Your Christmas Story!

What Is Your Christmas Story? A Year-End Reflection for Construction Leaders

Every year, right around this time, the construction industry is in the final sprint of its annual race. Employee reviews are done or nearly done. Bonuses are being issued or discussed. Raises are negotiated. Tax projections are being finalized. Parties are planned, gifts are purchased, and the leadership team is looking at the year’s financial results with one eye on what was accomplished and the other on what comes next. And then, somewhere in the middle of all of that activity, most people briefly feel something that is hard to name, a quiet question underneath all the busyness, about whether any of it matters the way it should. This episode is about that question. About your Christmas story. About what it means to look back and forward at the same time, and to do it in a way that actually changes how the next year begins.

What Scrooge Got Wrong

The story of Ebenezer Scrooge is not about a man who was evil. It is about a man who lost his focus. He accumulated everything a successful person is supposed to accumulate and forgot why he was supposed to want it. He had resources but no generosity. He had wealth but no relationships. He had a business but no purpose behind it. The three ghosts did not show him that he was bad. They showed him that he had drifted from who he actually was, and what that drift was costing him, the people around him, and the meaning of his own life.

Most leaders reading this are not Scrooge. But most organizations do drift. Not dramatically. Gradually. The purpose statement gets written during a strategic planning session and then lives on the website while the actual culture drifts toward metrics, margins, and market share. The people who were supposed to benefit from the organization’s work, the workers, the families, the communities, become abstractions rather than reasons. And the leaders running the organization wonder why they feel less inspired in December than they did in January, why the wins feel smaller than they should, and why the team is going through the motions rather than on a mission.

Ask Why Seven Times

Jason Schroeder describes a practice he learned from Dean Graziosi: ask why seven times. Not the lean ask-why-five-times for root cause analysis. The business version. Why do you do this work? And then take that answer and ask why again. And again. And again, until the surface-level answers fall away and what remains is the actual reason.

For Elevate Construction, that journey through seven whys led from “I’m a master builder and I want to share information” to “workers are being chewed up and spit out by this industry” to “their families are suffering” to the final answer: we are here to build people and build families. Not to be a training company. Not to be a consulting company. To build human beings and the families that depend on them. Every piece of content, every course, every book, every free Miro board, every coaching call is an expression of that purpose. When the team at Elevate lost sight of it for a moment, when the question arose about whether free content should be locked behind a paywall, going back to that answer clarified everything.

When the Business Question Becomes a Values Question

The debate about giving away content for free is a real business question. Other consultants and trainers would say locking content down behind a financial firewall is the right business move. They are probably not wrong from a revenue protection standpoint. But the question is not just whether it is financially optimal. The question is whether it is consistent with who you are.

Elevate Construction’s values are transparency, respect for people, doing the right thing, driving results, and employee enjoyment and engagement. Its vision is respected individuals, trained leaders, and preserved families. Its purpose is to build people in construction. None of those things are compatible with a strategy of withholding information that could help a worker get home safely, a superintendent run a better project, or a foreman lead a crew with dignity and skill. The moment the strategy would require contradicting the purpose, the strategy is wrong for this organization, regardless of whether it would be right for another one.

The Questions That Clarify a Year

As the year closes, these are the questions that actually matter, the ones that go deeper than the revenue report and the gross profit margin:

• Who reached out this year to tell you that your organization made a difference in their life, their project, or their family?
• What did your team build this year that will last beyond the project completion date?
• Who on your team grew into something they were not capable of at the beginning of the year, and what did you do to create the conditions for that?
• What did you give away this year, in time, training, recognition, and genuine support, that you did not have to give?
• Who in your organization is better positioned to go home to a stable family and a life they are proud of because of what you built this year?
• What is the story you want to tell about this year when you are looking back from the summit of your life?

Those questions are the year-end review that matters. The financial results are important. They are not the story.

Focus on Becoming, Not Having

The lesson that Scrooge’s ghosts delivered is the same one that every meaningful leadership story eventually delivers: having is not the point. Becoming is the point. A company that accumulates clients, contracts, and revenue without becoming the kind of organization that builds the people inside it is accumulating things the way Scrooge accumulated money. The accumulation does not produce the satisfaction it seems like it should. The meaning comes from the becoming.

For a construction company, becoming means developing leaders who can lead with dignity and produce excellent work. It means creating environments where workers are not chewed up and spit out but are treated as the capable, intelligent, valuable human beings they are. It means running projects where families are protected by good systems rather than damaged by bad ones. It means that the foremen, superintendents, and project managers who spent time in this organization leave it better equipped to live and lead than when they arrived.

That kind of becoming is a choice. It requires investment in training and development. It requires goal setting that includes people metrics, not just financial ones. It requires leaders who ask why seven times and anchor the answers to their actual decisions rather than just their mission statements.

Goal Setting That Points Toward the Story You Want

Patrick Lencioni’s framework of thematic goals and defining goals provides a useful structure here. The thematic goal is the most important single focus for the period ahead. The defining goals are the specific, measurable outcomes that define what success in that theme looks like. That structure works. But Jason’s point is that those goals should be anchored to purpose, not just to performance. People overestimate what they can accomplish in five years and underestimate what they can accomplish in ninety days. The ninety-day cycle of focused effort, reviewed and reset regularly, is how organizations actually improve. And the direction of that improvement matters. If the thematic goal is purely financial, the organization is optimizing for having. If it is also developmental, cultural, and purposeful, it is optimizing for becoming.

What the Organizations That Changed the Industry Did

The companies that have made the most meaningful contribution to construction are not the ones that protected their methods behind a firewall. They are the ones that shared generously, trained openly, and built an industry-wide culture of learning around their work. Paul Akers at FastCap shares his lean journey openly. Nicholas Modig teaches broadly. Iris Tommelein publishes research. The lean construction community, at its best, operates on a principle of generous knowledge-sharing that has moved an entire industry toward better practices. Elevate Construction has tried to operate from that same principle: give the information, trust that the people who receive it will use it well, and believe that the generosity itself is part of the purpose.

Oscar Schindler spent his money to save lives. He started with having, and the story that mattered was what he chose to do with what he had. For any construction organization, the question is the same. What will you choose to do with the capacity, the relationships, the knowledge, and the resources you have built? Who will be better because of how you spent this year?

Built for People Who Want a Trail of Accomplishment

The vision for Elevate Construction includes a phrase adapted from a quote Jason holds close: so that we can stand on the summit of our lives and look back upon a trail of accomplishment and not a slew of wasted energies. That phrase is not about financial achievement. It is about intentional living. It is about spending your energy on things that actually build something worth having built. For a construction company, that means building people. For a project team, it means building a crew that the workers are proud to have been part of. For a leader, it means building the kind of environment where the people around them go home better than they arrived. If your project needs superintendent coaching, project support, or leadership development, Elevate Construction can help your field teams stabilize, schedule, and flow.

Your Christmas Story Starts With Remembering Who You Are

The reflection this episode invites is not complicated, but it requires honesty. Why are you in business? Why does the organization exist? If the answer stops at financial targets and market position, keep going. Ask why again. What is the actual purpose behind the work? Who is supposed to benefit from the organization’s existence? What kind of people and what kind of families are supposed to be built by the work this organization does? When you find that answer and anchor next year’s goals to it rather than layering them on top of financial projections, the work changes. The energy changes. The people around you feel the difference.

Scrooge woke up on Christmas morning full of excitement, not because he had more money, but because he remembered who he could be. That is the invitation for every leader as the year closes: remember who you are, remember why you started, and go be that in the year ahead, with even more generosity, more joy, and more purpose than the year before.

On we go.

FAQ

What is the ask-why-seven-times exercise and how do you apply it to your organization?

The exercise starts with a simple question about why you do the work you do, then takes each answer and asks why again, seven times in sequence. The surface answers tend to be about products, services, expertise, or market opportunity. As you keep going, the answers get closer to the actual human reason for the organization’s existence. For Elevate Construction, seven rounds of asking why led from technical expertise in construction systems to a purpose statement centered on building people and families. The exercise works for any company, department, or project team willing to sit with each answer long enough to ask the next why before accepting it as the final one.

Why does the Scrooge story apply to construction companies at year end?

Because Scrooge is the story of a capable, successful person who drifted from his purpose and lost his joy as a result. Most construction organizations at year end are not facing a crisis. They are often facing something quieter and in some ways harder: the sense that the wins feel smaller than they should, that the team is executing but not inspired, that the metrics are good but the meaning is unclear. Going back to the purpose, acknowledging the people who were helped and the work that mattered, and setting next year’s direction with that purpose at the center is the organizational equivalent of what the ghosts did for Scrooge. It is a reorientation, not a rescue.

How does giving freely relate to business success?

The paradox of generosity is that it tends to produce more than withholding does, especially in knowledge-based work. Organizations that share their methods, develop their people openly, give credit generously, and invest in the communities around them tend to attract the best people, earn the deepest trust, and build the kind of reputation that opens doors that financial transactions alone cannot open. Elevate Construction’s experience of this is direct: the more freely content and knowledge are shared, the more the organization grows, because the sharing itself is the expression of the purpose, and living the purpose is what creates authentic momentum.

What is the difference between having-focused goals and becoming-focused goals?

Having-focused goals are oriented toward acquisition: more revenue, more clients, more market share, more profit. They are important and necessary, but they are incomplete as an organizing framework. Becoming-focused goals are oriented toward development: better leaders, stronger teams, a culture that consistently produces excellent work and treats people with dignity, an organization that leaves the people inside it more capable and fulfilled than when they joined. The most effective goal-setting processes at the organizational level include both. The thematic goal and defining goals framework that Jason describes works best when the becoming goals are as specific and tracked as the having goals.

How should a construction company use the year-end period for meaningful reflection?

Start with gratitude before you start with planning. Who made a significant contribution this year? Have they been told? Who grew into something they were not capable of at the start of the year? Have they been recognized? Who helped a project succeed, a client feel taken care of, or a worker get home safely? Have those contributions been named and celebrated? After the gratitude is genuine and complete, then look at the purpose: are the goals for next year anchored to why the organization exists, or are they only anchored to what the organization wants to accumulate? The best year-end reviews produce both a sincere appreciation for what was built and a clarifying direction for what comes next.