The Art of War Reflections – Chapter 5 – Use of Energy

Posted on September 23, 2026September 23, 2026 by va.jason.almas@gmail.com

Read 15 min

Five Notes, Limitless Music

Sun Tzu makes a striking point in the fifth chapter of The Art of War, titled The Use of Energy: just five musical notes, or five primary colors, arranged well, can produce limitless combinations. The same principle applies directly to organizing people. A genuinely limited set of core elements, structured with real intention, can produce enormous collective capability, far more than the same people operating without that structure ever could.

The Real Pain: Energy Lost to Disconnection

The real pain is what happens when people are not all moving in the same direction. Energy that could be building momentum toward a shared goal instead gets lost to disconnection, and that lost energy does not simply disappear. It gets consumed by the natural entropy, the steady pull toward disorganization and waste, that is always working against every project, whether anyone is paying attention to it or not.

The Failure Pattern: Individual Gangs Instead of One Team

The failure pattern is crews and departments operating as separate, disconnected units, effectively individual gangs, rather than one genuinely unified force. Without real, deliberate structure and connection, a project’s natural tendency is to fragment into smaller pockets pulling in slightly different directions, each technically working, none of them fully aligned with the others.

A few signs tend to show up when a project’s teams are operating as disconnected units rather than one coordinated force, and they are worth checking honestly:

Different crews or departments can describe their own tasks clearly but struggle to explain how their work connects to the overall project vision.
Information has to be repeated multiple times across different groups because it never reliably flows between them.
Teams feel more like separate, competing units than layers of one connected effort heading toward the same milestones.

This Isn’t About Rigid Hierarchy, It’s About Clear, Connected Structure

Sun Tzu describes a pyramid of command, building from individual soldiers up through progressively larger units, pair, squad, platoon, and beyond, each with its own leader. That language sounds rigid and purely military on the surface. The actual point translates into something far more human and practical: clear layers of genuinely connected leadership, foreman to general foreman to field engineers to superintendents to senior superintendents, each layer actually linked to the ones above and below it, not simply issuing top-down commands.

Five Things Every Team Actually Needs

Here is a practical translation of Sun Tzu’s five notes and five colors, applied directly to building real construction teams. First, genuine connection, foremen and workers actually know and trust each other, not just share a job site. Second, the right balance of complementary skills, drawing on established frameworks like working genius assessments or personality profiles to make sure a team’s strengths actually balance each other rather than duplicate or conflict. Third, the right team size, neither so large that coordination breaks down nor so small that real productivity suffers.

Fourth, real communication and clarity, ensuring each team stays genuinely connected to the larger project vision rather than operating with only a narrow, local view of their own scope. Fifth, genuine accountability to clear, specific goals and targets, so that connection, skill, and communication actually translate into real, measurable progress. From just these five elements, structured well, an enormous range of effective team configurations becomes possible, the same way five notes produce limitless music.

Why It Matters: A More Organized Team Steers the Outcome

This matters because of Sun Tzu’s closing point in this chapter: a skilled leader controls the movement of the opposition rather than being controlled by it. Applied to construction, where the real opposition is waste, variation, and natural entropy, a genuinely well-organized team does not simply survive that constant pull toward disorganization. It actively steers around and outpaces it, staying ahead of decay rather than being dictated by it.

Teach the Framework: Huddles as the Connective Tissue

This is precisely the thinking behind the morning worker huddle as a core practice, informed directly by ideas found in books like The Culture Code and The Proximity Principle. Huddles function as the actual connective tissue linking every layer of a project’s structure, foreman, general foreman, field engineers, superintendents, back to one shared vision and plan. Without that consistent connection, even a technically well-organized hierarchy on paper can quietly fragment into isolated pockets of activity, each doing their own job well while the collective energy of the whole team leaks away.

A few practical questions help check whether a project’s teams are genuinely connected or quietly operating in isolation:

Can someone on any given crew clearly explain how their work today connects to the project’s larger milestones?
Does information actually flow reliably between different layers of the team, or does it require constant repetition and rework to reach everyone?
Would each team score well across all five factors, connection, complementary skills, right size, clear communication, and genuine accountability, or does one of them consistently fall short?

Turning This Into Daily Practice

Audit your own project’s teams honestly against these five factors: real connection, the right balance of complementary skills, appropriate team size, genuine communication and clarity, and real accountability to specific goals. Use huddles deliberately and consistently as the mechanism that keeps every layer of the organization genuinely linked to one shared, visible plan, rather than assuming a good org chart alone will keep everyone aligned.

Connecting It Back to Building People, Not Just Projects

None of this happens without leaders willing to build genuine structure and connection deliberately, rather than assuming a project will naturally stay organized on its own. Building that kind of intentional, connected energy across every layer of a team is exactly what allows a project to outpace the natural entropy working against it every single day.

If your project needs superintendent coaching, project support, or leadership development, Elevate Construction can help your field teams build the kind of genuine structure and connection that turns individual effort into real, unified momentum.

The Challenge

So here is the challenge worth carrying onto your next project: check your teams honestly against the five factors, connection, complementary skills, right size, real communication, and genuine accountability, and see where the energy is actually leaking out. As Sun Tzu put it, a skilled leader controls the movement of the opposition instead of being controlled by it. On we go.

FAQ

What does Sun Tzu’s “five notes, limitless music” idea mean applied to construction teams?

It means that a small number of core organizational elements, well structured, can produce a vast range of effective team configurations. Rather than needing endless complexity, getting a handful of fundamentals genuinely right unlocks far more capability than most teams realize.

What are the five things every construction team needs, according to this framework?

Genuine connection between foremen and workers, the right balance of complementary skills, the appropriate team size, real communication and clarity linking the team to the larger project vision, and genuine accountability to specific goals and targets.

Why does Sun Tzu’s “pyramid of command” matter for modern construction leadership?

It describes building clear, connected layers of leadership, from individual workers up through foremen, superintendents, and beyond, so that coordinated action remains possible even when different parts of a team cannot communicate directly in the moment. The key is that each layer stays genuinely linked to the ones above and below it, not simply issuing commands downward.

How do huddles connect to this chapter’s concept of “energy”?

Huddles serve as the practical connective tissue that keeps every layer of a project’s organization genuinely linked to one shared plan and vision. Without that consistent connection, even a well-organized structure on paper can quietly fragment into isolated pockets of activity that lose collective momentum.

What does it mean to “control the enemy’s movements instead of being controlled by them” in a construction context?

Since the real opposition in construction is waste, variation, and natural disorganization, a genuinely well-organized team does not simply react to that constant pull toward decay. It actively stays ahead of it, steering the project’s outcome rather than being dictated by the entropy working against it.

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How to Run a Trade Partner Meeting

Posted on September 23, 2026September 23, 2026 by va.jason.almas@gmail.com

Read 17 min

“Just a Lot of Me Talking”

A recurring question shows up constantly from superintendents and project engineers: I follow a template for my weekly trade partner meeting, but I never walk out feeling like there was real collaboration. It ends up being mostly me talking. That frustration is common, and it rarely comes from a missing agenda template. It comes from what actually gets discussed once everyone is in the room.

The Real Pain: A Meeting Where Everyone Already Knows What’s Coming

The real pain is simple: trade partners usually already know when they are planning to do their work. A meeting that spends most of its time repeating scheduling information people already had access to is naturally going to feel flat, one-directional, and forgettable. If the meeting only covers what people already know, there is nothing left to actually discuss.

The Failure Pattern: Telling Instead of Asking, When Instead of How

The failure pattern is running the meeting as a broadcast rather than a genuine discussion, telling trade partners what is happening rather than asking them to explain what they are doing so the whole room can actually coordinate around it. It also shows up as a focus on when things happen, rather than how they will actually get done, which is exactly where the real coordination problems and roadblocks actually live.

A few topics belong in every trade partner meeting as a genuine minimum, and they are worth naming directly:

Safety, quality standards, pre-installation meetings, and first-in-place mock-ups, since installing things right the first time is what actually protects schedule and flow.
The arrival, staging, and ongoing maintenance of materials, tracked specifically rather than assumed.
Roadblocks, discussed openly and by name, not glossed over or left for a private conversation later.

This Isn’t About a Better Template, It’s About What You Actually Discuss

None of this means the agenda template itself is the problem. A well-organized template still fails if the actual content of the conversation stays shallow, repeating information people already had rather than surfacing the genuine problems and coordination questions that only get solved by talking them through together.

Complaining Trade Partners Are Gold Coins

Here is a mindset shift worth adopting directly. A foreman who is constantly bringing up problems and roadblocks is not a nuisance to manage, as long as the behavior stays respectful, they are handing over exactly the information needed to actually protect the schedule. Treat that complaining as valuable, not annoying, closer to a slot machine that keeps paying out useful information than a headache to shut down. Every roadblock surfaced early is one that gets removed before it actually costs real time and money.

Why It Matters: Visuals Matter More Than the Meeting Itself

This matters because real preparation determines whether a meeting has anything genuine to react to. Two screens matter directly, the schedule visible on one side, the model or drawings visible on the other, so trade partners can physically point to exactly where and how their work connects to everyone else’s. A conference room genuinely designed around visuals, roadblock tracking maps, a procurement log, sequence maps, a delivery board, all visible and current, gives a team something concrete to actually discuss.

Just as important, the weekly work plan itself should already be pre-filled and sent out to trade partners a few days ahead of the meeting, pulled directly from the Takt plan and already coordinated in advance. Building the plan live, from scratch, during the meeting wastes the room’s time and leaves little space for the real conversation that actually needs to happen.

Teach the Framework: The Actual Meeting Structure

A real, working structure starts with genuine preparation, at least thirty minutes beforehand, and opens with real energy rather than a flat, hesitant start. From there, two to four genuine shout-outs set a positive tone before anything else happens. A lightning round follows, giving every person in the room thirty to sixty seconds to share a quick update and name what is actually on their mind, with topics noted and prioritized so the meeting stays on schedule and the most pressing issues get real time.

From there, the group gets anchored back to the actual Takt plan and real project milestones, not simply what individual trades would prefer to do on their own timeline. That anchoring matters, because real, healthy pressure toward a shared deadline is exactly what makes people more willing to surface genuine roadblocks rather than quietly hoping they resolve themselves. A quick review of the previous week and current progress follows, then the group walks through the already-prepared weekly work plan together, using the visuals directly, pointing to the schedule and the drawings to talk through where and how the work actually connects.

The real engine of the meeting comes next: going zone by zone through the roadblock tracking map and asking directly what will prevent the team from hitting the plan. This is where trades actually start talking, offering ideas, pushing back, and coordinating with each other in real time, because the conversation has shifted from information they already knew to problems they still need to solve together. The meeting closes with a purpose-driven reflection, not a generic “what did you like” check-in, but a direct question: did this meeting accomplish what it was actually meant to accomplish, a real weekly work plan, real roadblocks surfaced and assigned, real collaboration. Whatever comes out of that reflection should go out to the team immediately, not hours or days later.

A few practical signs confirm a trade partner meeting has genuinely become collaborative rather than a one-way briefing:

Trade partners are pointing directly at visuals, the schedule, the model, the roadblock map, rather than just listening passively.
Roadblocks get named specifically and assigned for follow-up, rather than mentioned vaguely and left unresolved.
People leave with real information they did not have going in, rather than a repeat of what they already knew.

Turning This Into Daily Practice

Build in real preparation time before the meeting and a genuine buffer, at least thirty minutes, afterward for follow-up calls, emails, and schedule updates. Without that buffer, promised follow-through quietly disappears, and the meeting’s credibility erodes over time. Once this structure becomes stable and reliable, layer in genuine culture and enjoyment on top of it, real shout-outs, some lighthearted moments, a reason for people to actually look forward to showing up. A serious, high-stakes meeting and a genuinely engaging one are not mutually exclusive, and treating them as opposites is a mistake worth avoiding directly.

The clearest measure of success is simple: when a trade partner sees this meeting on their calendar, do they feel like it is worth their hour, or do they dread it. That single reaction reveals more about whether the meeting is actually working than any agenda template ever could.

Connecting It Back to Building People, Not Just Projects

None of this happens without leaders willing to prepare seriously, shift real conversation toward genuine problem-solving, and treat trade partner input as valuable information rather than an inconvenience. Building that kind of meeting culture is exactly what turns a weekly obligation into one of the most productive hours of a project’s entire week.

If your project needs superintendent coaching, project support, or leadership development, Elevate Construction can help your field teams build the kind of trade partner meetings that people actually want to attend, and that actually move the project forward.

The Challenge

So here is the challenge worth carrying into your next trade partner meeting: shift the conversation from what everyone already knows to the roadblocks nobody has said out loud yet, and watch how much more the room actually talks. As Jason put it plainly, “Problems are not a problem, we want all roadblocks to the surface.” On we go.

FAQ

Why do so many trade partner meetings feel like one person just talking the whole time?

Trade partners usually already know when their work is scheduled, so a meeting that mostly repeats that information leaves little room for genuine discussion. Real collaboration happens when the meeting shifts toward how the work will actually get done and what roadblocks stand in the way.

Why does Tony Eisenhut’s advice to “ask, don’t tell” matter so much in these meetings?

Asking trade partners to explain what they are doing, rather than telling them what is happening, keeps the whole room actively coordinating rather than passively receiving information. This helps prevent stacking, out-of-sequence work, and coordination problems that only surface through genuine discussion.

Why should a complaining foreman or trade partner be seen as valuable rather than annoying?

Someone consistently raising problems and roadblocks is handing over exactly the information a team needs to protect its schedule and avoid costly surprises later. As long as the behavior stays respectful, that input is worth genuinely appreciating rather than dismissing.

Why does visual preparation matter more than the meeting agenda itself?

A well-prepared room, with a visible schedule, model, and roadblock tracking map, gives trade partners something concrete to point to and discuss directly, rather than relying on abstract verbal updates. Without that visual foundation, conversation tends to stay shallow and disconnected from the real coordination work that needs to happen.

What is a better way to close a trade partner meeting than asking what people liked or didn’t like?

Asking directly whether the meeting accomplished its actual purpose, a completed weekly work plan, real roadblocks surfaced and assigned, genuine collaboration, produces far more useful reflection than a generic satisfaction question. Whatever comes out of that reflection should be acted on and communicated immediately, not left for later.

If you want to learn more we have:

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The Art of War Reflections – Chapter 4 – Tactical Dispositions

Posted on September 23, 2026September 23, 2026 by va.jason.almas@gmail.com

Read 16 min

“There Goes Jason Again”

On one university project, exposed concrete stair tower walls had formwork hanging off the edge of the building, ten to fifteen feet above a sidewalk and an adjacent road with a light rail line running alongside it. In nearly every team meeting, the same risk got named directly: that stair tower, that formwork, the real danger of a tool, a nail, or debris falling onto the road below.

The superintendent and project manager took it seriously. A lot of the rest of the team eventually started rolling their eyes: there goes Jason again. But walking the site regularly kept turning up the same real, specific problems worth correcting: planks not properly secured, gaps between the base and the toe boards, snow fencing that was not fully up. The job was going well overall, clean, safe, organized, on schedule, profitable. None of that made the risk any less real.

The Real Pain: “Delays and Mistakes Happen in the Real World”

A common pushback shows up constantly in training: Jason, this is all great in theory, but in the real world, delays and mistakes happen. That statement is true. It is also, on its own, an incomplete way of thinking about risk, because it treats all variation as equally unavoidable, when a large amount of it is actually preventable.

The Failure Pattern: Confusing “Some Variation Is Inevitable” With “Nothing Is Controllable”

The failure pattern is letting the existence of genuinely unpredictable variation become an excuse to stop controlling the variation that is actually preventable. In reality, tightly controlling what genuinely can be controlled is exactly what frees up the energy, focus, and morale needed to handle real, inevitable surprises well when they eventually show up. A team constantly firefighting problems that could have been prevented has nothing left in reserve for the problems that genuinely could not have been.

A few signs tend to show up when a team has confused “some things are unpredictable” with “nothing is worth controlling,” and they are worth checking honestly:

Preventable mistakes get waved off with “that’s just construction,” rather than being genuinely addressed and corrected.
A team feels perpetually exhausted and demoralized, with no sense of consistent wins in the areas that are actually within their control.
A known, named risk keeps recurring without any real corrective action, simply because “it hasn’t caused a real problem yet.”

This Isn’t About Being a Pessimist, It’s About Productive Paranoia

None of this is doom-and-gloom thinking, or a refusal to celebrate real progress and genuine wins. It is a specific, deliberate discipline: staying alert to real risk especially when things are going well, rather than assuming smooth progress means nothing can go wrong. That discipline has a name worth using directly: productive paranoia, the healthy, ongoing habit of taking real risks seriously precisely because a project is currently going well, not despite it.

A 98% Chance of Nothing, and a 100% Chance of Going Out of Business

Here is a useful way to think about risk that genuinely changes decisions. In a recent contract negotiation, a lawyer advised that a particular clause carried roughly a ninety-eight percent chance of never causing a real problem. That framing sounds reassuring on its own. The more useful framing is this: there is a ninety-eight percent chance that nothing happens, but a genuine risk that the remaining two percent could mean the entire business goes under.

Low probability does not mean low priority when the consequence is severe enough. This same logic applies directly to a hanging piece of formwork above a public road, the odds of something actually falling might be genuinely low on any single day, but the consequence if it happens is serious enough to demand real, ongoing attention regardless of how unlikely it feels.

Why It Matters: Complacency After a Win Is Still a Risk

This matters because of a direct warning worth taking seriously: a comfortable, easy victory is not automatically a mark of real skill, and the true reasons behind any success are not always fully visible in the moment. A project running smoothly can create exactly the kind of ego and complacency that allows a real risk to go unaddressed simply because nothing bad has happened yet.

“We’re fine, it’s not a big deal” is precisely the wrong posture, even, and especially, when a project genuinely is going well. Confidence built on current success rather than ongoing vigilance is fragile in exactly the moments it matters most.

Teach the Framework: Measure, Estimate, Calculate, Compare

The practical discipline worth building directly is a real risk and opportunity register. Rather than guessing or simply hoping a known risk resolves itself, real risks get measured, their potential cost and probability estimated, the actual exposure calculated, and the whole picture compared honestly against the project’s current plan and real chances of success. This is not a passive, one-time exercise. It is an ongoing habit of quantifying real risk rather than relying on gut feeling or optimism alone.

This is exactly what Sun Tzu means when he says a victorious army wins its victories before ever seeking battle. Outcomes are largely decided during preparation and planning, not improvised successfully in the moment through sheer effort or good luck.

A few practical steps build a genuine risk and opportunity register rather than a symbolic one:

Name specific, real risks directly and repeatedly, even when doing so makes you the person who “always brings that up.”
Estimate the actual cost and probability of each named risk, rather than relying on a vague sense of how likely it feels.
Revisit and update the register regularly, especially during stretches when the project is genuinely going well and complacency becomes more tempting.

Turning This Into Daily Practice

Identify your own project’s version of that stair tower, the specific, real risk that becomes easy to overlook precisely because everything else is going smoothly. Keep naming it directly and consistently, even if it means being the person who repeats the same warning in meeting after meeting. That consistency, not a single dramatic intervention, is what actually prevents real harm.

Connecting It Back to Building People, Not Just Projects

None of this happens without leaders willing to stay genuinely alert to real risk, even when doing so feels repetitive or unwelcome to a team that is otherwise feeling good about their progress. Building that kind of productive paranoia directly into a project’s culture is exactly what protects people and outcomes long after the easy confidence of a smooth stretch has worn off.

If your project needs superintendent coaching, project support, or leadership development, Elevate Construction can help your field teams build the kind of real risk management discipline that wins the battle before it ever has to be fought.

The Challenge

So here is the challenge worth carrying onto your next project: name your project’s real, specific risk directly, and keep naming it consistently, even when things are going well and nobody wants to hear about it anymore. As Sun Tzu put it, “A victorious army wins its victories before seeking battle. An army destined to defeat fights in the hope of winning.” On we go.

FAQ

What is the difference between preventable and unpreventable variation?

Preventable variation includes mistakes, risks, and problems that real planning and diligence can actually avoid, while unpreventable variation includes genuinely unpredictable events outside anyone’s control. Tightly controlling the preventable kind is what preserves the energy and focus needed to handle the unpreventable kind well when it eventually happens.

What does “productive paranoia” mean in a construction context?

It means staying alert to real, specific risks even, and especially, when a project is going well, rather than assuming smooth progress means nothing can go wrong. This discipline helps catch and correct genuine hazards before they cause real harm, rather than after.

Why does a low-probability risk still deserve serious attention?

When the potential consequence is severe enough, even a small probability of it happening carries real weight, since the cost of being wrong once can outweigh the comfort of being right most of the time. A ninety-eight percent chance nothing goes wrong still leaves a genuine risk worth planning for if the two percent outcome would be catastrophic.

Why is complacency after a successful stretch of a project considered dangerous?

A smooth, easy run of success is not automatically evidence of great skill, and it can create exactly the kind of overconfidence that allows a real, known risk to go unaddressed. Sun Tzu’s warning is that the true reasons behind success are not always fully visible, which makes ongoing vigilance essential even during a genuinely strong stretch.

What is a risk and opportunity register, and why does it matter?

It is a practical tool for systematically measuring, estimating, calculating, and comparing real risks and opportunities on a project, rather than relying on guesswork or hope. Keeping this register current, especially during periods when a project feels like it is going smoothly, helps ensure that real risks stay visible and actively managed rather than quietly forgotten.

If you want to learn more we have:

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The Art of War Reflections – Chapter 3 – Attack by Strategy

Posted on September 23, 2026September 23, 2026 by va.jason.almas@gmail.com

Read 15 min

Win Without Fighting

Sun Tzu’s third chapter of The Art of War makes a point worth sitting with directly: real victory is not measured by how much destruction you cause. The actual goal is to subdue the opposition through genuine strategy, ideally without ever needing to fight directly at all. That idea translates almost perfectly into construction leadership, where the real enemy, waste, bad behavior, toxic culture, bad process, rarely gets defeated through a direct, head-on confrontation.

The Real Pain: Confronting Toxic Behavior Head-On Rarely Works

The real pain is the natural instinct to go straight at a difficult person the moment their behavior becomes a problem, a foreman who is not bought in, a team member spreading negativity, someone actively undermining the culture you are trying to build. That instinct feels satisfying in the moment. It very often backfires, entrenching the person deeper into their position rather than actually changing anything.

The Failure Pattern: Winning the Argument, Losing the War

The failure pattern shows up clearly in a real story worth telling directly. After a heated conference room confrontation with a foreman, one leader walked away feeling like he had clearly won the argument. A colleague pulled him aside afterward and told him plainly: you lost today. Not only had he lost that foreman’s respect, but that foreman would never again go the extra mile for him. Winning the argument had cost him something far more valuable than the argument itself.

A few signs tend to show up when direct confrontation is not actually working as a strategy, and they are worth checking honestly:

A difficult team member becomes more entrenched in their position after a direct confrontation, rather than less.
Cooperation and goodwill from that person, and often from people watching the interaction, noticeably decline afterward.
The same conflict keeps recurring in different forms, even after being “won” in the moment.

This Isn’t About Manipulation, It’s About Shaping Culture on Purpose

None of what follows is a cynical or manipulative tactic aimed at secretly undermining someone. It is the deliberate, intentional building of a genuinely positive culture, strong enough that toxic behavior becomes unpopular entirely on its own, without ever requiring a personal attack on the individual behind it.

Encircling Without Confronting

Here is the actual tactic worth understanding directly, one Sun Tzu calls separating the enemy from its allies. Instead of going straight at a difficult person, the more effective approach builds the surrounding environment deliberately. In worker and foreman huddles, correct principles get taught consistently and positively. Good behavior gets genuinely praised, sometimes even recognized directly to that person’s own company leadership. Clear standards get stated plainly and calmly: on this job site, we do this, and we do not do that, without ever pointing directly at any one individual.

Over time, this approach isolates toxic behavior by contrast rather than confrontation. The behavior itself becomes visibly out of step with everything being reinforced and celebrated around it, and the person behind it eventually faces a real choice: genuinely change, quietly comply, or leave. None of those outcomes required a single direct fight to achieve.

Why It Matters: An Angry Leader Loses Even When They “Win”

This matters because of a story tied to Sun Tzu’s own teaching about emotional control. An emperor commanding a hundred thousand troops once requested wine from an opposing general as custom dictated, and received a pot of urine instead, a deliberate insult. Enraged, he attacked the city immediately. Within thirty days, more than half his army was dead.

The lesson is direct: a leader’s job is to remain in control of their own emotions, and their team’s emotions, especially in the exact moments when provocation feels strongest. Reactive decisions made in anger are rarely good decisions, no matter how justified the anger might feel in the moment.

Teach the Framework: Build the Culture That Makes Bad Behavior Impossible to Sustain

The actual mechanism behind this strategy is consistency. Regularly reinforcing the right behaviors, publicly and genuinely, combined with calmly and clearly articulating real standards, creates a social environment where toxic behavior increasingly stands out rather than blending in. This approach is slower than a direct confrontation. It is also far more durable, because it changes the actual social dynamics around a problem rather than simply winning one isolated argument.

A few practical steps help apply this strategy directly, without ever requiring a personal confrontation:

Use regular huddles to consistently reinforce correct principles and genuinely recognize good behavior, publicly and specifically.
State clear standards calmly and generally, “on this job site, we do this,” rather than singling out any individual directly.
Recognize good behavior to a person’s own leadership or company when appropriate, reinforcing the contrast between supported and unsupported behavior.

Turning This Into Daily Practice

Build the habit of using huddles and everyday interactions to consistently reinforce the culture you actually want, rather than saving your energy for confrontations after something has already gone wrong. Resist the instinct to directly confront someone in the heat of a frustrating moment, and ask instead whether the more effective path is building the surrounding culture strong enough that the behavior isolates itself naturally over time.

This same principle applies to how a team gets organized around a shared plan. In one training exercise, teams that laid their planning materials out visually on the ground, where everyone could see and contribute, consistently outperformed teams where one person held all the information and simply issued directions. Unified purpose, built around something everyone can see and rally behind, works the same way against toxic behavior that it does against poor planning: it wins through genuine alignment, not through force.

Connecting It Back to Building People, Not Just Projects

None of this happens without leaders willing to trade the short-term satisfaction of winning a direct confrontation for the slower, far more durable work of building a genuinely strong culture. That patience is exactly what allows toxic behavior to lose its footing naturally, rather than simply going underground after one heated argument.

If your project needs superintendent coaching, project support, or leadership development, Elevate Construction can help your field teams build the kind of strong, positive culture that makes toxic behavior genuinely unsustainable, without requiring constant direct conflict to maintain it.

The Challenge

So here is the challenge worth carrying into your next difficult team situation: before confronting someone directly, ask whether building the surrounding culture, consistently and patiently, might actually be the stronger, more lasting strategy. As one colleague put it after a hard-won argument, “You lost today.” On we go.

FAQ

Why does directly confronting a toxic team member often make the situation worse?

Direct confrontation can cause a person to become more entrenched in their position rather than genuinely reconsidering their behavior, and it often damages goodwill and cooperation even when the confrontation is technically “won.” A quieter, culture-based approach tends to produce more lasting change.

What does “separate the enemy from its allies” mean in a construction leadership context?

It means building a strong, positive culture around a difficult situation rather than attacking the individual directly, through consistent huddles, genuine recognition of good behavior, and clearly stated standards. Over time, this isolates toxic behavior by contrast, making it increasingly unsustainable without ever requiring a direct personal confrontation.

Why is emotional control so important for a leader dealing with provocation?

Reactive decisions made in anger tend to produce worse outcomes than calm, deliberate responses, even when the initial provocation feels completely justified. A leader who stays in control of their own emotions, and helps their team do the same, avoids costly mistakes driven by momentary frustration.

What does it mean to “win the argument but lose the war”?

It refers to situations where someone technically wins a direct confrontation but permanently damages the relationship, trust, or future cooperation of the person they argued with. True success often requires prioritizing the long-term relationship and culture over the short-term satisfaction of winning a single exchange.

How does building a strong team culture help address individual behavior problems?

When positive behavior is consistently reinforced and clear standards are calmly stated, toxic or unsupportive behavior becomes increasingly visible and unsupported within that environment. This creates natural pressure for genuine change without requiring ongoing direct conflict to maintain the standard.

If you want to learn more we have:

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The Art of War Reflections – Chapter 2 – Waging War

Posted on September 23, 2026September 23, 2026 by va.jason.almas@gmail.com

Read 17 min

A Good Plan, Violently Executed

General Patton is famously credited with saying a good plan violently executed today is better than a perfect plan next week. That line gets misread constantly, as if it means charge forward with no real preparation at all. It says the opposite. There was still a plan. The point was that once real preparation exists, speed and decisiveness matter enormously, and waiting for perfection costs far more than it saves.

Sun Tzu makes the same point in the second chapter of The Art of War, titled Waging War. Once an army, or a construction project, has genuinely been sent into action, speed and decisiveness become essential. The waiting, the hesitation, the second-guessing, all of it costs momentum, morale, and ultimately, the outcome itself.

The Real Pain: Never Having to Send for Second Provisions

The real pain shows up whenever a project starts before everything is genuinely in place. Sun Tzu’s warning here is direct: victory depends on solid preparation ahead of time, specifically so an army never has to send for second provisions mid-campaign. In construction terms, that means having the equipment, materials, tools, people, and information genuinely ready before work begins, enough to actually complete the work in real one-piece flow.

Starting before that readiness exists forces interruptions, second trips, and breaks in momentum that compound quickly. Every one of those interruptions costs real schedule, creates real roadblocks, and pulls a team further from the flow it should have had from the start.

The Failure Pattern: Treasure Hunts Instead of Flow

The failure pattern shows up as constant, low-grade scavenger hunting throughout the day. Picture a worker arriving at a disorganized site: where are the materials, how do I get to the forklift, who is even running it, where do I stage my work, where is my lanyard, how do I access the gang box, where do we meet in the morning, where do I eat lunch, where can I wash my hands. None of these questions are dramatic on their own. Together, repeated constantly across a chaotic environment, they accumulate into a genuine burden that exhausts a limited daily reserve of mental discipline before any real work even gets done.

Sun Tzu describes this as an army weighed down by the accumulated pursuit of loot, slowing its own advance. On a jobsite, the same weight comes from clutter, disorganization, and waste, an accumulated burden that drains people long before the actual work does.

A few basic physical needs deserve real attention before speed and decisiveness can reasonably be expected, and Sun Tzu names them directly:

Water, food, and regular breaks, treated as a genuine first priority rather than an afterthought.
Clean, accessible facilities, including well-maintained bathrooms and a real place to eat.
A safe, organized environment where basic questions, where do I go, what do I need, have already been clearly answered.

This Isn’t About Comfort for Its Own Sake, It’s the Foundation Everything Else Depends On

None of this is a soft, optional nicety layered on top of the real work. Sun Tzu names hunger and thirst as the very first fundamental consideration before any army can be expected to fight effectively. The same logic applies directly to construction: workers in a genuinely good physical and mental state are the actual precondition for real speed and decisiveness, not a distraction from it. Skipping this foundation does not make a project move faster, it guarantees the opposite.

“Eat Vegetables the Night Before”

Here is an honest, humbling example worth sharing directly. On one project with an otherwise genuinely strong culture, workers asked for simple electrolyte packets to add to their water during real summer heat. The response given at the time was dismissive: if you want electrolytes, eat vegetables the night before. It was a rigid, disrespectful moment, and it landed exactly as badly as it deserved to. For several days afterward, the entire project culture shifted noticeably negative, until a genuine, direct apology and a real gesture to make it right finally repaired the damage.

That moment is a direct, personal illustration of what Sun Tzu calls outrage at a perceived injustice. It rarely takes something dramatic to trigger it, sometimes it only takes dismissing a small, reasonable request. Taking that risk seriously, and correcting it quickly and sincerely when it happens, matters enormously.

Why It Matters: A Toxic Group Chat Is a Window, Not the Problem

This matters because of a real, useful reframe worth adopting directly. A project once started a group chat for daily operations that quickly turned negative, nitpicky, and frustrated. The instinct was to ask whether the chat itself should simply be shut down. The better response was recognizing that chat as a direct window into the project’s actual underlying culture, not the source of the problem, but a diagnostic tool revealing exactly what real grievances existed underneath the surface.

A leader waging real war against waste and disrespect should be genuinely grateful for that visibility, not defensive about it. Suppressing the symptom leaves the actual root cause, real outrage at real or perceived injustice, completely unaddressed and free to keep spreading quietly instead.

Teach the Framework: Take Care of People, Then Move Fast

Sun Tzu closes this chapter with a serious warning worth carrying directly into construction: real lives and real money are at stake, so recklessness is never acceptable. Pushing people into impossible situations, sometimes called hobbling the army, drains both morale and resources, leaving a team exhausted and supplies dwindling exactly when they are needed most.

The real sequence worth internalizing is this: meet basic physical and logistical needs first, eliminate the wasteful clutter and disorganization that quietly exhausts people, take real grievances seriously and address them at the root, and only then move forward with genuine speed and decisiveness. Skipping straight to speed while ignoring the first three steps is not decisiveness, it is exactly the recklessness Sun Tzu warns against.

A few practical markers show whether a project has genuinely taken care of its people before demanding real speed, and they are worth checking directly:

Basic conditions, water, breaks, clean facilities, a real place to eat, are consistently in place before pace becomes the primary focus.
Worker and foreman huddles surface real concerns, and those concerns get addressed at the root rather than dismissed or ignored.
Materials, tools, and information are genuinely ready before work begins, rather than being tracked down mid-task.

Turning This Into Daily Practice

Audit the basics honestly before pushing for greater pace: is water accessible, are breaks genuinely respected, are bathrooms clean and available, is the site organized enough that people are not constantly hunting for what they need? Take feedback from worker and foreman huddles seriously as an early warning system, rather than something to manage or suppress. And when a real grievance does surface, even a small one, address it quickly and sincerely, the way a genuine apology repaired real damage after one dismissive comment about something as simple as electrolytes.

Connecting It Back to Building People, Not Just Projects

None of this happens without leaders willing to treat basic care for their people as the actual foundation speed and decisiveness depend on, rather than a soft distraction from real production. Building that discipline directly into daily leadership is exactly what allows a project to move with real, sustainable speed instead of reckless, costly urgency.

If your project needs superintendent coaching, project support, or leadership development, Elevate Construction can help your field teams build the kind of foundation, genuine care for people paired with real organization, that makes true speed and decisiveness possible.

The Challenge

So here is the challenge worth carrying onto your next project: before pushing for greater speed, honestly check whether your people’s basic physical and logistical needs have genuinely been met first. As General Patton put it, “A good plan violently executed today is better than a perfect plan next week.” On we go.

FAQ

What does “a good plan violently executed today is better than a perfect plan next week” actually mean?

It means that once genuine preparation is in place, speed and decisive action matter enormously, and waiting for a flawless plan costs more than moving forward with a solid, well-prepared one. It does not mean acting without any plan or preparation at all.

Why does Sun Tzu list hunger and thirst as the very first consideration in waging war?

Physical needs form the actual foundation for everything else an army, or a construction crew, is expected to accomplish. Without that foundation in place, no amount of urgency or discipline can produce the speed and decisiveness a real campaign, or project, requires.

How does jobsite disorganization connect to Sun Tzu’s warning about the accumulation of loot?

Just as an army weighed down by looted goods loses speed and focus, a disorganized jobsite where workers constantly have to search for basic materials, tools, and information accumulates a similar burden. That constant low-grade searching drains a limited daily reserve of mental discipline before real work even happens.

Why should a leader be grateful for a negative or complaining group chat rather than shutting it down?

A toxic or frustrated chat often reflects real, underlying grievances within a project’s culture, making it a valuable diagnostic window rather than the actual problem. Addressing the root causes revealed through that visibility matters far more than suppressing the symptom itself.

What counts as “recklessness” according to this chapter, applied to construction?

Pushing workers into impossible situations, unsafe conditions, excessive overtime, or unmet basic needs, all in pursuit of speed, drains both morale and resources exactly when a project needs them most. Real decisiveness only works once genuine care for people and real preparation are already in place.

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Don’t Let the Demons Talk!

Posted on September 23, 2026September 23, 2026 by va.jason.almas@gmail.com

Read 17 min

“I Think It’s Over There”

Early in one career, a frustrated worker at a prison project in California needed to find the location of a rebar pull test. He asked a young field engineer where to go. The answer came back vague and half-interested: I think it’s over there. He went, could not find it, and came back genuinely furious, ready to confront the person who had sent him on a wasted trip with no real direction. A coworker had to physically step between them.

That field engineer carried real regret over that moment for years afterward, not because giving bad directions was a crime, but because not caring enough to actually help someone find their way was its own quiet failure of respect. That moment holds a lesson worth carrying into every conversation about communication since.

The Real Pain: When You Don’t Know What’s Happening, You Assume the Worst

The real pain is a simple, predictable pattern: when people are not told what is actually happening, their minds fill that silence with the worst possible story. A recent, extended travel delay made this painfully clear. A flight sat delayed for hours, passed between contradictory updates, vague announcements, and long stretches with no communication at all. By the end, exhausted travelers were convinced they had been lied to repeatedly, whether or not that was literally true.

The airline likely was not lying. It genuinely did not know what was happening operationally, and nobody was coordinating a consistent message across departments. But from the passengers’ side, unexplained contradictions and long silences felt exactly like dishonesty, because that is what an information vacuum does to people. It gets filled with suspicion.

The Failure Pattern: Rigid Policy Instead of Real Communication

The failure pattern is a rigid, siloed system where frontline staff are not empowered to actually help people or communicate honestly, leaving customers, or workers, stuck between departments that do not talk to each other. A separate, widely reported incident involving another major airline made this even more visible: passengers held on a grounded plane for hours during severe weather, with confusion over whether they could deplane, limited communication, and mounting frustration as basic needs went unmet. The airline’s official statement cited genuine weather disruption. Passengers described a very different experience: real uncertainty, real discomfort, and a strong sense that operational priorities came before communicating clearly with the people affected.

Contrast that with a culture built around empowering frontline employees to actually help. Southwest Airlines has real, documented stories of staff going well beyond a rigid script: a flight attendant personally driving a passenger to see a hospitalized family member, a pilot ordering food for everyone during a long delay, creative solutions found on the spot to get people off a plane comfortably. The difference is not that one airline has fewer problems. It is that one culture empowers people to communicate and help, and the other does not.

A few signs tend to show up when a team, company, or project has slipped into rigid policy over genuine communication, and they are worth checking honestly:

Updates contradict each other across different people or channels, leaving those affected unsure what to actually believe.
Frontline staff are not empowered to make reasonable decisions or communicate honestly, deferring everything to policy or a different department.
Long stretches pass with no update at all, even when there is genuinely nothing new to report.

This Isn’t About Having Perfect News, It’s About Being Honest About What You Know

None of this requires having a fully resolved answer before communicating anything. People can handle delays, uncertainty, and even bad news remarkably well. What they cannot handle is silence, or worse, contradictory information that makes them feel actively misled. Saying plainly, here is what we know right now, here is what we do not yet know, and here is what happens next, is almost always better received than saying nothing at all while waiting for a perfect, final answer.

Why It Matters: On the Job Site, the Same Silence Breeds the Same Distrust

This matters directly in construction. A foreman, worker, or trade partner working under a general contractor who communicates poorly, or gives contradictory messages from different people, will assume the worst about leadership’s competence or honesty, exactly the way stranded airline passengers do. A grumpy foreman in a meeting is very often not a difficult person, they are someone who has been left in the dark, filling in the blanks with their own reasonable suspicion.

This same pattern showed up directly in an ongoing contract dispute with a general contractor who was withholding payment for completed work while refusing to negotiate reasonable contract terms. A simple, honest update, even one admitting uncertainty, we checked with leadership again, we don’t have a final answer yet, but here is what we’re doing next, would have completely changed the tone of that relationship. Instead, silence and contradiction turned a fixable disagreement into a complete breakdown of trust.

Teach the Framework: Tell the Truth, Even When It’s “I Don’t Know Yet”

The practical standard worth adopting directly is simple: over-communicate, even when the news is incomplete or uncertain. Admitting genuine uncertainty, honestly and specifically, is a completely different experience for the person receiving it than silence or contradiction, even when the underlying situation is identical. And that standard only works if people at every level are actually empowered to communicate honestly and make reasonable decisions, rather than being forced to hide behind rigid policy because no one trusted them with real discretion.

A few practical habits build this kind of honest, consistent communication directly:

Give a real update the moment there is anything new to share, even if the update is simply that nothing has changed yet.
Empower frontline team members to communicate honestly and make reasonable decisions, rather than routing every question through a distant, disconnected process.
When you genuinely do not have an answer, say so directly, along with what you are actively doing to find one.

Turning This Into Daily Practice

Before assuming a delay, a problem, or an unresolved situation is fine to simply sit on, ask directly whether the people affected have actually been told what is going on. A short, honest update, even an incomplete one, protects trust in a way that silence never can. And look honestly at whether the people closest to your customers, your workers, and your trade partners are actually empowered to communicate and help, or whether they are stuck repeating a script while genuine answers sit somewhere else entirely.

Connecting It Back to Building People, Not Just Projects

None of this happens without leaders willing to communicate honestly, especially when the news is uncertain or incomplete, and willing to empower the people closest to the work to do the same. Building that kind of transparent, trusting culture is exactly what keeps small delays and disagreements from turning into full breakdowns of trust.

If your project needs superintendent coaching, project support, or leadership development, Elevate Construction can help your field teams build the kind of honest, consistent communication that keeps trust intact, even when things do not go according to plan.

The Challenge

So here is the challenge worth carrying into your next delay or difficult update: resist the urge to stay quiet until you have a perfect answer, and tell people honestly what you know right now instead. As Jason put it plainly, “People can deal with delays and problems, but they cannot deal with a lack of transparency and communication.” On we go.

FAQ

Why do people assume the worst when they aren’t given clear information?

In the absence of real updates, people naturally fill that gap with their own interpretation, which tends to default toward suspicion or worst-case assumptions. This is not a character flaw, it is a predictable response to genuine uncertainty left unaddressed.

Is it better to stay silent until you have a fully resolved answer, or communicate incomplete information?

Communicating honestly, even when the news is incomplete or uncertain, is almost always better received than silence. People can generally handle delays and bad news well, but contradictory or absent communication tends to feel like active dishonesty, even when it is not.

Why does empowering frontline employees matter so much for good communication?

When frontline staff are not trusted to communicate honestly or make reasonable decisions, they end up repeating rigid scripts while real answers sit somewhere else entirely, frustrating the people they are trying to help. A culture that empowers people to actually help and communicate tends to produce far better outcomes, even when problems still occur.

How does poor communication show up specifically on a construction project?

A foreman, worker, or trade partner receiving contradictory updates, or none at all, from general contractor leadership tends to assume incompetence or dishonesty, much like stranded airline passengers do. What often looks like a difficult attitude is frequently just someone reacting reasonably to being left in the dark.

What is a practical first step toward better communication during a delay or problem?

Give a real, honest update the moment there is anything new to share, even if that update is simply that nothing has changed yet. Being direct about genuine uncertainty, along with what is actively being done about it, protects trust far more effectively than staying silent while waiting for a perfect answer.

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Wounded Animals Bite

Posted on September 23, 2026September 23, 2026 by va.jason.almas@gmail.com

Read 16 min

A Dog That Bit the People Trying to Save It

A dog was drowning in a canal, and a group of people gathered to help pull it out. Every time the dog got enough footing for someone to grab hold, it turned and bit them, again and again, until the rescuers had to step back. The dog was not vicious or bad. It was terrified, and fear turned its instinct to survive into an instinct to bite the very people trying to save it.

That same pattern shows up constantly in leadership, training, and everyday work with people, and recognizing it changes everything about how to respond when it happens.

The Real Pain: Getting Attacked by the Person You’re Trying to Help

The real pain is genuinely disorienting: putting real effort into helping someone, training them, coaching them, supporting their growth, and getting defensiveness, criticism, or outright hostility back in return. In two separate leadership bootcamps, a participant in each group spent a couple of minutes directly insulting the trainers before finally sitting down to complete a difficult final exam anyway. The instinct in that moment is to feel genuinely hurt or angry, and that reaction is completely human.

The Failure Pattern: Taking the Bite Personally

The failure pattern is internalizing someone’s defensive lashing-out as a personal attack, which tends to produce one of two unhelpful responses: retaliating in kind, or quietly hardening into a more guarded, distant version of yourself to avoid getting hurt again. Both responses feel protective in the moment. Both also happen to be exactly the kind of defensive, wounded behavior worth avoiding in the first place.

A few signs tend to show up when someone’s hostile or defensive behavior is really about their own fear rather than genuine malice, and they are worth checking honestly:

The criticism or hostility arrives suddenly, disproportionate to whatever specific situation triggered it.
The same person, once past the difficult moment, ends up genuinely engaged and appreciative afterward.
The behavior looks more like panic or self-protection than a calculated, deliberate attack.

This Isn’t About Being a Pushover, It’s About Reading What’s Actually Happening

None of this means absorbing genuine mistreatment indefinitely or having no real boundaries. It means correctly diagnosing what is actually happening in the moment, fear-driven defensiveness rather than deliberate cruelty, which changes how the situation gets handled without requiring anyone to simply accept ongoing abuse. Strength here looks like staying steady enough to see past the bite to the fear underneath it, not staying silent forever.

The Fear Zone Between Comfort and Growth

Real growth requires passing through a genuinely uncomfortable stretch: moving from a comfort zone into a fear zone before ever reaching real learning and growth on the other side. People who get stuck in that fear zone, genuinely unsure of themselves and exposed in front of others, can react exactly like a scared, drowning animal, lashing out at whoever happens to be closest.

In both bootcamp examples mentioned above, the participant who spent a couple of minutes criticizing the training ultimately pushed through the discomfort, completed the difficult final exam, and came out the other side having genuinely grown, speaking up more, coordinating better with others, and reporting real value from the experience. The lashing out was not the whole story. It was a single, difficult moment on the way to something better.

Why It Matters: Wounded Behavior Is a Shell, Not the Real Person

This matters because of a deeper insight worth sitting with directly: being tough, distant, stoic, or quick to anger in the face of difficulty is itself a form of wounded behavior, a shell covering who someone genuinely is underneath. And the real cost of retreating into that shell, whether in response to someone else’s defensiveness or as a general leadership style, is that it blocks the very connection and inspiration real leadership actually requires.

Vulnerability, being genuinely willing to expose what you actually care about and stand for, is the opposite of that shell. Leaders who let other people’s fear-driven reactions harden them into something more guarded end up further from the kind of leadership that actually inspires people, not closer to it.

Teach the Framework: Absorb the Pain, Keep the Message

The practical skill worth building here is separating the delivery from the content. When someone reacts with hostility or harsh criticism, it is possible to let go of the emotional sting of how it was delivered while still genuinely considering whether any real, legitimate feedback exists underneath it. That takes real strength, not passivity, the strength to stay steady enough to allow someone their pain without either retaliating or quietly closing yourself off in response.

A few practical questions help apply this in the moment, rather than reacting purely from hurt or anger:

Is this reaction disproportionate to the actual situation, suggesting something deeper might be driving it?
Could this person be carrying real fear, pressure, or past pain that has nothing directly to do with me?
Is there anything genuinely useful in what was said, once the harshness of the delivery is set aside?

Turning This Into Daily Practice

The next time a foreman, worker, trainee, or team member reacts with unexpected harshness or defensiveness, pause before responding in kind. Ask honestly whether this might be fear or pain showing up as hostility, rather than a deliberate, personal attack. Choose to stay open and vulnerable rather than retreating into a harder, more guarded version of yourself, even when that guardedness would feel safer in the moment.

This also means checking your own reaction after the moment has passed, not just during it. Noticing whether a difficult interaction left you a little more closed off, a little quicker to expect the worst from the next person, is a useful signal that the shell is starting to form. Catching that drift early, and consciously choosing openness again, keeps one hard moment from quietly reshaping how you lead everyone afterward.

Connecting It Back to Building People, Not Just Projects

None of this happens without leaders willing to stay genuinely open, even after being bitten, rather than hardening into distance and self-protection. Building that kind of resilient vulnerability is exactly what allows real connection and real inspiration to survive the inevitable difficult moments that come with leading people through real growth.

If your project needs superintendent coaching, project support, or leadership development, Elevate Construction can help your field teams build the kind of leadership that stays genuinely connected to people, even through the hard, defensive moments growth sometimes requires.

The Challenge

So here is the challenge worth carrying into your next difficult interaction: the next time someone lashes out at you, pause and ask whether you are looking at genuine malice, or a scared, wounded person who needs help finding their footing. As Jason put it plainly, “Wounded animals bite.” On we go.

FAQ

Why do people sometimes react with hostility toward someone genuinely trying to help them?

Fear and discomfort, especially when someone feels exposed or unsure of themselves, can trigger a defensive, even hostile reaction, much like a frightened animal biting the people trying to rescue it. This response usually reflects the person’s own internal fear or pain rather than genuine malice toward the person helping them.

What is the “fear zone” in the comfort zone to growth zone framework?

It is the uncomfortable stage between a familiar comfort zone and genuine learning and growth, where a person feels exposed, unsure, and vulnerable. People who get stuck in that zone can react defensively or even lash out, similar to how a scared, cornered animal might respond.

Does staying compassionate toward someone’s defensive behavior mean tolerating mistreatment indefinitely?

No. It means correctly recognizing that hostility often stems from fear or pain rather than deliberate cruelty, which changes how the moment gets handled without requiring anyone to accept ongoing abuse. Real boundaries can still exist alongside genuine compassion for what might be driving someone’s reaction.

Why is being tough, distant, or quick to anger considered a form of “wounded behavior”?

These responses often function as a protective shell that covers a person’s genuine self, developed as a defense against past pain or difficulty. Leaders who retreat into that shell, even in response to someone else’s hostility, end up further from the genuine connection and vulnerability that real leadership requires.

How can a leader respond productively when someone reacts harshly toward them?

A useful approach is separating the emotional delivery from the actual content, letting go of the sting of how something was said while still considering whether any legitimate feedback exists underneath it. This requires real strength and steadiness, allowing the other person their difficult moment without either retaliating or becoming more guarded as a result.

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Management Approach, Feat. John Coffman

Posted on September 23, 2026September 23, 2026 by va.jason.almas@gmail.com

Read 17 min

“I Just Do What I’ve Always Done”

Ask a manager directly what their management philosophy is, and a surprising number will answer honestly: I don’t know, I just manage. Push a little further, ask how they actually manage, and the answer often gets even less specific: I do what I do.

That answer tends to catch people off guard, sometimes even offend them a little. They point to years of success as proof they clearly know what they are doing. But knowing you have been successful and being able to actually explain, defend, and teach the reasoning behind that success are two completely different things.

The Real Pain: Managing by Unexamined Habit

The real pain is that without deliberately thinking through and writing down a genuine philosophy, people manage almost entirely by habit. And habits, left unexamined, tend to drift in an unhelpful direction. The easiest habits to form are bad ones, and the only real way to build good habits is by actually thinking about them, deliberately and repeatedly, rather than letting them form on their own.

The Failure Pattern: Success by Accident, Not by Design

The failure pattern looks like this: something works once, so it gets tried again. Something else fails, so it might get abandoned, or it might not, depending on mood or memory. That approach can produce a genuinely successful career, but it never actually answers the underlying question of whether someone is a good manager or simply someone who has been fortunate enough to repeat what worked before without fully understanding why.

A few signs tend to show up when a leader is managing by unexamined habit rather than a real, considered philosophy, and they are worth checking honestly:

Asked to explain their management approach, the honest answer is closer to “I just do what I’ve always done” than a clear, specific description.
Decisions about what to try or repeat with a team are based mainly on whether something worked last time, without deeper reasoning behind it.
There is no written record anywhere of what this person actually believes about leading people, only a track record of outcomes.

This Isn’t About Copying a Book, It’s About Knowing Yourself

None of this means management books and mentors are not valuable, they absolutely are. But a real management philosophy cannot simply be copied from someone else, not even a book, and not even a trusted mentor’s own version. It has to be built around a specific person’s actual personality, genuine beliefs, and real understanding of how they see the people they work with. Reading widely matters, but only once it gets filtered through real self-understanding, not adopted wholesale from someone else’s experience.

Two Typed Pages in a Day Timer

Here is what a real, working management philosophy actually looked like in practice, carried for an entire career. Two typed pages, kept in the front of a day timer, broken into three sections. The first section held core principles, kept deliberately short, no more than five lines, each just a handful of words capturing what genuinely defined that person’s approach at its core. The second section defined, in that leader’s own words, the specific kind of manager they wanted to be, a personal definition of what “positive” leadership actually meant to them. The third section walked through a practical, step-by-step approach to leading any team through any project, construction or otherwise.

Those two pages stayed in that day timer for an entire career, getting edited and annotated constantly as real lessons accumulated from real teams over the years. And in a genuinely human detail worth sharing honestly, those original pages eventually got lent out to someone near the very end of that career and were never returned. The philosophy itself, though, had already done its job for decades by then.

Why It Matters: When You’re Not Enjoying the Work, You’re Doing Something Wrong

This matters because of a genuinely useful, practical diagnostic: construction is supposed to be enjoyable work, even accounting for real bad days along the way. When the job stops being enjoyable for a real stretch of time, that is usually a sign something is being done wrong, specifically, something out of alignment with a leader’s own stated values and approach.

In those moments, pulling out an actual written philosophy and rereading it, studying it, genuinely contemplating where the drift happened, provides a real way to re-center. Rather than assuming burnout or frustration is simply the nature of the job, a written philosophy gives a leader something concrete to measure their current behavior against and correct course from.

Teach the Framework: Management, Leadership, Inspiration

A real shift showed up across one long career worth naming directly. Early on, people primarily wanted to be managed well, treated fairly, given clear direction. Later, that expectation shifted toward wanting real leadership, people they genuinely wanted to follow rather than simply comply with. Toward the end of that career, a new word started showing up consistently from younger team members: inspire. People increasingly wanted leaders who inspired them, not just directed or even led them.

This matters because a written management philosophy is not a static document. It has to evolve as what people genuinely need from their leaders evolves, which is exactly why regular editing and refinement matter as much as the initial writing itself.

“You Inspire Us to Do Things”

One end-of-career evaluation captured this shift perfectly. Asked directly what could be done to help a young field engineer and their peers improve further, the response was unforgettable: other bosses tell us to go do things, you inspire us to do things. And because of that, nobody was ever going to let that leader down.

That comment reflected decades of deliberate refinement, not natural talent alone. A philosophy that started as basic management evolved, through real thought and real editing over time, into something genuinely inspirational, precisely because it was written down, revisited, and actively improved rather than left to develop by accident.

A few practical elements make a written management philosophy genuinely usable rather than symbolic:

A short list of core principles, just a handful of words each, that capture what truly defines your approach at its foundation.
Your own specific definition of the kind of leader you want to be, written in your own words rather than borrowed from someone else’s.
A practical, step-by-step approach to leading any team through any real project, something concrete enough to actually apply.

Turning This Into Daily Practice

Sit down and actually write your own management philosophy, even if it starts rough and gets revised constantly afterward. Keep it somewhere genuinely accessible, not buried in a drawer, so it can actually be reviewed and refined as real experience accumulates. And specifically, pull it out and reread it during a stretch when the work stops feeling enjoyable, using it as a genuine tool for realigning your own behavior rather than assuming frustration is simply unavoidable.

Connecting It Back to Building People, Not Just Projects

None of this happens without leaders willing to do the deliberate, sometimes uncomfortable work of writing down and examining their own approach, rather than assuming years of experience alone is enough. Building that habit of genuine self-examination is exactly what turns a manager who simply gets results into a leader people genuinely want to follow, and eventually, one who inspires them.

If your project needs superintendent coaching, project support, or leadership development, Elevate Construction can help your field teams build the kind of deliberate, examined leadership that inspires real trust and real results.

The Challenge

So here is the challenge worth carrying forward: sit down this week and actually write your own management philosophy, your core principles, the kind of leader you want to be, and how you will lead a team through real work. As John Kaufman put it plainly, “If you can’t write it down, you don’t have it figured out.” On we go.

FAQ

Why isn’t reading management books enough to become a genuinely good leader?

Management books offer valuable ideas, but a real management philosophy has to be built around a specific person’s own personality, beliefs, and understanding of the people they lead. Simply adopting someone else’s approach wholesale, even from a respected book or mentor, rarely produces the same results as one built through genuine self-examination.

What should a written management philosophy actually include?

A useful structure includes a short list of core principles, just a few words each, a personal definition of the kind of leader you want to be, and a practical, step-by-step approach to leading a team through real projects. Keeping it concise and specific makes it genuinely usable rather than a vague, abstract statement.

How can someone tell if they’re managing by habit instead of by real, examined philosophy?

A clear sign is being unable to explain your own management approach specifically, defaulting instead to some version of “I just do what I’ve always done.” Real philosophy can be clearly described, taught, and defended, not just demonstrated through past results alone.

Why does it matter that people’s expectations shifted from wanting to be managed, to led, to inspired?

As workplace expectations evolve, a management philosophy that stays static risks becoming outdated, even if it worked well in the past. Regularly revisiting and editing a written philosophy helps a leader keep pace with what the people they lead genuinely need from them.

What is a practical way to use a written management philosophy day to day?

Beyond writing it once, the real value comes from revisiting it regularly, especially during stretches when the work stops feeling enjoyable or satisfying. Rereading it during those moments helps identify exactly where current behavior has drifted from stated values, making it possible to realign and improve deliberately.

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The Art of War Reflections – Chapter 1

Posted on September 23, 2026September 23, 2026 by va.jason.almas@gmail.com

Read 17 min

The Enemy Isn’t Who You Think

Sun Tzu wrote The Art of War roughly twenty-five hundred years ago, and its central teaching still applies directly to construction leadership today, once you correctly identify who the actual enemy is. On a jobsite, the enemy is not the designer who changed the drawings, not the trade partner running behind, and not the coworker who frustrated you this morning. The real enemy is waste, variation, and disrespect.

Getting that identification right changes everything about how a project gets led. Energy spent fighting the wrong enemy, each other, is energy stolen from the fight that actually matters.

The Real Pain: Wars Fought Against the Wrong Enemy

The real pain shows up constantly as misdirected conflict: trades against the general contractor, the field against the office, one department against another. Meanwhile, the actual shared enemy, disorganization, wasted effort, disrespect toward the people doing the work, keeps operating freely in the background, doing far more damage than any of the people being blamed for it.

The Failure Pattern: Skipping the Planning Stage

The failure pattern is exactly what Sun Tzu warned against most directly: entering a real challenge without ever genuinely laying plans first. His central premise was that the most critical factor in any successful campaign happens before the actual conflict begins, honestly assessing your own strengths and weaknesses against what you are actually up against. Too many projects skip straight into execution without ever doing that same honest assessment.

A handful of specific factors deserve real assessment before a project genuinely begins, and they are worth naming directly:

Moral influence, whether the people following a leader genuinely trust and believe in that leader’s vision.
Weather and terrain, the real, largely fixed logistical conditions surrounding the actual work.
Command and doctrine, a leader’s own personal qualities and the organizational discipline that makes a plan executable.

This Isn’t About Fighting People, It’s About Fighting Bad Behavior With Compassion

Here is a genuinely important distinction worth making directly. Waging war against disrespect, disorganization, and unsafety does not mean waging war against the people who occasionally fall into those patterns. Everyone, without exception, carries some capacity for uncleanliness, disorganization, or unkind behavior. The real work is helping people want to identify with something better.

On a jobsite, that looks like clearly naming what a team does and does not do: we do not disrespect people, we do not discriminate, we do not tolerate harassment, we are not a disorganized crew. Framed the right way, people tend to step up and claim that better identity for themselves, the clean person, the organized one, the guardian who will not tolerate mistreatment of others. That shift happens not through punishment, but by appealing to people’s genuinely good instincts and giving them something better to identify with.

Moral Influence: Why People Follow a Leader Into the Hard Stuff

Sun Tzu’s first factor, moral influence, asks a direct question: do the people following a leader genuinely trust that leader, and is that trust strong enough to carry them through real difficulty? A leader who is passionate about treating workers well, who has a genuine vision for elevating the people around them, and who clearly cares about the purpose behind the work earns that trust. A leader who treats people poorly rarely does, no matter how much authority they hold on paper.

Weather and Terrain: Assess the Fixed Conditions First

The next factor, weather and terrain, is about honestly assessing the real, largely fixed conditions surrounding any project before making further plans. In construction terms, this means genuinely surveying the actual site before anything else: where the job sits, what surrounds it, road conditions and access points, where materials will stage, where the laydown yard needs to be. These logistical realities are not things a leader controls, they are things a leader must understand clearly before building any plan on top of them.

Command and Doctrine: What a Leader Must Embody and Organize

Command refers to a leader’s own personal qualities, wisdom, sincerity, humanity, courage, and appropriate strictness, and whether those qualities are strong enough that direction given will actually be trusted and followed accurately. Doctrine refers to the organizational discipline underneath that leadership: proper roles clearly assigned, supply routes genuinely regulated, and the right materials and resources actually provisioned when needed.

A project with real command but poor doctrine has an inspiring leader running a disorganized operation. A project with strong doctrine but weak command has good systems nobody actually trusts or follows. Both pieces genuinely need to be in place together.

A few practical markers indicate whether a project has genuinely laid real plans before beginning, rather than skipping straight to execution:

The team can clearly describe the leader’s actual vision, and genuinely believes in it, not just repeats it back on command.
Site logistics, access, staging, laydown areas, have been assessed honestly before the schedule gets built around them.
Roles, supply routes, and provisioning are clearly organized, not assumed to work themselves out once work begins.

Why It Matters: You Can’t Win a Battle You Never Actually Planned For

This matters because of one of Sun Tzu’s most famous lines, worth carrying directly into any project: if you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.

Applied to construction, that means genuinely understanding your own team’s real strengths and weaknesses, and genuinely understanding waste, variation, and disrespect as the actual enemy you are working against. Projects that skip this honest assessment tend to repeat the exact same losing patterns, project after project, never quite understanding why.

Turning This Into Daily Practice

Before a project, or even a single week, genuinely begins, take real time to assess all five factors directly. What is the actual vision, and does the team genuinely believe in it? What are the real, fixed logistical conditions surrounding this work? Does leadership embody the qualities, wisdom, sincerity, courage, that earn real trust? And is the organizational discipline, roles, supply routes, provisioning, actually in place, or simply assumed?

None of this needs to take the form of a lengthy formal exercise. It needs to happen honestly, with real attention, before the work itself begins, rather than being skipped in favor of jumping straight into execution.

Connecting It Back to Building People, Not Just Projects

None of this happens without leaders willing to do the harder work of honest assessment before action, and willing to direct their energy at the real enemy, waste, disorganization, and disrespect, rather than at the people around them. Building that discipline into how a project actually begins is exactly the kind of leadership that produces lasting, repeatable success.

If your project needs superintendent coaching, project support, or leadership development, Elevate Construction can help your field teams build the kind of honest, thorough planning that sets a project up to win before the real work even begins.

The Challenge

So here is the challenge worth carrying into your next project kickoff: before diving into execution, take real time to assess your team’s moral influence, your actual terrain, your command, and your doctrine, honestly and completely. As Sun Tzu put it, “If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles.” On we go.

FAQ

Who or what is “the enemy” in a construction context, according to this framework?

The real enemy is waste, variation, and disrespect, not coworkers, trade partners, or designers. Misdirecting conflict toward people rather than these underlying issues wastes energy that should be spent solving the actual, shared problem.

What are the five factors Sun Tzu says must be assessed before real planning can begin?

Moral influence, whether people genuinely trust and believe in their leader, weather and terrain, the real logistical conditions surrounding the work, and command and doctrine, a leader’s personal qualities combined with the organizational discipline that makes a plan actually executable.

How can a leader wage “war” against bad behavior without attacking the people involved?

By naming clearly what a team does and does not tolerate, and appealing to people’s genuinely good instincts rather than shaming them personally. Given the right framing, people tend to want to identify with the better standard, the clean, organized, respectful team member, rather than needing to be punished into compliance.

Why does assessing “weather and terrain” matter so much before building a schedule?

Site logistics, access, road conditions, staging areas, are largely fixed conditions that shape everything else about how a project can realistically run. Understanding them honestly before building further plans prevents a schedule from being built on assumptions that do not match reality.

What happens when a project has strong leadership but weak organizational systems, or the reverse?

A project with an inspiring leader but poor organization ends up disorganized despite good intentions, while a project with strong systems but a leader nobody trusts ends up with plans that are not genuinely followed. Real success requires both command and doctrine working together, not just one or the other.

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Many Asking Questions, Feat. Krysta Van Ranst

Posted on September 23, 2026September 23, 2026 by va.jason.almas@gmail.com

Read 16 min

A Simple Diagram With Two Arrows

Picture two intersecting arrows forming four quadrants. One axis runs from answers at the bottom to questions at the top. The other runs from one on the left to many on the right. A director at Google X used this simple diagram to describe organizational growth: the goal is moving from the bottom-left quadrant, one person holding all the answers, toward the top-right quadrant, many people genuinely asking questions together.

That framework, built for a completely different industry, lands with real force in construction, where one specific role tends to get stuck at the bottom-left corner more than almost any other.

The Real Pain: The Weight of Being the One With All the Answers

The real pain is a quiet, unspoken expectation that follows superintendents everywhere: the belief that they are supposed to be the one person with every answer, every time, for everyone. Project managers, foremen, and trade partners often look to that single person as the source of resolution for whatever problem shows up.

That expectation is heavy, and it is often unrealistic. No single person genuinely holds every answer to every problem a project produces, and pretending otherwise sets superintendents up for a standard nobody could actually meet.

The Failure Pattern: Command and Control, or Cooks in the Kitchen

The failure pattern shows up at both ends of this framework. Staying in the bottom-left quadrant, one person with all the answers, is classic command and control: authoritative-sounding, but disconnected from the real, collective wisdom sitting untapped across an entire team. Simply flipping to the bottom-right quadrant, many people all offering their own answers, creates a different problem entirely, the familiar chaos of too many cooks in the kitchen, everyone asserting a conclusion without any real shared understanding first.

A few signs tend to show up when a team is stuck in one of these two lower-value quadrants, and they are worth checking honestly:

Team members consistently defer every decision to one person, rather than contributing their own perspective or expertise.
Meetings devolve into competing opinions being stated loudly, without any real space for genuine listening or shared understanding first.
Quieter or more thoughtful team members rarely speak up, even when they clearly have relevant knowledge to contribute.

This Isn’t About Leaders Abdicating Responsibility, It’s About Where Good Answers Actually Come From

None of this means a leader disappears or stops making real decisions. Moving toward the top-right quadrant, many people genuinely asking questions together, does not remove the need for someone to ultimately decide. It shifts the leader’s role from being the sole source of every answer to being the person who draws out the team’s collective wisdom before a decision actually gets made.

Muted for Saying “Try”

Here is what that shift looks like in a real training exercise. Participants get muted the moment they say the word “try,” a rule that inevitably silences some of the more talkative, extroverted voices in the group first. That silence creates real space, and quieter, more thoughtful team members, who might otherwise never get a word in, start contributing directly.

The result is striking. Once everyone genuinely has room to ask questions and share confusion or understanding, the team solves the actual problem together, drawing on the full range of expertise in the room rather than whichever voice happened to be loudest or most confident.

Why It Matters: Good, Better, Best

This matters because there is a clear progression worth naming directly. Simply telling people what to do is a start, decisive, but limited. Telling people what to do while also genuinely listening to their feedback is better. Best is listening to everyone first, and then deciding together, drawing collective wisdom into the decision itself rather than treating listening as a courtesy that happens after the real decision has already been made.

This connects directly to the actual purpose of the Last Planner System: pulling the best available wisdom from trade partners, foremen, and superintendents actually doing the work, rather than routing every decision through a single person’s individual judgment, however experienced that person might be.

Teach the Framework: Ask Better Questions, Gather Wisdom, Then Decide

The practical version of moving toward genuine collective questioning starts before any solution gets proposed. Before jumping to answers, genuinely ask the team what questions, confusion, or uncertainty actually exist about the problem at hand. Let that shared understanding surface fully, out loud, before moving toward a decision. Only then does an actual decision get made, whether by one designated person or by the group together, but either way, informed by real, gathered input rather than a single perspective alone.

A few practical habits help shift a team meeting from simply telling toward genuine collective questioning:

Open a discussion by asking what questions or uncertainties people have, rather than starting with a proposed solution.
Deliberately create space for quieter team members to contribute before more vocal participants dominate the conversation.
Treat listening as part of how the decision actually gets made, not as a courtesy step that happens before the real decision is already decided.

Turning This Into Daily Practice

A simple team exercise makes this lesson vivid: give a group a shared physical or logistical puzzle, and watch what happens. At first, people typically retreat into their own silos, trying to solve it alone. After a few failed attempts, someone suggests actually working as a team, and the shift is immediate and visible. The group moves faster, not by rushing frantically, but with a steady, sustained momentum that only comes from genuine collaboration.

The same lesson applies directly to real jobsite problems. Whether the challenge is a stalled crane, a scheduling conflict, or a business decision, the instinct to retreat and solve it alone is strong, and it is usually slower and less effective than gathering the right people, asking what questions exist, and working through it together.

Connecting It Back to Building People, Not Just Projects

None of this happens without leaders willing to trade the comfort of having every answer for the discipline of asking better questions and genuinely listening first. Building that habit into daily leadership is exactly what turns a good decision-maker into a leader who draws out the full strength of an entire team.

If your project needs superintendent coaching, project support, or leadership development, Elevate Construction can help your field teams build the kind of collaborative decision-making that pulls real wisdom from everyone on the project, not just the person expected to have all the answers.

The Challenge

So here is the challenge worth carrying into your next team meeting: instead of opening with an answer, open with a question, and see what your team already knows that you didn’t. As Jason put it plainly, “You can go into a shell and attempt to solve it on your own, or you can gather and build the team.” On we go.

FAQ

What does the “one person, all the answers” quadrant represent in this framework?

It represents a command-and-control leadership style, where a single person is expected to provide every answer and every decision. While it can feel decisive, it misses the collective wisdom and expertise available across the rest of the team.

Why doesn’t simply having “many people with answers” solve the problem either?

Without a shared process for genuinely listening and understanding first, many people offering competing answers at once tends to create the familiar chaos of too many cooks in the kitchen. Real collaboration requires shared understanding before conclusions, not just more voices asserting their own solutions.

How does this framework connect to the Last Planner System?

Last Planner is built around pulling real wisdom directly from trade partners, foremen, and superintendents actually doing the work, rather than routing every decision through one person’s individual judgment. Moving toward genuine collective questioning is essentially the communication philosophy behind Last Planner applied more broadly to leadership.

Does moving toward “many people asking questions” mean a leader stops making final decisions?

No. It changes how a leader arrives at that decision, gathering genuine input and understanding from the team first, rather than deciding alone and only informing others afterward. The leader’s role shifts from sole answer-provider to the person who draws out and integrates the team’s collective wisdom.

What is a simple way to start shifting team meetings toward this approach?

Open discussions by asking what questions or uncertainties the team has about a problem, rather than starting with a proposed solution. Deliberately making space for quieter team members to contribute before more vocal participants take over tends to surface much stronger collective insight.

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