Construction Trailblazers: Paving The Way to Excellence

[00:00:00] Welcome to Construction Trailblazers, Paving the Way to Excellence, your go to podcast for innovation, success, and streamlined excellence in the building industry. I'm Samantha C. Prestidge, your host and expert in operations and processes. I've seen the transformative effects of adopting smart, efficient processes.

And these changes not only boost company revenue, but also restore peace of mind for owners overwhelmed by the daily grind. Today, we're going to dive into a topic that can really add so much of a burden onto that daily grind and hold your business back. Silos. Yep, pesky, annoying barriers. These silos pop up within your teams, they create divisions, inefficiencies, and so much frustrations.

So we're going to dive into how can we spot these, how can we understand the cost behind them, and most importantly, how you can break them down and solve any issues you have with your silos. So if you're all about leaving behind the daily [00:01:00] firefighting and moving towards a future of freedom and predictable success, then you're in the right place.

Discover more about us and catch up on past episodes at ConstructionTrailBlazers. com. Okay, so I think the best place to start here is to first really understand what a silo is. To do this, I want you to think of a basketball game. If basketball isn't your thing, then really this is applicable to any sport, so just pick the sport that is your thing.

But I like basketball. On a side note, I love the Denver Nuggets. I was so disappointed in how they lost in the playoffs this year. I'd love to know who you are going for, so if we're connected on LinkedIn then DM me or you can email me at hello at construction trailblazers dot com. Anyway, okay, you're thinking of a basketball game or your favorite sport, And you know there's moments when you're watching as a fan and you start to stand up because things are going sideways and you're like, what the heck is happening?

What is going on? They aren't making shots. They aren't passing the ball. They keep going for three pointers instead of just getting in the paint and driving it to [00:02:00] the rim. There's just no synergy in the defense, right? Everyone seems to be doing their own thing and it's like the players have forgotten that they are part of a team.

They're all focused on their own moves and it's turning out to just be a mess. This is what silos can feel like in your business. Silos are when, even within the same team, or it could be different groups, different departments, when people are not talking to each other, they're not sharing information, so they're just doing their own thing, and it's slowly causing problems, and it's slowing things down, right?

It's a major hindrance in your business. So let's bring an example back to a real team. Imagine if your design team wasn't communicating with a project manager on customer selections. Or you have an office manager that's answering calls from customers but isn't sharing those notes with estimators and project managers.

So now we've got people that need these notes, they need this information, but they don't have it [00:03:00] because there are silos that exist and the teams don't know how to talk to each other and collaborate. If there are silos in your business, you might hear things like, that's not our department's problem or we've always done it this way.

Or you might also just feel like there are inefficiencies that continue to persist despite it feeling like everyone is working really hard. These are red flags that you have silos that are holding your business back. So to be super clear on this, on what the heck a silo is, it's any time that a stakeholder, so a stakeholder is someone that's involved in a process, they have either a step in the process or they are affected by the process.

So any time that a stakeholder is in a situation where they don't have all of the information, to keep that process moving forward in a swift and streamlined way. Another example here, I was talking with a client a few weeks ago, and they were trying to explain that there wasn't a silo between these two people because it was a senior project manager and someone else in the field, and they were discussing [00:04:00] buying certain equipment for a project.

So they were talking about how much it was going to cost, what they would use it for, when that piece of equipment would arrive, and pretty much the argument there from my client was that, oh, there wasn't a silo because the communication was happening between these people. But when we took a step back, their communication was only happening between these two people.

It was not happening alongside accounting. Who should have been involved in approving the purchase? They also needed to know, you know, what project is this even for? So when that invoice came for the equipment, They had no PO to connect it to, they had no idea what project they were adding this expense to, right, for job costing and things.

So just because communication is happening in some sort doesn't mean that a silo doesn't still exist, right? So the silo was between these field guys and accounting. And silos can have major costs associated with them. One of the biggest things that has such a long term [00:05:00] impact on the potential that your team can rise to is when we have silos, it keeps your team thinking in the small picture.

So if people are not communicating well within their teams or across departments, then they are only ever focused on their own little corner of the business instead of on the big picture. This narrow focus keeps them from developing proactive problem solving skills, because they don't understand, they don't see how their work fits into the larger organizational goals.

They don't get how their piece connects to what the business is trying to do. So without that big picture thinking, teams are going to be stuck in a reactive firefighting mode, rather than proactively addressing challenges and hopping on opportunities for growth. It also means that in this small picture thinking, there's not a whole lot of innovation and creativity happening because new ideas often come from different perspectives working together.

On top of this, [00:06:00] Silos build frustration. They breed frustration like gossip spreads in a high school hallway. When team members aren't able to communicate openly about challenges and issues, when we don't have this healthy conflict and collaboration going, then those team members resort to venting behind each other's backs.

It's just like us as fans during that basketball game or whatever sport you chose. If we don't know why the team is messing up, we're just going to start talking shit about the players and the coaching staff. Right? That's why Sports Talk Radio exists. Gossiping when we're frustrated is just such a common relief for people, and it's such a common go to and default behavior, and silos are just going to encourage this.

and tear down whatever positive culture you're trying to build because gossiping really bleeds into productivity and morale. The other aspect of this is that silos are going to create blind spots. So without effective communication and collaboration, Blind [00:07:00] spots pop up because information isn't clear or it's just plain out, not shared.

So you end up missing things that you didn't even realize you were missing. And in these blind spots is when we end up with annoyed and upset customers, projects going over budget, sales members missing out on revenue opportunities, and so many other issues that just hinder business growth overall. Okay, so I know that was a lot of crappy stuff we just laid out, but the good news, the flip side of this, is that we don't have to accept silos as part of our business.

We can work to break them down. It might involve some growing pains. It's going to involve you being comfortable with conflict, being adaptable to change. But this is what is going to pave the way for a great and awesome culture, for operational excellence, and for that long term success and sustainability.

So the first thing we need to do is to break these silos down, is to take a step toward fostering a culture of collaboration. If that [00:08:00] feels abstract for you, then here are some small steps you can take for this. First, you're going to make sure that you have regular check in meetings. It doesn't have to be a daily stand up, but regularly, maybe every week, you should be meeting with your team and they should have the opportunity to share updates and discuss any challenges they are facing.

This is going to keep everyone in the loop and encourage that open communication. And you're also going to get curious. So if you hear a challenge pop up in the meeting that you don't think should be a challenge, should be an easy fix, you're gonna get curious onto why that's happening. If you see something that isn't moving forward at the pace you want, or it seems like someone is asking for information they should already have access to somewhere, then get curious into what's going on and what that slowdown is.

You're also going to make sure that you have good collaboration tools for your team, so implement and encourage the use of a tool like Slack. If you don't want to invest in that, then maybe you have Microsoft, you want to invest in Teams. I'm not a fan of Google [00:09:00] Chat. I do really promote Slack, though, for my own team and for a lot of my clients.

I think so often, especially in the construction world, we just result to these crazy group text threads. And it's really hard to keep track of. It's hard to search information. Eventually, people just don't even want to be on their phone. I think Slack or Microsoft Teams is a great way to separate communication by project, by department, um, and really keep everyone in the loop of what needs to be happening.

And it also feels a lot less informal than emails that are going back and forth. You also want to make sure you have some kind of project management tool. There's a lot of industry specific project management tools or you can use something simple like monday. com, Asana, Trello, something like that. Okay, then you're going to take this a step further as far as this culture of collaboration.

and Team success. So you want to celebrate different team achievements, even if they're small, whatever the big achievements are, you want to celebrate that during team meetings, send out a [00:10:00] Slack announcement to everyone, company wide communications. You want to highlight the things that you want to see, and this is going to reinforce the value of working together.

It's going to boost that team morale. You're also going to continuously share Like, Hey, this person did this and this contributes to this other company goal, right? So it's, it's not only making people feel good about what they're doing. It's also reiterating. This is the company goal, right? This is why we're working together.

And the last point here is I don't want you to underestimate how much you need to communicate. So you cannot overcommunicate, especially when you're tearing down silos. There's no such thing as overcommunication. So you want to communicate what you want done. You want to reiterate your priorities. You want to follow up on expectations.

Your number one goal is keeping everyone across your team on the same page and aligned with company priorities. All right, remember that breaking down silos isn't something that happens overnight. It takes [00:11:00] a lot of effort and a commitment from you as the leader, as you as the manager, to foster a culture of collaboration and communication.

But the benefits are worth it. Improved efficiency, better decision making, a more agile and responsive team, that innovation and problem solving that you want to see as you strive for operational excellence. All right, if you want to see if your leadership style has created silos or even if despite your best efforts, if you might have some silos, then I highly recommend that you take our What Type of Business Hero Are You?

quiz. It will help you identify if you've got silos going on and what are some additional action steps that you need to be taking on your journey to excellence. you Can take that hero quiz at construction trailblazers. com. Thanks for joining me today on construction trailblazers, paving the way to excellence. Hopefully you found this episode helpful and insightful. If you have your own story to share about silos or how you helped foster communication and [00:12:00] collaboration in your team, then I'd love to hear that.

Please share your story with me at hello at construction trailblazers. com.