Asking For Help | Reconstruction Experts COO Mike Barclay (Podcast 244)

At any given time throughout your career you don't have all the answers. And many people feel like they need to just put their head down, figure it out. And if they don't figure it out on their own, they're a failure. And quite frankly they're the failure when they don't raise their hand and ask for help. Because now we have been given that opportunity to step in and give the assistance that I think is required of leadership.

Michael Barclay, who is the COO for Reconstruction Experts, they're a Johns Lane Group company. They've just merged with a company in Australia. So the Reconstruction Experts group is 350 people. John's Lane Group is a thousand. Michael, who's their COO, has been with the company for 14 and a half years, but started in the industry when he's 18. He talks a lot about this merger that just happened between the two companies. Talks a lot about the leadership conference that they went to over in Australia and what they would work on at a leadership conference of a 1500 person company. Talked about kind of the imposter syndrome and belonging in a room and trying to instill that confidence in all the leaders in their company that if you're in this role you belong here, you belong in the room, otherwise you wouldn't be here. Talks a little bit about decision making and the humanity of the business and interesting insights around culture and people inside of a typically a blue collar construction industry. So some great insights. I think you're really going to enjoy the show and glad you're with us this week. Michael, welcome to the Second Command podcast.

Thank you very much Cameron. Good to be here.

Yeah, looking forward to chatting. I loved when we were chatting briefly before we just got on that you had said you were just over in Australia at a leadership conference, which I don't think too many Americans ever get to say so, but I think there's a reason why that happened. It's really kind of a core part that we're going to even talk about today. So why were you over in Australia and give us the backstory there?

Went over to Australia actually the second time over there. Beginning of this year we partnered with a Australian firm called Johns Link Group who is one of the largest restoration contractors in Australia. And we were fortunate enough for them to see Reconstruction Experts as their platform for growth in the United States. And so at the beginning of the year we started to get to know who each other were. We went out in March, which was quite a challenge because that was still very significant. COVID lockdowns in Australia at the time, so had to kind of promise our firstborn in order to get out there back then. This time around, about two weeks ago, we went out for a leadership conference in Byron Bay and what was great about that is we were able to really bond with the leadership in Australia and really understand that they do carry the same culture that we do, which is essentially people first and culture and how do we grow our people and how do we empower our people? So it was a great, great conference and the fact that we got to spend time in Byron Bay, Australia, definitely wasn't a bad thing.

Yeah. And I'm not going to say the city that you could have been, you know, partnering with a company in, but it's awesome that you got to partner with someone in a great area. So you mentioned going to a leadership conference. Before I dive into asking a little bit about that, just walk us through very briefly, what's the size of reconstruction experts, which is the US company, and then what's the size of the John Lanes group in Australia in terms of like maybe number of employees?

The size of reconstruction experts here in the states, and we're in multiple states within the country is about 350 employees. The Johns Lane group I think is about 1,000 employees. Maybe actually pushing a little bit over that when you contemplate them taking, you know, all, all populated regions of the country there.

So years ago I was a part of an organization called College Pro Painters which was the, the first acquisition of the first service group. And then they did call it, you know, certapro Painters and Paul Davis Systems and all these like brands in the services space. And our leadership conferences were pretty unique. But what's the leadership conference look like of a, you know, 1300 person company? What are you covering? What skills are they working with you on?

You know, primarily we, we spent time on how to work together as a team. So we did kind of a LEGO building event and gave our, our teams opportunities to try and collaborate better and learn and take lessons away from that. So very interesting, large company doing building Legos. But I think it gets down to the task of how do you work together? A lot of time I'm just thinking through decision making so many times, you know, leaders feel like they need to be the ones to make the decision and it all revolves around them and where decision making should be collaborative. Decision making should have a lot of contemplation. And so we even talk about pre contemplating and then contemplating and multiple steps before you actually get to execution. And so we talked A lot about that and why that was really, really important. And then just the empowerment of leaders. And many times leaders find themselves unsure if they should be in the room. So there was a very consistent message of like, you belong here. There were, there were people like myself who was the CEO of re reconstruction experts, but then there were also folks there in the JLG mindset is creating a lot of small businesses where they put business partners over top of them and they drive deep into their marketplace. And some of them are fairly new and some of them are fairly young in their careers. And so they can find themselves unsure if they belonged in the room. And so we, we worked hard to make sure that they felt comfortable there.

That's a super unique concept that I, we, we hold an event called the COO alliance and we have a network of COOs from around the world that meet. And remember at one of the events, one of the guys put his hands up and he said, I feel like a fraud. He actually told me at lunch. So I went back into the room and I said to all of the COOs, like, how many of you ever feel like a fraud in your job? And every single person's hand went up. And then Brian, who'd said it to me at lunch, turned and looked around. He started laughing. He goes, okay, I'm good now. But I think there's something that's really beautiful about that, that you need to give leaders, no matter their age or their skill level, the confidence that, yeah, they do belong in the room. So was it just a discussion that you did that or was there some vulnerability exercises or how did they approach that?

There was discussion around it. And they have a, they have an amazing leader by the name of Curt Mudd. He actually really had an impact on the industry, both for John's Link group and many other multinational companies as their HR leader. And it's just taking the time to understand who people are. We spent a lot of time on like brand mapping as well and, and really opening up these younger leaders to be able to talk about what the brand should look like and what the experience of the brand should look like. And, and when you're talking to, to young leaders about those types of things, that it starts to empower them because they're being heard and many times they have better ideas than we do.

So I want to ask you about that in terms of consultative approach or the collaborative approach and getting people's buy in on stuff. Is it a complete kumbaya group hug where you're trying to get everybody to kind of the big loving where we all agree and we're all going to get along. Or does sometimes the leader making the call even after listening to everybody, or is it a balance?

It's a balance. And in all reality, I don't believe that the Kumbaya is the way they get things done. I don't think we have movement or growth without disagreement. And I think that breaks into kind of the other piece of the business that we look at is a trust based environment. We talk a lot about the relationship with the COO and the CEO. We have a very trust based organization here to where disagreement is good. We want to make sure people can collaborate together and people feel empowered to provide their opinion and don't feel like what they might say is wrong. What really matters is when you do get into that collaboration, you have to set the ground rules. And maybe the leader of that group, if it's me or somebody else, will say, hey, listen, we're going to spend the next hour collaborating on this. If we can come to a decision as a group, great, we'll go forth and conquer and we'll be all behind that decision. But if for whatever reason we get to the end and there's not a decision, then there's going to be an executive decision and it may be me, maybe somebody else within the group because at the end of the day we have to move on in a direction.

Yeah, I agree. I love that as well. So you talked about the trust based environment. How do you and the CEO build trust with each other? And this does follow the whole Pat Lanciones five dysfunctions of a team, right? With the fear of conflict and that good healthy engagement. So how do you and the CEO have good, healthy engagement? And then how do you have that good healthy engagement or conflict with your direct reports? Can you speak to both of those?

Sure, I can. And I think it's all about making sure that people feel empowered to raise their hand at any given time throughout your career. You don't have all the answers. And many people feel like they need to just put their head down, figure it out. And if they don't figure it out on their own, they're a failure. And quite frankly, they're the failure when they don't raise their hand and ask for help. Because now we have been given that opportunity to step in and give the assistance that I think is required of leadership. And so the same thing works with myself and my direct reports and especially myself and the CEO and all the other people on the, on the C Suite side of things. We just had a meeting yesterday and, and you know, all of us had a different opinion as it related to a topic of discussion. But at the end of the day, what was great about it is everybody could provide their opinion and they knew that, you know, the CEO wasn't going to come in and tell you you're wrong. He's going to listen, he's going to understand, he's going to come back with some good feedback. But I don't have to be afraid to talk to my CEO about any, anything within the organization, good, bad or indifferent.

Was this partnership with the Johns Lane Group, is it an acquisition or is it a partnership or where does it fall in that spectrum?

Yeah, it was actually an acquisition. They took over the primary shareholder from where we were private equity held. And so they came in as permanent capital and took over that piece of the business.

How's that transition been from moving to working with a PE firm to, you know, working with a strategic partner?

Yeah, it's been amazing. I do believe there's a place for private equity. I think they can take some small businesses and really help them grow. But it's a breath of fresh air to be able to come in, you know, limit debt on your balance sheet, have permanent capital, have a company that wants to grow with you over the years as opposed to, you know, you have a five or six or seven year horizon, typically with private equity, you know, that could potentially cause, you know, changes in leadership, changes in direction of, you know, business goals. And now here we can lay out what I feel like is a 50 year plan and know that we can stick to it because of this.

Have there been any changes in leadership? Have there been any, you know, transition, like, are they coming in and changing or what are they coming in and changing?

Yeah. What's really great about it is Jones Link Group spent many, many years trying to decide who was going to be their platform for growth in the United States. And, and the leader, the CEO of John's Link Group, Scott Didier, he's got his CFO and a bunch of other people, you know, chasing after him of going, hey, this is a great company. Look at their balance sheet. Hey, this is a great company. Look at their EBITDA number. Hey, we should get on board with these guys. And he's like, I don't care about any of that until I meet the people. And they spent three or four years looking for a group that had the right people. And so when you ask, like, did they change anything? No, they were insistent on the fact that the leadership group that's here, which is our CEO or cfo, our chief sales officer, we're going to stick. And if we weren't going to stick because they needed to know that we were going to carry on what they bought and we were wondering, it was interesting, you know, we thought we had a deal, right? And we're going through this process and like, we want to close in October. And they're like, no, they were slow rolling it. We couldn't understand why. And the reason why is they couldn't come over from Australia during COVID and in a way so they can meet us face to face. So finally they were able to pull it off. They came out, I spent a week touring with their coo and then the CEO came out and spent another week touring. And the questions that he asked our teams weren't about numbers. They were like, tell me about who you are, tell me about your family. What do you like to do? Are you into sports? What drives you? What motivates you? And one of the, the biggest changes I think that has come from, not that we didn't already do this, but a big change that's come from the Johns Lane Comic group coming in is, is in our hiring world and in hiring mindset over skill set. And so we're actually getting into where we do no resume interviews. So the first interview we ever do, you know, sure, if I need somebody that has a degree in a particular field, that'll have to be a prerequisite, but I'm not necessarily concerned about, you know, their skill set as I am concerned about their mindset and the belief and the and now reconstruction experts in John's Ling USA and John's link group is if they have the mindset, the drive, the energy and the passion, then the rest will fall into place.

That's amazing. I love the approach to it all as well. I recently heard that a great approach to interviews is to also tell the candidate in advance the questions you're going to be asking them and then just say like, this isn't a stress testing meeting. This is just a conversation. So I'm going to ask you these questions. Let's talk about them. It really humanizes the whole thing. Right. So what about the systems and brand changing? Are they going to do anything related to changing the brand or changing the systems that are being used? What's happening there?

Systems, not so much. We have to try and pull together our ERP and our accounting systems and make all that work. But that's I think pretty Typical. With any acquisition at our merger, we got to pull the books together. But by far they. They want Reconstruction Experts to run the business that they've always ran. The difference is they also want to include all of the other brands that they offer in Australia. And so Reconstruction Experts is a large scale reconstruction, general contractor. You know, our business is, you know, anywhere from, you know, $50,000 to $15 million projects and up. And we're able to achieve a lot of market dominance through focusing on everything from the thousand dollar drywall job through the $50,000 restoration work. So a lot of insurance type business. So there's several different brands that Ari will become one of those brands. And RE is now part of the johnsling USA brand package.

Okay. So it is kind of like the first service group of companies where you're a part of something. They're not going to rebrand your business. You're just now a part of the Johns Lane group. And then your business will have some other services that you can cross sell or. All right, you mentioned empowering people to raise their hand. I want to go back to that because how do you do that? How do you get people to feel confident, to be able to do it when they're in a room of people that are overpowering them?

It's a really interesting question. And it doesn't happen overnight. It takes time. And so, for instance, when I came into this role as CEO, prior to that I was a VP within the Colorado region, there were people in California and Texas and some people in the organization within Colorado and Florida that they didn't really know me well enough, at least as a leader. And so it really took setting down and taking time with them. You know, if we're going to go through the P and L of the business or we're going to go through some certain metrics as it relates to performance measurements, not just sitting down and going like, here's your numbers. What do you have to say about that? It's sitting down and actually opening up the numbers, understanding where they came from, how they were able to, you know, do good or where they may have challenges and them starting to slowly learn that I'm there to help. One of the things that if you talk to any of my direct reports that I consistently tell them is I work for you, you don't work for me, and my success is your success. And so that they feel that way and they truly believe that their success is the utmost importance to me because at the end of the day, that's how I become successful. Then they know that they can raise their hand. And I think that's the driving force, from the direct reports that I have to the folks that they actually lead as well.

Right. And you've been at Reconstruction experts for almost 15 years. Did you rise up in the organization or have you always been in this very senior role and the company just kind of built around you?

I actually rose up through the organization. When I joined the company 15 years ago, we were about a $30 million year company. We had just started, you know, branching off into a few over the different regions, such as California and Texas, and, and I was running projects and I think having the opportunity to come in and, and of course, you know, one of the best things you can do to get ahead in the company is fix something that's broken. And so I had a project that was broken and I fixed it. And, and you know, you get the attention of the leaders and the next thing you know, like, hey, they can fix things, you know, and so as long as you can do that. And really, the way I fix it and I keep going back to this, I fixed it through building relationships. I built relationships with the client, I build relationships with the engineers, I build relationships with my team. And once again, it goes back to trust. You know, if people are trusting that you're trying to fix something and make something go well, they're going to allow you to do that. Or if they don't trust you, they're going to push back on you consistently.

Are you cognizant on how you build relationships or has it just become kind of second nature to you after all these years? Can you tell us specific things that you do to build the relationships?

Yeah, that's a really interesting. And, and I, and I owe certain levels of, of my relationship building to our chief Sales officer, Ali. When I first started with the organization here, I knew that I had to build relationships. I started my own business when I was 18 years old and in restoration. And you can't be 18 if you don't know how to build relationships. But, but I was always prideful of, like, I'm just going to do it really well. And that's what they're going to like about me, because I'm going to do it really well. And I had this engineer on that project, and she had known him for a while, and she knew that he was an influencer in the industry. And she's like, you got to buy him some Jamba Juice and you got to bring him some coffee every once in a while. I'm like, no, I'm not going to do that. I'm like, I'm just going to do this really well and he'll like it for that. And it turned into, no, get a personal connection there. Understand who that person is so that when you do have an issue, you do ask for that next line of business, they're going to be more apt to give it to you or at least give the inside track of what's going on. And it seems so common sense. But it struck me 15 years ago as such an important factor that I continually push that. And let's face it, that's a sales, I think, trait to be able to build those relationships. But at the end of the day, we may be this big great general contractor, but we're a sales company that are working on homes and buildings.

You just touched on something that I've said for a while that I think every great salesperson is amazing at customer service. They have to be right. But not every great customer service person can sell. There's a complete disconnect there. And yeah, the only way you're going to do that is by staying connected with the people. So it's clearly worked well for you. So talk about the people first culture. What does that mean? And how do you instill that and how do you live that and. Cause I know there's a lot there.

Yeah, there really is. And like, it's not like you have a book that says here's what to do and how to treat your people. Well, it comes from the heart. And so if you look at our business and you just look at our core values, our core values are we are driven to be the best. We do the right thing, we work together and we enjoy the journey. So it starts right there at our core values. You know, it's weird. Starts by everything is we. And. And if everybody feels like we are, we are a we, then they don't feel like they're an island anywhere. So I, I, and we, we live and breathe those core values. And then the other piece is just like I said before, our statement, our slogan of love your place again. Who says that? What contractor says love your place again? Not many. And so it starts there and then it goes into just your daily interactions. And so I could be walking down the hallway, you know, there's not a hierarchy that anybody feels here, you know, like, oh, there goes the coo. You know, I can't say hi to him. If anything, it's quite the opposite. Open door policy. People can come in and you know, Voice their concerns or their questions. They don't necessarily feel like there would be any retribution even through the ranks. I had an individual come into my office the other day. It's like, hey, do you have time for lunch on Friday? You know, he's an estimator within one of our divisions. I'm like, probably not lunch, but let's find some time to sit down because I want to hear him out. I want to understand like what he wants to communicate about. And I think the organization is set up that way to continually have what you want to call open door policy and that supportive mindset. And so as I said earlier, you know, my success is your success. And so how do we continue to drive that through the organization?

The open door policy where people can come to you is really critical. The other layer is the skip level meetings. Do you run skip level meetings? And if you do, can you talk us through those?

We actually don't run skip level meetings. And it's not because it's a bad idea. I don't still think we've contemplated that. And there's probably some benefit there. What I do is I have a regular one on one session with my direct reports on a regular basis and they then take the valuable information that we may gain garner that or I may take the valuable information that I hear from them and present. I think, I don't want to call it policy changes, but you know, present opportunities for change based upon the information that they've given and then they can get that back to the next level. I've contemplated the skip level and I think it may just happen organically. We just don't do it specifically as.

A kind of specific tool. It makes sense. You talked about the core values and I'm curious what you do to kind of live the core values internally. How do you reinforce them? Are there some systems around that?

So a lot of it is really celebrating them. And so if you have a situation, you know, one of the core values is doing the right thing and somebody made a decision, you know, for our client to do the right thing, it doesn't go unnoticed. And so say for instance, we did have a situation where a homeowner had a medical condition on a project and the project manager went down there, went above and beyond to, to, to resolve the situation and get them first care response. And while that's a great thing and he probably felt good about it and the team was wonderful about it, the whole company knew about it. You know, the whole company was able to understand like, hey, what did this guy do to do the right thing or go above and beyond. And so you can't just have core values and not celebrate when people are actually embracing them and running with them.

Talk about your growth as a leader. I mean, you've been with the organization for, you know, again, almost 15 years. And what are you focusing on growing today? Because you're going through a new trajectory or a new transition in the organization.

So as I grew, you know, I went from a project manager to running a branch to running the state. And at every level, you start to pull away from, you know, the core of what we do. Right. So first I'm on the project. You know, that's where the rubber meets the road with the client, you know, in the office and working closely with the folks that are on the project. Now at the position I'm at is. Is you're at 30,000ft above the work that we're putting in place, and you can't do it all, right? And so I think at every step of the way, you know, leaders have a tendency to want to be able to do it all. And I have all the answers. I know how it gets done. And it's finding that opportunity to know when you can one trust your people. And I'll let them, let them make a mistake. If they're not given the opportunity to make the mistakes, they'll never learn the way that you did. And so every time you take a step in a. In a leadership role where you're farther up in an organization, you're that much more removed from the client. And it's stressful for people that have grown their business. And like, for instance, I started my career in the home, you know, doing the work, you know, and controlling every single thing to where now it's like I'm not there, and I. I have to be okay with that. And being okay with not controlling everything is, I think, a challenge that I see in a lot of leadership. And it's one of the things that I work to train all of my people on is, you know, even this morning, we had a situation where my ops manager in one of our regions, you know, had a. Had a challenging situation yesterday, and he was upset that he didn't know about it prior to it. I said, that's okay, it's okay. Because at some point in time, you can't know everything. And you have to now just go back and say, okay, how could we have avoided this? You know, what systems and processes maybe do we have to put in place? But you can't control it. And you can't be upset that you didn't know about it prior to it happening. And so it's the same thing that I learn every day as I grew up in the organization, because I did. I started in this industry when I was 17 years old. And so I won't say how many years I've been in it, but it's been quite a while. I always have this mindset of I'm the young guy in the organization because I started young and I'm not anymore. And I have to continually prove myself. And it's not proving myself anymore, it's proving my organization. And it's not about me, it's about the product of the organization and the people. And so I actually went through a bit of a mindset change about three years ago when I took the COO role, was realizing I was finally at that level to where it's like nothing was about me anymore. It was all about the organization. And every step of the way, you take a step away from that.

That's really interesting as well. I'm curious about two parts of your business right now. One is, and we'll speak to this one first. I mean, it would be hard to find anyone in Gen Y, kind of the millennials, which are like the 26 to 45 year olds, 46 year olds, hard to find any of them that want to be in a company for more than two years, let alone, you know, 15 years. Is that an issue for your business or your industry? And if it's not, what have you done to attract and retain people that are, you know, in that cohort?

As the years go by, more and more people are moving around. And so first of all, culture, you know, I want to make sure that people are working in an organization that they feel good at. Many of the many large companies like us, folks feel like a number, you know, feel like maybe that it doesn't matter. They come in for a paycheck and that's it. In our organization, you know, one of the unique things about what we do is because we are working in occupied space. And so most of the work we do is folks that are having something repaired and they're not leaving their home. So inherently that means we've got a eight to five day and nobody wants you on weekends. And so we sell that hard with our employees to say, hey, listen, you know, I'm not going to put you to the grindstone through, you know, 16 hour days and weekends like many commercial builders and new construction people will do so they have a good work life balance for the most part. And then we've been working really hard over the years from a competitive standpoint, whether it's 401k, whether it's, you know, additional benefits associated with vacation time, like what can we do to consistently keep our people happy with not only the product offering that we have, but also the culture that they work with?

I love that answer. I love the whole grasping of what's really important to them. And it is, yeah, the 16 hours is a horrible. There is no work life balance and the fact that you can give that to them is really powerful. All right, I want to go back to the, the 18 year old Michael Barclay, who's starting off in his construction career. What advice would you give yourself when you were just starting out that you know to be true today?

Always believe in yourself. I think the times in my career where I maybe taken a step back and while I, well, I feel like I've always been on a, been on a pretty good trajectory, it's always when I've second guessed myself and didn't believe in myself and I can't say that anymore, that the harder and the more you believe in who you are and what you do and that you can do something, you will accomplish it. Happy with where I'm at, but definitely think that a couple steps in the road could have been resolved by an older me talking to a younger me.

Yeah, agreed. Me as well. Michael Barclay, the COO for Reconstruction experts, the Johns Lane Group company. Thank you so much for sharing with us on the Second Command podcast. Really appreciate it.

Great, thank you, Cameron. It was a pleasure.

You can teach them the basic understanding of the economics of our business and the basic understanding of our assets and liabilities and basic understanding of cash flow.

Basic.

So they go, oh, okay, I understand. And just even that basic understanding, maybe it doesn't even build enough of an education that they're going to be able to do much, but it certainly builds trust from them to you that you care about them.