Work together. We still promote decision-making processes individually. And, as a team does, we all sit down and discuss the pros and cons and different means and methods. Each day is a learning experience.
We have project review meetings weekly that discuss every project: where we are in the project, how it is on schedule, where the costs are on the job, if there’s difficult obstacles going through. On a particular job, we might have three people involved in that one project, but when we sit down in the meeting, there’s a dozen of us.
People that aren’t quite familiar with the project, when they’re hearing different things everybody is open to suggestions. So we just talk out different challenges and how we can continue to keep the project on a profitable basis.
We build a trust with each other. It goes back to the point of are you always placing the blame on somebody else for failures or are you taking the responsibility of that and also taking the responsibility of the wins. If you have that culture, no one is afraid to open up and say things.
Promote responsible decision-making. I think when you let the employees (get) involved in all facets of that particular project or that particular task that they’re doing — on a management level — they need to be aware of what the costs are, they need to be aware of what the ultimate goal is, so that they’re aware of are we hitting that or are we missing. It’s all about money. Are you making it or are you losing it?
I think you certainly will suggest that you ought to look at it going from this way or approaching this, take this way, and you’re talking through different things like that. But the bottom line is when your monitoring the job costs, the profitability of whatever the task you’re doing, you can see some pretty instant results if you’re successful or not.
It’s not an immediate thing. It’s a time of working together and doing it and respecting their trust and so forth, it doesn’t happen over night.
Monitor when you need to step in and when you need to back off. It’s a gradual process. When like a project manager is making recommendations to move in a certain direction or change the path that they’re going down, you know when they’re making the right decisions.
Once you’re seeing them make the right decisions, you don’t need to interact as much.
If they aren’t making the (right) decisions — I guess in our company we have different levels of management and I’ve got people like (our) chief operating officer, they’re having the daily contact. Then that individual will come to me, and he’ll say we have a problem here, you need to step in and take a look at this.
It’s just communication. Every day you’re communicating with people. These people are our friends and partners; they’re part of the business. It’s a family; that’s how we run it.
How to reach: Sports Construction Group LLC, (216) 241-9900 or www.sportscongroup.com