Navigating Change in Construction Businesses

To own and run a business is to be in a constant state of change.

The ebb and flow of the market, the growth and contraction of the audience, the rise and fall of the technologies—they’re all phenomena that we expect to some degree—and yet, when these phenomena occur, we’re often surprised, or caught off guard, or uncertain of how we should respond.

It’s as if we expect that the good times will continue to be good and that what got us here will inevitably get us there.

But that’s rarely the case, of course.

What brought us to this level of success is almost never what will get us to the next level of success. Because success, in both life and business, is never linear.

Instead, it’s a mountain range of experiences that we climb and descend, over and over again, sometime fighting to catch our breath, gasping for oxygen, and, other times, pausing to enjoy the majestic view from the sunny peak of contentment.

Which is to say nothing of the fact that the definition of success is constantly changing as well. What constituted success for you a decade ago may not even enter the equation of success today.

Not long ago, a colleague of mine shared a favorite highlight from Michael E. Gerber and Fred G. Parrish’s book, The E-Myth Chief Financial Officer: Why Most Small Businesses Run Out of Money and What to Do About It.

“Remember, there are three kinds of people,” they write, “(1) those who make things happen, (2) those who let things happen, and (3) those who wonder what the hell happened. The people who make things happen are masters of change. The other two are its victims. Which type are you?”

What struck me about this quote was how much I completely disagreed with it.

Thinking of “masters of change” as only one of these three limited descriptors is far too reductive. “Masters of change,” to use the author’s words, aren’t simply one of these types of people; rather, they’re an amalgamation of all three of these types of people.

Making things happen (action) is indeed important, but so is letting things happen (observation) and wondering what the hell happened (reflection).

Running a business demands that action, observation, and reflection be utilized strategically, in copious amounts. What’s more, convincing yourself that you’re the sole engineer of your fate, that you can control all the outcomes, that you can incite the type of change you desire, is to ignore the fundamental nature of change itself, which is that it can be directed but it cannot be controlled.

And yet, just because I understand this intellectually doesn’t mean that I’ve always navigated change gracefully.

Losing our biggest client abruptly and without warning, coming up short on new business pitches, parting ways with longtime employees, posting financial losses two years in a row—these changes, these mistakes, all came with the requisite hand wringing and cursing, but they also came with action, observation, and reflection. In each instance, the result was a new approach to the way we worked and a new path forward.

In the years since I founded Thrive, I’ve reinvented the agency a half-dozen times, and I’m sure I’ll need to reinvent it again. My guess is that you’ve done the same with your business and you’ll need to do it again, too—and probably soon.

Artificial intelligence, the skilled labor shortage, the skills gaps, additive manufacturing—all this, and so much more, is changing the way we work in the blue-collar industries. These technologies are ushering in a fundamental shift that is forcing us to reconsider everything, from the way we work, to the positions for which we hire, to the areas in which we invest.

But circling back around to Gerber and Parish’s idea of becoming masters of change, I’m struck by the fact that it feels like the wrong goal altogether. We don’t need to be masters of change. Instead, we should be shepherds of change or sherpas of change, perhaps even passengers of change.

The reality is that change is coming and change is here. You may know what that change means. You may not. Regardless, the question you need to ask in this moment is the same: How will you respond?

Your answer—as I’m sure you’ve guessed— changes everything.