December 20, 2007

Accountability … It's a Bigger Deal Then You Think

This past week I had one of my three yearly meetings with my Maverick Contractor Mastermind Team. We met in Seattle for two intense days to work on business and marketing issues. First let me tell you that this group of contractors is experiencing considerable growth in their businesses despite what the economy is doing. They implement new ideas and aren’t afraid to take on the challenges that this business brings. Most of these guys have tripled their businesses in the last year. This is a huge deal when you consider what’s going on with the economy.

One of the topics of this past meeting was accountability. You see, accountability is a very critical component which will allow you to deliver excellent service to your clients. As a construction business owner, you must model personal and organizational accountability. You will need to enforce and obey the rules, be on time, follow through on your commitments, and publically admit your failures. The minute you step out of line and start doing our own thing is the time when conflict starts to appear … and soon you’ll be struggling or out of business.

Accountability is a culture that you must grow into and develop over time. Do your staff and business operations encourage commitment, responsibility and results? Would a new hire quickly understand that in order to fit in and remain with the company he or she needs to be able to deliver.

You need to hire carefully and look for employees who can demonstrate accountability in their personal lives and work lives. If you are like I am, I am no good when it comes to managing people who aren’t accountable, so I work extra hard to make sure I hire accountable people. When you interview prospects ask questions that focus on their willingness to make commitments and be results oriented. Make sure that part of your due diligence includes a background check for criminal convictions, driving violations and drug testing.

Implement systems in your company so that you can focus on the important things. If you are like most contractors you get pulled in many different directions and that’s when the frustration starts to set in. Suddenly you feel like you are a dog chasing its tail. By creating systems that your staff can run will allow you to grow your business and keep your overhead low. Most contractors don’t really take a solid look at their overhead and suddenly they are losing money. Give your staff the leeway to update and modify the systems in order to increase the productivity. Make sure you sit down on a weekly or monthly basis and review the changes with your staff and address any items that need to be systematized. By spending a few hours a week systemizing your operations you will save yourself hundreds of hours over the course of a year.

Each member of your staff should have goals with key metrics to track their progress. By setting goals and metrics you will have an easy way to measure your employee’s achievements. By establishing job descriptions goals and meetings you will be able to quickly be able to know who your top employees are and you will make your job a lot easier in weeding out the underachievers.

Having a feedback loop allows you to define business metrics and show every individual how they and the rest of the team are doing. Use feedback to reward employees who are meeting and beating the goals and challenge your other employees. The team is the strongest and most powerful enforcer of accountability, followed by the owner. Work to create a culture of accountability and you’ll quickly expose the weak, the unwilling, and the irresponsible. Hopefully, they will go work for your competitors.

Filed under Contractor Marketing by Brian Deacon