We were driving between job sites with Ryan Schmitt and Lauren Atwell of Petticoat-Schmitt, and I wanted to ask them about something I keep hearing about from their people. Ryan owns the company and is the CEO. Lauren is the President and COO. And Ryan pulls out a notepad, pops down a tailgate, and asks his workers for candid feedback over breakfast.
Short answer: Feedback sessions in the field are small-group conversations where a company leader brings breakfast to a jobsite or office and asks for candid feedback: what’s going well, how the culture rates from one to ten, the challenges, and what they’d do if they owned the company. Done consistently, they connect leaders with workers and build team health.
How Does Ryan Schmitt Run a Feedback Session?
In Ryan’s words: “I call them feedback sessions, and I do two or three a week with different parts of the company. I might do a couple at different job sites in the morning and then maybe one or two in the office with small groups. I try not to make the groups too big because I want a lot of interaction.”
“I’ll bring out breakfast, we’ll pop down the tailgate, and I tell them, I’m feeding you, so I want candid feedback. I pull out a little notepad, and we usually start with a positive focus.” Here are the questions Ryan asks:
- What’s going well with your job, your department, or the company?
- How are we doing as a company with our culture, on a scale of one to ten, and how can we get to a ten?
- Do you believe we are honestly practicing what we preach?
- What are your challenges? Where can we get better?
- If we’re sitting here a year from now having breakfast, what has to happen in that year for us to be successful?
- What would you do if you were me, if you owned the company?
“At first, I think people are a little reserved to speak candidly, but that’s a thing of the past. I tell them there are some things I can go change right now, and some I’ll keep in the back of my mind when future decisions come up.” He usually ends by handing out hats and t-shirts from a container of company swag on the back of the truck.
Ryan said it has been one of the best tools he’s found to connect and help the culture. “I’ve learned a ton, and I think a lot of people have learned a ton because they’ve learned why we do certain things from my perspective too.” It adds to what he does every Wednesday morning at new hire orientation, where he greets every single new person, asks about their family and what they like to do, shares his own, and talks about the company. See Onboarding & Orientation: Your Workforce’s First Impression.
Why Do Leaders Have to Do This Themselves?
Other leaders at other companies are starting to do feedback sessions after hearing how they’re going at Petticoat-Schmitt. In fact, Lauren and I asked a group, if you were Ryan, what would you do? We got great feedback.
Here’s a sidebar. These are leaders who know Lean and the Entrepreneurial Operating System, and they keep learning, reading the books, doing the trainings, and going to conferences. They’re not saying, let me hire a Lean expert, or let me delegate the business to my CFO. Just like they do the feedback sessions themselves, they do the implementing themselves. That’s why you’ll always see companies really scale excellence, Lean, and good business systems when the leadership team does it themselves.
How Do Systems Create Team Health?
Lauren said: “We went through the process of EOS, using the tools in EOS coupled with the development of our Elevate 20 project delivery system. Creating those systems wins over our workforce. A worker needs to know how they fit in and needs certainty, and we satisfy those needs with worker huddles, foreman huddles, feedback sessions, and quarterly conversations. All of that together provides strong team health.” A system built to make better projects and more money is also providing team health. That’s really cool.
In the book Traction, Gino Wickman says you must know the business systems and processes that are critical to your company. Ryan explained how theirs fit:
| System | What it governs |
|---|---|
| Stand and Deliver | The process that governs the whole company, top to bottom. |
| Elevate 20 | Their project delivery system, inside Stand and Deliver. It’s how they build projects. |
| EOS | How they run the whole company, from people to processes. |
“It’s a multi-tiered system of systems that helps us integrate,” Ryan said, “and the better people get at learning and running them, the better we do.” I’m reading about systems thinking in Thinking in Systems and The Fifth Discipline, and they say systems are hierarchical. If those systems tie together and reinforce each other as virtuous systems, you really get traction, which ties back to the title of the book. More in Build the System – Support the People!.
What Advice Do They Give for Connecting With Your People?
Ryan: “You’ve got to connect with your people. Spend the time to talk to them and share the vision and the plan so they’re part of it.”
Lauren: “You have got to have a mindset of people first. We say that all the time, but you can’t just think about it. You’ve got to plan it.” On Administrative Professionals Day, while we were visiting job sites, they had a masseuse in the offices giving chair massages to make their admins feel valued. They ran a big mud run to support Seamark Ranch, a home for abandoned and abused kids, nd they host Digger Day every year with the Child Cancer Fund, where kids battling childhood cancer and their families get on the equipment with the operators. “It’s connected our company in ways that go way beyond what we can do day in and day out.”
“When you marry those things with leaders being transparent, empathetic, and listening day in and day out, and it’s not a thing of the week or the quarter but something you do consistently, people say, yeah, Ryan’s the CEO, but he listens to my ideas, and I saw some of them get implemented. There’s a connection that can’t be duplicated.”
So here is the challenge. Book your first feedback session this week. Bring breakfast, keep the group small, start with what’s going well, ask what they’d do if they owned the company, and write it all down.
Bottom line: Connection with your people is planned, done by the leaders themselves, and repeated consistently.
If your project needs superintendent coaching, project support, or leadership development, Elevate Construction can help your field teams stabilize, schedule, and flow. Want your team trained on this? See our Last Planner® System and Takt training.
On we go.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is a feedback session?
Ryan Schmitt’s version is a small-group breakfast on a jobsite or in the office, two or three times a week, where the CEO asks for candid feedback on what’s going well, the culture on a scale of one to ten, the challenges, and what people would do if they owned the company.
Why should leaders run feedback sessions themselves?
Because companies only really scale excellence, Lean, and good business systems when the leadership team does it themselves, reading the books, doing the trainings, and implementing, not delegating it to an expert.
What is the closing advice for connecting with your people?
Ryan: spend the time to talk to them and share the vision and the plan so they are part of it. Lauren: have a people-first mindset, plan it, and do it consistently, not as a thing of the week.
People Also Read:
More Accountability, Feat. Ryan Schmitt & Lauren Atwell
Bring up The Younger Generation, Feat. Ryan Schmitt
Empathy & Connection
Total Participation Requires Total Connection
If you want to learn more we have:
-Takt Virtual Training: (Takt Virtual Training)
-Check out our YouTube channel for more info: (Elevate Construction on YouTube)
-Listen to the Elevate Construction podcast: (Elevate Construction Podcast)
-Check out our training programs and certifications: (Training Programs and Certifications)
-The Takt Book: (The Takt Book on Amazon)
Discover Jason’s Expertise:
Meet Jason Schroeder, the driving force behind Elevate Construction. As the company’s Founder and COO, he’s dedicated to taking construction to new heights. With a wealth of industry experience, he’s crafted the Field Engineer Boot Camp and Superintendent Boot Camp – intensive training programs engineered to cultivate top-tier leaders capable of steering their teams towards success. Jason’s vision? To expand his training initiatives across the nation, empowering construction firms to soar to unprecedented levels of excellence.