Construction Trailblazers: Paving The Way to Excellence

[00:00:00] Welcome to Construction Trailblazers Paving the Way to Excellence, where we dive into innovation, success, and streamlined excellence in the building industry. I'm Samantha C. Prestige, your host and ally in simplifying operations and empowering dynamic teams. I know the transformative effects of adopting people focused, tech forward lean practices.

And these changes not only boost company revenue, but also restore peace of mind for owners overwhelmed by daily chaos. On this show, we bring to light leaders who are innovating across the industry and creating outstanding results, inspiring you to forge your path to excellence. Today's guest is Craig Montz.

He's currently the Industrial Special Projects Business Group Leader for the Iowa region at Myron Construction. He's got over 20 years of experience in the construction [00:01:00] industry and his goal is to be the easy button for both internal and external customers by finding those creative solutions to the complex challenges that we all deal with.

His approach centers around building trust through transparency, teamwork, and problem prevention, all while fostering a positive, solution oriented attitude. So Craig, what I want to start with first here is like, tell us more what industrial special projects really means and what does that day to day look like for you?

Yeah, it's maybe not your normal construction path when you think about construction traditionally. It's not that different than a lot of subcontractors. But industrial special projects, my focus is on project sizes, 5 million and under. And a lot of that moves really quick. A lot of that moves really fast.

My focus had been around industrial construction, but we've really had to pivot a little bit here over the last 12 plus months, the market and industrial. I'm in [00:02:00] Iowa. It's heavy ag focused in Iowa. There's been a lot of. A lot of pressure on the ag industry as far as economics go and the, the market has provided us with some opportunities, but there are opportunities that I haven't traditionally done in the past.

So a little bit of a pivot there. So we've done a retaining wall for the Department of Transportation recently. I was involved with a medical clinic. I'm working on a larger renovation project right now, so it's been a little bit unique. It's not that far outside of what I would typically take on as work, but it's been unique for sure.

So we've had to adapt to the market.

I think some of that is like, okay, now we've got some new fun projects keep you on your toes a little bit. And not everything is standard, but then there's also that disruption to like the stability and predictability there. How different, I know you said they're, they're pretty similar, but how different of approaches are you kind of taking with the more [00:03:00] agriculture or different projects outside of your typical industrial projects?

I think it's fair to say everything's construction. So there's a process involved with all of it and everything starts with, you know, maybe it's an estimate to get it off the ground and you've got to sell the work a little bit and, and how you're going to provide value to the project or to the customer.

But it's really being in Iowa, I'm pretty rooted in, in, in my life here. And, Being a generalist has been my specialty, so I've done a broad range of projects from concrete to structural steel to equipment installation, and being that generalist has allowed me to pivot a little bit in the market conditions we're in right now, whereas if I specialize, I see a lot of benefits in scalability and some different things where specialization offers, but I'm a generalist.

That generalist world really doesn't scare me, and I grew up with an ag background, I've always [00:04:00] been hands on, I'm a little bit blue collar in a white collar role, and

it

works well for me, I get to spend a lot of my time in industrial special projects or special projects in general, I spend a lot of hands on time.

There's a lot of times seller doer role, I get out in the field and I'm working with our folks in the field and I'm spending time in the office. It creates some, some challenges to scale. But it does create a lot of opportunities when I, when somebody needs help.

Mm hmm. Oh, I want to touch on a few things there.

Let me back up to, you're calling yourself kind of a generalist, which I think is awesome in a world where a lot of times people are like niche down, niche down. Like whether it's in your business or Or career like niche down because people want to hire other specialized people. But I think what's awesome about a generalist mindset and the experience that backs that up is really diversity of thought, right?

So when you are coming up or when you're coming into challenges, like the market challenges and things, you have [00:05:00] different ideas and different experiences that you can pull from for that diversity of thought. Do you find with other, not that we want to talk poorly about any other team members, cause everyone's amazing, right?

But do you find that there's a little bit of coaching involved with some of your peers that it may be a little bit too specialized that, hey, this is how we can adapt and think differently about this problem?

I'm going to change it a little bit on what you asked, but we, so, so I have to, or I don't have to, I do find a lot of the opportunities that I get involved in and I actually go through the process of estimating and project managing and occasionally I help out with some of the field supervision and all of those things allow me to understand that project really well and it does get uncomfortable to me a little bit giving up some of those pieces to folks that are more specialized.

But one of the values that I see out of that is what they bring when they do get involved, and we do it well, we can provide a better product for the customer. [00:06:00] And when we're, when we're working with somebody, let's say in estimating their detail and their delivery is significantly better and focused and it's scalable versus that generalist role.

What I do find the generalist role or what I've done, I like to say I specialize in being a generalist because I feel provide me with. a little bit extra when it comes to problem solving. So if it's concrete work and we're working on a structural steel project. Well, maybe there's something that we found as a useful technique in concrete that people hadn't thought of in structural steel.

And I am able to, to help bridge that gap a little bit. So I think there's some value to that.

Well, now that you bring up problem solving, we can jump into one of the things that really caught my eye when we first got started. Connected on LinkedIn was you stress the problem prevention approach to things like, yeah, we're going to have a solutions oriented [00:07:00] mindset when problems and challenges come up, like we're not going to stop with that, right.

We're going to keep going until we find a solution, but you're also really about, well, how do we just like prevent problems from happening in the first place? So talk to me a little bit about that mindset. Was that something that you developed over your career? Or that's, that's something that you've kind of always run with.

Yeah, so problem prevention is, is interesting, but one of my favorite quotes is, you know, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. And I was, I think Benjamin Franklin did that, but gosh, there's a lot of truth to that, but I love being a problem solver. I love being the hero. I love the firefighter, the adrenaline, I'm an adrenaline junkie.

There's a little bit of a addiction there. Some of the things when you're doing problem solving, there's not a ton of accountability that's put into place, especially if you're helping out with a situation. So there's a lot to it, but you know, you go through a process where you identify what the problem may be, or the issue may be.

You prioritize. Things to work around, [00:08:00] whether that's keeping the public safe, whether that's making the situation safe. There's a lot of things that go into the prioritizing that. Then you come up with some solutions. It's a lot more cost effective if you take time to identify, hey, here's the solutions, let's walk through this.

It's a lot safer if you take time to go through that. And then the action piece. But again, I'm a little bit of an adrenaline junkie. I like Being that firefighter, but I recognize somewhere along the line that being more methodical has been a nice balance, especially the longer I do this. I need to do that a little bit just to manage my energy.

Yeah,

yeah, so one of the things I did recently, so we had a customer, they had a collapsed roof and they had over a foot of snow in February, which in Iowa is not normal. Their roof collapsed. So I get a phone call and I respond and yeah, we've got an issue here and we worked through some quick responses just to make sure that the area was safe [00:09:00] and make sure that the area were protecting different pieces of their property to make sure that there wasn't going to be more damage and it was really, you know, I love that.

I really liked that. But the problem prevention, I mean, it's the same process. It's identify, it's prioritize, it's to come up with solutions, go through those and then action and then repeat. But that firefighter adrenaline junkie thing, the longer I do this, I have less energy when I do that all day. Yeah, I run out of steam at some point.

So it's been a nice balance. It's not that I don't like to solve problems, but if I can prevent them, I'm a lot more sustainable.

Yeah, definitely. I remember when we first talked, you mentioned, you know, the person that prevents problems, they don't get as many awards and medals and shout outs because it's a little bit more boring.

It's not the adrenaline. But it helps you way more and there's stability, right? And you don't have to spend all that energy. And I try to tell managers that [00:10:00] sometimes of like, don't you want an easier way of doing things? Don't you like not want to have to be the hero all the time? Like, let's chill out a little bit and create a plan for that.

Well, not having to react all the time. There's a ton of value and be able to, Hey, we can, we can kind of plan out what we're going to work on. And that's just, again, I'm getting to the point in my career, managing for energy is pretty important to me. Yeah, I can't sustain playing the firefighter 100 percent of the time.

Yeah, but I do appreciate your calling out that like at one point that was a bit of an addiction. And I think sometimes there are people that we we want to help not be so reactive, but they're kind of addicted to that a little bit and yeah, being proactive is calm and it's kind of boring, right? It doesn't always fill your cup there.

Okay, so something else I wanted to highlight is a lot of what we've heard. Or a lot of your answers so far have been about the customer. We heard like, Hey, how can I bring value to the customer? How can I help? How can I create a better [00:11:00] product for the customer? And it's that customer centricity that's really driving things.

And that's going to go back to your introduction where we were like, Hey, part of your approach is how can you be that easy button? So break that down a little bit for us. And how does that maybe tie into some of your problem solving and prevention stuff?

Yes. So I always tell people my focus or my goal is to become the easy button for the customer.

All right. A lot of that comes back to that responsiveness and a little bit of that is problem solving, but if I can prevent some of those problems from happening, I'm also going to be that easy button for the customer. I mean, part of the thing the customer's doing is they're reporting to other folks and they're trying not to get themselves in a position where they've, they've got a, Have a difficult conversation with someone.

So there's, there's a lot of that, but you know, part of becoming that easy button, some of my focus is just doing what I say. I'm not perfect, but I try hard to do what I say. So I I've taken an approach of say do. And if I say [00:12:00] something, I do what I can to respond. But there there's times where I can't, I'm not able to complete what I said I would do.

I overcommit. Like a lot of individuals, and I hate to say I overcommit, I'm getting better at not doing that, but it happens. And part of that is just communicating with people that, say, I, I know we're end of the day Tuesday, these three things came up, I'll get this to you first thing Wednesday, and if that's when I tell them I'm going to get it to them, and I've, I had to put something off, that's when I get it to them, so, but most of the time people are reasonable, and they work with you on something like that, but another thing is just being responsive, people aren't always responsive, I don't like being ghosted, I just, there, there's times where people don't respond and I feel the, the urge myself as if I don't have an answer to something, it's easy not to respond.[00:13:00]

So

what I've come, what I enjoy or what I like is if somebody says, Hey, I don't know, I don't know. I, I, you know, I, I, I'm working on it. I don't have an answer for you, but I don't know right now. And so I take that approach when I'm working with somebody, try to become their easy button. If. They have to wait for an answer from me.

Who knows what sort of bad things they're putting into their thoughts. So it's easy to think of the negative. It's hard to think of the positive. So I just let them know, Hey, I'm working on this. I don't know an answer right now, but, but I'm going to help get, we're going to get there. And there could be a time we don't get there.

Yeah. Or even if you have like just so much going on, I think sometimes we don't reply because we're like, okay, I know I can't find the answer to this right now. It's not always that you don't know, but it's like, I can't complete this project in order to respond to this. And even if you just respond, it's like, Hey, I can't get to this right now, but here's [00:14:00] when I think it'll be done.

And so that other person, like your stuff is a priority too. It matters, but I have all these other things going on. These other fires, your things. Yeah.

When you're wanting to be that easy button for the customer. So the, the Responsiveness is so important that they may reach out to you and you may not be able to respond back to them in those first five minutes with the answer, but you can respond back to them.

Hey, I'm working on this right now. I'll get back to you at some point.

Yeah. And just give, give them a perspective so that those dark thoughts and all the ghosting feelings don't start getting in their heads. Right. I also love what you're saying of you do what you say. 'cause you can't have quality without integrity.

And so if you're gonna say you're gonna deliver on something and when you're gonna deliver on it, like you, you've gotta do it. 'cause if we don't have that integrity, it doesn't matter how good of a product you have. In the end, the rest of the journey there was diluted and, and kind of crappy.

And that industrial mindset really.

It was driven into me early in my career. So we do a lot of work with, with [00:15:00] clients that have an outage on their product line. And if we don't start their product lineup, when we said we would, that, that's a really big deal. They're letting a lot of people down. It may actually mean that other, that people aren't employed, you know, they may, may not be able to put people back to work when they had promised they would put people back to work.

So it's. Crucial to me. And it's been, been put into my head. That's what you do. You do what you say.

Oh my gosh. There's a lot of pressure then on the problem solving when there's so much at stake. It's not just about your team and the company getting their invoice paid, but it's also about like, well, how does this affect our customer and our customers?

Correct. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. It's a definitely circle. So being that easy button, a lot of times those customers that we work with help. help us out. They help make sure that our people are taken care of. And, you know, we do the same for them.

Now, something else I liked with me when we first chatted [00:16:00] was, yeah, we got this great focus on external customers, which is what we need.

They're the paying customer. But you also pointed out on your own, like you've got internal customers. And I think that that's something a lot of people kind of miss is that. is the people on your team, whether they are your employees or just like the peers you're working with. Those are also your internal customers.

So how do you kind of balance that? Or actually, not even just balance, but what was a moment that made you realize, Hey, I've got to treat these people like they're my customers too.

Well, a lot of it in the world that I'm in, I, I do the 5 million and under focus. I may do a hundred jobs in a given year through that process.

Some of them as small as a 500 project, but we're constantly working with accounting, doing invoicing, things like that. But part of customer invoicing is part of customer service. How many people consider that part of customer service? So. Yeah, so if I'm not getting the information to our accounting [00:17:00] team and they're my internal customer, how do we serve our external customer?

So there's pieces of administrative activities that, that when they don't get completed, we can't serve our customers. So to me, serving those internal customers also helps aid that external process, but it's, it's, it's definitely not. Something that a lot of people correlate, but yeah, if I don't get the accounting, the information that is needed, we can't give our customer the information that they need.

And it just, it steamrolls.

Which, you know, that's not just about customer centricity, but that's going to go back to don't you want your day to be easier? I want my

day to be easier, yeah. Right?

So like, yeah, let me help out the accounting department, but ultimately it's so that I don't have to deal with some disgruntled customer or some confusion later down the line.

And that day is going to be easier and I don't have to have those fires.

A little bit of problem prevention, right?

Oh, there we go, right? It's all coming full circle now. I think [00:18:00] sometimes, I've had this conversation recently with quite a few people of, hey, not every fire is like a fire that's outside of your control.

Some of this was probably smoke and embers, and there was something you did that maybe contributed to the spark here, so now it's a bigger problem.

Yeah, so just doing those tasks that need to be done on a regular basis can prevent a lot of these fires.

Yeah. Yeah. So we've touched on a few different things, this customer centricity, problem prevention, being the easy button, and also kind of this generalist mindset that has brought some balance with the specialist there's pros and cons there.

So I also just kind of like looking back at, at your career outside of Myron, you have such diversity, which has contributed to this generalist mindset. So outside of what we've talked about so far, are there any other lessons from working in such different markets? that have led to your success now?

Yeah, from the generalist perspective, I have [00:19:00] had a lot of opportunities and I've, I've, Done some roles in the safety world.

I've done some roles that involved some of the human resources, the side of the business. I interact with accounting on a regular basis. I'm not an accountant. I don't, my attention to detail is not that great, but it's something that is part of what I have to do every day or. Do regularly to serve again as customer focused, but you know, some of that I've had some, some friends, some coaches tell me that, you know, your success is made by your routine.

And I get a little bit discouraged that, Hey, my, my routine is a little chaotic, just based off of the special projects, the reactivity of it. But. If, if I step back and I look at the course of a week, the course of a month, the course of a year, there's certain routines that fall into that. [00:20:00]

So

just because my day wasn't, hey, this 30 minute increment, I was going to do this today, and this 30 increment, I was going to do this today.

And you go back to that idea of, hey, you do these activities and it makes your day. Your job easier at that time. So I've created a little bit of a method to manage my to do list. I have a queue that I work with of, Hey, these are the things that I need to work on, and then I have my to do list, which are things that I'm actively engaged in.

And then I have an urgent column. And those things are my priority, and I don't work on my to do list until things are out of my urgent column, and I don't, I don't work on my queue until things are out of my to do column, and then the queue is, is here, is, is that backlog that is ever waving, and through that process, there are certain activities I have to do on any, on a given day, I've got to do certain things on, on a given day, that if I do those things, it makes my day easier, or makes [00:21:00] my week easier.

There are certain things that I have to do in a given week that make my week easier, or my month easier, or my quarter easier, but if I don't do those things on a given day or a given week, Things fall apart, I create those problems, I create those fires. Maybe for me, maybe for somebody else.

You gotta have some of that self accountability there.

I like that you took a step back though, because I think sometimes we get, we either hear advice or we read something in Forbes or on LinkedIn, and then we might get fired. frustrated that that advice doesn't seem to literally apply to our situation. And we've got to remember like routine and consistency does look different for everybody.

And then, then I don't get in the trap where I read some good advice and I'm like, stop everything I'm doing to try that new, new idea that was out there. Right. So I can have a somewhat of a consistent path.

Right? Now you have such structure to the things you have to get done, but I'm sure that there's some people listening that are like, well, my urgent column is never [00:22:00] done.

Like I can't ever get to the basic to dos or this backlog of stuff I want to work on because there's always something urgent. So have you found yourself in a similar situation or how do you prevent yourself from getting in that situation?

Well, so part of that process that I use is I do move things from the cue to the to do to the urgent.

So I'm not. upset if I'm always working in the urgent column, I may find that myself in that bucket for a while or that down that path for a while. But, but the items that were in my queue eventually end up in my urgent column if they needed to be done. So the thing that I, Don't want to do. I try to delegate, try to work with people.

Delegation is a great way to, to coach people, help, help people learn a lot of people use delegation, not a necessity. And I get stuck in that trap too. But gosh, it's a great way to help, help people learn.

Yeah, we had a podcast a few weeks ago when we first launched. I'll link it in the show notes for our [00:23:00] listeners, but it was about how like, it's okay to say that certain things aren't worth your time.

That doesn't mean that it's not beneath you. It's just, it's not where your time is best spent. So delegate it, have somebody else work on it. And that's okay. Sounds like a business owner. I can see that

being very important as a business owner.

Yeah, I mean, I get in a similar trap sometimes to where I sometimes I just really enjoy doing a certain type of thing.

And so I'll tune out all the other problems so I can have that project. And there's other times where I'm like, I just want to get this done when really it's better if a different team member does this so that in the future. They know how to do it. And so it's not, I, I teach my clients, you know, how to delegate, but it's not something that I have always solved for myself.

I don't do, no, I'm not that great at it. I

don't, don't, don't pretend I'm an expert, but yeah. So one of the things with, with my to-do list, one of the, probably the biggest value I've got out of that is I created a waiting on bucket so that I can follow up with folks. So how many times do we do something where we did our portion of the task, [00:24:00] but we're waiting on someone else before we, it's actually done.

And then it's sitting on your to do list forever. And so that, that becomes a frustration. There's a, there's a little bit of that, you know, that addiction of, of. For me to get through a to do list, I'm a to do list person, but when something sits on there for several days or longer, it can be frustrating.

So, okay, I did my piece. Let's put it in the waiting on and I'll, I'll put dates on there on when I expect to do a follow up and then I follow up with, with, Hey, you were working on this, you know, and I try to get deadlines from those folks, but you don't always get that done.

Well, what's great about that though, is there's a recognition of like, what is in your control?

You can't control when this person is actually going to do it, but you can follow up with them. So the people I know that. They get busy and they get back to me really late on things. I'll just say, Hey, is it okay if I send you a follow up in two to three days? Just as a reminder, you don't owe it [00:25:00] to me in three days, but like, I'm probably going to follow up with you.

Is that going to be okay? And just have that permission to pester them. And yeah, that would be so helpful, you know?

Yeah, somebody that does some sales, pursuing opportunities, finding work, so I will reach out to someone and then what I enjoy is when somebody follows back up with me and lets me know, hey, here's where we're at.

I may have something right now. I may not have something yet. When somebody doesn't follow up and you're like, okay, well, are they mad or what? Why are they not following up? It's just hard not to think of the negative. And so, yeah, just setting up that expectation on a follow up is helpful too.

Well, even outside of sales with my team, like going back to delegation, I think a big part of that is just setting expectations.

And so I'll tell my team, like, if something doesn't get done because you were waiting on me for something, I'm not always going to say that's my fault. Did you follow up with me? Cause if you didn't follow up with [00:26:00] me, that's on you and you should have known better. I understand

that. Yeah, I do. Yeah. It takes all of us to help each other.

So I worked with a coach at one time and his, one of his things was, is, Hey, let's follow up all the time, follow up all the time. Well, what that did is that created self accountability. So if I was doing something, I would follow up with somebody at the status of, of what I was working on. And when.

Somebody else was working on something I appreciated when they followed up with me. But it also ensured that I was doing what I said I would do.

Yeah, right. Going back to that integrity for your quality there. I love, I love all the different strategies that we've been able to dive into. For our listeners, though, that are like, Hey, we've talked about a lot.

What would you recommend is like their first action step to becoming that easy button for people?

Well, so I guess the probably the biggest overall thing, and I share this with, with people wanting to get into construction careers all the time, but [00:27:00] It's, you know, it's pretty simple. It's show up. It's have a good attitude and be willing to learn.

And if you do those three things, we can get a lot done. It all starts with showing up.

That's awesome. And the mindset that you show up with, right? That humility to learn. All right. Well, thank you so much, Craig, for being with us today. I'm sure our listeners are walking away with a lot of different ways that they can approach being that easy button.

Starting with how they're showing up. If you liked what you heard from Craig today and you want to learn more about him, we'll have his LinkedIn in the show notes. And if you want to catch up on past episodes, you can check us out at construction trailblazers. com.

Thank you.