In this episode of the Construction Cowboy Show, Mark James, founder and president of Performance Advisors, shares his extensive experience in business advisory, focusing on employee engagement, cultural improvement, and change management. He discusses the common barriers to effective operations and people performance, emphasizing the importance of managing change and improving employee and customer experiences.
In this episode of the Construction Cowboy Show, Mark James, founder and president of Performance Advisors, shares his extensive experience in business advisory, focusing on employee engagement, cultural improvement, and change management. He discusses the common barriers to effective operations and people performance, emphasizing the importance of managing change and improving employee and customer experiences.
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Jeff Williams:
All right. Welcome back to the Construction Cowboy Show. And thanks to our sponsors, Merchant Commodities, your wholesale building materials supplier nationwide. We have a special guest with us today. Mark James is the founder and president of Performance Advisors. And Mark is a frequent business speaker and accomplished business implement advisor with over 40 years experience.
Mark James:
Thank you, Jeff. Happy to be here. Good to see you as always. Appreciate the opportunity today. I started my career in sales over 40 years ago. I used to be six inches taller then. And I had a number of sales and marketing roles in the oil business. I was in the investment world. And in the last 20 or so years, I've been doing my own thing. I have my own practice now. It's Performance Advisors Group.
Jeff Williams:
And I work with companies, primarily B2B organizations, and help them get rid of the barriers that inevitably get in the way of operations and people performance. And even the best companies in the world don't always operate on all cylinders all the time. So there's always opportunity for improvement because there's these very common barriers that get in the way of operating at a high level, both from an operational standpoint as well as from an employee standpoint.
Mark James:
That's where I spend my time. concentrate in that area. And as you mentioned, that includes also helping organizations manage the journey of change that might be brought about by a new product or a new service or changes in the marketplace they have to react to or the way in which the business operates. So change is something that a lot of businesses struggle with because they know their product, they know their service, they know their market, but change itself is kind of can be a struggle for organizations. So I can come in and be a.
Jeff Williams:
independent set of eyes and ears and help them to manage that journey.
Mark James:
Well, as you know, Mark, we focus a little bit more on construction and development projects and things of that nature. And I know that your background experience can help a lot of those folks, along with the listeners that are in many multiple businesses. So I've got a question for you. Kind of start rolling the ball a little bit here. When you meet with a company, what's the first non-financial problem you usually see that leadership is underestimating?
Mark James:
There are a couple of them that kind of bubble up and this is sort of universal across all different types of organizations and verticals. And by the way, my background in construction, I actually put myself through college working construction. I wrote road construction, I worked building construction. So I have a background. was a card carrying laborer in the business. And so I got to see how things operate from my days putting myself through college.
Jeff Williams:
very familiar with the business from that standpoint. And some of my clients over the years have been in the construction world or support the construction industry. So the answer to that question, the two things that I observe when I come on site or on scene with a client for the first time is I noticed the attitude of the employees and related to that, what's the level of stress that the employees might be under? And stress can be pretty obvious.
Mark James:
when you know what to look for. And one of the things about stress that a lot of people don't realize is that stress actually causes 85 % of workplace accidents. It's not necessarily carelessness, although that can be a cause, but stress causes 85 % of workplace accidents. And stress also, according to the American Psychological Association, causes 1 million lost days of work every year in the United States.
Jeff Williams:
So every day in America, one million days of work are lost. So one million people are out because of stress. So stress in the workplace is something that I look for, and it's an indicator of where there's opportunities for improvement from an attitude standpoint, or what's the cause of the stress. That's interesting. So another part of the question that ties to this is that, what does the problem look like
Mark James:
mainly kind of on a job site or in production or sometimes it's office environment, but different locations. so can you just kind of touch on that again? So many different businesses and so many different locations and with COVID came in, there was remote home. So can you just touch on that a little bit? What do you see with that expanding? Yeah.
Jeff Williams:
The stress is often caused, stress is an indication of something else is going on. Stress itself is a symptom. It's not the problem itself per se. Could be issues at home before people ever get to work. It could be things that are caused on the job site. So some other indicators to determine whether or not stress is caused at home or other ways. There are some typical signs to look for. Do employees always seem off topic or off task?
Mark James:
And that could be caused in the workplace by the fact that they don't have a clear understanding of what they're being asked to do, or the expectations are unrealistic or not clearly defined. One of my favorite statistics to this point is that research was done by the conference board across all different kinds of organizations and they found for a typical organization, nearly two thirds.
Jeff Williams:
of the employees are only one third as productive as they could be because they simply don't understand what they're being asked to do. So being off task, off topic or off task could be a result of they just don't understand what's being expected of them or they're unclear about what should be done. Another indicator that there's something amiss is there's chronic distrust or complaining about management. Employees are complaining about management one way or another. There's generally, that generally is an indicator of poor morale.
Mark James:
and or people don't have a connection in their own minds and can't make a personal meaning connection to what they're being asked to do and or they feel as though they're being mismanaged. In fact, there is some research by the Dale Carnegie Institute that found that 80 % of employees who are dissatisfied with their manager are considered disengaged.
Jeff Williams:
So managers and or people that we all work for have a great impact on how we are at work and what our attitudes and our feelings of stress. If there's high absenteeism on the job, that's also an indicator that the stress is a challenge. And there the key is to help people to cope with conflicts and encourage wellness on the part of people. There's also a concept called presenteeism and
Mark James:
present ism is people are the job they show up there physically but mentally they're checked out. And so it's it's almost the equivalent of absenteeism except while they're president they just checked out so if you if people are there in the job that checked out that's another indicator that we've got some challenges need to be addressed. If there's a lack of pride in work or decrease quality or qualities declining that's an indication that that there are some there are some opportunities for improvement around what's going on.
Jeff Williams:
One of the things that we know about engaged employees, those that are really good at what they do and their contributor, their contributors is that they're connected, they're enthusiastic, and they're very observant. They know what's going on and they're in position to tell their boss or their leaders, hey, I see something going on that you may not be aware of. And the cool thing that leaders should understand in any organization is that you have one set of eyes and one set of ears.
Mark James:
your people are a force multiplier when it comes to that. They see and hear things because they're close to things and they're more of them. So being able to having the ability to listen to what they have to say and involving them in understanding what is going on is very important. And if you have high turnover, if there's a lot of people, if you can't hold on to employees and people are constantly leaving, it also is another indication of something that may be amiss.
Jeff Williams:
One of my favorite quotes here about high turnover is based on some research that Gallup Inc has done around employee engagement. They are probably the best in the world in terms of measuring employee engagement in the workplace, both internationally and nationally in the United States. And sadly, in the United States, the percentage of employees who are engaged versus those that are disengaged kind of hovers around one in three, which means that every day in America, seven out of 10 people get up
Mark James:
put their job and then go to work. They're just not engaged. And what is a major cause of that disengagement, again, could be the manager of the person they're working for. One of my favorite quotes from Gallup is that people join great companies and employers, but they leave very poor managers. So those are some trouble signs that you want to pay attention to, and they're indicators that something needs to be addressed. And quite often, so much of this is communication.
Jeff Williams:
and openness and having a bias for transparency. So you do a lot of framework and training with tools and resources and people and you're able to reformulate that model or that need for change once you get involved with the company, is that correct? Yeah, when there's a need for change,
Mark James:
There are a couple of things that organizations need to keep in mind or the leaders of the organization. When there's a need for change, the important, there are a couple of things to remember is that first of all, is a journey. It's not a singular event. It takes time. The second thing to keep in mind is that change itself doesn't cause people to fight it or flee from it or freeze in front of it. So it's not the change itself that causes people to resist it.
Jeff Williams:
It is a loss or the potential or perceived loss that's related to the change that's causing people to fight it or flee from it. So it's important to understand that as part of having a good change and having successful changes, you have to address that natural human tendency to resist change because people are perceiving a loss or they're actually experiencing a loss.
Mark James:
And that's where transparency comes in. It's much better upfront. If there's going to be a change that's going to affect people's jobs, either in terms of what they're going to be doing tomorrow or their job may be eliminated or they have to be moved on to something else, it's better to be upfront and be honest and transparent as possible upfront because human nature being what it is, if you let what's going on fester and you don't have explanations and that lack of transparency is there.
Jeff Williams:
people are gonna make things up in their minds and they quite often will invent or blow the situation out of proportion. And when that happens, then a lot of negative things can happen. Sooner or later, customers are gonna start to see it because there's gonna be chatter. And when it starts to show up with customers, now you have much more difficult things to worry about because not only do have to worry about making sure that employees are gonna be stable and doing what they should be doing, but you don't wanna lose customers because of the change.
Mark James:
So, and the other thing to keep in mind about change is that I like to use the analogy from football. When you embark on a journey of change for whatever reason in an organization, understand that there are three possible outcomes to the change effort. Just like there are three possible outcomes when you pass the football and then end the game of football. In football, when you make a pass, three things can happen and two of them are bad. Same thing happens with change in an organization.
Jeff Williams:
The first negative outcome of change in change is that I call it the incomplete pass. So you embark on the effort to change, to be something different tomorrow than we are today. And we, and in between where you are now and where you want to be with the change is in between is what I call the swamp of change. It's where your people and you are going to get a little wet and dirty, figuratively speaking, because there's some uncertainty. There's a lot of stuff that has to be addressed and that's where the resistance to change is going to bubble up.
Mark James:
So the incomplete pass analogy in change is that people in the organization, you embark on the change, everybody gets out into that swamp of change and everyone looks around and says, this is ugly, this is dirty, this is what I don't like it. And everybody snaps back to the as-is state. the change failed. The worst of the two bad outcomes is the interception. Again, everybody embarks on the change effort. We get into the swamp of change and everybody gets stuck there, either going forward or going back.
Jeff Williams:
choose up enormous amounts of resources, goodwill, as I said earlier, customers are be in the notice. It's a bad situation. You obviously wanna avoid that. I mean, that's the equivalent of avoiding a head-on accident with a car. That's the last thing you wanna do is a head-on accident. So you wanna avoid that. The one outcome in change that is successful is the completed pass, where you embark on the journey of change and you spend a minimum amount of time in that swamp of change and get to that new state and stay there.
Mark James:
So that's a good way to think about the three possible outcomes and change and understand that if you do it right, you've got to complete a pass. If you do it wrong, you could have an incomplete pass or an interception. Yeah. Okay. So I'm going to shift gears. I'm going to give you a loaded question. This call is kind of for a short, brief answer and it may be hard to answer because it's so, so wide and broad, but I'm a financial guy. So,
Jeff Williams:
to root. So what does it cost them long term? Just an estimate of, and I know that's across the board. It's hard to answer because every industry is different. and I don't care about percentages. It's more about your philosophy of does it actually cost them long term if they don't make those changes or is it just status quo? And I know that's a really, it's like the pin in the donkey. It's hard to hit. And you may not even be able to answer that question because it is such a
Mark James:
wide, you know, wide diverse answer. No, it's a fair question. There's a lot embedded in that. And there are a couple of three ways to look at it or the perspectives to take in answering it. With respect to change, change is going to come your way as an organization, whether you like it or not. The marketplace is going to put it on you, the competitors. It could be regulatory or governmental stuff that is put on you in terms of how you're allowed to operate.
Jeff Williams:
If you're in a collective bargaining situation, what happens with the union is going to impact and cause things to change and or just the advance of technology. I've been doing some talks recently with a fellow colleague of mine. We've been doing some talks about AI and the impact of AI. AI is coming like a freight train down the path for most businesses.
Mark James:
And in fact, that impact is going to be happening anywhere from the next several months to 900 days. And so many businesses are going to be impacted. And so you have to decide how are you going to manage the change around and embrace AI rather than fight it or figure out how to work alongside it because it is coming and it won't stop. In terms of the cost of not embracing change, you're going to miss opportunities and
Jeff Williams:
Here's one statistic I can give you that is a pretty hard one based upon research that's been done by a number of people. And that is that the cost of replacing a customer, a good loyal customer you have, if you don't change the customers themselves may feel a temptation to leave and move on because you're not keeping up with the times or a competitor comes along with a more tempting offer that is a better one for the client. It costs five to six times more
Mark James:
to bring in a brand new customer than to continue to serve a current existing loyal customer. Now that doesn't, I'm not trying to say you shouldn't bring in new customers. You always have to make an investment to do that, but it will cost you five to six times more. So if you're constantly in a state of turnover with your clients and you're churning and burning through customers, your cost to bring on those new customers to replace an old one is five to six X. So if you're working on thin margins, which a lot of industries are,
Jeff Williams:
Think about what that does to you and how long you can sustain that. All right. So I want to shift gears a little bit and touch a little bit more on employee engagement side of this. But business has skilled labor, tight schedules, and constant pressure. What does real employee engagement look like in this environment? Not corporate theory, but boots on the ground kind of thing. And can you just share some of that with us?
Mark James:
Yeah, I mentioned some attributes of engaged employees earlier. just show up to work and they're more enthusiastic. They are more connected to the organization and its goals. And it shows up in just their attitude and their approach to things. And they're more observant. Engaged employees tend to be more caring about what they see and hear. A disengaged employer, one that's actively disengaged, the people that go out and could poison the well.
Jeff Williams:
And they're the people that can just ruin the culture and the esprit de corps of everybody overnight. They're the people you don't want on a team. So actively disengage people, they will actually go out of their way to sabotage you by keeping their mouth shut about something they see. Engaged employees do exactly the opposite. They have their best interests because they're connected to the organization and the organization's goals in mind. So they see their interests and the organization's interests as being mutual.
Mark James:
So being a... Yeah, go ahead, sorry. Go I'm assuming it's more around the culture of the company sometimes than anything else, but knowing you as well as I know you. Yeah, culture has, culture is both a dependent variable. It depends on other things or things influence culture and then culture influences other things. So it's an independent variable as well. And the key thing to remember about culture is that every organization has a culture.
Jeff Williams:
I always had to chuckle there. There have been a couple of times in my career where I've encountered a prospect and I'm talking to them and they say, we need a culture around here. And I say, okay, cool. Guess what? You have a culture already. You just may not know you have one, but every organization has a culture. The key question then becomes not whether you have a culture because you do, is whether that culture is by chance or whether it's based on good choices.
Mark James:
And you obviously want a culture that's based on good choices that is actively done and done with intention as opposed to culture just kind of let it happen. I like in leaving culture the chance to giving whiskey in the car keys to teenagers. Bad things can happen, right? So you want to focus on making good choices that impact the culture. And we come back then to leaders and managers and supervisors or foremen at a local level.
Jeff Williams:
Their attitude, what's important to them, what they pay attention to and how they behave has a huge impact on the culture. So to start in terms of understanding where you can improve your culture or where you can assess what your culture looks like currently, start with your leadership team. Start with your supervisors, start with your foreman, start with your superintendents and understand how they're doing the job and what are their attitudes and perceptions about what's important and on the job and are they themselves engaged and enthusiastic.
Mark James:
That kind of leads me to this next question. What's one of the behaviors a superintendent or project manager or manager of a plant can change tomorrow? What is it? What is the one behavior that they could change that would impact that to a positive? Yeah, I'll give you two real quickly. One is to understand that for the people that they are managing or leading is that their employees, their team,
Jeff Williams:
They're all, those people are always asking themselves or looking for answers to five questions that directly impact their behavior on the job. And those five questions are, what is it I'm supposed to be doing? Two, how am I supposed to be doing it? Number three, how am I doing at it? Am I on the right path? Am I doing what I should be doing? I, you are you giving them feedback?
Mark James:
Number question number four is what I call the motivation question. Why should I do it? What's in it for me to do it? And here you talk, there you hear you talk about having recognition and celebrating successes. And then the fifth question is where, where am I going? What's my future here? Employees are always looking to answers to those questions. And it's the responsibility of leaders to answer those questions. Cause again, in the absence of the right answers, people are going to fill in the blanks with their own answers, which may not be the best one. So that's the first step. Understand.
Jeff Williams:
that your employees are asking those five questions or are looking for answers to them and make sure you're answering them correctly. The second tip I would offer is to practice what I call the one three one method with your people. And this is a problem solving technique or gets people in being into a problem solving mode as opposed to just people that you want completing tasks. And I get it. People are you hire people to do certain things.
Mark James:
and they need to do certain things a certain way. But I would challenge the thinking that if you think that your role as a leader is to make pure that people check the box and do things a certain way, you're basically just directing traffic. I would contend that that's not your primary responsibility as a leader or a superintendent or a foreman. Your primary responsibility is to help the people that work for you to be the best they can be. And one of the ways you can make people to be the best they can be, and this is human nature, people love to be in the...
Jeff Williams:
Most people like to be in a situation where they have an opportunity to contribute to a problem or help solve things or are contributing to a positive outcome. So here's a quick technique that you can use to get people into a problem solving mindset as opposed to saying, Hey, we got a problem. I'm going to let you, Mr. Manager and Mr. Superintendent, tell me, tell me what to do. When someone comes to you as a leader or a superintendent or a foreman and says, Hey, we got a problem boss. The first thing you do, the one in the one three message, the first one is.
Mark James:
Tell them to describe the problem and define it in their own words. Okay, tell me exactly what the problem is and ask for specifics. Get them to tell you. Don't second guess it. Get them to talk about and frame the problem in their own mind and describe. Here's the evidence of why it's not working. Okay. The three in the one three method that is to then ask them, right, well, what are three options or alternatives we should consider to solve this?
Jeff Williams:
And again, get them to give you specifics. What are the three options that you think we should consider? And the last one in the 1-3 method, and this is the $64,000 question, and this is where it might be difficult for a lot of people leadership role because you kind of feel like you're giving up control, I contend this is not the way to look at it. The last thing you ask them is, what's the one thing you recommend we should do? Now, again, that might be counterintuitive to a lot of people, but I would tell you that quite often,
Mark James:
What that employee suggests that we should do, what their recommendation is, quite often it's the right one. Because again, they're closer to this situation. Now you can always override that because you may have the benefits and the knowledge that they don't, or there's something that we need to be doing that they're not aware of from a compliance standpoint or some other reason. But more often than not, what that employee thinks is the right thing to do if you've gotten to think about defining the problem correctly and what are the alternatives and then what do you recommend?
Jeff Williams:
try that as a problem. It gets people into a problem-solving mode. Here's the other thing. When you go with their recommendation and it turns out to be the right one, guess what happens? Now that individual, that employee is mentally invested in that solution because it was their idea. And when it succeeds, you celebrate the win with them.
Mark James:
Well, I love this because you've answered the cultural questions, you've answered the loyalties with the employees. I think one of the things is, how does customer loyalty tie into, and here's the really big question is, can the employee, from the management employees perspective, where does that loyalty actually get created and or destroyed during production? But it's more about
Jeff Williams:
Can they see customer loyalty and how that impacts them in their day-to-day operation? so it kind of intertwines and pulls together and sews together, but it's a really big piece because if the customer's not loyal, then how is the employee to be loyal if there's not any repeat business in a sense, right? Yeah, yeah. The two, customer experience and the employee experience, are intertwined. It's love at hand. My favorite quote,
Mark James:
on this point is from Simon Sinek. He said, customers will never love a company or a business until the employees love it first. So you really, you begin to focus and dedicate yourself on the employee or on the customer experience by making sure the employee experience is one that creates satisfaction and loyalty. And there's been quite a bit of academic research has been done. It's a great article if you want to bore yourself with a little.
Jeff Williams:
academic reading, it really is, it drives home the point. The whole notion of the service profit chain, and this was developed by some gentlemen at Harvard University based on their research of companies of all different kinds. And they found that the service profit chain concept basically says that loyal, satisfied customers buy quality products and services that are made by loyal and satisfied employees.
Mark James:
So again, all comes back to you, you make the connection to the employee, the customer experience by making sure the employee experience is one that drives their satisfaction and their loyalty. I mean, think about it for a minute. If you've got an employee who doesn't really give a flip, it's gonna show up and it's not gonna drive a sense of loyalty. And in fact, my favorite disruptive statistic about this has to do with the number one reason why customers in any industry
Jeff Williams:
leave and go somewhere else to buy. And when I ask that question to most people, they say, well, they say, well, it's poor service. I said, well, that's partially true. It goes a little deeper than that. The number one reason based on research that I've been following for 45 years across a number of different industries and research projects, the number one reason why customers leave a business and go someplace else almost seven out of 10 times is they didn't feel welcome or appreciated.
Mark James:
by the company serving them. Seven out of 10 times. The next most frequent reason is that there was a problem with the product or service itself at only 14 % of the time. So literally by orders of magnitude, 4X more frequently customers leave because they didn't feel welcome or appreciated as opposed to either a product or service issue. Price isn't even near the top of the list. It's the attitude.
Jeff Williams:
It kind of brings up an experience of a question where I've come from in the construction world. You've got your owners and your developers. You've got your banks and finance folks and the lawyers. And then you've got your general contractors or your CMAs, whatever. But then you've got your middle management, your project managers. And so this is more about leadership in the middle kind of question. know, superintendents and project managers are caught between ownership and operations. How critical, Mark?
Mark James:
How critical is that middle layer of performance and what does most companies fail to equip them with? It's a huge, it has a huge impact and it's an excellent question. And if we think about, you kind of touched on it as part of answering the question is to understand what are the pressures that those people in that middle level management are under. They're getting pressure from above, obviously. You're getting pressure from below. There are people coming to them who have expectations and needs and so they're in the middle.
Jeff Williams:
And one of the things that leadership should understand again is to help those people in the middle to do a better job themselves. understand, assess and evaluate how your managers lead people, how they do their job, how they develop their own people, how themselves, how they themselves were developed and give them the right tools and give them the encouragement to do the right thing.
Mark James:
as opposed to creating a sense of competition from one or between one or another. I worked for an organization many, many years ago. It wasn't in the construction industry, but I've seen it happen in all different sorts of verticals. The owner of the company was a very successful person. He built a multi-billion dollar empire. And he actually, and it showed up in the culture of the organization. was an ugly underneath this kind of friendly, nice veneer. There was this ugliness that occurred.
Jeff Williams:
he actually would purposely set off his leadership team against each other. It was almost like that old thing you do when you're a kid, you take a couple of fireflies and you put them in a jar and you shake it up and see if they fight each other. This was this guy's attitude about how he managed his people. And guess what? That trickled down on the rest of the organization. The culture of that organization underneath this nice outward-appearing friendly veneer, it was ugly. It was very-
Mark James:
Setting proper expectations also is, I know from my own experience one time, I had a client that brought me a task that they wanted me to work on. And I had no experience in that task or anything else. And I said, you need to understand, I don't know what you're asking me to do and don't understand the task because I've never done anything like this. And the answer was, I don't care. Just figure it out and fix it.
Jeff Williams:
They didn't want to pay for the time to figure it out because it took time to figure it out. And so again, setting proper expectations a lot of times in the rush of the pressure of the mental management side of it is, I think that's really just a high note to pay attention to its ownership and things of that nature sometimes. absolutely. Yeah. That attitude you just described where go fix it and figure it out yourself. That's kind of a leftover from the early days of the industrial revolution.
Mark James:
where you're expected to go out and get the job done. We don't really care. You're replaceable. If you don't want to do, we'll find somebody else. Newer generations of people in the workforce. This is the first time in history we've had so many different generations in the workforce at the same time. Those attitudes really need to die and go away because they don't work in the world anymore. Because there are so many people say, I'm not sticking around for this. This is not worth it.
Jeff Williams:
So hopefully over time that those attitudes will go away and die. But back to your original question, it's all about, you know, it's a lot like practicing the golden rule. If you're the executive leader of the organization, you want your people to be treated like you would want to be treated. That's really, it's just applying the golden rule. It's really not more complicated than that. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Well, it kind of goes right to this next piece is that how do you prevent burnout at
Mark James:
at not just any level, more so the real, I always think of the critical masses in the middle of the leadership. If the middle leadership is not strong enough to handle both ends of the spectrum, know, both ends of the rope burning at the same time, then how do you prevent that burnout? and then that turnover again, it just keeps, you again, and you've already answered a lot of that in previous conversations there, but it's worth repeating again, at least with a quick one or two answer.
Jeff Williams:
Yeah, yeah, back to the golden rule to treat people the way that you would like to be treated yourself and do it and to encourage people to do things that enhances their resiliency rather than beats them down. So quite often it's really making sure they had the right resources to get the job done properly. Being willing sometimes as the leader of the executive to go in at some point and be willing to go in and get your hands in your own your your own hands dirty and they have step in and help out.
Mark James:
Sometimes we all have to coal in life and it shows to your people that you're willing to get your hands dirty at the same time and doesn't have to be necessarily all the time but what that shows to people around you is that you care and you're in there to help them out. So giving them support, having the emotional intelligence to have empathy for the position they're in to understand that you're putting pressure on them, they're getting pressure from all different sides and understand
Jeff Williams:
the pressures and or the things that they have to respond to from employees. So it's having the empathy and the goal and the the golden rule plays plays heavily here. Well, we're going to begin to kind of wrap up here a little bit. But before we do that, just a practical takeaway for everybody is if you were advising an owner or manager that is listening right now.
Mark James:
What's the one move they could make in next 90 days that would improve performance through their people? And what's the risk if they don't do that? Well, the risk of not doing what I'm going to suggest means that you can continue on a path where you're going to continue to expect results by doing the same old thing over and over again. The old definition of insanity is doing something over and over again, expecting different results.
Jeff Williams:
So understand what you can do to improve the performance of your people. And it comes back to those two tips I mentioned earlier. Make sure that people understand what they're being asked to do, how they're supposed to do it. Give them feedback and do it in the moment, whenever possible. Don't wait for an annual reviewer every once in a while, let them know. Give them constant feedback. Also make sure that your expectations for them and the team.
Mark James:
are clear and unambiguous. Don't leave anything to chance. And practice that one-three-one method. Focus on making people problem solvers. Because when people are problem solvers, they become very powerful additions to the team. So those would be the couple of three things. Answer those five questions, be clear and unambiguous about expectations, and practice the problem-solving techniques. You could do all those in the next 90 days easily. Great.
Jeff Williams:
You're an expert in this field. You have many years of experience. And so I'm going to ask you the same question differently so you can produce a second set of answers. And what to me demonstrates to our listeners is that you are many years of experience at different model businesses. But Mark, if someone wants to build stronger teams, tighten their job sites, and more loyal customers, have more loyal customers, where should they start paying attention first?
Mark James:
And it's kind of a wrapping up question. It's a closing question here on the show, but it's similar to what we just asked you before. But again,
Jeff Williams:
That's the question that I want you to bring a different answer to. Sure. Here's how I wrap it up. Is to understand, and I'm going to go back to what I said earlier about the customer experience is heavily influenced by the employee experience, their glove and hand fit. So focus on are your employees and is their experience the one you want it to be and the one that's going to be most beneficial to the customer. Along with that is to understand for both your employees and your customers
Mark James:
It doesn't matter so much what you do for them. What really matters at the end of the day is how you made them feel. So let me repeat that again. We tend to focus on what we do for people and that's what's important. What's really important to people is at the end of the day, how did you make them feel? So how do you make your employees feel? Are they enthusiastic? Are you rewarding them as opposed to constant punishment or having unrealistic expectations or leaving it to figure it out themselves?
Jeff Williams:
All those kinds of things you want to focus on and get rid of those kinds of approaches to things so they can feel like you made them feel like they're important and they're contributors. And then the same thing applies to entity customers and employees will communicate that over to customers and they will be made to feel right as well if the employees are feeling that way. So in closing, a couple of things. One, I want to stop and give you the opportunity to share your website here on the broadcast.
Mark James:
your phone number, whatever, however you want. If somebody wants to get in touch with you, how do they do that? And let's do that. And then again, I want to thank you for being on the show, the Cowboy Construction Show. It's a fun show and fun, fun topics we bring to it, but this applies to any kind of business or construction. So Mark, go ahead. Yeah. Well, thank you for the opportunity to be here and hopefully what I was able to impart here will be of help. There's at least hopefully one takeaway that everybody got that is important in their world.
Jeff Williams:
The best way to reach me is my email is markj as in Mark James markj at perform per form advisors advisors so perform advisors one word.com markj at perform advisors.com. phone number is 630-882-9107.
Mark James:
You can also reach me through LinkedIn. welcome connections on LinkedIn. And you can look for me under perform advisors at LinkedIn. You'll find my profile there. So those are the three best ways to reach me. And again, even if you just have a question, no obligation, happy to connect. So it's the best way to reach me. And again, I appreciate the opportunity to be here today. Thank you so much for spending time and great information shared.
Jeff Williams:
Happy trails to all followers until we meet again. And so bye for now. Thanks everybody. Take care.