You're the Bottleneck: Building the Banks of the River So Your Team Can Flow, with Scott Borroughs

0:00Construction Genius: A superintendent's wife wakes up at 2 a.m. to find him pacing the bedroom for the third night straight.

0:06Scott Borroughs: I'd be getting up at like 1.30, 2 o 'clock in the morning, tossing and turning. One night I woke my wife up and she's like, what are you doing? And I'm like, well, you know, I can't sleep. I got plenty to do at work. I'm going into work. She looks at him and says, this isn't going to work. And then kind of paused for a second there and said, for anybody. And I'm like, wow, that was kind of a revelation there that she was absolutely right. That superintendent was Scott Burroughs.

0:32Construction Genius: The project was Deep Space, an 850 ,000 square foot auditorium that J.P. Cullen had to blast 80 feet down through limestone before they could even pour a single yard of concrete coming back up. Scott was the general superintendent. He thought he had it all locked in. He planned every detail in his head. And then, as the project went on, he realized, I'm the bottleneck.

1:00Scott Borroughs: Really, I kind of became a decision-making funnel. I was the funnel, and it was overflowing. I couldn't get the decisions made fast enough to keep up with the pace that they needed the information. I became the bottleneck. Yep, that was a very difficult lesson learned for me at that point in time.

1:16Construction Genius: Every decision ran through him. The whole job slowed down because one man wouldn't get out of the way. This episode is about what happened next. How Scott went from the funnel that choked the project to the leader who turned it loose. How he built what J.P. Cullen calls the banks of the river. And why letting your people solve problems differently than you would is the only way to get the work done. If you're a superintendent or an operations leader stuck in the weeds, doing everything yourself, telling yourself that's leadership, this one is for you. Scott Burrows, Deep Space, Banks of the River, let's dive right in.

2:04Construction Genius: 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.

2:32Construction Genius: Scott, welcome to Construction Genius. Thank you, Eric.

2:36Scott Borroughs: It's a pleasure to be here. Yeah.

2:39Construction Genius: Take us back to the Deep Space Project. And as a superintendent at the time, what did it really mean to be responsible for a project of that scale, complexity and visibility?

2:51Scott Borroughs: Yeah, it definitely was an exciting opportunity. And I guess to put some context to what deep space was, 850 ,000 square foot auditorium. And it had, I guess, picture a donut where the center of the donut is the auditorium. And this auditorium is over 100 ,000 square feet in itself. And it seated about 12 ,000, a little under 12 ,000 people, and then divide the bowl or the rest of the donut up into six separate pieces. So there are seven separate distinct areas for this auditorium that was, like I said, about 850 ,000 square feet. and in order for us to even start we were building this at EPIC and this thing was 80 feet down into the ground so we were excavating 80 feet through limestone so we were blasting into the ground 80 feet before we could even build this thing back up so we're doing soil nail walls and mass excavation to get this thing down to where we could actually even start building it back up And at Epic, again, very unique client.

4:06Scott Borroughs: Those that aren't familiar, basically the trendsetters the last 40 years or so, as far as paving the way for electronic medical records. And their campus in Verona, they have six campuses now. And about, I guess I'd say probably 12 ,000, 13 ,000 employees. I'm sure I'm off there a little bit, but they're obviously a growing, very successful company. and interactions and relationships are very important to them. And so is the customer and employee experience. So at Epic, they had a need. They have what they call a user group meeting. So I guess just to define the purpose of what this auditorium was for, they have a user group meeting where they bring all of their customers for training and interaction with other customers as well, all under one roof.

4:55Scott Borroughs: And they had grown so much, they outgrew their existing auditorium, which was 5 ,000 people to build this new one that was, like I said, just under 12 ,000 seats.

5:05Construction Genius: Why did they choose to build it there? Why did they take it on with, you know, again, blasting through 80 feet of rock is a big deal. Why there?

5:12Scott Borroughs: Good question. And for them, preserving the natural look of the countryside was very important. So at Epic, they have time they had three campuses. They now have six. but they didn't want all of their parking structures are underground. So they want to preserve as much of the natural landscape, the farm field, that they can. And again, it's part of that feel and culture that they like to have out there from the experience. So location-wise, it was very centrally located. So again, it traveled from building to building. That made sense. And it's really, if you look at it now, it's pretty much in the center of all their campuses.

5:56Scott Borroughs: But again, this thing was something we'd never undertaken anything like it before as a company. And again, the soil nail wall that had, you know, was over 800 feet long. There were close to 3 ,000 nails and over 3 ,300 micropiles on this thing. So there was a lot of work just to get to where we could start building concrete coming back up. And the blasting along the way presented some interesting challenges, too. So there were a lot of new construction operations that I hadn't necessarily been a part of before or exposed to. So that was pretty exciting.

6:28Construction Genius: What did you do to prep yourself, both going in, but also on a phase-by-phase basis, particularly with those things that you hadn't been exposed to before?

6:38Scott Borroughs: So we had a great design team that helped us. And then Colin, again, has been very good with supporting our project team. So we did have a lot of experience with our project team. Our division manager, project executive at the time, had a lot of experience with this work in larger projects. And our overall project manager had a lot of experience with this type of work. So we had mentors and people that could help us with that. And then our design team, the structural engineer was Thornton Tomasetti. And then GEI was the soil consultant and engineer for the retaining wall. So they had a lot of experience there and they helped us come up with a plan for how we were going to excavate this and then again build the structure.

7:28Scott Borroughs: So the auditorium itself, we had several, went through several different ways as far as how we were going to build it. But Thornton Tomasetti had used a process called strand jacking before, which again was something unique to us. And we decided on doing it because from a schedule and a safety standpoint, we were able to build this whole bowl structure. So again, over 100 ,000 square foot structure. We built it essentially on the ground off of concrete cribbing piers. And some of these steel members were, they were W36 by 935. So these things were 900 pounds a foot and very beefy members. And we built these trusses, these W-shaped trusses on the ground.

8:11Scott Borroughs: And then we used a company called ALE out of the UK. They helped us engineer and design this too. They were the Strandjackers. They do a lot of offshore oil rigs. So they had a lot of good experience with that. Let me ask you something, though, about Epic.

8:27Construction Genius: Why did Epic, understanding that you as a company, Cullen, didn't have necessarily a ton of experience with this specific type of project, why did Epic choose you guys for the project?

8:39Scott Borroughs: Relationship. It all goes back to the relationships that had been built. So Jim Schumacher had been building the relationship with Epic. since I want to say it was like the mid 1990s. So by the time this came around, there was already 10 or 15 years of relationship there and trust. And that was another with a project like this, the delivery model for this was a design build and it was an open book and a project on this size. I think that was really the only way to do it because again, we were designing as we went. So it was pretty unique that way with the fast track and the pace of this project, that relationship was very important.

9:20Scott Borroughs: So with the architect, the engineers, and the owner, there was a lot of trust already built that was enough from a comfort standpoint to let us go do this work.

9:30Construction Genius: Yeah, it's interesting. On a project this technical and unforgiving, where did your instinct to control or micromanage show up the most?

9:39Scott Borroughs: Really, it sounds a little bit probably counterintuitive, but time was almost an issue on this as far as a negative. Because we had better part of 10 months to get to the bottom of the excavation before we could start coming back up, I got into the weeds. And again, I started as a project manager and I always enjoyed puzzles and solving problems. And my goal was always try to support the field that way by helping plan and removing constraints from them at the face of the work so they could be safe and productive. And really, I felt like I had this thing locked in from a planning standpoint. So again, as we evolved and the drawings evolved, I was, you know, it's exactly what you wanted.

10:23Scott Borroughs: You want to be part of the design process, have input in how you're going to build it. So in my head, I had this thing locked in. And then when we started building this thing, obviously it was, I guess, to be probably blunt, I was probably too ignorant when I started this. I said, again, it was exciting to be selected as the general superintendent on this, but I was probably too naive and ignorant to really realize the magnitude of what we're about to do here. And again, I think just my previous attention to detail, getting into all the weeds and figuring out how I wanted to build it in my head, made it more difficult for our project team.

11:03Scott Borroughs: Again, as I described that donut, the seven pieces, as we started, as this thing got going, we would add more to our project team. So, again, we started with kind of two project teams and then it grew to seven as areas presented themselves and design developed.

11:19Construction Genius: And you were responsible for, as general superintendent, for managing the field folks associated with those teams.

11:25Scott Borroughs: Correct.

11:26Construction Genius: You said earlier that you moved from project management to superintendent, which is often you hear people going from the field side to the office side, but not vice versa. Tell us about that transition there.

11:38Scott Borroughs: Colin is a very field focused company and we pride ourselves. We make our money. We do our best. We service our clients the best from when the field does well. So even in my role now, our primary focus is we serve our field. We have to do whatever we can to make sure they have what they need to execute the work safely and productively and put a high quality product in place. So the transition wasn't that unique on that side of things as far as what the actual end goal was. The roles and responsibilities might have changed a little bit as far as submittals, shop drawings, the more of your project management type operations.

12:19Scott Borroughs: We're now more into the scheduling, the planning, how we're going to build it type operations, and then making sure the team was bought in and executing to that means and methods.

12:32Construction Genius: But for you going from PM to superintendent, what was the biggest challenge you had in making that transition?

12:39Scott Borroughs: The biggest challenge was, I would say, definitely, again, our project managers are on site. We're at the face of the work. So, again, that wasn't unusual. but it's the different relationships that you're now building. So again, the PMs, again, we have relationships with the field, but it became a lot more intimate with those relationships. You're dealing more firsthand with, again, superintendents and foremen from other subcontractors. So that was a little bit more challenging. And then really the accountability went to a different level as well, as far as expectations and holding people that were physically doing the work to make sure they were getting it done.

13:16Scott Borroughs: And again, it worked upstream too. So again, the project managers, and like I said, information flow, we're counting on the project, the project managers and the engineers to get us information so we can go build it. So it's kind of working both ways in that role as a superintendent to make sure we're getting the information and the answers we need so the field can go and execute it.

13:37Construction Genius: As you were going through the project, obviously, every project has its ups and downs. You mentioned as we were preparing for this call for the interview that you hit a three-week stretch where things got pretty unpleasant. What was happening during that time, and what did that pressure reveal about how you were leading?

13:55Scott Borroughs: Yeah, so there was a three-week stretch. So we actually strand-jacked the bowl. So, again, the donut, the middle of the donut just got jacked up into place. And as soon as that happened, basically the floodgates opened. So all the work for all the other, call it six sections of that donut that I described now was open because everything tied back to that bowl from a structure standpoint. We had to get that up and raised. And really, I could no longer keep up with the pace of construction, you know, in my head with the details, what was changing, the pace of the change, what was getting built. And the way that I had it set up, again, trying to serve the superintendents the best way that I could as far as providing the information and helping them make decisions, really, I kind of became, I guess, from an analogy standpoint, a decision-making funnel.

14:48Scott Borroughs: And I was the funnel, and it was overflowing. I couldn't get the decisions made fast enough to keep up with the pace that they needed the information to go ahead and make decisions and keep their work and their area moving forward. So you were the bottleneck, in other words, is that right? I became the bottleneck. Yep. That was a very difficult lesson learned for me at that point in time, because, again, I'm trying to help do the best that I can. And ultimately, I ended up being part of the problem here as far as constraints and letting our project teams be successful.

15:20Construction Genius: Now, did you realize that yourself or did someone else have to point that out to you?

15:23Scott Borroughs: A little bit of both. I think there was, and again, our superintendents were very patient. And again, it was a new role and responsibility for me. And we worked well together. I'd worked with most of them in the course of my four years with Cohen in some regard. But I think they were ready. They're trying to give me not so subtle hints as far as, hey, come on, let's go. This isn't working. Really, I think it was the defining moment after we raised that was my wife really kind of spurred a reflection moment there. because shortly after we lifted that bowl, there's probably a three, well, with that two or three week stretch there that I'd be getting up at like 1.30, two o 'clock in the morning, tossing and turning.

16:07Scott Borroughs: And finally, one night I woke my wife up and she's like, what are you doing? And I'm like, well, I can't sleep. I got plenty to do at work. I'm going into work. And really, she basically just said, well, this isn't going to work. And then kind of paused for a second there and said, for anybody. And I'm like, wow, that was kind of a revelation there that, and she was absolutely right. And I think everybody, you know, needs one person in their lives that has that ability to, to recalibrate perspective for you. And, you know, for me, it's my wife and, you know, I appreciate that piece of it. And she definitely gives me feedback with, with the bark on, right?

16:47Scott Borroughs: So this one was kind of like a punch in the face, but it was definitely eyeopening, even though I knew deep down inside, this wasn't going to work. Her pointing it out definitely opened my eyes that a new approach was going to have to be required for me to make sure I get through this for one. And then again, with a project of this size, once you get this thing going, it's going to go no matter what. So one way or another, this job was going to get built. It just would have been nice for sure that the goal was, hey, let's get it built with me still part of this thing. So we had to take a different approach from my perspective to make sure we're going to get it done the way it was supposed to be done.

17:25Construction Genius: So then how did you hit the reset button? What was the difference from one week to the next in terms of how you were managing the project, how you were managing yourself?

17:34Scott Borroughs: Yeah, so with those area superintendents, again, they were in their role for a reason. They earned their responsibilities. And again, after that two or three week stretch that I got recalibrated, met with the superintendents and basically went through more of a larger high vision elevation perspective, basically saying, OK, here are the milestones. Here's where we're at. Here's where we need to be. So I kind of redefined what my role was and what I was going to do from a milestone and a perspective standpoint and gave them goals along the way. And then basically said, OK, you tell me how you're going to get it done, knowing that these are the banks of the river.

18:17Scott Borroughs: These are the milestones that you need to hit along the way to make sure we get this job done safely and productively and on schedule. So I had those separate conversations with them and they all came back and said, here's what we're doing. This is our plan. This is our goal. So in hindsight, that's where we should have started. And I think they were just waiting for that moment in time to say, all right, the light bulb went on. Here we go. From that point on, we changed our meetings were more high level at that point. So we had our all superintendent meeting with that high level, with the milestones, making sure we're hitting them.

18:53Scott Borroughs: And really, all the questions I asked was, what do you need help with? So instead of me getting into the weeds, trying to help solve the problems for them, it turned around to them. You bring your problems to me on how I can help fix what you need to help or get solved and push what you need to get solved as far as answers. And as long as those conversations didn't impede and there was good communication, Because, again, with that, with the bowl and the back house area, there are two distinct areas that you couldn't access without going through the other areas of the building. So they all impacted each other.

19:28So really the kind of the ground rules were we have to hit our milestones to come up with that plan.

19:33Scott Borroughs: And if you're going to impact somebody else's work, we have to talk through that. So those are kind of the two ground rules that we set going forward. and project teams and the superintendents came up with very good plans to execute from that point on.

19:47Construction Genius: So as you made that shift to a more stepping back a little bit, how did you deal with your own feelings? And what I mean by that is this. If someone's moving from micromanagement or from detailed involvement to less detailed involvement, it feels to them often like they're not working. or they start to feel guilty because the level of pressure that they're sensing diminishes because they're not operating in the weeds. Does that make sense?

20:22Scott Borroughs: It makes a lot of sense.

20:23Construction Genius: And yes. How did you handle that? Yeah.

20:25Scott Borroughs: There was definitely discomfort there, as you described, because again, it went from basically every day almost inserting myself to help solve and get into the operations of each of these respective superintendents. And it was very intentional and very deliberate where when I wanted to go insert myself, I basically had to say, all right, let's pause. Let's let them come up with the solution or get as far as they can and try and ask, let them ask for help or coordination as far as what they needed to help from the support that standpoint. But it almost felt like, you know, like a fear of missing out, right?

21:02Scott Borroughs: So I went from helping be part of all the decisions to Now I'm intentionally removing myself from making the decisions. And again, it's a trust thing that, again, I had worked with a lot of these superintendents before. They've earned their position and their responsibilities. That trust should be there. And it really was me just trusting them to make the decisions that they should be making and then just supervise and provide direction from that higher level to make sure we're, again, hitting our goals and our milestones to get to that end date. So, yes, definitely a difference from working in the weeds and in the business to intentionally removing yourself.

21:43Scott Borroughs: And the other way that I look at that, too, as I've grown over time, is if you don't allow those people, the superintendents in this instance, or it could be anybody that you're accountable for, that opportunity to lead and grow and be responsible for what they're supposed to be, you really inhibit their growth and you also inhibit your own growth.

22:04Construction Genius: Yeah.

22:05Scott Borroughs: So that's, it's just a good lesson I've learned over time and a good message. Hopefully everybody can pick up on that. You have to allow them to grow and those scars and those failures, they provide a valuable lesson in its experience along the way.

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23:34Scott Borroughs: And now back to the interview.

23:38Construction Genius: That concept of the banks of the river makes a lot of sense. You define the banks and then you let people function within those. But the question then is, how do you go about defining the bank? What are the sort of the go-no-go areas? How does that happen?

23:53Scott Borroughs: Yeah, so for deep space, really it was bound to obviously safety and quality are going to be obviously two banks that you're just not going to cross or kind of their own separate thing. But as far as the other banks, it evolved over time. But with this one, like I said, it was the milestones. We have to make sure we're hitting the milestones. And then we have to make sure if we're going to the communication was another bank to the river for deep spaces that we have to communicate properly. because just with the material, the logistics, the impact each one of these area superintendents had on each other was so significant and critical, those banks we didn't want to cross.

24:31Scott Borroughs: So again, if you're going to go through somebody else's area or impact what they were doing, we had to coordinate that properly before that was done. And the banks of the river was a concept that came from Jim Schumacher, again, that division manager that was out there, pretty much stuck with us over time. So again, it was a pretty neat concept and it's evolved. And we kind of took that to our SOPs from a project management, field management standpoint as well. So we kept them pretty simple with the SOPs and the banks of the river. So we use it for that going forward.

25:03Construction Genius: That's interesting because you mentioned earlier this idea of the fear of missing out. Another fear that could come as you're allowing people more freedom is that they would solve problems in a way different than you. And so I could see how some people might perceive that as diminishing their value if people are doing things different than the way you would do it. In that kind of situation, can you describe something where someone on your team handled a situation differently than you would have, but it still worked? For sure.

25:33Scott Borroughs: I would say the bowl was one, again, that auditorium bowl. Once we raised the roof, we still had just an unbelievable amount of work that had to go in there. We had a lot of underground work. We had all the vomitories, the concrete, the bowl seating. There was just a lot of work that still had to go in place there. And the superintendent at the time, he put his plan together and we didn't necessarily agree on the logistics or the sequence on how things were going to go together and be put together on that. And we had a lot of good, healthy debate over that. And ultimately, I just went back to, OK, we're going to run with your plan.

26:09Scott Borroughs: We're going to trust that you've got it figured out. But then we went back to, again, the banks of the river. here is you got one way in you got one way out of this hundred thousand square foot call it building inside a building that you're working on that everybody ties into and as long as you manage between those two call it 12 foot wide roads into your building we'll go with how you want to do it and as long as we communicate again when you're running through those two other areas that your roads and your building cross through we'll let you run with it and again he put a great plan together and he executed it.

26:44Scott Borroughs: Again, there was challenges along the way, but he did a great job executing the bowl and we got that thing done on time and it turned out great. The second example was from our project manager, and this was really pretty much brilliant from a decision standpoint. As far as I know, I don't think it's ever been done before, but we had, there were 42 escalators that went in the pre-function space of this building. And I don't think it's ever been done before, but we had our escalator fabricator installer. We ran the idea behind them to prefabricate all these escalator trusses off-site. And there were 42 of them.

27:22Scott Borroughs: So we rented a warehouse and he built these things. They built these off-site while we're excavating to the bottom, while we're building the structure on this thing. And we set all 42 of those trusses in three days. So our ironworkers dropped them through openings in the roof and set them all in place in three days. And I think that that had to have saved us the better part of six weeks, at least on the back end of this thing. So again, it's just some ingenuity and definitely not some, not a way I would have done it or thought about doing it, but that definitely paid off from a ingenuity standpoint.

27:58Construction Genius: You mentioned that some of the stuff you were doing on Epic has now translated into SOPs that you use in the company. Tell me about how you guys work through distinguishing what's unique to a particular project versus what is applicable to all projects that you're working on so that something that you do on one project can become an SOP for other projects.

28:22Scott Borroughs: Yeah. So again, with the banks of the rivers, with the river, there were, as I progressed, Once Deep Space was done, I moved on to EPIC Campus 4 in a project executive role and then to an operations manager role with our industrial division. And that was in 2016, 2017. And there were four of us in that similar position at the time. And we've obviously grown a lot even since then. And we sat down, the four of us, there were two general superintendents and two operations managers. And we just asked one question. What activities from a project management, field management standpoint, if we do them all the time, are going to give us the highest rate of success?

29:04Scott Borroughs: If it can be measured, it can be improved. So we have checklists, processes, all those things. We have hundreds of them. And this isn't necessarily specific to quality checks and processes as far as building a wall or forming a wall, pouring a wall. This is more from a field and project management standpoint. So we took all of those down and narrowed it down to really six of them for our project managers and six for our superintendents. And two of them overlap. So really, we have 10 total, five, six for each, but really 10 total SOPs that we have for the banks of the river for our field management team.

29:42And again, we wanted to keep it simple because what we don't want to do, again, inherently, most of us enjoy the problem solving, the puzzle, figuring out the puzzles.

29:53Scott Borroughs: And what you don't want to do is inhibit the creativity and the opportunity to solve those problems by going through the paperwork side or being very rigid in checking the boxes and following all these steps along the way. So, again, we narrowed it down to six for both the project managers and six for the superintendents and basically said, as long as you do these on all of our projects, you have the liberty to navigate between the banks of the rivers however you want. However you want to get from point A to point B to get your job built, that's up to you. But you have to stay within these banks of the river from a process and a management standpoint for the superintendents and the project managers.

30:36Construction Genius: So you're now VP of Field Operations. And I know the, how long ago did you build this EPIC project that we've been discussing?

30:43Scott Borroughs: Deep Space was finished in 2013, at least the structure where they got occupancy. So it was about a two-year project. We started in 2011, spring of 2011, and had to have it usable by September of 2013. And then there were finishes. So again, there were five or six floors to this structure. They did the finishes on two or three of the mezzanines that followed up. It was kind of neat, too. What was pretty unique about this job that we're all proud of is, Colin, as we actually won the 2015 Alliant Build America, AGC Build America projects. This was a big deal for us on executing it. But yeah, to answer your question, it was 12 or 13 years ago is when we got done with it.

31:29Construction Genius: And what have you taken from that to how you lead today, especially now that you are the VP of field ops? Yeah.

31:38Scott Borroughs: So again, it's kind of what you hinted at before. It's again, removing myself even more from the weeds in the day-to-day. And really, again, I try and look at it as more of a, in my role, again, we're trying to service the field. We're a field-oriented company. That's where we do our work and where we're successful. So again, it's more of a teaching and coaching. So I really look at my role as how can I serve and teach and help our superintendents, our project managers, help guide our operations managers and our general superintendents in each of the divisions to be successful in their roles. So a lot of where I look at it is risk management, high-level risk management and assessment, help communicate my concerns to our ops managers and general superintendents, and just provide insight and teaching where I can to that group and then to our project team.

32:31Scott Borroughs: So I'll pick out 10-ish projects from across our divisions that I think are higher risk, whether it's complexity, design, just job size, dollar value, new customer, new market sector, and I'll get more engaged in those. So again, I kind of have my own constraint as far as kind of my own criteria of what I'm going to get involved in. And then obviously, if Jeannie or George, our co-presidents say, hey, Scott, you got to get more involved in this one, then I'm going to do that as well.

32:59Construction Genius: So for superintendents or operations leaders who are listening who feel stuck in micromanagement, what's the first shift they need to make to give their people more freedom without losing control?

33:11Scott Borroughs: Yeah, I think from what I've learned, I guess my recommendations would be one, clearly define and communicate the end goal, whether again, if it's, if you're, regardless of what your position is and who you're, the responsibility, who you're accountable for, but just from a project standpoint, talk to your team, your foreman, your superintendents, clearly communicate what the end goal is and the major milestones along the way that you're going to measure to to make sure you're making progress to hit that end goal. You have to trust, again, the people that you're accountable for, they're in their role for a reason.

33:48Scott Borroughs: They've earned it. You need to trust that they're going to be able to do what they're supposed to be doing in that role. Again, there's the trust but verify piece. So again, you also owe it to yourself and the company and the project to verify that the people you're accountable for are doing what they're supposed to be doing. But you have to have the trust that they are capable of doing what they're supposed to be doing. And then create the banks of your river. Whatever your river is, again, we have our SOPs, like I said, from a corporate standpoint for our project teams. You can define that and narrow it down to whatever level you want.

34:22Scott Borroughs: So each project could have their own banks of the river if they want to, as far as assigning responsibility, who's going to do what. So just clearly define what those banks of the river and let them develop their plan. So again, kind of as you go down, each level of work has its own kind of visibility. So again, the foreman and the journeyman that are putting the work in place, let them build their plan, let them put their operations plan together to be successful. Again, it gets buy-in ownership on their side, give them the guidelines, let them figure out how they're going to provide them the parameters, whether it's people working in areas around them.

35:01Scott Borroughs: So again, there's a bigger world working around them. We want them to focus on, you know, pouring their walls, forming their walls the best they can, but they have to be aware there's other trades working around them. We want them to focus on that. Same thing with project teams. We want them to focus on their project, but they have to be aware that we have other projects within divisions. So again, you can carry that up at different levels of the company. But again, And it's building those banks of the river to let the people do their job in that level. And I guess the last thing, last comment I would say is just don't confuse activity with accomplishment.

35:35Scott Borroughs: And really the point there is, and what I am doing, is it really moving the needle towards the end goal? Or am I just doing something to stay busy? So it kind of ties into that Eisenhower matrix. And what's your time worth? Are we really putting, focusing on the things that we need to be focused on to move the needle forward at your position? So, again, it goes back to that trust. And is it in the right quadrant that I should be working on or is it in a quadrant that somebody I'm accountable for? It makes sense that it's a priority for them to focus on to get done in their role. So don't confuse the activity with accomplishment.

36:16Construction Genius: That's excellent. Excellent. Well, Scott, I've really enjoyed the conversation. Lots of terrific takeaways for folks. And I really appreciate you joining us today.

36:23Scott Borroughs: Yep. Thanks. It's been a pleasure, Eric.

36:25Construction Genius: Hey, this is Eric. Thank you for listening to today's episode. And if you're like Scott or like Scott was, micromanaging and getting stuck in the weeds, think about creating the banks of the river that your folks can flow down and get their projects built without you having to be involved in every single detail. Feel free to share this episode with other people that you think would benefit from listening to it. Give us a rating and a review wherever you get your podcasts. And if you haven't already, please subscribe to the podcast. Thank you. We'll catch you on the next episode. Thank you for listening to this episode of Construction Genius.

37:01Construction Genius: Hope you found that 1 % of inspiration to help you in the next few days. If you like the show, please give us a five-star review on iTunes. Share it with other construction leaders who you think would benefit. And always remember that the show is brought to you by Kick-Ass Meetings. I've been working with construction leaders since 2004, teaching them how to run extremely effective problem-solving meetings that gets their people collaborating, taps into their creativity. And to get yourself a free copy of the Kick-Ass Meeting report, go to www.ericanderton.com slash kickassmeetings. Grab yourself that free report, read it, use it in your business.

37:43Construction Genius: you'll find it extremely useful. And thanks again for listening.