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Dani Rojas steps up to the ball as he prepares for a game-winning penalty kick, and in one last deep-breath moment calms himself and exhales with his infamous dogma preached repeatedly on the Ted Lasso sports comedy-drama saying simply and profoundly…
Football Is Life.
For Dani, when the game seems out of his control, and life seems complicated, unfair, and uncomfortable, he calms himself and retreats back to his basic truth.
Football.
Is.
Life.
The show Ted Lasso has provided a pandemic-confused world, a respite of breath with profound insight packaged in off-color, but understandable humor.
When Ted Lasso meets chaos, there is always a bypass to peace. Dani Rojas reminds himself of that bypass with his Football Is Life enunciation.
For business owners, and particularly those in the construction (or processed material delivery) industry, the chaos of material delays, price increases, frustrated project managers and superintendents, client expectations, and global unpredictability have given rise to the schedule unpredictability complex.
What is a schedule? Its very basic definition from dictionary.com is this: “a plan for carrying out a process”.
In any business, every schedule should be a culmination of two parts; the processes needed to be achieved, and the dates and sequence by which those processes should be started and completed.
A schedule is a pre-mapped plan that includes the right processes, in the right sequence, happening on the right timeline.
In order to build such a pre-mapped plan, your schedule must be informed by three pieces of information; past, present, and future.
Past information and experience allow you to more easily navigate trends that have been true up until now.
If material procurement for windows in the past has a normal delivery turnaround of 7 days, then you pencil in your plan a window of 7 to 14 days out.
But wait!!!! Now window delivery times are upwards of 6 months! That brings us to the present and future information.
Present information and experience allow you to see what is really happening in today’s environment allowing you to just to what you think may come true in the future.
If window delivery times are now 6 months, then you adjust your planning based on the latest information you have. You base scheduling projections on the cocktail of…
Past Experience + Present Reality + Future Projections =
Communicated Schedule
You have three options in preparing a schedule for you, your team, and your customer…
Option one, create a schedule with the best information you have, update it daily or weekly, and communicate it with clarity and repetition.
Option two, create a schedule with the best information you have, do not update, and do not communicate it well.
Option three, do not put in the hard work of creating a schedule with the best information you have.
This upheaval culture that we have navigated in a post-pandemic reality has turned past partners into current and future enemies. The ideal setup was that the contractor, client, and partners were a team in coordination. Much of that has been twisted where the client and partners have become the enemy.
An aligned, well-prepared, often-updated, well-communicated schedule will bring that partnership mindset back into play and allow for the production or construction process to be far more enjoyable and profitable.
In the same way, Dani Roja proclaims that Football Is Life, you must believe that in your business Schedule Is Life.
If a project is budgeted to be complete in 12 months and takes 13 months, most would simply look at that and think, “well that stinks, but we are still billing for the project in its full amount.”
The challenge is that by adding an extra month to the project, billing essentially decreased by about 8% because although the full project amount will still be received, there was an entire extra month of fixed overhead added to the project because of the delay. While the schedule can be delayed, payroll and all other business overhead continue to be paid.
The 8% in many cases, eats into much of the profit of the job, and eventually, with more delays, the company just performed that project breaking even or in a situation where it actually spent its own money to complete the project.
How do you build a construction schedule (or any production schedule) that will bring clarity and make time for what matters most?
The secret has to do more with the time you set aside than the innovation needed.
First, you must block time to think through it and build it.
Just last week I was leading a business team through an exercise in helping each team member build their own weekly schedule around their role. While many were skeptical that such pie-in-the-sky exercise would actually work day to day, the team had real wind in their sails when the Director Of Construction pulled out his physical weekly schedule, held it up, and declared, “This works, but it only works if you build it and use it.”
In order to build it, you must make time and do it.
Second, you must block time to update it.
That same Director Of Construction, after months of living out and refining his weekly schedule, then took it a step further and, after blocking time to think and build, created a simple spreadsheet listing out a typical construction billing cycle based on the cocktail of historical experience, present delays, and future projections.
It is not perfect because it cannot be… but it is much closer to useful than nothing at all.
He updates his weekly schedule monthly, and his billing cycle sheet weekly. The time to work on his schedule is actually blocked on his schedule!
Third, you must act both on the information you have today, and build contingency on the information you could have tomorrow.
Stop longing for the past, bemoaning the present, and laboring over perfect projections for the future.
Instead, take what you know from the past, listen to what you are seeing in the present, and listen to what you might be hearing about the future. Mix that cocktail and build the best schedule you can based on the information you have.
Finally, you must communicate your schedule, and it’s fluctuations, early and often.
Over-communication will help cover a well-thought, but ultimately imperfect schedule. Clients, vendors, and partners will have far more grace and forgiveness for a schedule-centered process that get altered by forces outside of your control, than a poorly communicated schedule where you have no defense and everything will seem like your fault.
Communicate when you are going to communicate. Tell them what you are going to do. Tell them what you are doing (even if it is nothing at all). Tell them what you did.
Your schedule is your silver bullet. It’s all you’ve got. Try to wing it, and it will send you straight to the ground. Build it thoughtfully and communicate it well, and you will find that Schedule Is Life and you will bury it in the back of the net.
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Dani Rojas steps up to the ball as he prepares for a game-winning penalty kick, and in one last deep-breath moment calms himself and exhales with his infamous dogma preached repeatedly on the Ted Lasso sports comedy-drama saying simply and profoundly…
Football Is Life.
For Dani, when the game seems out of his control, and life seems complicated, unfair, and uncomfortable, he calms himself and retreats back to his basic truth.
Football.
Is.
Life.
The show Ted Lasso has provided a pandemic-confused world, a respite of breath with profound insight packaged in off-color, but understandable humor.
When Ted Lasso meets chaos, there is always a bypass to peace. Dani Rojas reminds himself of that bypass with his Football Is Life enunciation.
For business owners, and particularly those in the construction (or processed material delivery) industry, the chaos of material delays, price increases, frustrated project managers and superintendents, client expectations, and global unpredictability have given rise to the schedule unpredictability complex.
What is a schedule? Its very basic definition from dictionary.com is this: “a plan for carrying out a process”.
In any business, every schedule should be a culmination of two parts; the processes needed to be achieved, and the dates and sequence by which those processes should be started and completed.
A schedule is a pre-mapped plan that includes the right processes, in the right sequence, happening on the right timeline.
In order to build such a pre-mapped plan, your schedule must be informed by three pieces of information; past, present, and future.
Past information and experience allow you to more easily navigate trends that have been true up until now.
If material procurement for windows in the past has a normal delivery turnaround of 7 days, then you pencil in your plan a window of 7 to 14 days out.
But wait!!!! Now window delivery times are upwards of 6 months! That brings us to the present and future information.
Present information and experience allow you to see what is really happening in today’s environment allowing you to just to what you think may come true in the future.
If window delivery times are now 6 months, then you adjust your planning based on the latest information you have. You base scheduling projections on the cocktail of…
Past Experience + Present Reality + Future Projections =
Communicated Schedule
You have three options in preparing a schedule for you, your team, and your customer…
Option one, create a schedule with the best information you have, update it daily or weekly, and communicate it with clarity and repetition.
Option two, create a schedule with the best information you have, do not update, and do not communicate it well.
Option three, do not put in the hard work of creating a schedule with the best information you have.
This upheaval culture that we have navigated in a post-pandemic reality has turned past partners into current and future enemies. The ideal setup was that the contractor, client, and partners were a team in coordination. Much of that has been twisted where the client and partners have become the enemy.
An aligned, well-prepared, often-updated, well-communicated schedule will bring that partnership mindset back into play and allow for the production or construction process to be far more enjoyable and profitable.
In the same way, Dani Roja proclaims that Football Is Life, you must believe that in your business Schedule Is Life.
If a project is budgeted to be complete in 12 months and takes 13 months, most would simply look at that and think, “well that stinks, but we are still billing for the project in its full amount.”
The challenge is that by adding an extra month to the project, billing essentially decreased by about 8% because although the full project amount will still be received, there was an entire extra month of fixed overhead added to the project because of the delay. While the schedule can be delayed, payroll and all other business overhead continue to be paid.
The 8% in many cases, eats into much of the profit of the job, and eventually, with more delays, the company just performed that project breaking even or in a situation where it actually spent its own money to complete the project.
How do you build a construction schedule (or any production schedule) that will bring clarity and make time for what matters most?
The secret has to do more with the time you set aside than the innovation needed.
First, you must block time to think through it and build it.
Just last week I was leading a business team through an exercise in helping each team member build their own weekly schedule around their role. While many were skeptical that such pie-in-the-sky exercise would actually work day to day, the team had real wind in their sails when the Director Of Construction pulled out his physical weekly schedule, held it up, and declared, “This works, but it only works if you build it and use it.”
In order to build it, you must make time and do it.
Second, you must block time to update it.
That same Director Of Construction, after months of living out and refining his weekly schedule, then took it a step further and, after blocking time to think and build, created a simple spreadsheet listing out a typical construction billing cycle based on the cocktail of historical experience, present delays, and future projections.
It is not perfect because it cannot be… but it is much closer to useful than nothing at all.
He updates his weekly schedule monthly, and his billing cycle sheet weekly. The time to work on his schedule is actually blocked on his schedule!
Third, you must act both on the information you have today, and build contingency on the information you could have tomorrow.
Stop longing for the past, bemoaning the present, and laboring over perfect projections for the future.
Instead, take what you know from the past, listen to what you are seeing in the present, and listen to what you might be hearing about the future. Mix that cocktail and build the best schedule you can based on the information you have.
Finally, you must communicate your schedule, and it’s fluctuations, early and often.
Over-communication will help cover a well-thought, but ultimately imperfect schedule. Clients, vendors, and partners will have far more grace and forgiveness for a schedule-centered process that get altered by forces outside of your control, than a poorly communicated schedule where you have no defense and everything will seem like your fault.
Communicate when you are going to communicate. Tell them what you are going to do. Tell them what you are doing (even if it is nothing at all). Tell them what you did.
Your schedule is your silver bullet. It’s all you’ve got. Try to wing it, and it will send you straight to the ground. Build it thoughtfully and communicate it well, and you will find that Schedule Is Life and you will bury it in the back of the net.
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