THE OPERATING CODE | 008

OWN THE OUTCOME

Owning the outcome doesn't mean doing everything yourself.

I've learned over the years that as your responsibilities grow, the way you contribute to getting the work done changes. When you're part of a crew, you may be the person physically solving the problem. As a foreman or superintendent, you're responsible for making sure your people have what they need, understanding what's holding up the work, and helping them work through problems they can't resolve themselves.

When you're responsible for multiple crews, projects, or an entire operation, your involvement changes again. You can't personally handle every problem, and you shouldn't have to. That's why you have people in leadership positions throughout the organization. They have responsibilities, and they need the authority and support to handle them.

But having other people responsible for the work doesn't remove your responsibility for the results.

Know When to Get Involved

One of the things I believe good leaders need to understand is when to step in and when to let somebody else handle the situation.

If a foreman has a problem under control, I don't need to walk onto the job and start making decisions for him. He deserves the opportunity to manage his crew and take responsibility for his decisions. But if he needs additional manpower, help with an engineering issue, a customer decision, or something that requires authority he doesn't have, that's where I can contribute.

The same principle applies farther up the organization. A director doesn't need to become involved in every problem a superintendent or project manager encounters. Sometimes the people responsible already have a good plan, and the best thing leadership can do is give them the room to carry it out.

Other times, they need support that only another level of the organization can provide. That might mean making a decision, connecting the right people, providing resources, or removing an obstacle that's preventing the work from moving forward.

The important part is understanding what your involvement will accomplish. Getting involved simply because you have a higher title doesn't necessarily help anybody.

Take Responsibility Without Taking Over

I've seen situations where a problem becomes visible in the field even though the reason it happened started somewhere else. A crew might be waiting because material wasn't ready, an approval was missing, or information didn't reach the people who needed it.

By the time the problem shows up, several people may have been involved in the decisions that led to it. That's when it's easy for everybody to start pointing fingers instead of figuring out what needs to happen next.

I believe accountability matters, but I also believe it needs to lead to something useful. We need to understand what happened, determine who was responsible for which part, and make sure the problem gets corrected.

If I made a poor decision, missed something important, or failed to provide support when it was needed, I need to acknowledge that and take responsibility for correcting my part. If the problem belongs to somebody else, that doesn't mean I should automatically take it away from them. They may be perfectly capable of handling it with the right support.

Helping somebody solve a problem doesn't mean they have to lose ownership of it.

Look Beyond the Immediate Problem

There's another part of ownership that becomes more important when you're responsible for several projects or teams. You have to recognize when something that looks like an individual problem is actually happening throughout the organization.

One crew running into a material issue might be an isolated mistake. But if several crews are consistently dealing with the same problem, somebody needs to examine how material is being ordered, received, and verified.

The same applies to communication, staffing, scheduling, and the way responsibilities are assigned. When the same issues continue showing up across different projects, solving them individually may keep the work moving, but it doesn't necessarily correct what's causing them.

That's where broader leadership needs to get involved. The people managing individual projects should be able to handle the problems within their authority, while the people responsible for the larger operation need to recognize patterns and determine whether something needs to change.

The answer won't always be a new process or additional resources. Sometimes people need training, sometimes responsibilities need to be clarified, and sometimes somebody simply needs to be held accountable for work they aren't handling.

You have to understand what's causing the problem before deciding how to correct it.

Be Willing to Question Your Own Decisions

I think one of the harder parts of leadership is being willing to look at your own decisions with the same scrutiny you apply to everybody else's.

Did I give my people what they needed? Did I make a decision when it was mine to make? Did I get involved too early and interfere with somebody who already had things under control? Or did I wait too long when somebody genuinely needed help?

Those questions matter because your contribution isn't always something you can point to on a completed project. Sometimes it's a problem you prevented, a decision you made at the right time, or somebody you helped develop into a more capable leader.

And sometimes your best contribution is recognizing that the people responsible already know what they're doing and allowing them to do it.

Owning the outcome isn't about taking credit for everybody else's work or making sure you're involved in every decision. It's about understanding your responsibility for the result, providing the support your position allows you to provide, and being willing to acknowledge and correct your own mistakes.

Own your part, help others succeed in theirs, and when the same problem keeps coming back, stop treating it like a new problem.