One important responsibility of a CEO in the construction industry is to improve the organization that he or she serves.
All areas of the business need to be reviewed and adapted to the pandemic, from procurement, operations and process as well as every other aspect of company objectives moving forward.
Having a great deal of knowledge and understanding by itself accomplishes nothing. Great leaders of industry must be able to apply what they know to move the organization that they serve ahead in the competitive race.
As Booker T. Washington observed: “The world cares very little about what a man or woman knows; it is what a man or woman is able to do that counts.”
No organization will be perfect when a CEO takes it over, nor is any likely to be perfect when he or she leaves. However, every CEO can try to improve the organization during his term in office.
Improvement in this context does not mean constant progress. It means bettering the result that would otherwise occur without the CEO’s input.
While the institution of great change is the kind of thing that gets a leader’s name into the history books, from a practical perspective there is as much to be said for seeking to accomplish a series of small gains.
Big scores are hard to make at any time and they are even harder to make consistently.
Fundamentally, those who pass by the opportunity for small gains are unrealistic. Watching the NFL playoffs the last couple of weeks, many of the most successful quarterbacks rarely throw the long pass.
They are content to pick apart the other team six or seven yards at a time. Not only does this approach eventually result in a score, it also has the advantage of depriving the opponent of a great deal of time.
The big score fallacy is not restricted to those who seek profit or to take over an industry, it undermines much of public policy as well. There is a widely articulated view that it is impossible to change the world. In a certain sense, there is considerable truth in this sentiment.
Those who set out to bring about major changes often encounter overwhelming resistance. Virtually all leadership positions offer the opportunity to effect changes that affect the organization, the community in which it operates and those who are associated with it for years to come.
CEOs need to avoid becoming excessively preoccupied with highly visible “big ticket” changes. Very often what seems of great importance when it happens is often of minimal importance over the long run, whereas what seems like a small-scale change is one of permanent influence.
Alexander the Great may have been the greatest general of all time, but today virtually all that remains of him is his name.
In contrast, the unknown inventors of the wheel and the lever continue to influence each of our lives in countless ways every day, yet an outsider walking by the hut at the time when the wheel was invented may have not noticed the occasion at all.
Small scale changes can be used to buy time and may lend support for larger scale projects. The success of such changes is often more lasting than its larger scale rival. It can lay the foundation for longer term accomplishments.
Insofar as it can be related to a specific source, people who benefit from small scale change will often feel a deeper debt for the assistance that they have received than will those who benefit from large scale change.
In contrast a large-scale change requires a broad-based consensus that can be difficult to achieve. Only rarely will proposals be seen as intimidating, but a proposal for “massive restructuring” will often cause a sea of red flags to rise up in protest.
Stephen Bauld is a government procurement expert and can be reached at [email protected]. Some of his columns may contain excerpts from The Municipal Procurement Handbook published by Butterworths.
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