Have you ever realized you're not the little piggy who built a house of bricks? A lot of business leaders and managers find themselves in this position. They realize that their business might not be built with straw and sticks, but it's definitely not built with bricks. And when the big bad Wolf of Chaos comes along, they notice that things can go sideways real quick. Their house might not get blown down, but there are tough challenges ahead.
Welcome to Construction Trailblazers Paving the Way to Excellence Your go-to podcast for innovation, success, and streamlined excellence in the building industry. I'm Samantha C. Prestige, your host and expert in operations and processes. I've seen the Transformative effects of adopting smart, efficient processes. These changes not only boost company revenue, but also restore peace of mind for owners overwhelmed by the daily grind.
On this show, we bring to light leaders who are innovating across the industry and creating outstanding results, inspiring you to forge your path to excellence. Today we're diving in to how to keep the big bad wolf of chaos from blowing down your house so that you can build a business with more predictability and ease. If you're all about leaving behind the daily firefighting and moving towards a future of freedom and predictable success, then you're in the right place.
Discover more about us and catch up on past episodes@constructiontrailblazers.com. So let's get into it. Remember the story of the three little pigs. The first built his house outta straw, the second with sticks, and the third little piggy built his house with bricks When challenges hit, a lot of business leaders realize that they are, in fact, not the third little piggy. They realize that their business, while maybe not built with straw and sticks, is definitely not built with bricks.
These challenges, that big bad wolf of chaos can be so many things like hiring the wrong team member, setting the wrong goals, or just being a crappy communicator. Or even the customer that just won't leave you alone for a refund, whatever it is. Your team, your processes, or your profit shakes when stuff gets hard. So you're not built to withstand the unpredictability that just comes with running a business.
So your house might not blow down, but sometimes it just feels way harder than it should to deal with those small challenges. I remember talking to a client a few weeks ago who could almost never enjoy a good day in business. He was just always worried about when shit was gonna hit the fan, because anytime that something went just a little bit wrong, it always seemed to get blown out of proportion and made him feel like he could never get ahead.
So that Wolf of Chaos was constantly blowing down on any progress he was making. We had to find ways to clean things up in a way that would repair the shit that already went down while also creating some positive predictability so that he could have more of those good days in business and actually enjoy them. So how can you rebuild and get more bricks and more predictability in your foundation? There's a lot you can do here, but it all starts with lean leadership.
Sometimes when people hear lean, they think lean and mean. So when I say I focus on lean operations, there are some people that think I just walk into a company and start finding all the positions or employees they can cut back on to save money or that I'm just gonna start attacking what snacks people buy for meetings. And that's not what I do in the slightest like. If you're on a tight budget, then yeah, scale back on the snacks. Like that's just good business or personal budget advice, right?
But there's more to the picture here. Lean focuses on how to do things in the most efficient way possible while bringing out the best in our people, because at the end of the day, we still want people to enjoy showing up to work for us. Besides being just decent human beings, there's too much profit to lose when we have bad culture and high turnover. So lean is a collaborative efficiency.
It means as a culture, you're embodying qualities like humility, curiosity, communication, and a pursuit of excellence. This means that you have a clear vision, you've got structure and processes that allow your team to thrive during calm success and rough challenges. Businesses that are built with these lean leadership principles are resilient and adaptable.
So the managers and the employees can problem solve on their own, and they're ready to face whatever challenges come their way because they're actually equipped to deal with it. You would naturally have less waste, less errors, less expenses, less frustration. The list goes on, you're more likely to produce top performers. You're more likely to have an amazing culture that retains those top performers, and you would have more consistent profitability. So it's a win-win, win all around.
Customers are happy with the service or the product they get. Employees are happy to collaborate with their teams and just show up to work. Owners are happy when they look at that p and l reports, right? The numbers are singing to them. If all of this sounds like a far off dream, let me assure you that it's not. I do this all the time with the clients that I, that I work with, If all of this sounds like a far off dream, let me assure you that it's not.
I do this all the time with the clients that our team works with. So if you've listened to some of our other podcast episodes or have followed me on LinkedIn, then you know I'm all about practical action forward advice. I'm not just gonna leave you hanging with this far off dream idea. So here are a few questions that you can ask yourself or take back to your team to start laying down these strong, lean leadership bricks. First, are we organized? So this is the base layer, right?
This is critical. This is essential. Do you know where to find I important information when you need it? Do you know where to put important information? A lot of this will come down to your software. but you've gotta just know are you organized baseline? At the next level, you're gonna look at do you have clarity and confidence? Are you, and is everyone on your team clear on what you're responsible for, and are you confident that what you're doing is pushing your goals forward? From there.
Then we wanna look at do we have efficiency and ease? So do our processes make sense in ways that streamline our workloads, make things easy for us to do, limit the waste that we might be producing, whether that's limiting cost or limiting errors, whatever it might be. Do we have that efficiency and ease that makes our team happy and our customers happy? Your fourth question here, can we achieve systematic scalability?
This is really the overarching goal for everything about lean leadership is this predictable and sustainable growth. So can you create and handle new phases of growth without burning out your team or displeasing your customers? So crucial, and it's like the peak performance of business is that systematic scalability. if you can say hell yes to all of these things, then you're experiencing less firefighting and more strategic growth.
If you can't say yes to these things, then you're likely in a more reactive state when dealing with challenges. If you wanna find out exactly where you are on how well you are leading with lean with your teams, then you can take our, what kind of business hero are you quiz. If you get the Thunder Trooper or captain of excellence result, then you are kicking ass. Like, great job. There's just a few things you can do to either improve or to maintain that success.
If you don't score one of those heroes, then your quiz results will show you what your best next steps would be to level up and get those lean leadership bricks in place. Alright, I'd love to hear if any of those four questions organization clarity and confidence, efficiency and ease or systematic scalability. Got you really excited or maybe struck a chord for you. You can share your story with me at hello@constructiontrailblazers.com or on LinkedIn.
Thanks for tuning in to Construction Trailblazers Paving the Way to Excellence. The quiz email and my LinkedIn will all be in the show notes for you. See you next time.