THE OPERATING CODE  |  006

NEVER LOSE TOUCH WITH THE WORK

The higher you move in an organization, the easier it becomes to lose touch with the work that built the organization in the first place.

Your responsibilities change. They should.

There are customers to manage, financials to understand, schedules to protect, people to develop, meetings to attend, and decisions that have to be made.

But there is a risk that comes with that.

You can become responsible for work you no longer understand.

Not because you forgot how to do the job. Because you stopped seeing how the job is being done today.

Processes change. People change. Tools change. Customers change. Requirements change. Problems that look simple from an office can look very different when you are standing beside the person dealing with them.

That is why leaders need to intentionally stay connected to the work.

GO SEE IT

If I were responsible for a region, I would not want my entire understanding of the operation coming through reports and meetings.

I would occasionally be at the shop when the crews are getting ready to leave.

Talk to them. Meet the new person. Ask what they are working on. What is going well? What is making the job harder? Anything broken? Anything you need?

And then remember what they tell you.

Come back later and ask: “How did that work out?”

That is how people know you were not just making conversation.

SOMETIMES TAKE OFF THE TITLE

I would also want project managers and operational leaders to occasionally spend a day working alongside the people they are responsible for supporting.

Not running the crew. Not standing beside the truck watching.

Helping.

Pull rope. Stage material. Carry something. Hand somebody tools. And take direction from the foreman.

You are not there to prove you know how to do their job. You are there to see.

How does the foreman communicate? How does the crew respond? Where is time being lost? What tools are they fighting with? What process looks good on paper but does not work very well in practice? What does the crew do every day that nobody in the office realizes they are doing?

You can learn a lot when you are not the person running the show.

SUPPORT MEANS SUPPORT

I have been on jobs where I was there simply to help.

A foreman has asked me, “What do you think we should do?”

And my answer has been: “This is your show. I am here to help you. Tell me where you want me.”

If every time someone higher in the organization walks onto a job the chain of command changes, you are not supporting the foreman. You are replacing him.

Sometimes leadership means having enough confidence to take direction from someone whose title is below yours.

The same applies when people need something.

If a crew tells me a tool is broken or they are missing something that is affecting the work, I want to understand what they need.

There may be purchasing processes and equipment procedures for good reasons. But the process should support the work.

The work should not suffer just so we can say we followed the process.

If I have the authority to remove an obstacle and it makes sense to remove it, that is part of my job.

WATCH TO SEE

And sometimes do not ask anything.

Watch.

Watch how people work together. Watch who teaches. Watch who gets frustrated. Watch who everybody goes to when something gets difficult. Watch whether the foreman has to repeat himself.

Watch whether people are standing around because they are lazy—or because the material, tools, information, or direction are not there.

Those are very different problems.

A spreadsheet is not going to show all of that. Neither will a thirty-minute Teams meeting.

Sometimes you have to be close enough to the work to see it.

REMEMBER WHO CREATES THE VALUE

Moving into leadership does not make the work beneath you.

It makes you responsible for supporting more of it.

Without the people performing the work, there is not much for the rest of the organization to manage.

That is worth remembering as the titles get bigger and the office gets farther away from the jobsite.

Stay close enough to understand what people are dealing with. Give them what they need when you can. Listen when they tell you something is not working. And occasionally take the title off and help.

Never lose touch with the work.

And never lose touch with the people doing it.