Masonry Magazine June 2000 Page. 33
The Fuel of Explosive Corporate Success
The engine has some value without the "fuel", but it is the fuel in the engine that drives to extraordinary results. Effective management development is the fuel that is the fulcrum of explosive corporate success.
Ensuring Your Efforts Generate Results
Having spent the last several years working with contractors to create training and development systems, a defined sequence of steps has evolved to ensure effectiveness of mid- and senior-level managers. Whether directed at improving a defined skill like finding and securing new customers or more comprehensive in nature, the pitfalls of developmental success are consistent and avoidable.
Start at the End
The real objective of any training program is changing the behavior and performance of those participating. This is not to be confused with the objectives of an educational program. The goals of which are to deliver information, facts, ideas, and opinions rather than modify your existing skill capability.
If changed behavior is your target, that's where the training process needs to start. Specific performance expectations are established and communicated to the target audience. Efforts are directed at uncovering the internal support systems that will help or hinder implementing new skills. Strategies are then developed to reinforce skill implementation.
Discovering Potholes and Roadblocks
Incentive compensation, employee feedback, and the performance review process are frequently hidden potholes to greater performance. While working with one general contractor this point became very evident. He was frustrated by the lack of initiative demonstrated by project managers in discovering new work opportunities. After having repeatedly "trained" project managers on everything from negotiating skills, marketing strategies, leadership, and even time management, there was no significant change in the basic performance of the project managers.
Project managers spend the majority of their time running projects and putting out fires. They spend very little time courting potential clients. Time invested in marketing was inconsistent and largely ineffective. Work opportunities being secured with new customers was on the basis of "the lowest bid wins."
FMI's involvement was to review which compensation and benefit package would be required to attract a higher calibre of project manager. The contractor had resigned to hiring a new project management staff as the only means of affecting the corporate objective of increasing negotiated work opportunities and, therefore, profit performance.
During the process of reviewing the responsibilities and duties of project managers for a new compensation and benefit package the real training challenges were revealed. The hidden roadblocks to the marketing behavior of project managers involved the incentive compensation plan, field manager effectiveness, and the performance review system.
A significant portion of project managers' incomes were based on profits from work completed. Every six months a bonus check was cut. It represented a substantial amount of their annual compensation. With the average length of a project being 3 to 11 months, the key to maximizing compensation was securing and closing out work in an expedient manner. They simply did not have the financial luxury to spend a significant portion of their day chasing negotiated work opportunities that may not pay off for 12 to 24 months-if at all.
Aggravating an already challenging situation was a small element of the formal performance review system. It "graded" the project managers on their ability to manage jobs-nothing was included for their efforts in finding new customers. I am not suggesting incentive compensation or performance review systems are inherently detrimental to training efforts, quite the contrary. These systems can be a key element in an effective reinforcement system designed to elevate performance standards.
But in this case, incentive compensation and performance reviews were roadblocks to getting project managers to embrace marketing responsibilities. Changing only those two elements will not affect sizable changes in behavior. By looking at the project manager's key responsibilities laid across a matrix of time invested, it was obvious that management skills training at the superintendent and general foreman level was necessary to free up sufficient time to allow project managers the luxury of marketing prospective new clients.
Uncovering roadblocks to skill implementation is sometimes like an archeological excavation for buried treasure. Though the process requires a commitment of time and energy, the treasure it uncovers is worth thousands of dollars of profit. Attacking those inhibitors that float silently along like icebergs in your internal systems is the most effective means of