Time Management for Construction Leaders: Stop Fighting Fires

0:00The way you spend your time shows what you value. Your real priorities are whatever gets the hours. Your life is the sum of the choices you've made about your time. It shows in the strength of your family, in your own health, and in the strength of your business. Now, not everything is in your control. A key client pulls a job where the market turns. What is in your control, you have to take charge of. and your time sits at the top of that list. I worked with an executive who told me his top priority was business development with key clients. So I asked him to open his calendar and show me the time he'd blocked for those clients.

0:45And there wasn't any, not one hour. He was an introvert, and sitting across the table from a client made him uncomfortable. His calendar let him avoid that type of activity, and nobody noticed. Your calendar might be doing the same thing to you. My name is Eric Anderton, and this is Construction Genius.

1:09Eric Anderton: This is Eric Anderton, and you're listening to Construction Genius, a leadership masterclass. Thomas Edison said that genius is 1 % inspiration and 99 % perspiration. If you're a construction leader, you know all about the perspiration, and this show is all about the 1 % inspiration that you can add to your hard work to help you to improve your leadership.

1:38Here's a question for this episode. When you look at last week's calendar, do you see a firefighter or Smokey the Bear? The firefighter puts out fires. Smokey the Bear prevents them. Most construction company owners spend their week with a hose in their hands. And I understand why. Firefighting is exciting. And there's a little risk in it. You see the result right away. People treat you like a hero when you save the day and put the fire out. And prevention really isn't that sexy. Smokey's work shows up as the fires that never start. and nobody throws a party for a fire that never started in the first place.

2:2220 plus years of working with construction leaders has taught me this. The way you handle your time tells you how you see yourself. If you see yourself as the hero who saves the day, you'll keep finding fires to fight. The leaders who change see their job as getting work done through other people and they spend their time making sure the fires never start in the first place. Lately, I've been watching some YouTube videos from families who live in Alaska as I spend my time in nice, warm, sunny California.

2:55Eric Anderton: They spend their whole summer getting ready for winter. Wood, fuel, food, shelter. And when the snow comes, they're ready and they get to enjoy a nice, cozy winter in their cabins. That's Smokey the Bear type attitude. If you want to enjoy running your construction company, you have to be willing to do work ahead of time to prevent the fires that cause you so many headaches. Being always available feels like good leadership, but it comes with a price. Gloria Mark at UC Irvine in California found that it takes about 23 minutes to get back to the work you were pulled off of. I was working with a guy named Daniel a few years ago, a very highly skilled project manager, and I was coaching him on how to become better at doing his work.

3:47He tracked his time for a week and found he was spending three hours a day on interruptions from other people. Now, do some simple math. Three hours a day across 220 working days is 660 hours a year. That's more than 16 40-hour work weeks. What would you do with 16 extra weeks a year? I'm going to walk through the rest of this with a free framework that I've put together, how to stop being overwhelmed and start being effective. I'll put each page on the screen as we go. If you're listening on audio, this is a good episode to watch on YouTube so you can see the pages. And while you're there, subscribe to the channel.

4:29The link to download the framework is in the show notes and the video description. I want to begin with the Eisenhower Matrix. The Eisenhower Matrix is one of the two tools I use to help people fix their time issues. And the other one is time blocking. With the Eisenhower Matrix, you can sort your work so you can see where your time is going. And with time blocking, you can decide ahead of time what is important and put it on your calendar with a name on it. We'll start with the Eisenhower matrix and then dig into time blocking later in the episode. In 1954, President Eisenhower gave a speech at Northwestern University.

5:14He quoted a college president who said, I have two kinds of problems, the urgent and the important. The urgent are not important and the important are never urgent. Stephen Covey later turned that idea into a four-box grid in The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. Two questions sort any task. Is it important and is it urgent? I number the boxes in my framework in my own way. Box one, as you can see here on the screen, is long-term priorities. Those things which are important but not urgent. Long-range strategic planning or a one-to-one with a direct report that you keep putting off. Those need to be scheduled first because nobody else is going to ask you to do that.

6:04Box two are critical activities, things that are important and urgent that you need to take care of right away. Box three are the interruptions, things that are urgent but not important to you, like a PM asking you to approve a change order they're already authorized to approve. And those things need to be scheduled or redirected or declined. Box four are distractions, like checking in on your fantasy football roster. And you've got to do your best to avoid those distractions. Oh, and by the way, where do most of those distractions come from? They come from what I call the crack pipe. And that crack pipe is your mobile phone, your mobile device, your iPhone, your Android, whatever you're using, that's the crack pipe.

6:55And it distracts all of us because we're all addicted to it. That's why I call it the crack pipe. So you, even as the owner of a multi-million dollar construction company, have to be able to control yourself and put away distractions that come from your phone. So every box on the page in the template has examples for a construction executive. So you can kind of get an idea of where your own week is going. If you know Covey's version, my box number one is his quadrant two. I put long-term priorities first on purpose. That's the work that builds your company's future. And it's always the first thing that gets cut.

7:36And here's how the firefighter fits in here. Every fire you fight lives in box two or box three. Fire prevention happens in box one, and it's the only way to shrink the fires or prevent the fires that happen in box two and in box three. So let's stay on box one for a minute because it's the box that often gets skipped. Employee reviews belong here, along with those one-to-ones, like I said earlier that are so easy to put off. A trade show counts where you go to spend time with key suppliers and project partners, or even where your clients hang out. And here's a free tip in terms of networking.

8:16Spend as much time as you can in an environment where your clients hang out, so that you're spending time with people who can actually give you money for the work that you do, as opposed to spending a whole bunch of time with your competitors or with a bunch of vendors who just want to sell you stuff. Okay. Now, like I said, a trade show counts as box one and also meetings with key clients may be the most valuable box one time you have. Here's why. You take a key client to lunch and halfway through, he tells you about a project that's going to start in a year and it's worth millions of dollars in revenue to you.

8:51Now you have a headstart on everyone else. You might even get a chance to help shape the specs, all because you took the time to take him to lunch. Now, Box 2 doesn't have to be bad news. A strategy session on how to build a key project is Box 2. Giving your estimator's feedback on a bid due this week counts as well as a Box 2 activity. Those things are all urgent and important. The fires in Box 2 come in two kinds. Some that you couldn't see coming, like your best superintendent quitting mid-project, and you got to handle those. The rest you saw coming, but you left them too late, like a must-win proposal that's due on Thursday, and it's now Monday and no one started on it, and the fire is raging.

9:39Box 1 work prevents fires that occur in Box 2. If you skip box one long enough, the work is going to land in box two anyway with a deadline attached. Box two is part of the job. Early in your career, most of your week lives there. As you move up in the org chart, that should flip. If you own a construction company and you're spending 80 % of your time firefighting, you're doing it wrong. Most of your time should be spent in box number one. doing those activities that prevent the fires. One rule for the other two boxes, box three and box four should never get a block of time on your calendar. So where do the interruptions come from?

10:28Here's how I define box number three. An interruption is anything outside the role and responsibility that you've committed to. It's urgent to the person bringing it because it's their job. And when it lands on your desk, ask one question. Is this urgent for me or is this urgent for someone else? Real emergencies are obvious, like a safety incident or a key client issue. Those are yours to handle if they fall within your role and responsibility. Where's an executive down is the steady stream of interruptions that are outside their role and responsibility. And those interruptions in many cases are a reflection of the quality of your leadership.

11:18And let me explain why. Because those interruptions come because of three key reasons. Number one, delegation or a lack of it. You haven't handed the work off or you've handed it out without the authority for people to finish it. Number two is training. Your people don't have the skills yet to do it without you. And number three is accountability. You haven't held them accountable to execute on their role and responsibility, so they keep bringing stuff back to you that they should be doing. Every time you answer a quick question in 30 seconds, you're teaching your people that you're the fastest route.

11:58You're training them to interrupt you and pull you away from the box one and box two activity that is critical to your success and the success of your business. So fixing this starts with self-control. You must control yourself first. Then you teach your people to control themselves so that ultimately they can do more fire prevention and less fire fighting. Page six on the framework, as I'm turned to now, if you look on the screen. Page six of the framework has an interruption audit. For one week, write down who's interrupting you, how that interruption came in, what they wanted, and what would have prevented it.

12:44Then look for the names that keep showing up. And before you blame your team, you can also flip it around. You are somebody else's box three. In other words, you spend a lot of time interrupting people and dragging them away from their role and responsibility. So think about who you interrupted yesterday and whether it was urgent for them. I worked with another executive who decided he was done being the firefighter. And first, he just started to say no to people. And that was very uncomfortable for him because he got to where he was in his company by saying yes. And that's the dilemma a lot of leaders face.

13:20You get promoted by saying yes. You get effective as an executive by learning how and when to say no. So this executive I was working with told his people exactly when he'd be available for their questions. So his time blocks to work in box one and box two stayed protected. He also made sure his people were trained for their roles, and he got some of them a mentor so that they could do the work without coming to him. With the hours he got back, he was able to work on strategic business development and long-term planning. He learned to hold his team accountable for improving their processes, and it showed up in productivity, safety, and the quality of their projects.

14:06The Eisenhower Matrix and time blocking are part of my online leadership program, The Shift. And if you want your people to make that shift from firefighting to fire preventing, the link to learn more about the course is in the show notes.

14:21Eric Anderton: Go check it out. If you see a fit there, you can sign some people up for the shift. When I open an executive's calendar for the first time, I look for two things. The first is meetings they shouldn't be in. How much time did you spend in meetings last week where you're sitting there and after about five or 10 minutes, you're like, man, what am I doing here? Those types of meetings, whatever they are, they should be eliminated from your calendar. The second is what's missing. Most fires in a construction company start in one of three places, sales, operations, and people. Each one needs a block on the owner's calendar, and on most calendars, I see all three are missing.

15:07In the framework, page five lays this out in detail. Start with sales. If your backlog is thin and you're tempted by a job that isn't the right fit for your business, that fire started months ago when your backlog was fat and you got a little complacent. The prevention is a weekly block. Make a list of your top 10 clients and prospects. Then put breakfast, lunch, coffee, or a phone call on the calendar. And when you can spend half a day, go play around a golf with someone. That's what we did with the executive from the start of this episode, the introvert. Remember him? A top 10 list and a couple of hours every Friday.

15:49One of my clients, who's definitely not an introvert, I call him the rainmaker. He drops by clients' offices whenever he's in the area. He's a master at putting his face into place, going belly to belly with clients and getting to know them so that they trust him, like him and hand him work. Operations is next. If schedules slip, incidents and accidents happen and your quality is shoddy, the fire is in the processes that run your business. Lock time to find where the schedules slip, where you're unsafe and where your quality falls short. Someone else may be responsible for building the processes themselves.

16:32You still need time on your calendar to oversee the building of the processes and holding people accountable for testing them and refining them. And then people. If you have people who refuse accountability and aren't performing, the fire is in your hiring and development. Get crystal clear on the people you want, technically and culturally. other people may be doing the hiring, but you need to define what they're looking for when they're hiring. And that's true in all three areas. As the owner, you define what excellence looks like even when other people do the work. And here's the test. If you can't describe what you want in sales, how you want your jobs run, and who you want on your team, those things haven't had enough of your time, and you need to dedicate time to clearly defining those aspects of your business.

17:27If you skip that work, the fires are just going to keep popping up. You're going to stay stressed out. The company stays on edge. Projects run late. Owners are unhappy. Quality is poor, and your business does not thrive. Now, back to the second tool. Time blocking is the answer to everything we've just found. Give every hour a job before the week starts. And if you don't, your inbox and your interruptions will. I run my week this way. Mondays are for marketing and working on my business. Fridays, I record my podcast. Tuesday through Thursdays is for clients. And I don't take client meetings on Mondays or Fridays.

18:13Once something's on my calendar, it has a hook in my brain, and it keeps me focused throughout my week. On page seven of the framework is a clear explanation of time blocking, and it lays out six kinds of blocks. And I want you to treat these as an example and then shape them to the way that you work. Three of the blocks do most of the work. A focus block is 90 minutes on a box one priority, with the door closed and alerts on the emails off and your phone on the other side of the room so you don't get distracted. Office hours are set two times a day when your people know they can find you and bring their issues to you.

18:55And there's a buffer of 60 minutes a day with nothing in it because something always goes sideways on a job site or in your business. and that is the time for you to work on those particular issues. If you've never used time blocks, don't try and build the whole week at once. Pick one key area of box one, like business development or strategic planning, and block out time for it once a week. Get comfortable with that and then add the next block. So you remember Daniel, the project manager, losing three hours a day to interruptions? He set up time at the start and end of each day to meet with the people who interrupted him the most.

19:34That freed the bulk of his day for box one and box two activities. And there's research behind this as well. Sophie Leroy, who studies how people focus at work, found that when you switch from one task to another, part of your mind stays stuck on the last task. She calls that attention residue. So every interruption costs you the time it takes, plus the focus you don't get back right away. Which brings me to the most important thing about time blocking. A block only works if you keep it, and that takes diligence. Start by naming it. Strategic plan or top 10 client lunch. That tells everyone what the time is for, while busy on your calendar just invites people to negotiate your time away.

20:24Then hold yourself to your time block. You put that block on your calendar because you've decided that work matters. So treat it that way when the phone rings. Then tell your people about it. Communicate your time block. They need to know when you're not available during that block unless it's an emergency. And you have to spell out what constitutes an emergency. Everything else waits until the block is over. If a block does get broken, move it to another slot. Don't delete it. Now, let's say you're in a block and someone walks up anyway. You have four ways to handle it. You can do it now. You can schedule it for later.

21:07You can send them to the person who owns it, or you can just say no. The last piece is a planning habit. Every Friday, take 30 minutes and block out your next week with your box one going on the calendar first. Page eight of the framework gives you a blank week to fill in. So where do you start? Now, this is not going to be perfect, and that's okay. General Patton said, a good plan violently executed is better than a perfect plan next week. We're not looking for perfect time management. We're looking for good time management. Everything I've covered today is in my free framework, how to stop being overwhelmed and start being effective.

21:47It has that time management inquiry, the Eisenhower matrix, the three places fire start, the interruption audit, a weekly time blocking planner, and the time log. The link is in the show notes and in the video description to get that free framework.

22:04Eric Anderton: You're going to spend the next 25 or 30 years working 40, 50, 60 hours a week. Why not make it as productive and enjoyable as possible? And that all starts with you making the shift from being a firefighter to being Smokey LeBear.

22:44Eric Anderton: and four, teaching them how to run extremely effective problem-solving meetings that gets their people collaborative.