THE OPERATING CODE | 009

THE NUMBERS TELL YOU WHAT. NOT WHY.

Managing performance means understanding what's happening behind the report.

I've spent enough time managing construction work to know that what shows up on a report doesn't always tell the whole story. A schedule might show that a project is falling behind, a financial report might show labor costs increasing, or a productivity report might indicate that a crew isn't getting as much done as expected. Those numbers are important, and I believe accurate reporting is necessary to understand how a business is performing. But the report is only part of the picture. It tells you what's happening without necessarily explaining why.

Look Behind the Numbers

When you're standing on a jobsite, you can usually see quite a bit of what's happening. You know whether the crew has the material it needs, whether the work is moving along, and whether something is holding everybody up. As you take on responsibility for more crews and projects, that visibility changes. You can't be everywhere at once, so you depend more on schedules, financial reports, productivity information, and the people responsible for managing the work.

That's where I believe experience and good judgment become especially important. If a report shows that productivity is down, I don't want to immediately assume the crew isn't working hard enough. I want to understand what's happening before deciding what needs to change.

Maybe the crew is waiting on material, or the work is taking longer than originally estimated. Maybe the scope changed, the crew isn't properly staffed for that phase of the project, or there's a problem with supervision. It could also be something outside the crew's control that's affecting their progress.

All of those situations can produce similar numbers, but they don't require the same solution. If you don't understand what's causing the problem, you could end up putting more pressure on the wrong people without improving anything.

Telling a project team to improve productivity because the report looks bad isn't management. It's repeating the report back to the people who produced it.

Experience Helps You Understand the Problem

One advantage of spending years in the field is that you understand how problems develop and how they affect the rest of a project. I've seen how one missing piece of material can change an entire day's work. I've dealt with engineering questions, customer approvals, schedule changes, and situations where the crew was ready to work but something else wasn't.

I've also seen the difference between a crew that's genuinely struggling and one that's doing everything it can with the circumstances it's been given. That experience doesn't mean I automatically know what's wrong every time a number changes, but it does help me recognize when an explanation doesn't make sense or when there may be something else we need to investigate.

I believe that's where field experience becomes particularly valuable in a larger leadership role. You don't need to personally solve every problem, but you should understand enough about the work to ask meaningful questions, evaluate the answers, and help the people responsible make better decisions.

There's also a financial side to this that can't be overlooked. When labor costs increase or a project's profit margin starts shrinking, leadership needs to understand what's driving those changes. It could be poor productivity, but it could also be an unrealistic estimate, additional work that wasn't properly accounted for, schedule delays, or resources being used differently than originally planned.

Those differences matter because the response needs to address the actual cause. Pushing a crew to work faster won't correct an estimating problem, and reducing manpower won't necessarily improve a project that's already struggling because it doesn't have enough qualified people.

Recognize When a Problem Is Bigger Than One Project

One project running behind schedule doesn't necessarily mean there's something wrong with the organization. Construction has variables, and sometimes a job simply doesn't go the way anybody expected. But when several projects start experiencing the same problems, I believe leadership needs to look beyond the individual jobs and understand whether something in the operation needs attention.

If material is consistently arriving late, for example, the problem may involve purchasing, receiving, scheduling, or how information is being communicated between departments. If multiple projects are having trouble meeting their labor budgets, we need to understand whether the estimates were realistic, whether the work was properly planned, or whether the teams need additional support.

The important thing is recognizing the difference between an isolated problem and something that's happening throughout the organization. The people managing individual projects should be able to handle the issues within their responsibility, while broader leadership needs to recognize patterns and determine whether changes are necessary.

That doesn't mean a director should personally become involved in every field problem. That's why organizations have foremen, superintendents, and project managers. Those people need the authority and support to manage their responsibilities.

But leadership still needs enough visibility to recognize when a project is drifting, when a customer relationship may be at risk, or when a problem has reached the point where additional resources or authority are required. Sometimes the right response is to provide help, make a decision, or remove an obstacle. Other times, the people responsible already have a good plan, and the best thing leadership can do is allow them to carry it out.

Make Sure the Decision Actually Helped

There's another part of managing performance that I think deserves just as much attention as identifying the problem. Once you've made a decision or changed something, you need to determine whether it actually improved the situation.

If we change how material is ordered or verified, are the crews receiving what they need more consistently? If we provide additional training, is the quality of the work improving? If we adjust staffing or change a schedule, are we seeing the results we expected?

And if the numbers aren't improving, we need to be willing to reconsider our original assessment. Maybe the change wasn't effective, or maybe we didn't fully understand what was causing the problem in the first place.

Making a decision doesn't automatically mean you've solved anything. You have to follow through, review the results, and be willing to make another adjustment when necessary.

The Principle

I want accurate schedules, financial reports, productivity information, safety records, and quality measurements. Those things are necessary when you're responsible for multiple projects and the people managing them. But I don't want to confuse managing reports with managing the operation.

The numbers help me recognize where something needs attention. My experience helps me understand what questions to ask, and the people closest to the work help explain what's actually happening. From there, it's a matter of making a sound decision, providing the support that's needed, and checking whether the result improved.

The numbers tell you what. Leadership has to determine why.