Treating the Symptom vs. Treating the Root Cause

You go to your doctor with a nagging complaint about pain in your knee, one that you’ve brought to their attention during the previous five visits. After a series of X-rays, MRIs, CT scans and lab tests, the medical professional’s recommendation simply sends you on your way with an ice pack and compression sleeve (and a sizable bill). You can barely walk, yet the entire visit is summarized with ice. 

“But Doc, what’s the problem? Will the ice get me healthy?” To which the doctor responds, “I don’t know, but the ice will make you feel better this evening.” While ice may have some magical properties, your confidence in this doctor will quickly erode, causing you to find a second opinion. It is likely that the solution is deeper and will require more than superficial treatment. 

Construction organizations that are facing challenges are similar to the patient with the knee issue. Sure, there may be a magical spreadsheet or AI solution that you can pull off the shelf. However, it is more likely that situations within a business resemble an iceberg, manifesting themselves as a small sliver of ice bobbing at the surface, with deep, ship-destroying shards just below the surface. Hearkening back to an old commercial, there are not as many “easy” buttons that are available to “quick fix” an organization. 

‘We have low morale & poor internal communication — let’s move the needle on our morale, quickly.’

No one likes hearing they have an ugly boat. We quickly want to right the ship and do some quick, superficial “cleaning” to show everyone, “See! Look at our nice, clean ship!” Just do not open that door, knowing full well that closet is jammed with all the horrible skeletons that will come tumbling out. 

An organization needs to realize that morale is probably low for any number of reasons, with a lack of proactive communication serving as the top detractor on morale. Increase communication and chatter — along with a litany of other characteristics of the business — help. More importantly, negative morale likely comes back to trust. Do your people trust your leadership team to make the right changes that better the organization, or are you just telling them what they want to hear in the short term? Trust is the linchpin, and everyone knows that trusts takes time to develop but just minutes to erode.

‘We don’t have time to create a set of processes, tools or spreadsheets — we’re way too busy to work on the business.’

Imagine yourself as a driver in a major NASCAR race. You’re the pack leader, looking at the competition in your rearview mirror. You also take a glimpse at your fuel gauge, which is dangerously close to empty. You also know you are running on tires that are going bald. (Yes, I realize they are bald already, but humor me.) You begrudgingly pull into the pits and allow the team to wrench on the car. Undoubtedly, everyone else has the same constraints impacting their car too, with empty tanks and bald tires. You can “run on vapors” and hope for the best, but that is a weak strategy — especially with 80 laps to go. 

Contractors have a tendency to leave a lot to chance, hoping their systems are up to the challenge of meeting the performance demands of a long project and theoretically infinite backlog. “Pulling over” to make sure the right tools are in place and, more importantly, being utilized effectively (versus running on empty), is critical. There is no question that this takes time, but you cannot fast-track change. More on that in a moment.

‘Let’s just buy an off-the-shelf ops manual so we limit the downtime.’

There are plenty of books that can be plagiarized. In the era of artificial intelligence, you could have your intern named Claude or Chat jam out an ops manual quicker than you can say “Claude” or “Chat” or hit the print button. Try this, and it is a safe bet you will end up with a useless ream of paper that no one uses or even believes in. 

You cannot fast-track buy-in. An off-the-shelf tool is an excellent start, but your team needs to get their fingerprints all over that ops manual. Once again, it takes time, but there is a return on that time invested. By having say in the genesis of a process or tool, the team will ultimately be more committed to the process or tool.

‘We need to train our people, but there is no way we can pull them out of the field.’

A dull knife will never get sharper without a whetstone. Arguments can be made that “on-the-job training” might be some of the best training available for put-in-place construction. However, most of the training that is needed is more than likely soft skill related — management, leadership, conflict resolution, time management, etc. — that can be derived through both classroom-style training and one-on-one coaching/development.

‘We have a lot on the books with our current clients/sectors/etc., but we also know this trend will slow down. However, there is no way we can peel off a team to look at something new.’

Think of a new sector as an expeditionary force. They are deployed in advance to poke around in a market, free of the encumbrances of the legacy business. Dabbling with a new client will expose some potential market opportunities, but once that project ends, who will champion growth? 

For instance, you land a medical clinic project that is the origin. You see the market opportunity as one of growth but also realize it will take a lot more than one project to develop a sound resume, so you quickly go back to the traditional core business. Would the right play have been to commit to chasing a portfolio of small projects, serving as an incubator for the medical sector, betting on potential growth? No one has a crystal ball, but riding the current backlog off a cliff that you plainly see is also a fool’s errand. 

The common theme that runs through these examples is time. There is no silver bullet; there is no “red pill.” Real strategic efforts take time to implement and, more importantly, they take action, effort, discipline and rigor. Sure, you can ice your knee, but the most effective treatment for a torn ACL will likely involve surgery, therapy, prayers and vitamins to get you back on the track. 

Or you can just plop your knee on the iceberg and hope that “dime store” doctor didn’t just stay in a Holiday Inn last night.