Wally Adamchik | Well-Led People Are the Best Profit Strategy

You know, I'm a capitalist. I, I love what I do, but I'd like to make money when I'm doing it. Wait a second, we bring them in and then they don't stay because the culture sucks. Now they say there's not a labor crisis, there's a leadership crisis. I've been saying that for 20 years. It's not people are the best profit strategy, it's well-led people are the best profit strategy. This was said to me by the CEO of one of the biggest road builders in the world, and he said, just tell them to be patient. All they have to do is show up for the next 10 years and they'll be a vice president.

What would you say is the common mistake that you see contractors make? Um, my name is, uh, Tristan Wilson. Welcome to The Edge, uh, podcast. I'm really excited today, um, to have Wally, uh, Adamczyk on, on, on the podcast. Um, Wally has done the rare Trifecta. He was a Marine officer. He's got an MBA from UNC and he was the Notre Dame Leprechaun. And he has spent 20-plus years teaching construction companies how to lead without yelling, which if you've ever been on a job site, you know is harder than it sounds. And just somebody that I'm really excited to spend some more time with. Wally and I had the pleasure of, you know, we'd met at, you know, at an industry event and have followed each other's work and just really excited to sit down with you. So Wally, welcome to The Edge Podcast.

It's great to be with you, Tristan. I look forward to the conversation.

Awesome. Well, I guess first things first, man. Let's talk about the hat. Tell me what's going on.

Well, you know, you're a little bit in this technology sector from what I know. But I'm, I'm home and I'm in the studio and I didn't have a studio in 2019, but obviously COVID created the need for a studio and there's green screens and lights and all that stuff. And one of the things I started doing in early COVID was these 2-minute, I'll call them skits, uh, with green screen and costumes and all of that. And they were fun and they showed that I had a personality. We got the message across from leadership in a different way. And as I came into the studio today, I looked down and I saw this, you know, probably bought for $2 at the Spirit Shop on November 1st. And it occurred to me that I haven't done one of those videos in probably a year and a half. And the point is that, um, in the last 5 years, technology has changed dramatically. And what was cool in 2019 and '20 is obsolete in today. Whereas green screens were something that were just, hey, that's really, that's, that's, oh my God, that's amazing. Now there are apps that will put backgrounds in and you don't even need a green screen. So as we talk about Welcome to 2026 and whether it's technology or culture, just because it worked for you a generation ago, let alone 5 years ago, uh, may no longer be the case. So that was that.

Interesting. And I know, well, you and I have, have, you know, the— we talked a little bit about like, you know, uh, AI and technology. And, and I understand that you are a, a regular daily user of, of, of the AI tools. How did, how did that kind of come about?, for you? How did you get there?

First of all, let's be clear, you know, was it maybe 3 years ago when ChatGPT and some of the other platforms became a thing or was starting to become a thing? I was the guy who said, I'm never going to use that. I'm my own man. I can come up with my own ideas, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And today I'm at a place where I, I don't want to say I use it every day, but I probably use it every day. And the point being. I didn't understand it. I hadn't used it. I hadn't tested it. I hadn't learned to work with it. So, for example, on a creative side right now, maybe a piece of research last night, I wanted to do new exercise. I said, and I got into a conversation with, with the model. So it wasn't doing my thinking for me or editing. You know, I may write a LinkedIn post to say, hey, edit, you know, proofread this for me. So I haven't outsourced my brain, but I have definitely outsourced some of the grunt work, you know, what I would call number crunching in your world, and some idea iteration, not idea creation, but, you know, hey, I'm thinking about doing this. And it really has been transformational for my business.

What would you say has been like the, I guess, what motivated you to want to start? And then what, maybe we'll start there.

I'm a capitalist. I love what I do, but I'd like to make money when I'm doing it. And like most everyone listening to this call, this podcast, we're a for-profit enterprise. So how can I get a little bit more efficient? And maybe more importantly, how can I deliver a better product to my client? So here's an example. We were doing, we do personality profiles. We do some pretty high-level ones. And I had, you know, they're 50-page reports and the client said, can you summarize this? And traditionally I would have summarized it by myself. And it was a very labor-intensive process. So I asked, in this case, ChatGPT, are you familiar with this? Yes, I'm familiar with it. And then I tested ChatGPT and I said, tell me about it. What is this assessment designed to do? Because some of these AI models will just make you feel good. And so I verified that the model knew what it was talking about, not just said it knew. And then I dumped a 50-page report in and it gave me a 2-page summary. And I said, wow, that's That's pretty good. And then I edited it and I did it again and again and again and again. And after 30 reports, now think about how much time I've just saved. It saved me about 30, 40 hours of time. But after 30 reports, it said, are you seeing the trend that I'm seeing? Oh my God. I didn't ask you for that, but what is it? And it said, well, here's what I'm seeing. And I was aware of that. I mean, you know, I spend time in this industry. I only work in the construction industry. But it broke it out with some language and some differentiation and what I would call some granularity that traditionally I wouldn't have had. So it gave me a story to tell and an insight to deliver that I previously hadn't been able to do. So, you know, AI and LLMs for the sake of LLMs, no, but for a more efficiency, for a better value to the client, That's why I'm using it.

Excellent. I appreciate that. And I love what you said about just kind of like getting in there and just doing it, you know, because I feel like a lot of people are stuck on like where— or maybe like, oh, which one do I use, or which model, or what's the latest and greatest, or they have all of these questions. And then these are things that block them from just even getting started in the first place. And One other thing that a friend of mine, you know, mentioned to me last week that I really appreciated was he was like, you don't even— you can ask the models to teach you, right?

If—

yes, they, they will teach you, uh, you know, if you have kind of that, you know, beginner's, uh, beginner's mindset, uh, if you—

yeah, I want to create an app that does X, how do I do Y, you know, all of that. And the other piece I heard was If you take it down a path in ChatGPT, cut and paste that entire thing into Pickett, Perplexity, Claude, whatever, and ask it to validate it. So you get another perspective at it. And usually it's about 90% right. Or agreed. You know, it might change some language or whatever.

Well, on kind of a more personal note, I'm curious about like your trajectory and, you know, your journey. So, you did Marines first and then your MBA and then you were with FMI and now, you know, of course, Firestarter. Like, when did you realize that kind of leadership was like the product that you're selling and what attracted you to construction?

Well, let me answer the second question first. First because I think you and I had very similar summers, uh, in that, um, my brother and dad were Teamsters in New York City. So every school break that I had, I was a helper on jobs, uh, at age, you know, 13, 14, 15. I, I think you had a similar experience, uh, where, where the shovel was in your hand and you— I, I want to say you learned to respect the trades. So, so when I, when I'm standing with people in the construction industry, particularly foreman, superintendent, it's like I'm with my brother. There's a fundamental respect there. They don't care that I have letters behind my name. I don't care that I have letters behind my name with, you know, education, certifications, et cetera. It's just that these are two dudes trying to make life better. So that's, you know, how did I get into the construction world? Hmm. I've kind of always been in the construction world. If you go back now, my experiences being an officer of Marines and being in armor, hey, tracked vehicles, and then being a pilot and then working for FMI. It's one of those things where, where when you're doing it, the career path looks like this. And when you look back on it, it looks like this, that everything, everywhere I was, I learned along the way. I was learning things along the way that now that as I stepped into this consulting world, it just, it all came to, came to a head. Clearly my, my love of leadership was from being a Marine officer and having led people there. But then I come out into corporate America and I, and I led people there. I recognize that people are the best profit strategy or best win strategy. And Actually, I've said that for about a decade now, but in the last year I've changed it. It's not people are the best profit strategy, it's well-led people are the best profit strategy. And that's, it just kind of all came together.

That's excellent. You know, it's funny how I first heard your name. Like I had no idea who you are, but I was sitting with a client and they basically said, this is a name that most people know. And they basically said, We don't work with consultants, but we work with Wally. So, that's how I first heard about you. So, it's pretty cool. I want to learn more about the book and kind of your philosophy. So, you wrote a book called "No Yelling." Yeah. And, you know, in an industry that has historically run on yelling, Like what made you kind of stake your flag there?

Well, I want, as a speaker and consultant and, you know, knowledge expert, you know, the book becomes a big business card. You can get it on Amazon. No yelling. But I, what I didn't want it to be, and there's too many books out there of people with an opinion and opinions are interesting, but I didn't think my opinion was that compelling. So I interviewed 100 Marines or former Marines. And I asked, what's leadership, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And one of the quotes from one of the interviews was, it's not about yelling. It's about impact. And that whole phrase stuck with me. And if we take it a little bit further, I remember being on a TV interview as we were doing a, you know, promotion tour for the book. We've all seen this. You get to the end of the interview, whether it's 5 minutes or 30 minutes and the interviewer asked this question of, well, you know, so how, you know, we, he says, we've got 30 seconds remaining in the history of leadership from Christ until modern times with a particular emphasis in the Renaissance. What, you know, they asked this incredibly long question and in the back of my mind, I'm going clock ticking, clock ticking, clock ticking. And then he says, how would you summarize this? And I'm like, uh, trust and respect. It all comes down to trust and respect. So if, if we trust and respect our people, we have a chance that they'll trust and respect us. Now, yelling in and of itself is not disrespectful, but most yelling actually is disrespectful. I mean, you can raise your voice to me and get my attention and you can be frustrated. And, um, so it's conceptually trust and respect.

Yeah. I think yelling is like the first step towards like, honestly, in my opinion, like towards violence.

Um, And well, it is, it is. Yeah.

You know, and, and, uh, I, I, uh, as somebody who's actually been yelled at on a job site, like I remember distinctly everything, just like I remember every single nice compliment that anybody ever gave me that was my boss. Very much, very similarly. I remember every time, you know, that, that, that I was, uh, that I was yelled at or. Self-admittedly when I yelled at somebody else, because I remember one time we had a bad subcontractor and I went out on the job site and like I yelled at him and I threw my hard hat and I was like 26 years old and I felt about this small after, after, after I did that. And, and, you know, I finally apologized to the guy, but I just, it, it seemed like a good idea at the time. And then I did it and I was just like, I just want to go take like a hot A hot shower.

So it may not just be yelling, right? It could be the finger in your face where you're going, now look, you know, it's, it's, it's quote violence. Look, ultimately we go to silence or violence. We withdraw and say nothing or we overly engage when really what we want to have is the adult to adult response of, hey, this isn't quite how we're supposed to do it. Let's talk about it, etc. Look, you're allowed to get frustrated. We get frustrated. That's fine. But getting off your game and losing, you know, losing your perspective, you know, you lose it at that point. So let's not miss the learning point here. You said you remember the times you've been yelled at and you remember those specific pieces of praise. To the folks listening to this, when's the last time you went out and caught somebody doing something right? And the answer is never. Actually, 79% of frontline leaders would say they get praise and recognition monthly or never. And I don't mean nice job. I mean nice job getting the erosion control in place before this tropical storm, you know, specific memorable pieces of feedback. Catch people doing something right. Oh, but Wally, that's lowering the standard. Everybody gets a trophy. No, it's not. It's just recognizing people for doing what they're doing. But we live in a punchless mentality. We fix things that are wrong. We don't reward things that are right.

Punchless mentality. That is, well, let me, let's dig in here a little bit. 'Cause I think this is an important topic and something that I struggle with honestly, Wally, when I was running jobs was Yeah, it felt like every time that I was like, hey, I'm really proud of you guys for the great job that you did on this. Like the next day, it's like, now we got to go rip out that 120 feet of pipe because we laid it wrong and it's not right. And, and it was like, I had a conversation with a really good general superintendent who like, he was good. He was good at giving. He knew how to kind of balance it. But he and I had this conversation and we're like, man, it kind of does seem like every time that we give really positive feedback that we have to go back and like fix something. And it's almost like we're never out of the woods until the job is like done and sold. How do we give that like really constructive, positive feedback along the way without telling everybody, you know, or without giving our team the impression that, you know, we're good and we can kind of lay back.

Well, you know, the, the, there's, um, we can praise a task, like I can be doing something right along the way. And yeah, hopefully, you know, yeah, hey, we got 120 feet done. We were supposed to get 100 feet. And now we got to go rip it out. All right, clearly we missed something along the way. Um, but, um, it's, it's about making it more normal. Uh, so like I said, we, we have no problem with saying, quote, what we did wrong and criticizing somebody. Um, uh, but we, we, we, we have a time— it's not in our DNA to say, quote, nice things. But if, if you catch people doing something right, you just work it in, not a big deal. It doesn't become the norm. It's okay, right? So yeah, what— just make it part of the normal thing. That way it won't be so unusual, but it will be memorable. Now, you know, in the moment we said, hey, nice job. Oh my God, there was a quality issue. Hey guys, I appreciate the effort yesterday. We got 120 feet done and we didn't quite get it right. Let's go back and talk about what we did wrong. I mean, making it all a learning, uh, uh, opportunity.

Um, yeah, I, I agree. It was something that I— it was something that I, that I kind of struggle with and One thing that, that helped me kind of like reframe it a little bit was, um, kind of, there's this like Nick Saban approach or mentality where he basically is like, it's not about like, don't look at the scoreboard. Right.

Right.

Just focus on like, what are we supposed to do? And then praise people for like the effort that they made. Um, that's another thing. Like, that's another like mindset thing. I feel like, uh, I've tried in the past just to praise people for effort as opposed to the results. And sometimes that has worked out. I mean, what do you see, like if you're looking at like a frontline supervisor, like, and you're, what do you see as like the really good characteristics and traits and habits and routines in construction?

Well, we talked about trust and respect a minute ago. I would add humility. As one of the new words. But that's not quite the question you asked. When we look at good operations leaders all the way up the chain, two things. Yes, I'm going to say great leadership, great culture, great people, all that stuff. Great systems, great processes. We can call this management and leadership, systems and culture, process and people. The only way you produce superior results is to be great in both of those things. So at the field level, this would be understanding production, understanding where I am on the job, not, eh, we were supposed to get 100, we got 105 yesterday, we're doing great, or I know where I stand, not that bravado, I know the job, but data that says, you know, what, from whatever software it's coming from that says, um, we're ahead by X, we're behind by Y, that data with which to manage the job.

So knowing where you're at every day and kind of understanding, uh, how that lines up with, um, what's in the bid.

Yeah. Yeah. So one of the questions I'll ask, particularly if I'm standing in front of frontline people, say, what do you do for a living? Uh, you know, paving guy, I'm a pipe guy, I'm a construction guy. Wrong answer. You're a business person. Uh, you are running a small business out there, uh, and it could be bigger than the majority of small businesses in America. I mean, these, these, these leaders out there are running scopes of work of millions and tens of millions of dollars, so they are business people. The only difference is it's a funded startup for them because, you know, somebody else is on the line from a, you know, from a profit perspective, you know, at the end of the bottom line perspective. But they're business people. So to do that, you have to understand the business of the business, that rework has an outsized economic impact because, you know, the cost of ripping it out, the reputational piece, the cost of putting it back in, opportunity cost, etc., etc., etc. So understanding the impacts of that from a business perspective and understanding production from a, you know, business perspective is equally important as the leadership. Let me say it differently. You can be God's gift to leadership. You can have read every book. You can be every word I say. But if you can't get materials to a job site and you can't get paid for putting them in place, everything I teach doesn't matter.

I like that. It's realistic. And that's something I would say that you hear from like, you know, a quote unquote, like a leadership, you know, person, but very like grounded in, you know, reality. I mean, to your point, a lot of the, you know, most construct— all construction companies to my knowledge are, you know, for-profit enterprises and not, you know, pretending that that's not the case. You know, doesn't is, is I would say,, you know, a disservice, uh, if you will. So I appreciate that. It's like, um, that's very grounded, uh, you know, in, in, in reality. Um, what, you know, construction is facing like a massive labor shortage right now, Wally. We've got like 350,000, you know, workers short. And I think there's, you know, I've read some statistics that I think what, 40% of the workforce is going to be retiring, you know, in the next 7 years. What, what are your thoughts on that? And kind of what, what are you, what are you seeing, um, in, in, out in the field with, with the frontline leaders?

Well, first of all, you can't argue with the numbers in the demographics. That's, that's a mathematical fact that we've just gone over a demographic cliff with the number of high school graduates. I mean, you're seeing colleges close now, um, because there's no one to go to school. Now, you know, not the Ohio States and all of that stuff, but there are small colleges closing across the country because there's not enough kids to go to college. Um, well, if there's not enough kids to go to college, there's definitely not enough kids to get into the trades. There's not enough kids to get into everything. So this then becomes not the opportunity, but the mandate. So as we look at, um, it was, this was said to me by the CEO of one of the biggest road builders in, in the, in the, in the world. And he said, I was talking to his young leaders conference and he said, just tell them to be patient. All they have to do is show up for the next 10 years and there'll be a vice president. I mean, the numbers are stark. So what does it look like out on the job site? And you're seeing this big push right now in the, in the, in the social world, you know, and, and online and all that stuff. Is we've been preaching bring back the trades for probably 10 years. And now it's, wait a second, we bring them in and then they don't stay because the culture sucks. So now it's a, they say there's not a labor crisis, there's a leadership crisis. I've been saying that for 20 years. Um, so it's, it's like a bait and switch. You bring people in, you say, this is going to be a wonderful career for you. And then It's miserable. It's shut up and dig. And this is a generation that has been asked their opinion. Now, let's be clear about something here. I never said lower the standard and I never said everybody gets a trophy. But the leadership methods that worked 50 years ago, 80— by the way, they worked. I mean, we won World War II. We won the Cold War. Like, good stuff. Just not as effective anymore. It's why I started with a Viking hat on my head because the technology and the means and methods and the leadership styles that we were doing, you know, from a technology perspective 5 years ago, different. I mean, look at your product, how it's evolved in the last couple of years. And it's not just incremental, it's exponential change. So same thing from a leadership perspective, that what used to work doesn't not work, but it's significantly less effective. So if you want to have a great culture, you, you need 3 things on the job site. You need trust, pride, and camaraderie. Trust in my immediate supervisor. Hmm, I think we used that word already. Pride in my organization. Uh, and let's face it, building roads, putting pipe infrastructure in place, man, that's good stuff. And maybe the company does, you know, the Hike for Hope for suicide or whatever. And then camaraderie with whom I work. I like who I work with. And that is what it takes. And oh, by the way, when you do all those things, retention goes up, safety goes up, productivity goes up, turnover goes down, dot, dot, dot. Two things happen. There's more smiley faces and more dollar signs. And that's what we're all about.

Yeah, I really liked that. Um, like that, like that mindset. What, when you talked a little bit about retention, like, what do you, what do you consider? I mean, cause you get, you work at, you work with a lot of big contractors. What do you consider, like, what, what are some numbers you want to know when you're looking at retention? And what do you consider like best in class? How do you, how do you determine that?

Yeah. So, um, we— there are definitely two populations. The one is that inside 90 days or inside a year population, and then, you know, everybody else. Because with good cultures, we know if we can get them past, again, 90 days to a year, they're probably not going anywhere. But you see turnover rates, even in the best companies, at 50%, 60% in that population. It's brutal. Because people are like, yeah, this isn't for me, even in the best places. But when we move into what I would call best-in-class organizations, you should be seeing turnover levels in the single digit, you know, 9, you know, 5 to 15% range. That's what best-in-class looks like. It's almost like you got to push people out because people don't want to go. And sometimes you need to let people go.

That's really low. I mean, just, you know, my family was in the construction business and I'll just go ahead and lay this out there. I mean, we had at one point, we had a turnover rate which was mostly driven by like the entry. It was a lot of it was the entry-level type folks that would come in and then, you know, they would stay for, you know, less than, you know, 3, 4 months and then they would leave. But regardless, our numbers were, We're 25%. 25%. And we had one of our board members say, 25%, huh? You know what that means? That means every 4 years you're turning over your entire company.

Yeah, but that's not true because you're turning over that first-year person.

But, but, but, but statistically, right?

Right.

It's like, it's, it's like basically, you know, theoretically it's— it's like, it's like a new company now. Now, of course, we had people who worked there for 40 years. We had a 40-plus year, you know, multiple 40-plus year employees and folks that were super dedicated and, and a great, like, core of people. But our, our, our retention numbers were, were like, we're way out of whack. And, you know, you know, it's interesting is that, like, we weren't really measuring it, I don't think, uh, the way that we, you know, should have been. And the more that we dug into it It was like we started to break it down by division and we started to break it down by, by, by, um, you know, by, by classification, like what type of employee, what's— and then also by supervisor, you know. So, and that's, that's when we started saying, oh shit, like, okay, this person has like a 10% hit rate and this, this, this person over here, I mean, Everybody's sticking around with them. What is that telling us about the leaders of the crew? And when people started to see their name next to it, that's when things started to, I think, start to move in a more positive direction with us. I'm curious, like, of the clients that you work with, like, how do they How do they think about that number and, and, and how do they work to, you know, get, get that down?

Yeah. So there are different ways to calculate it, right? So you can get into a conversation as well. But one of, you know, obviously CW Matthews, we both know them well. You know, they do their annual safety awards and there's safety incentives and bonuses or whatever. And there's a lot of permutations of that. But It's interesting that the crew leaders who have the best safety year after year after year after year also have no turnover. And the guy who never gets on the stage has high turnover. You know, what more data do you need? But what, what I think the best of class companies are doing, first of all, clearly articulated value statement. And it's not just I'm going to offend some people here, safety, quality, integrity. You know, that's looked good on a website 30 years ago because an MBA said you need it. But what I mean is, and embedded in this are safety, quality, integrity, but, you know, companies that add a little bit more granularity to it, Sargent does a great job. CW, Stracke, Scotty's, Emery Sapp have their 5 Ps. I mean, These are folks that everyone has heard about before, and there's a reason. So it starts with values, which are foundational and directional. In other words, we know who we are. And values only have value if you value them. Speaking at World of Concrete this year, and I asked the audience, how many of you have values? Most of the hands go up. How many of your people know the values? And the guy in the front row said, yes, we know it in the boardroom, but I don't know if they The rest of the company knows it. All right, that's a foul. But then the next piece of it is, which means we're reinforcing them along the way, we're integrating them into huddle talks and all of that stuff. If your values have value, they will have value. If you don't value them, they don't have value. The next thing is frontline leadership training. We know that that frontline leader, we've always talked, we've already talked about them a little bit. Great leadership, great people, great systems, great process that they, these folks are being given the skills to supervise, not lead, not manage, but supervise, uh, in a way they've never done before. Uh, some of it is you got youngsters stepping up, some of you got oldsters trying to need to learn the new way. Uh, and that is probably the next piece of it. And then I would add a robust succession planning process. In other words, We're intentionally looking at bench strength and having those conversations, not intuitively, not yet, because here's the thing, Tristan, you're pretty good and you're on the succession plan for 6 different people in the company. That doesn't work. So having an intentional conversation about succession planning. Now, as we think about the listeners on this call, some of them are $20 million company and some of them are $2 billion companies. So you got to right-size all this. Um, but conceptually it's all the same.

Um, what's, um, what would you say is the most common mistake that you see contractors, um, that you see contractors make? Like, if you, like, what's the most common pattern where you're like, oh man, I'm kind of, I'm tired of seeing this.

Um, rework and downtime, uh, which by the way are more management and systems things and construction process things and leadership things. Um, but we're leaving so much money on the bottom line, uh, leaving so much money and not flowing it to the bottom line. So if I've got an engaged team who care, we go back to your example, or example of you got 120 feet, but it was wrong and we got to rip it out. Whereas if I have somebody who's engaged, who at 10 feet says, hey boss, I don't think we're getting that weld done correctly, or whatever it is, that, that could, you know, preclude that. But good is the enemy of great. And so many contractors are, they're making money, they're fine. But the difference between fine and superior is lost time, whether it's rework or downtime. And I think that's one of the biggest mistakes that most self-performing contractors make. They're doing fine, and fine is the enemy of fantastic. Yeah.

And I think the other thing too is that there's, there are a wave of, of, of, I would say like contractors that were maybe started within the last, you know, it was started probably post-2008.

Yeah.

And they may not have been through. The hard times and seeing, you know, what it's like to go through, you know, a recession, uh, and when it was— I mean, when it was hard. I mean, I'm, I'm sure you remember that, like, basically, like, there was private work went from, like, you know, 100 to zero, basically. And, you know, people were— it was, it was tough. And I think anybody who's ever been through one of those experiences knows how important it is to never like rest on your laurels as a contractor and to always be growing and always be, you know, learning. And that's also just the competitive nature of construction too, right? Because if you're not, then somebody else is, is going to be stepping in, you know.

So this gets into another mistake I think people are making these days. And if you were around in '08, you downsized, you, you had to fire people. And most humans I know, that's a really painful experience. So the, the, the, the reaction to that, the overreaction to that is don't overstaff. Okay. But that doesn't mean understaff. And when you look at operations leaders, whether it's field or office these days, they are working a lot of hours. 55, 65, 75 hours just to get it done. And yeah, they may be compensated for that, they may be rewarded for that, but we also do have one of the highest suicide rates in the entire nation in this thing called construction. So what are we doing from a wellness, quality of life perspective? And yeah, people are making money, and you'll hear Aaron Witt say it, you know, yeah, you can be a tradesman making $120,000 a year, but you're working two jobs because you're working 80 hours a week. So understanding that dimension of it, uh, that maybe that requires an extra body or two, or maybe that requires a different way of going at it, um, you know, dare I say flex time. Oh my God, that's— okay, no, there's what, you know, maybe you got an early start crew and a late start crew, um, or maybe you're working 4 12s instead of, you know, 512s or what. These solutions are out there right now. People are figuring this out. And the net of that is people look around and go, you know something, I'm going to stay with your company because I'm not going to go to that company, or I'm going to come to your company because they're working me like a dog at this company. So there's more to it than money. And people think money is a motivator. For some people it is. For some people it's not.

Yeah, I think people generally in construction probably over-index on the dollar when it's usually about like feeling valued and feeling appreciated and also feeling like I'm a part of something that's like really cool and really like something that's, you know, bigger than me. I like to tie this back to kind of like Chick-fil-A. Right? I go to Chick-fil-A, I walk in there, I get greeted, uh, and they have like the orders ready. And if it's not ready, they're like, hey, we're working on it, uh, is there something I can get you, you know, while you wait? Um, there's like, the tables are cleaned, like they don't, this, the stuff doesn't sit there for more than like a minute. Somebody's coming by, they're adequately staffed. The bathrooms are, it's like Buc-ee's, right? You go to the Buc-ee's, Bucky's bathrooms, I mean, are incredibly clean and it's because they have people that are assigned to go make sure that it is that way consistently across the entire country. So like they're adequately staffed and they also compensate, you know, their, their people well. And it's a place where you can, you can make a really good, you can make a really good living. And, and construction, I think, is, is that. But there's a, we still had a lot of work to do to fill, to fill the gap. To your point that you said earlier, I think this is really smart. It's like, it just feels like it's less about like, can we get people? I think we can. It's, can we keep people? Right?

Yeah. I mean, people are hiring every single day, which would suggest there's bodies out there. Uh, or is it that same guy working between 5 companies over 5 years? But You know, there's people hiring, there's people coming in. But we go back to that turnover number. Let's, let's, let's start tracking that and aggressively lowering it. No, by the way, even the companies that do all of this stuff, the demographics are against you. So you're going to get people that visit and go, yeah, this isn't for me. There is going to be higher turnover in year one. That's just it. But that doesn't mean you shouldn't Be investing in culture. I've never seen a company— let's, you know, let's look at Chick-fil-A. I've never seen a company that cut its way to success. You invest your way to success.

I would agree. There's so many other examples. Costco is another one. They, they pay their people, you know, they generally have a few less, but they pay their people way, way, way more, you know, than, than, than other folks in the industry.

Yeah. So let's talk about Chick-fil-A. So we visited them a couple, couple of months last year.

Tell me.

Part of, part of our Advanced Leadership Program. We went to headquarters. We had very high-level access. And here's an example. So first of all, owner-operators at the local level, not franchisees. So you have that owner in the store. That's a big difference for sure. But let's go to corporate where they have, you know, thousands of people and They recognized that during COVID they had hired a lot of people and many of them had never been to a restaurant because it wasn't legal to go to restaurants. Whereas traditionally there was this initiation orientation where even, you know, your accounting person would go to a restaurant for a while. That had gone away for obvious reasons. And they recognized they needed, I'll call it a back-to-basics approach. And they created a program to re-instill the values, re-instill the connection with operations, you know, the field. Oh my, don't we have a field office chasm in construction? That, so they, they said, hey, you know something, we've gotten away from who we are. We need to do something to get to to who we are. They spent a boatload of money on it, but now they, they got that alignment again. And when you look at leadership in its direction, alignment, and commitment, alignment is always the lowest number. Uh, so, you know, this whole culture thing doesn't happen by accident. Um, when you look at your equipment fleet, you maintain the heck out of it. There's policies, procedures, and timelines, and You know, we're going to pull oil at 250 hours, whatever it is. We do none of that with our people. Yeah.

I, I, Chick-fil-A, we could, we could have a little episode about Chick-fil-A. I'm so fascinated with, uh, with, with the way that they operate and, uh, consistency. So it's, it's a cool, cool organization.

Take a look at a book called The Founder's Mentality.

The Founder's Mentality. All right.

I will, uh, they, they cite it. It's about how do you grow? How do you become complex? And how do you retain? The, you know, the secret sauce, so to speak. They referred to it.

Well, that actually leads me to the question that I like to ask every guest. So aside from The Founder's Mentality, what are you reading or what have you read recently that you really like?

When are we going to get to the part about you and I disagree on things?

You know, that's a good question. We can do that. I think One thing that I had asked you is, uh, or that I, I had said that I think it's important for somebody who estimates and somebody who is responsible for project managers to estimate a job every once in a while and to build a job every once in a while. Um, because, uh, I think it keeps you sharp. And, and I think, uh, if you know how to use the tools, like, you know the right questions to ask, and the further away you get from that, Um, I think the more disconnected you, you can get. So I'm not saying you bid every single job, but I am saying like you should stay sharp. And I've seen, I know people who continue to do this every year and who I believe are like operating at the top of their game. Um, and you kind of pushed back on that and you were like, well, like what about giving the, you know, the, the next gen, you know, opportunity. So, uh, that's the kind of just, this is great.

I love this. So broader context for everybody. This was a LinkedIn exchange where we get 1,100 characters to debate the world. And specifically you were talking about a chief estimator doing takeoff and estimating and that kind of thing. And, and I pushed back and said, do your own job first. Uh, that's not what he's getting paid to do. I think we're more in alignment than, than, than we might, uh, think, but let me, let me take it to the field. When there's a superintendent or a foreman on a machine, he's the highest paid operator we have. He's not getting paid to run the machine. So when I hear Chief Estimator doing takeoff, I hear the same thing. Interesting. Here's the pushback we're going to get. Wally, I wouldn't do anything I wouldn't ask my people to do. I'm showing respect. I'm being a role model by hopping on that machine. Or doing a takeoff? Yes, you absolutely are. How often? So if you say to me, in your case, you know, as an estimator, I want to get in and do nuts and bolts just to make sure I'm fresh and I haven't lost my edge, that's great. But if you're doing it on a regular basis, you're not, quote, doing your own job first. Let's take it down to the field. If you're an operator, a superintendent foreman and you hop on a machine because there's nobody else to run that machine, or it's in a confined space, uh, you know, urban area, and you're like, hey, this is really risky, I have no problem with that. Uh, or maybe there's new machine controls and you want to learn how to use that machine, I have no problem with that. Well, when you are regularly hopping on the machine, quote, whatever that looks like, you're the highest paid operator we have. And what happens is the entire organization sags. So I have a foreman doing operator work. Who's ordering materials for tomorrow? I have a superintendent doing foreman work. Who's looking at cost? I have an assistant project, right? Project. And the entire organization sags. So Chief Estimator, yes, not a problem. Get in and do a takeoff. But if, if you're regularly doing that, who's doing the, the real reviews? You know, looking at the market, not just cost, because that's what junior estimators do. But who's looking at what the competitor did, what the trend is? Who's looking at your platform to say, this actually may be a good thing? Where is the strategic nature of it? It's the exact same thing in finance. We have too many controllers, not enough CFOs. It's the same thing in the shop. We have too many shop managers as opposed to equipment leaders, that kind. We see it. The entire organization sags. And that's not good.

Yeah. So I've, I've seen this on crews. The second, if I ever rolled up on a crew and, and, and a foreman was running like a spinal pipe crew and the foreman was running the hoe, like something's wrong in my opinion. Like, right. Unless like the guy's out, uh, which if he's out, you know, maybe it makes sense, but honestly, there should be a backup person. And I think you've got to build people. You got to cross-train people. It's a very, very, very important thing. Especially on, I mean, on a paving crew, if you have somebody who can run the screed and run the rollers and run the Bobcat, like that's incredibly important. And for you to be like flexible and be able to move people in and out. So I totally, I totally agree on, on, on that point. Um, and I don't think that taking the perspective of like, I'm the only one who can do this is, is, is empowering either for the crew members. Cause they're like, well, What do you mean? Like, you don't trust us? Like, how the heck are we going to learn if you don't let us do it? What I'm referring to is somebody who's been so far disconnected from it that you almost don't really go to them with the hard questions because you're kind of like, no, they're They're too big time for that now, you know.

Well, and here you see, you see it too in the, let's, let's use it in financial modeling for, for, for overhead. Um, we, we used project managers or estimators, you know, used to bid 5 jobs or manage 5 jobs. That's, they could do a $50 million worth of work. I'm making up a number. Yeah. Right. And now they can only run $30 million worth of work. They're soft. They're not as good. Back in my day, we ran $50 million. Yeah, you didn't have all the requirements that you had. You didn't have all the paperwork, all that, you know, in other words, the nature of the work has changed. And these folks that are out of touch are out of touch. Uh, so I think that's an important add to this conversation.

Yeah. And another part of like where this actually, where this part of where this post came from was, um, was I was, I'm reading a book called, uh, The Book of Elon, uh, which is basically, you know, Elon Musk's mostly like interviews and things that he said or written. And part of like how Tesla structures their teams, which is that, you know, the people who are the engineering managers also spend time writing code and stay involved. Now it's maybe, it's closer to like, you know, 80% managing and 20% like doing some of the IC work. But I just, I think it's one of the best pieces of advice that I ever got in construction was like, I wanted to be promoted really badly to project manager when I was a field engineer. And the guy that I worked for was like, pretty much with all due respect, he was like, you're not ready. And he's like, you really need to understand everything about the work and what you're going to be managing so that you know the right questions to ask the new person, you know, that's coming up. And, you know, and in time. I was patient, you know, and stuck with it, and he was a great, you know, mentor to me. Um, I was able, I was able to get there, but I think it is important to like earn that, you know, as you're stepping up in the org, and then also to, to keep your, um, keep your, you know, stay sharp, stay sharp.

So with all due respect, you are never going to know it all. You are never gonna, um, You know, because you were going to go through it in 4 or 5 years and move out. He'd been there for 40 years and going to stay. That next foreman was going to stay. So this, oh man, this gets me going. How long does it take to become competent or proficient as opposed to expert? Look, we need experts, but experts need not be supervisors. Supervisors can be competent in the task. They know what questions to ask., or they know who to ask. But look, yeah, I know Bubba down the road has seen this before. My favorite on this is military guys coming out of combat engineers in the military. He's a sergeant. He's led people. How long before he can run a pipe crew? I think 2 years. Uh, oh no, no, it's got to be 5. No way. He's got it. Really? He's been doing it already. He's been doing it while he's getting shot at. He doesn't have all the answers. He has most of the answers. Yeah, we— or, or she, by the way. Or she.

Yeah, yeah. I've actually seen this with, with, with field managers, you know, a.k.a. most people refer to this as a foreman. I don't know. I don't know what your stance on that is, but, you know, it's, it's when somebody like— we assumed that the person who ran the crew was basically the only one who could because they had been doing it for that long. And then all of a sudden something happens, you know, they mouth off to the wrong person or they step in it and, you know, and they're gone. And I was always— it amazed me at how somebody who hadn't actually been there for that long could actually step in and run the crew and do a better job. And, and it was, it was not because of technical ability. Like, technical ability was freaking irrelevant. It was about their ability to lead people.

And well-led people are the best profit strategy.

Yeah. And, and, and did he have all of this technical, you know, stuff and been around the dirt moving the way that this guy had, you know, and been in the trackhoe for 20 years? No. But, but he was, he was pretty good at getting the crew lined out, and they were— and, and, and that was a, that was a very happy, safe, high-quality, productive crew that could move the hell out of some dirt, um, after the original leader had, you know, had lost.

So absolutely. Yeah.

Yeah. So, well, good. Well, uh, well, that's probably, I think that might be a good, a good, um, you know, stopping point, um, for us. Uh, I'm glad that we got to, uh, respectfully disagree on some things. Uh, so I really appreciate it.

Well, let me, let me, let me answer your question about what am I reading. I think was the question. Uh, I'm kind of nerding out on Normandy again. Uh, we take an advanced leadership program. We graduate there, uh, on a regular basis. I've been there 15 times. Uh, so I'm kind of nerding out on that again, but let's change the question. Uh, and first of all, you got people listening to this podcast. Good on you. Um, I don't care what you're reading or consuming because let's just think. Yeah. But if, if, if you're stagnant— I'm talking about the people listening— if you're stagnant, you're not growing. And if you're growing, you're losing ground. So what are you learning? Uh, is, is— and Mo, by the way, it could be golf, uh, or pickleball. What are you doing to make yourself not one-dimensional? And why does this matter? Because it stimulates brain growth, uh, and that keeps us sharp. And then the other thing I would add is, when are you not reading? And I'm going to tell you, this fills every moment. Boredom is key to creativity and innovation, but it's when we're sitting around and the brain just starts working that we come up with ideas. Uh, and we have filled our downtime with this and we are stifling creativity and innovation with it. So the question here is not what am I reading? It's what am I learning? What am I nerding out on? How am I expanding my brain? How am I creating more connections, neurons, et cetera, so that I continue to be competitive and then profitable, or at least happy as we go forward?

Yeah, growth. If you're not growing, you're dying. Totally.

Pretty much.

So, well, great. Well, Wally, this was really fun. Appreciate you coming on. Thanks for sharing your message. I think it'll be very impactful for our listeners. Where should people find you?

Yeah, I mean, the website is nice, wallyadamczyk.com. If people want to take a leadership capacity assessment of their company, they can go to constructionleadership.com. But as you know, I live on LinkedIn and post there regularly. So I'd invite people to follow me on LinkedIn as well.

Excellent. Excellent. Well, thanks again and really appreciate it. So