The topic today is that we need to think about what we’re doing. Let me dig into a concept: digging deeper. If we dig deeper on concepts and don’t just take them at face value, I feel like we will get to the more loving, more kind, more appropriate, more respectful, more accurate, more truthful behavior. In a religious sense, more Christ-like or God-like behavior. And in construction, we’ve got to get back this critical thinking.
Short answer: Dig deeper means questioning why we do things instead of doing them because someone told us to or because we’ve always done it that way. Takt, the Last Planner System, and most of what we produce at Elevate came from critical thinking. If we sat down and questioned the status quo, we could find 75 really stupid things we do in construction that we could fix tomorrow.
What Does a Church Building Teach About Digging Deeper?
I was called as a bishop in our local ward, which is a non-paid, totally volunteer position, for about five years. A bishop oversees the youth, the building and finances, welfare for anyone who needs emotional or temporal help, presides, and serves as a common judge for people with difficulties.
Three wards share our building, and a new bishop in another ward got crazy about the building, which is great. He organized service projects and got on the cleanliness, which I really like. Then one of our youth groups was having a Nerf gun war in the church, and he got after them. Okay, not a big deal. Then my daughter was babysitting kids at church who were being a little rowdy, and the clerk from the other ward got after her over a mess. I got a nasty email. Then something else happened.
So I called him. I said, you and I are not on the same page. I don’t want this to be contentious, but I want us both to understand our boundaries. I believe the building is here for the people, not the people for the building. I want the people in our ward to always feel welcome and feel like they belong. They pay tithing. They pay for the space. He said if people really had a testimony, they would be reverent. I said if we want people to develop a relationship with God, they better feel like they belong. So we agreed to disagree. I asked him not to talk to our members, and told him I would always prioritize the feelings of people over keeping the building tidy in the moment. We’ll still clean up after ourselves.
On a shallow level, you think, I’m in charge of the building, so I police it. I’m in charge of the youth, so I can lord over them. I preside, so I make the decisions. That can lead you to play boss and upset people. But look deeper. This is not a religious podcast, but in that belief structure, Jesus told the scribes and Pharisees that the Sabbath is meant for man, not man for the Sabbath. He said, suffer the little children to come unto me. If you dig deeper, you realize what the building is for. It’s for the people and the children. They’re not here for us to lord over or play police officer. Shout-out to my Petticoat-Schmitt friends, whose saying is dig deeper.
Why Do You Cut the Ends Off the Ham?
Katie Schroeder, my wife and our CEO, digs deeper in everything. She will not take something at face value. Why? Why does that have to happen? Why do we have to do that? She asks over and over. In some personality profiles she comes up as the questioner, meaning she’ll question authority and the accepted ways of doing things. Most of my digging deeper comes from her example, or her forcing me to. And we always get to a better answer.
You’ve heard the story. At Thanksgiving dinner, both ends were cut off the ham. Someone asked why. The mom said, let me ask my mom. Grandma said, because that’s what my mom did. Great-grandma was at the party, and she said, oh honey, back in the day all I had was a six-by-nine pan, and I had to cut the ends off to fit it in. All those years they’d been cutting off good meat just because they had always done it that way, not because there was a need.
Where Did Takt Come From?
I did a post about CPM scheduling, and someone responded, another day, another myth. I thought, they learned something in school or in a class and never decided to dig deeper. This is going to sound arrogant, but I don’t mean it to be. A lot of people invented takt and takt planning at the same time, separately, throughout the world. It’s like the world had the telephone, and then somewhere in the Amazon forest a group of people independently came up with something similar. That’s what I did with takt and with these lean systems.
Somebody says, Jason learned takt and now that’s all he’s doing. No, I invented it myself, because the way we were scheduling didn’t make sense. It makes sense to flow work, break schedules down by location, zone them out, and have trades flow from area to area. I couldn’t go to any project anywhere and find a working CPM schedule. There had to be a better way to schedule and communicate it to the trades. When I was 23 and first saw it, I was like, that’s it. It came from critical thinking, and so did everything else we produce at Elevate.
What Isn’t Rocket Science?
You don’t need a book, a professor, a law degree, a white paper, or a university to tell you these things don’t make sense:
| What we do | Why it doesn’t make sense |
|---|---|
| Trade stacking or zone stacking | It overburdens the trades |
| A schedule nobody can read | No one can follow it |
| No float in schedules | Pretty stupid, on its face |
| Composite cleanout crews | They don’t work, waste other trades’ time, are unfair, and mask waste |
| Design-bid-build with a next-day start | No time for the schedule, estimate, staff, or planning |
| Bathrooms cleaned once a week | By Friday it’s an 18-inch pile of waste and no toilet paper |
| Superintendents who don’t know how to build | They’re put in charge of people who do |
| All materials delivered at once | Stacked in everybody’s way |
It’s not rocket science that the Last Planner System includes the people doing and leading the work. When people badmouth it, I say you should ask the opinions of the people doing the work. You didn’t need Jason to tell you to fix the bathrooms. Too often it’s, well, this is what I got, this is the way it’s done.
So if you hear me talk about contractor grading, keeping things clean, zero tolerance, lean in pre-construction, or flow scheduling, this is pretty obvious. Sit back and ask, does this make sense? The old way, cutting the ends off the ham, is what didn’t make sense. Read Ask Yourself Why? too.
A listener wrote that they’d listened to about 150 episodes, read four Patrick Lencioni books, and are reading The Toyota Way. Their crew is struggling, but they’re confident it will become remarkable.
So here is the challenge. Pick one thing on your project you do because it’s always been done that way. Ask why, like Katie does, until you hit the real reason. If there isn’t one, fix it.
Bottom line: Let’s do things for the right reasons, dig down, and get more critical in our critical thinking.
If your project needs superintendent coaching, project support, or leadership development, Elevate Construction can help your field teams stabilize, schedule, and flow.
On we go.
FAQ
What does dig deeper mean in construction?
It means not taking concepts at face value. Ask why, question the accepted way of doing things, and find out what makes sense. Jason says digging deeper gets you to the more loving, kind, respectful, accurate, and truthful answer.
What is the ham story about?
A family cut both ends off the Thanksgiving ham for generations. When they finally asked great-grandma why, she said she only had a small pan and had to cut the ends off to fit. They had been cutting off good meat just because they had always done it that way, not because there was a need.
Did Jason learn takt from someone else?
No. Jason says he invented it independently, the way people in different places invent similar things, because the way we were scheduling didn’t make sense. Flowing work, breaking schedules down by location, zoning them, and having trades flow from area to area came from critical thinking.
People Also Read:
Ask Yourself Why?
Victims and Losers Love CPM (Why Bad Contractors Hide Behind Schedules)
Start in the Bathroom!
Zero Tolerance
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.