Jim Smith: We're going to invest the time into them. The war for talent is huge, as we all know, and it has been, but it's investing in them so they understand why we're doing what we're doing. It's a true investment in our future. And you want to put it in the right hands. Tim Spiker: From the front lines, all the way to the C-suite, the investment of time, energy and money in the development of leaders is a must if you want your organization to thrive over the long haul. No leader in the organization, including the CEO, is exempt from that responsibility. I'm your host, Tim Spiker, and this is the Be Worth* Following Podcast, a production of the People Forward Network. On this show, we talk with exceptional leaders, thinkers, and researchers about what actually drives effective leadership across the globe and over time. You just heard from Jim Smith, CEO of Elford Incorporated, a 112 year old contractor whose construction experience runs the gamut, from healthcare to education, to retail, to multifamily, to industrial, the list goes on and on. And you know what else goes on and on? Elford's commitment to developing its leaders. Tim Spiker: In our conversation, Jim shares how he personally invests in the growth of Elford's leaders. He also talks about his unyielding requirement for fellow executives to disagree with hi and how one of his children has impacted Jim so much as a human being that it has made him a more effective leader. But first let's hear about the leaders who have influenced Jim, including those who took him under their wings in his very first job as a teenage janitor. Jim Smith: I've been so blessed with so many interactions with so many people. And not necessarily just interactions, but watching people. My dad was a World War II paratrooper, lifelong UAW machinist type role, the classic 50s, 60s, 70s life after the war. And dad said, "Going to life, it's important what you know, but it's more important who you know." And as he'd said they would talk about in the wars, you're going to surround yourself with people that are smarter than you and people you trust. So always on the outlook for people that were smarter than me and always just a sponge for knowledge and for what's out there. Jim Smith: And it really hit me when I was in high school, when I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do when I grow up and all my buddies were going to college and I didn't know if I was going to college or not, because my parents didn't and all. And so I was searching and I went to talk to my school counselor and he looked at me, he knew me from sports and this and that. And he said, "Smith, you're not college material." He says, "We need to do is find a career for you." And he goes, "I got just the thing." He goes, "There's a construction company here in town, needs a janitor after school and on Saturdays." And he knew I needed a job because I was a classic mowing the grass, shoveling snow kind of thing and putting the money away. So I get this job and the leaders of that organization, they took me under their way instantaneously. Jim Smith: They didn't know anything about me, but they just saw me taking care of their facilities like it was my own and making money. And so all of a sudden I watched how they just started teaching me about what they were doing. And it was like being on my baseball team, everybody was around each other and helping one another, and these guys showed this... I didn't know it then, but today I'd call it unconditional love. They really cared about this young kid and wanted to give him some direction. And then on Saturday morning, the CEO of that company was always in the office working. I was like, "God, that guy works hard. These people are fun to be around. They're smart. They're building buildings and I this." So they set me off in the direction, to go to college and become a civil engineer, so I really learned a lot from those interactions about how to treat people, how they treated me, I was a janitor. Tim Spiker: I hear this time and time again with the people that we visit with, when we talk about their history, what is it that's helped them become who they are, and it still amazes me, but I should stop being surprised by it because... Okay, I'll give it away a little bit, your current age is? Jim Smith: 62. Tim Spiker: So I ask you this question about influential leaders and you immediately go to 17, 18 years old? Jim Smith: I was probably 16 when I had my first day on the job. Tim Spiker: So you think about the time span between 16, 17, 18 years old and 62, and would've never imagined when you were that age somebody's going to ask me a question about influential leaders in my life when I'm 62 and these are the people that are going to immediately come to mind. Jim Smith: It shaped my way of thinking as I became a professional, as I was put in roles of leadership, it wasn't that many years separate from that time that I just absorbed how they treated me and it was classic servant leadership. And I didn't know to call it servant leadership then. I didn't know to call it servant leadership until you bought me the book in 2003, but people can say what they say and do what they want to you but it's how they make you feel, and they made me feel valuable. They made me feel that I had a say, that I had a place in the world, that I could do new things that were limitless. I had never met a vice president of a company when I was 16. I didn't know what I didn't know clearly, no 16 year old does, but I didn't really understand the impact at the time what they were having on me, but it was pretty special. Tim Spiker: And I'm so thankful knowing the influence and role that you play now to think about how those leaders are influencing a multitude of lives that you've had a chance to influence through your work at Elford and the community in different places. It's just that multiplicative effect that happens, I'm going to say, when we do it well, but unfortunately sometimes the opposite is true as well, we multiply when we're treated poorly, but I'm thinking about the position that you were in with them and you're saying they made you feel valued and how many people that are in a position like you were in are made to feel just the opposite of that. You just do your job. I don't want to hear from you. You'll hear from me if you don't do it well and I'll tell you exactly how to breathe and when you're allowed to pee and all of that kind of stuff, there are many people in your position,, probably most that are treated that way versus the way that you were treated. Jim Smith: Oh, absolutely. I think about what you just said about how people are treated and it's because people don't give people the time of day. They don't think they need to. And people need us as leaders to interact. In the late 80s, this, it was one of our trade partners, big insulation company, I was working for a general contractor then and we'd worked on a few jobs together and he gave me this book called Operational Excellence, and I'm sure you've read it. But the theme in the book is MWWA, manage while walking around. And it was all stressed on as a leader you better work hard and know your role and know your product line, know all the steps in a process, if you're a contractor like me, know the plans, know the specs, work hard, knowing that, but spend your days primarily interacting with people and walking around talking to them about what they're doing, how they're doing it, making sure they've got the resources, making sure they got the support, making sure they know where to go for questions and so on, so forth. Jim Smith: And I didn't know it then, but it was about building a culture at work by just reinforcing that you care about all the people that are in your sphere of influence. Too many times we forget about that. If you're in a leadership role, if you think you're the boss, that's fine, but we should think of ourselves as the person that helps influence to everybody so that they can execute the work, whatever that work is. It could be an accounting firm. It could be the back house of a bank where they're processing credit cards and invoices. It doesn't matter. It's taking time to be with people, because you learn so much. I learned more in those interactions and have forever about how we're doing, how they're doing versus me giving advice. Tim Spiker: There's a perspective that lives behind doing that management while walking around, there's a perspective behind that makes that more effective and you articulated it. It's basically that people are valuable, that people are worth that time, that people are worth engaging with. Have you ever seen leaders who approached the connection with other people more as a tactical strategic thing instead of a human to human interaction thing? Jim Smith: I've seen it where it's like where you go to a seminar and all of a sudden you come back and try to save the world and change everything at once. It's checking the box, if you will. I think really good, authentic leadership, you got to be fanatical about the discipline of how you lead and how you interact with people, how you provide them the right systems, because you got to do all that to get results. Great results, great income is an outcome of being passionate about what you do, having the discipline and structure around and knowing your core competencies, and hiring the right people. Tim Spiker: Let's talk about that for a second. How do you hire the right people? Jim Smith: We hire at a lot of different levels, a lot of different job titles, if you will, and what we do is we look at what's the profile of that. There's a job description, that's tactical, it's pretty set in stone what we want that job to perform. So what we try to create is a profile, what's the characteristics of that role and are they aligned with our core values, are they aligned with our core purpose? Because I think sometimes when organizations talk about mission, vision, core values, so many times, I don't have a number, I haven't even done the research, but I would guess, 80% of the times people never talk about core purpose. And core purpose is why we exist. And our stated core purpose is to make construction a positive experience. And that's experience within the walls of Elford inter-departmentally. It's with our customers. It's with our design partners. It's with the ability to communicate to the neighbors next to a building that we're building or the neighbors within a building that we're renovating or with our building officials, and so and so forth. Jim Smith: We really talk about that a lot with them and ask them to give us examples of how they've had interactions with people and teams and make it not about them. If we hear I, I, I a lot and not about we, this is how we did it and it's about what we would do, then we start can this person shift to we versus I. And most people can, but not everybody can. So that helps us discern, because in our industry, not undifferent than every industry, is an ultimate team sport. So if the interviewees and our team, if they don't get that, they don't get the we portion, then we're not a match. And they might have a great resume, but one of the things with our growth that even becomes more and more and more important, there was a time not too long ago, and I'll say 12 years ago, I pretty much knew every job we were doing. We're five times the company we were 10, 12 years ago. So we've entrusted our brand, we've entrusted our reputation to so many people, it's critical that we have the right people. Tim Spiker: One of the things I love about that purpose is that so many times when people get into the purpose statement business, the purposes sound like it is save the world. And I'm not suggesting that some people aren't genuinely doing that, but so many times when the purpose is save the world or some version of that, the values around that, they're not actually being pursued, it just sounded nice when they were talking about it. They don't actually use it for decision making. Don't actually use it in recruiting. And I think the way you stated that, to make construction a positive experience, it almost is, okay, we're not going to save the world, we're going to make construction a positive experience with us. It's a accessible. And I'm like, "Okay, if it's accessible then I can show up at work and do something about that." Jim Smith: We developed our mission vision core values in 1994, and four years ago the team came to me and said, "Hey, Jim, we'd like to revisit all those." And I'm like, "Oh, might as well take an organ out. That's our soul." I said, "But I can't be in the room." So we had probably 35 to 40 people and they came back and it was beautiful. It was a beautiful thing. The core values and the mission were really the same, it was just articulated a little differently, but it was the same message, the same values. But the only thing that stayed verbatim was that core purpose. And I was like, "See, that's how important it is." Because when a person's out on a job site and they're in a cold dark corner, it's 20 degrees and the wind's blowing or it's 105 degrees, the core value that's aligned, we have six core values, you take the one, it says do the right thing. Jim Smith: And it's the golden rule. So when you're in that cold dark corner, that sweaty hot place, or you're just tired and dragging, that's an easy thing for people to remember because you don't say do the right thing, there's no but or and, it's do the right thing. And so it's music to my ears as I watch our young managers articulating that to college graduates and it's, okay, it's happening. And it doesn't happen overnight. It's creating a language in your organization. It's not just throwing words out there, but it's identifying people who exemplify those actions and tell them stories. And we get competitors that build buildings and they build them well. Those two things alone are about out the journey. It's about the experience. It's about the culture on a job. And people say, "Well, you don't need culture on a construction job." You need it more there than anywhere. Jim Smith: You got a workplace that changes every single day. Every day it changes. We know culture changes all the time. It changes whether you like it or not, but I'm really proud of our team. And when I look at culture 2.0 in this organization, a couple years ago, it came with an idea that we wanted to pilot a program where, by job, we would create a mission statement with the owner, with our customer and with our design team and with our key trade partners on a job. So, again, it gives the trade partners too a heightened realization of the impact they're making when they're in that cold dark corner or that hot seat or they're making electrical shut down in a NICU and the most fragile of our population are laying there and you're making a switch over. So helping them, empowering them with the significance of what they do, it's been the coolest thing and customers love it. We love it. Trade partners love it. And you got to care to love it. Bu that's how we pick our teammates, people care. Tim Spiker: Because you and I have gotten to know each other really well over a relatively longer period of time, I know a little bit about your family. And you've got some uniqueness in your family that, from my estimation, has impacted the way that you think and the way that you lead. And so I'd like you to talk a little bit about that. Jim Smith: So we have two sets of twins, boy and girl on each set. The first set was born when we were 24, we were surprised. And then all of a sudden, two years later, Cindy's pregnant again. Were like, "Oh, by the way, you're having twins again." So when she was 22 weeks pregnant, they found something on the ultrasound, the OB said, "One of the babies is not thriving." I'm like, "What does that mean?" And he goes, "I'm not sure." And the technology then to determine what that meant obviously it exists more today. So anyway, that day forever changed our lives, not knowing what it meant. And fast forward for the next 13 weeks, there was a lot of uncertainty in our lives. And then Missy and Ben were born, and [inaudible 00:16:39] off to the NICU. Jim Smith: And he was a little dude. He was just a hair under three pounds and she was fine. So that night, it was a rough night. And I had gone home because the other kids were at home and no cell phones, I get home and the godmother to one of the younger babies, she's balling and crying really hard. I'm like, "What happened? What's going on?" She goes, "Cindy's on the phone." And she was really upset because he had just come into her bedside and said, "Your son has Edward's disease and he's not going to live nine months." And I'm thinking why did he do that with her alone in the middle of the night. And so the luxury of having a cell phone is unbelievable. Jim Smith: So I bolt down there and I demanded for him to come back into our room. I said, "Because you don't do that to our family without a little for my wife." And he came back in, he goes, "Well, son, your child has Edwards disease and he's barely going to make nine months." And I said, "How do you know? How do you know this?" And he says, "I just know. Just the way his ears are turned." I said, "That doesn't make any sense." I said, "We all have DNA."And I'm this engineer geek going, 'You got to give me more than his ears are turned." And at the same time, sitting there we're both balling. We go down to NICU and I'll never forget that first visual. He is a little red dude, got wires all over him. It was horrible. Jim Smith: And he stayed in that NICU for five to six weeks and I'd go visit him every week. And what I noticed in that visit, I'd go there at four in the morning before on the job site at six, and she would go later in the day, and what I noticed in that room, he was far much better off than 90% of those babies in that NICU. I was like, "Okay, I don't know what's going on, but Ben's got a leg up." We just prayed and prayed and prayed and prayed. It took eight weeks to get the DNA analysis and it was a thing they call trisomy 8 and deletion 8, chromosome deficiency. And of course, first thing an engineer says, "Well, don't they offset each other?" It's a equation, there's two sides of the equation. Of course, he goes, "Son, no, that's not the way it works." Jim Smith: So she proceeded to show us, because they could never find a case where both chromosomes existed in one body, and so she showed us pictures and everything of both chromosomes and they were just God awful. They were awful. And I said, "Fine. I'm going to go find somebody who understands this." Of course, no internet. So Cindy goes, "You know what? You do what you got to do. I'm taking him home and we're going to love him, and he's healthy otherwise." There wasn't anything wrong with him, if you will, health wise. He had a chromosome deficiency. And I said, "That's great, honey. You take him home and love him. I'm going to go find a fix." Of corse, what a silly thing to say, you don't fix chromosome deficiencies. But she was smart enough to know that we both were somewhat grieving and she knew how to handle it herself and what was best for our family. Jim Smith: And she knew what I needed to do to process it. So it took about nine months for me to work through my engineer research syndrome and buy into the power of love. And Ben's had a number of challenges throughout the year, but we've met incredible angels along the way, mostly in the caregiving field, mostly in the therapy field, mostly in the service field who want to support you not try to fix something. And you're in trouble for asking me this question, because it takes about four days to truly answer the question,, but Ben's thriving today. Ben's in the day program with Goodwill and I could tell you a million stories, but he's thriving today. He lives with us. He's a small guy, he's only 48 inches tall and 65 pounds. But Ben can't add two and two and he can't count money, but Ben knows. Jim Smith: He reads how people feel. He can engage in conversations somewhat. He knows and follows about every sport on the planet, and he gets it in his own way and he's fun to be around. He makes people smile, make people laugh, but what Ben did more than anything, and he's touched thousands of people, that he showed that people with disabilities are approachable. He has taught without teaching so many people through his life and still does today that you can make a difference in a life for someone who has a disability and be really important to them. And plus you grow as a person because now you understand what they're going through, and he expresses love better than most people that I've met. Jim Smith: And I think it's the power love. Not in a romantic way. You know what I mean? We care about each other and it's amazing watching him care about people and he's made me a better father, a better grandfather, better leader, better husband, better friend. He's made me a more patient person. He's made me a more intentional person. People would say early on, "I'm sorry." I'm like, "I get it. You don't have to say you're sorry. I'm thrilled. I can't imagine life without Ben." Tim Spiker: What would you say is the biggest shift if you look at how you looked at whether it be life or leading other people interacting relationships, any of those kinds of things, what is the biggest shift from pre-Ben to today? Jim Smith: So I would say being able to take a world view of people, of individuals and situations and environments and not make snap decision. You got to make snap decisions as a leader sometimes. He's taught me to think things through and he's helped me to think about it through, because we had to think for Ben. He didn't walk until he was nine and he barely talked until he was... We did a lot of sign language early on. I talked to our leaders today about put yourself in their shoes. Think like our customer. Think like our trade partners. Think like our design partner. He made me think that way, I think. I don't know that I would've ever gotten there as quickly as I did if it hadn't been for Ben. So we've been blessed. Was it hard? It was hard. It was hard at times, but we had a lot of faith in God that he gave us Ben for a reason. And Cindy deserves the credit that we had courage to do what we did, how we did it, and she led that. Tim Spiker: I've just had a sense for a very long time that Ben being a part of your family plays a really big role in who you are. And getting the chance to be around you and watch just the way you interact with people, the way you talk, the way you think there's a maybe it's the word patience that you said, maybe it's the word grace that comes to mind, but you think about hard charging leaders who are driving for important things and you are that, but you do it with a humanity that I don't see with a lot of other people. And you might have gotten there eventually on your own without Ben being part of your family, but I have a feeling that Ben was an accelerant and an enabler to that. Jim Smith: I also have that tough love component that he gave me. I was like, "Don't tell me you can't do that." You want to hear somebody who overcame? Let me tell you. Tim Spiker: I don't want to hear your excuses. Jim Smith: Well, let's buckle up, lace up, let's go. Come on. Don't give me a bunch of weak excuses. Tim Spiker: That's good. Well, hey look, when you care about people, you can deliver that message effectively. When you don't care about people and you deliver that message, it ultimately is not very effective and those people are trying to find employees these days. Jim Smith: You're preaching that. Tim Spiker: You talked about leadership development. You mentioned it a little bit previously. I know that you have been intentional and diligent. Talk a little bit about the leadership development process within Elford and what you guys have, pardon the pun, constructed over the years around developing your leaders. Jim Smith: I'll tell you what started our leadership development program internally especially, it's been probably 18 years ago we started a very structured mentoring program and it's thriving today. And it's ebbed and flowed through the years, but our young mentees, they don't have to be young, they can be 40 years old, it doesn't matter, but they have to apply for it. They have to submit essentially a application of why they should be in the program. And so they get a mentor. And today it's a two year and they also have a peer mentor who helps them navigate the process. And it's mentee driven, which means a person being mentored has to develop the topics, has to develop the subject matter by which each session is held and they're meant to have a one to two hour session monthly. And if you show up with a blank sheet of paper, that's a problem, because you've got to respect your mentors time and you have to come with questions about what do you want to learn, where do you want to go. Jim Smith: The mentors will take it anywhere you need them to go. Mentors have the freedom of bringing other experts within our company into those sessions too. Say, if a young PM needs a little more under understanding of how do I read a subcontractor's pre-qual sheet? Because it gave me a balance sheet and I have no clue how to read a balance sheet, so we'll bring the CFO in or a controller in and they'll help with that. So it does two things. One, it allows them to learn how to read that financial statement, but also it creates a relationship building environment between that PM who probably has never been in the CFO's office yet, creates an environment of what an open door feels like in this organization. And we have what we call mingle with the masters for the mentees and during a year there's nine of those, but we'll have all kinds of specialized classes with them as a group. Tim Spiker: How does somebody end up becoming a mentor in the organization? What's the process for qualifying people to say, "Okay, we're willing to hand up and comers to you," trusting what you're going to share with them? Jim Smith: So today we look for our executive VP of talent, our COO, our president to scan the team and say, "Okay, who's ready for that?" And honestly, Tim, to be selected as mentors, a part of many of these mentors now part of their development plan because they might have just become a director of a group. And so a part of their leadership responsibilities now is how to be mentoring all day long. Going back to that management while walking around, because all great doers don't make great leaders. We all know that. And so this is a way to help them either reach that or not. And so it's a great way for us to just put them to the test, if you will. And we have to create that field that they can plant themselves in and grow. Tim Spiker: What do you see as your primary role in it or overseeing it at this point? Jim Smith: I don't directly oversee it today. I participate in the kickoff meeting and talk about the importance of it and give them a historical perspective, and I talk them about accountability on their part. And it also lets me be able to drop in with them and just ask them throughout the year how's it going? Talk to me about your experience. And my role has evolved. So I've taken on the next level of all-stars in our company that have been through all these programs. And now I'm doing one on one, you can call it, mentoring or coaching, whatever you want to call it, but got about a dozen young men and women that I meet with for an hour a month. These are players that we see in our seats in 10 to 15 to 20 years. And so we're going to invest the time into them. The war for talent is huge, as we all know. It has been. But it's investing in them so they understand why we're doing what we're doing. We talk about the why a lot. And every one of those meetings is different. That's the cool thing, it's really engaging. Tim Spiker: I think there's a lot of CEOs, a lot of presidents would say, "Okay, just hold on. This is a chunk of your time. This is a chunk of your energy. I can't give that kind of time to development." What would you say to somebody who has a pushback on the amount of investment that you're currently making in developing the leaders in your organization? Jim Smith: It's true investment in our future. People my age would complain about millennials and say, "God, they expect a lot. They're always asking why, why, why." And I said, it was, "You know what? They're making me rethink about a lot of the things we do and they taught me to ask the why." Early in my career, I just was given orders and say, "You do this as I say," and boom, you did it. And they taught me to step back, if you will, and ask the why. Why are we doing it this way? Why are we doing it that way? And if we don't invest, we can't trust outside organizations completely to teach our young leaders of how to lead our company. We should know more the than anybody of how we see our company launching forward and you want to put it in the right hands and I don't know how you afford not to. Jim Smith: And, of course, one of my other favorite books was Built to Last and they talk about building a sustainable organization. And if you want to build a sustainable organization, you want the majority of your town to come up through your organization. Not everybody. It's always great to have somebody from the outside. It's always great to have some fresh perspective. Someone who's not breathing our air all the time, as they say, but it works. It's worked here. Tim Spiker: And there's a lot of different ways that we could define it works. It could be looking at the longevity of people being there. It could be looking at what it feels like to be here. And it could look like the top and bottom line growth that you've experienced in what is traditionally an incredibly competitive and difficult industry to be successful in. I think by any of those measures, that Elford would be deemed as successful. So pick one, pick any of them. Let's talk about your executive team a little bit, because you've been very intentional, more so than most organizations that I've had the opportunity to observe, about how you're building this executive team. And you've landed in a spot now where it sounds to me like you're reaping some of the fruit of being very diligent over here. So talk a little bit about whether you'd be strategically or philosophically about your perspective on building your executive team. Jim Smith: I became CEO about 12 years ago and I've been president for 10 years prior to that, and it wasn't one magical moment, but it was a series of meetings with our leadership team. I found out that every time I was talking about a new idea or thinking about a new adventure, a new business line, it was, "Jim, that's a great idea. That's a great idea." No one said "No, no, no. I really have a major question about that, Jim. That doesn't fit. That's not going to work. Why aren't we doing this? Why aren't we doing that?" I'm going home thinking that's pretty scary, I can't be the smartest guy in the room, because they weren't willing to take risks, they weren't willing to challenge me. Jim Smith: I'm about as approachable and challengeable as it comes and I'll change, you know what I mean? And I was like, "Oh, this doesn't feel good." Everybody's getting along, they're all good people, but no one was challenging me. So we systematically just either found new roles for those leaders or we just said, "We're going to part ways," because they weren't willing to grow and we had growth plans. And an organization can't build itself around people, it's got to build itself around strategy, goals and aspirations. Tim Spiker: When you say you can't build around people, you mean around a particular person's personality, that particular individual? Jim Smith: Or that person's capabilities or that person's aspiration. Tim Spiker: The whole has got to be more meaningful and bigger than just one person's capabilities? Jim Smith: Absolutely. And there's a great book called the Next Level and it essentially is an S-curve and it talks about the evolution of a company. And at the bottom of the S it's the entrepreneur neural stage and everybody's wearing different hats and everybody's sleeping on cots under their desk. It's like working 20 hours a day, then as you go up that S, departments, processes, procedures systems, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then all of a sudden, boom, it's like the flywheel in Good to Great you hit that where you feel things are clicking and then you've got a choice to make. If you look at a top of an S, it curls back down. So your decision then is how long does that S tail go or do I want to reinvent ourselves? And as I introduce myself to a lot of people today, I say, "Elford's 112 year old startup." Jim Smith: So it's like you pile SS on each other, and they can be months or years, so we said we got to get to the next level and we need new entrepreneurs to drive this. And so we systematically figured out what talent we needed and what seats and they came from outside the organization. And even in the last three years, two of our leaders have retired and we had a beautiful succession planning process in place for our CFO and our director of HR. And it's like we haven't missed a beat. Now, there's a lot of work put into that, but that was part of that, okay, now we're going up the spine of that S again and we're ready to hit a flywheel here soon and then we'll say, "Okay, what's next?" And what's next for us is we open an office in Charlotte and I'm sure some of the founders of our company are going, "What are you doing?" But it was our responsibility to create that next S. Tim Spiker: So you're essentially saying that in many ways one of your primary qualifiers for people that you wanted to be a part of your executive team are people that would challenge you, not people that would agree with you? Jim Smith: Absolutely. And Mike Fitzpatrick is our president, and so one of the things we worked really hard on is our succession planning and it's very purposeful. So Mike came on board 11 years ago now, maybe 12. So Mike is the owner in principal of Elford Development, a sister company, and there's firewalls between our company. Mike's a brilliant guy. He's not a civil engineer, construction manager. He's a finance major, he's a developer, but he clearly knows the business and he knows customers and he's great with people. He's a fantastic team builder. And Mike was the perfect first person first change on that executive leadership team because Mike challenged me on almost 80% of the things. It was great. I told him one day, I said, "You have to challenge me on everything." Tim Spiker: You could back it off just a little bit, it's okay. It's okay, I could use a break once in a while. Jim Smith: We did have some fun with that, but it was the greatest thing for everybody else to see. But when they saw Mike challenge me, he had his own ideas. It's one thing to challenge somebody, that's easy, but to bring a solution means you're working a little harder and you're thinking and you care about the future. You care about the team. So that clearly was the beginning of saying who's in the boat and who's not, because if you're going to be in the boat, you got to exhibit that leadership characteristic. It's in a professional way too. And most of those challenges weren't around the table with 10 or 12 people, Mike was coming in with new ideas and we'd go to that next meeting and he didn't know ahead of time, but Mike's going to lead the meetings everyday. Jim Smith: And it was, oh, okay, Mike's president now so we're listening to Mike and it's also, as the leader, being comfortable in your skin to delegate leadership to others too. So there isn't that point, there's multiple points of leadership in the consistency, because there isn't anything more important for an organization as the alignment of the executive team. If executive team, leadership teams, whatever your organization calls it, if they're not aligned, it is so obvious, it's so transparent and it takes work. It takes the right people. Tim Spiker: Obviously COVID has had an impact, not just on the United States, but around the world. And we have this massive movement that's happening in the workplace where people are moving from one job to another and saying no to things that they previously had said yes to for 20 years. But you said it earlier, the war for talent has always been going on and now we have something even more on top of that. How is that affecting Elford these days? Jim Smith: The Great Resignation, the media hasn't done any of us any favors by how this has exploded in the headlines. However, it's one of those things you can't change and some might worry about. It has impacted us. It's been interesting. We've had people leave to, say, their parents were in Florida and they had a sister in Virginia and they had a brother in Texas and they said, "We need to all be together." And we've seen three or four cases of that. We've seen people leave to pursue things outside our industry. You can't control that. Those things, no matter what we do, no matter what we pay, isn't going to impact those decisions. We stepped back say a year ago and just relooked at all our benefits too and said, "What else could we offer? What else could we provide for our team that would be appealing?" Jim Smith: There's many things we can't help them with. Childcare has been the biggest disruptor for everybody. We stepped back and looked at our maternity and paternity leave, they needed a boost, and we have a huge women builders of Elford group. We have a tremendous amount of females in our organization that are builders, not just in accounting or marketing, but are part of operations. I'm really proud of our women builders at Elford. Actually, when they meet monthly, I go to every one of their meetings and I spend about five to 10 minutes just being there for questions and just talking about what's going on. Jim Smith: And now I look forward to it, because there's so much energy in that room. So we've upgraded our development programs. We created a new development program for all our foreman and superintendent. So we've got them in a program that talks about 21st century leaderships, about the building the culture on a job site, courageous conversations, developing deliverable action plans. We've enhanced, like I said, the mentoring program and the leaders are more intentional about being in front of our team out in the field, being intentional about team activities with departments and making sure they're taking time to do things together and having a flexibility to do things together socially. Tim Spiker: What I'm hearing you say is you guys have made some adjustments, but in some cases it forced you to look at things that maybe you would've said in retrospect we probably should have been looking at that anyway. Jim Smith: Absolutely. Tim Spiker: Have you had a moment where you've had a mass shift, people leaving Elford, that just left you in a lurch in the midst of this increased war for talent? Jim Smith: We haven't. We've not. There's been no that floodgate opened or anything. Tim Spiker: As I ask this question with all the people that we're visiting with and others outside of the podcast, I'm hearing a lot of the same things. We visit with only a certain kind of leader and a certain kind of organization because we're not trying to promote that other stuff. And I think if I were to just take the small sample set of the people that we visit with, the Great Resignation is not so great, because they've built organizations and leaders that people will be like, "Look, I get paid to be here." To your point around there are family things or maybe I had the aspiration that I always wanted to be a X Games, motocross... There's that kind of stuff that COVID has brought out, life's too short, life's too long, whichever it is, I'm going to go do this or I need to be with my family. Tim Spiker: There's the other exodus, which is I hate this job and I hate these people and I don't want to come here to work here anymore. And that stuff, I'm finding time and again with the people that we filter through to have a part of this discussion is they're not experiencing what is being reported on the news. And I think it's a testament to you and what others have done. You've readied yourself for this moment for the last couple of decades. Jim Smith: We really learned that in the last crises, in the financial recession we learned how do we best prepare ourselves for this happening again. We didn't know what it was going to be, so how do you build stronger, more culturally centered organization with great systems, great leadership, great hiring practice, great benefits and on and on and on? There's a lot of slices to that pie that have to work to make it a great pie. Tim Spiker: And now organizations like Elford and others are experiencing benefits, in many cases, even thriving, in the midst of a time when so many others are trying to figure out how to survive. So it feels like a very filtering time. Jim Smith: And what's the beauty of it is that when you have that environment, majority of people come and talk to you if they're not feeling good about something. You won't be afraid to walk into your office Monday morning with that envelope sitting on your chair, or so and so walks in my office and shuts the door and you're like, "Okay. I know what's coming now." Tim Spiker: Customer centricity is a buzzword that a lot of people will use, customer care, getting to know your customer, voice of the customer, all that kind of stuff of lands into a similar bucket. How does Elford approach that? Jim Smith: Think you've heard me use the word care a lot. And similar to invest in our time into our teammates, more than ever do we have to invest time with our customer outside of what I would call regular meetings, because they're running a business, got a lot of challenges, they've got a lot of risk. They've got the same risk and challenges we do running our business and, oh, by the way, they're building a building or renovating their building and that's not their core purpose. Jim Smith: So especially the leadership team, we're spending a lot more time over the last two years intentionally finding time, making time to make sure we have our customers ears one on one. And generally it's a structured half hour call and every customer's different. Every customer has different needs and every customer might not want it once a month. You just have to gauge them and get to know them as people and you become their friend, not just their business partner and so you want them to open up and help them walk through this journey, be a part of it because they're under a lot of pressure to do their own business. And that's been really key for us in solidifying our existing relationships and helping us build new relationships. Tim Spiker: There are some other things, before we wrap up here, that I want to point out regarding what Jim had to share with us. One is a little bit subtle but I think worth mentioning, did you notice how many times during our discussion that Jim referenced the books that he was reading? Some of you may have heard the phrase leaders are readers, but one thing that we know, whether it's through reading a book or watching a TED Talk or listening to a podcast is that we as leaders need to be in continuous learning mode. And Jim certainly exemplified that has influenced the way he leads and the way he thinks. So let's take a cue from him on that. Secondly, it really got my attention that Jim took such umbrage at having yes people on his executive team that when he wasn't getting enough pushback that he actually concluded that he needed to change some members of his executive team. Tim Spiker: And so I just ask this rhetorically, do we have yes men and yes women around us as leaders and are we tolerating that, or are we working in opposition to that? A fun little exercise that you can do around that is to take a $20 bill, a $50 bill and $100 bill and put it in your pocket before you go to your next executive meeting. If you're leading that meeting and somebody hints at challenging you, pull the $20 bill out, give it to them and tell them why. If they step a little further into that space, then go with the 50. And if they really come at you, now still in a respectful way, but if they really say, "Hey, I have some grave concerns about the idea that you just shared there boss," give them the $100 bill. Tim Spiker: You'll create some smiles in the room, but you will also make a point. Now here's the reality that comes before putting any dollars in your pocket, and that is do we have the humility and the personal sense of security to have people challenge our ideas. That comes before we try to do any cute and fun things like handing out dollars in meetings, but if you're there on the humility and the personal security, then you can take some fun actions like that to help emphasize with people that you want people who will challenge you. And you may get to a spot like Jim communicated, where he realized he didn't have the people who were willing to challenge him and in order to lead the company appropriately, he had to switch out those leaders. Finally, did you notice how much time that Jim is using to invest in the leaders that report to him? It is big chunk of time, 10 to 15 hours per month, individual one on one. Tim Spiker: And let me emphasize the difference between a get stuff done conversation and a leadership development conversation. The get stuff done conversation is regarding your three major projects, where are you at with regard to schedule and budget. That's a good stuff done conversation. We have to have those with the leaders that we're leading all the time, but that's not the type of conversation that Jim was referring to. He was referring to a conversation that's about how well that person is leading. So, for example, to sit down with the people that you're responsible for and say, "Talk to me about where you're seeing yourself over the last 30 days in terms of being successful as a leader, and tell me where you see yourself not being as successful, maybe even some spots where you're failing and let's talk about what's going on there and what we can do to improve that." Tim Spiker: Here's another question that falls into more of the leadership development category, which is to say to those folks, "Walk me through the leaders on your team that you're investing in, where does each one of them need to grow and develop as a leader? Let's talk about each one of them and the improvements they need to make, and what's your plan to help them take those steps and make that progress." Do you see the difference between those conversations and the get stuff done conversations? There is a big difference. And notice that Jim is putting a lot of time and energy into the leaders that report to him so that he can help them become the future of the organization, the future leaders of the organization. Tim Spiker: In that time, he's not working in the business, and frankly he's not even working on the business. In that time, he's investing in the future of the business. So that's the final question I want to leave you with today, when you look at how you're spending your time as a leader, do you have meaningful time where you are investing in the leadership development of the leaders who report to you? I'm Tim Spiker reminding you to be worth following and to follow us wherever you get your podcasts. If you've heard something valuable today, please share our podcast with your colleagues and friends. And if you're up for it, leave us a five star review. Thanks for listening.