (Change Order or Notice to proceed), or long-lead items that are not onsite, to name a few. The top performers are looking for people to help them remove Constraints well before they become a killer of their plans.
Strategic Vision
Now for the not so obvious… in order to manage by constraints one has to:
- Constitute a sequence of actions that lead to a sequence of situations (strategy)
- Which enable the observation of what needs to be done by when
- Revealing the Constraints that exist relative to executing the strategy
We at JENCO have a fundamental strategy for Construction Put In Place that all jobs have to operate in. It’s like cars; all cars have to operate fundamentally the same way. They have to have some form of energy the car uses to propel the car down the road. Then the specific form of energy for the car and how it transforms it into the car’s movement is specific to each type of car. Just like in the car example, Construction jobs operate fundamentally the same but specifically they are all different.
Requirements for Long Term Success
At JENCO we know fundamentally we must Satisfy our clients as one of the main purposes of our strategy. But each customer’s Conditions of Satisfaction are different and we must interact with them in order to Constitute powerful Conditions of Satisfaction on each job in order to work every day of the job strategically to Satisfy the customer. Does this approach strike you as different? Interested in how we form strategies to satisfy our customers? Let’s talk about where and how we can help each other –please give me a call at 480.513.1611 or shoot me an email at kanderson@jencoinc.com