When Clark Construction Group LLC came to the West Coast 14
years ago, Richard M. Heim’s goal was simply to survive.
Though the construction services juggernaut had been very successful on the East Coast, Heim was suddenly 3,000 miles from the
home office with a new territory and new challenges.
To build up the business, there was one thing Heim, president of
Clark’s western region, decided would grow the new region with
the same success as the old — his people. When the company was
ready to move forward, he always looked within his existing people to find the next leader.
“We can be as big as we want to be on the West Coast,” Heim
says. “But you have to have some controlled growth, you can only
grow as fast as you’ve got good people. We want growth not for its
own sake but controlled growth as necessary, given the caveat that
we can’t grow beyond our ability to take care of each customer,
and we can’t grow beyond our ability to have good people.”
As the western region became a bigger and bigger part of the $2
billion company — building San Diego Padres PETCO Park and
starting construction on LAX’s Tom Bradley terminal tower
improvements — and it became time to grow into two new western markets, Las Vegas and San Diego, Heim again turned to his
existing staff to push forward. Not only did his staff members have
knowledge from previous construction ventures, but he knew he
was also providing them a growth outlet, keeping them loyal to the
company.
By allowing his existing employees to grow, while aggressively
recruiting and assimilating new employees into that loyal culture,
Heim has been able to push employee numbers to more than 250
without losing momentum. And with those new employees starting to fit in, Clark has been able to push projected revenue for 2007
beyond $800 million in the western region after topping out at $600
million in 2006.
Build on what you have
Heim knows one thing about his leadership style: He does not
wish to be an inch high and a mile wide. With projects across the
West Coast in 22 different cities, Heim says that Clark has to grow
leaders to keep growing the company. And the best place to find
those leaders is in your own backyard.
“Try to promote from within, that’s your first primary purpose,”
he says. “That way you are getting a known entity, you know what
you’re dealing with, and you are also providing growth opportunities for your own people. Rarely do we hire officers outside of the
company, probably 95 percent of them are homegrown.”
In order to promote from within, he goes through a talent evaluation process that touches on every employee by going to different
leaders and talking about expectations and potential.
“I sit down with the officers probably three times a year, and we
go through every employee we’ve got and talk about them, where
are they in their development, where are they in their excitement,
how they fit with the synergy of where the company is going,”
Heim says.
From there, he says you need to give the talented ones a chance to take on more responsibility so they can see where leadership is
going — and how they might fit in to that. By letting people grow
into new positions, Heim says they will also be more inclined to
stay with the company because they find it easier to buy in to a
leader’s growth plans.
“They have to believe in the leadership because it costs an awful
lot to replace that person once you’ve invested three years or five
years or 10 years into that person,” he says. “Each employee is an
investment, and it’s just like a diamond, you have to polish it to
give it more value and make it shine more brightly.”
Clark teams future leaders up with current leaders in a mentor-ship program that lets the new leader see what he or she will be
doing.
“We are very interested in promoting the new guard, so we have
set up a program in some of the new markets where we have a
younger person shadowing an older one, so there is a smooth transition to that leadership.”
The idea is that someone on the leadership track can learn a lot
by spending a few months seeing how a current leader works his
or her daily plan into the Clark vision. Not only does it give the
future leader a good base — and help give Heim more leaders he
can immediately call upon if needed — but Heim notes there has
been a side benefit he didn’t expect: The seasoned leaders enjoy
the process.
“We don’t have any hiccups; that’s beneficial not only to the
young person, but the older, more seasoned leaders tend to enjoy
the mentoring,” Heim says. “Our operations could never rise and
fall with one person, and you need to have that wide-based leadership to do that.”
Recruit young talent
Even though it’s nice to move existing employees up when a
company grows, you still have to fill in holes at the entry level.
Heim’s phone is always ringing with employment agencies trying
to sell him on a new candidate, but he has a better plan in mind.
Instead of just looking at the existing market, Clark heavily
recruits from a group of local colleges and returning military personnel.
“If you go out to the open market right now, employment services are calling daily with candidates that they are pushing,” Heim
says. “But the market has been picked over pretty hard in terms of
who is out there, and you need to be very careful.”
Clark employs a full-time college recruiter to scout the colleges
with degree programs that fit in to the company’s mold, and the
company also works to make a good impression with the students
by providing speakers for ceremonies and regularly contributing
financial donations. Clark also sponsors a graduate-level construction competition.
“It gives us the opportunity to meet and interact with the best students produced from the various colleges of construction throughout the nation,” Heim says.
From there, Clark also lets several of the more impressive candidates get their foot in the door with a large internship program.
“At any given time, we have 20 to 30 interns from a variety of different colleges,” Heim says. “It gives us a chance to look at them
and gives them a chance to look at us.”
Beyond giving talented college recruits a chance to find an
interest in Clark before they go into the open market, Clark
also actively recruits military men and women, finding that
those trained in the armed services are much better qualified
than the average candidate off the street. In the last two years,
Heim’s region has had to hire 100 new employees, and he estimates 20 percent of them have come from the military. For
many entry-level positions, the immediate benefit of that background will help push a company.
“They have good work ethics, they understand chain of
command, they understand teamwork,” he says of military
hires.
“When you take somebody right out of school, it takes a couple of years for them to sort of gain the experience and those
types of life experiences where their efficiency gets to a certain point. The military people are obviously more mature in
age, they are focused, they are looking for careers, many of
them have families, and we looked upon that as an opportunity, and it’s been very successful.”
Assimilate new talent
When you hire more than 100 employees over a two-year
span, there is more of a challenge to continuing growth than
just bringing in new talent. Assimilation is job No. 1 after a new
hire is made.
“The challenge is how fast you can assimilate those employees not only to where they are productive, but they are also
brought in to our culture,” Heim says.
This challenge is really a threefold process of getting employees involved with each level of the company. The initial challenge rests heavily on middle management, which has to make
it a goal to continue to move existing employees forward while
blending in training for the new team members.
That means making things that are the normal parts of the
day also act as educational tools. Meetings where senior staff
members are going over projects can include younger employees to give them some background on what they are doing.
“If you are on a specific project, staff meetings where that
staff sits down weekly and goes through all aspects of the project, these new employees get significant knowledge and info,
and it’s very much a learning process for them if you include
them,” he says.
Beyond the middle management taking time to include new
employees in the loop, Heim makes it a point for higher management to make a connection with new hires to help them
blend in. Today’s employee needs more feedback, and that is
best served from the top.
“I sit down at least once a year with all of our new employees,
and I have dinner with them — just me and them,” he says. “I
talk about our way of doing business, what’s important, and I
look for feedback from them because they are an important
part of our employee set.
“Performance evaluations are extremely important to our
employees that have been with us one to five years, they want
to know what they are doing right and where they need to
improve on, so the timeliness and genuineness of those is very
important. The new group of employees — call it the millennia
group, if you will — is looking for that feedback almost on a
continual basis. There are all kinds of ways of giving feedback
on performance, but nothing replaces that one hour of quiet
time where you’re giving the employee time to speak and you
talk about what they are doing right, some areas they can grow.
That is extremely important because it shows that in all the
hubbub and whirligig of everyone being busy, we’re going to
carve out some time and talk about you and what your contribution is to the puzzle, and that openness with them lets them
feel free to give you feedback.”
Beyond working with different levels of management, Heim
says the third step in assimilation is blending new employees
with experienced nonmanagement staff. Clark has a program
that takes a group of young employees and let’s them meet
informally with an elder employee for an hour or so to talk
about how the new job is going. New employees are also
offered training through Clark University, which is a program
with classes taught by senior employees.
The idea is to work with new employees on all three levels to
communicate where they fit in to the company and what the
expectations are.
“You have got to be in touch with an effective, candid, crisp
communication channel with your employees at all levels,” Heim
says. “Communication is probably 50 percent of your success.
How well do you articulate, how well do you encourage feedback, how well you follow on the feedback, how you filter that
feedback, your communication skills in terms of listening and
expressing yourself are extremely important.”
HOW TO REACH: Clark Construction Group LLC, (714) 429-9779 or www.clarkconstruction.com