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I guarantee if you learn this, you will accelerate your career faster than 97% of your peers:
In 2016, I started my first real job as an Estimator/Project Manager for a specialty subcontracting company.
The spent the first couple years doing 2 things you can't do as an Estimator/PM:
- Bringing jobs in overbudget
- Not winning any work
I kept getting busier and busier without the results getting any better. Worse, I didn’t have the energy to work on myself. I was ignoring my mental and physical health, and I felt like my career was pretty stagnant.
But now I’m an Executive (at 29 years-old), and I owe it all to changing my mindset and learning how to work on myself and my career.
It all started after I talked with over 50 industry veterans and realized I was being short-sighted and selfish. I needed to stop being a jerk who does everything himself and start building relationships and teams that are greater than the sum of their parts. I came up with 3 principles that I still live by to this day:
- The Small Industry Principle
- The “I Don’t Know” Principle
- The Life Without The Contract Principle
Each of these represents a way to build better relationships, better teams, and ultimately free up time so you can do your job and still have time to work on yourself.
Today, I will break down each principle and show you how to leverage them in your daily work-life so you can accelerate your career faster than 97% of your peers.
If you use them, I really think you’re going to love your job so much more and grow so much faster!
Let’s get after it.
The Small Industry Principle
The Principle: It’s A Small Industry- Treat People Right
What It Means: The people you meet today will undoubtedly show up again in the future — whether on another project, at another company, or even as a coworker. Treat everyone like you will work with them over and over again in your career.
How-To Leverage: There are two primary actions you should take to best leverage this advice:
- Treat everyone really well, but especially Project Engineers and other low-ranking people. Why? These people will grow up to be Project Managers, Executives, and CEOs one day. If you spend time investing in your relationship with them now, they will remember you as the person who cared about them when no one else did. Great way to set yourself up in the future!
- Do NOT screw people over for selfish reasons. In your career, you are going to face challenging decisions where you can either a) throw someone else under the bus or b) throw yourself under the bus. If you really want to elevate your career, choose option b every time. It will almost always serve you to take a short-term personal loss for a long-term relationship win.
You should always be working on building credibility as someone who “treats people right.”
The “I Don’t Know Principle”
The Principle: It’s Better To Say “I Don’t Know” Than Make Up An Answer
What It Means: Construction Professionals have some of the highest BS meters out of anyone in any industry. Further, construction is litigious, and accuracy is extremely important to avoid liability. For these two reasons, you should never make up an answer to a question. It will set off the BS meter or get you into trouble. Don’t be afraid to say, “I don’t know.”
How-To Leverage: Rens Hayes, CEO of H+O Structural Engineering, always tells me that saying “I don’t know” is not enough. He advises young people to say:
“I don’t know the answer to that, but I will find out and get back to you by the end of the day.”
“I don’t know” by itself is lazy, but when you show you are willing to learn and go chase down an answer? That’s how you really show people you have potential. Plus, leveraging your team to find answers and solutions is just plain smart. You’ll go from feeling like you need to do everything yourself to doing less work and giving better answers.
The Life Without The Contract Principle
The Principle: You Can Get A Lot Done Without Saying “But The Contract Says..”
What It Means: Most 20 and 30-somethings in Construction are taught to use the Contract as a weapon, constantly saying things like, “Your Contract says you have to be at foreman meetings and you weren’t there so I’m fining you $500.” This is a very bad way to build relationships and grow your career. People will come to resent you and you’ll isolate yourself. It also creates a lot of unnecessary, time-consuming conflict (and remember — we’re trying to save time so we can work on our careers).
How-To Leverage: Let me be clear about something: I am not saying you should not know your Contract inside and out. Actually, the best way to leverage this principle is TO KNOW the Contract inside and out. You just don’t need to say it to get things done.
I spent a lot of time studying the Contract in my first 5 years in the industry, and because I understood it so well, it allowed me to say things like:
“Hey, I know what our Contract says, but I’d rather we operate on fairness. I have subframing excluded but I could understand why you’d need me to pick it up here. So we’ll pick it up, no charge. I just ask you to use the same judgement and fairness as we go through the rest of the project.”
I can’t tell you how well this worked. And it allowed me to hardly ever say, “But the Contract says..” and instead establish a relationship based on trust with my clients and vendors. I highly recommend leveraging the Life Without The Contract Principle in this way because it reduces the amount of time you spend fighting over petty stuff and opens up time to focus on more important work.
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