Getting Supers bought in – Part 2

Where Are the Teams Representing the Company?

If you have ever walked onto a jobsite and felt that sinking feeling, you know what I mean. The signage is inconsistent, the trailer energy is flat, and the project feels like it is being managed, but not led. You can tell nobody is really “owning it.” Then the owner asks a simple question like, “Who is closing up the building?” and everybody looks around like it is someone else’s responsibility. That moment is not about a lock, a window, or a door. That moment is culture. That moment is operations. That moment is the difference between a team that represents the company and a group of individuals just trying to survive.

This is Jason Schroeder with Elevate Construction, and episode 109 was centered on a listener’s question that I hear all the time: how do we get superintendents bought in, and how do we scale a culture so our operations actually represent who we say we are? Most companies do not struggle because they lack technical capability. They struggle because they have never built the cultural operating system that makes technical capability consistent. They keep trying to fix people when the real failure pattern is the environment and the expectations that the system creates.

The Construction Pain Nobody Wants to Name

Let me name the pain the way it actually shows up. Leaders will tell me, “Jason, we have some individuals who don’t secure the building. They leave windows open. They leave workers working in the building without communicating that they need to lock up.” They usually add, “It’s not everyone, it’s a small percentage, but they are burnt out and not vested.” That is a real problem. That is also a very common problem. Most companies treat it like a discipline issue first. They send an email. They create a rule. They threaten consequences. Then they act surprised when the behavior repeats.

Here is the failure pattern. When we do not create a clear system for ownership, we rely on personality and goodwill. When personality and goodwill fade because people are tired, stressed, or disconnected, the building stays open, the risk goes up, and the customer experience takes the hit. In construction, we can often “muscle through” for a while, but eventually the cracks show, and that is when owners stop trusting you. That is when leaders stop sleeping. That is when the culture becomes reactive instead of stable.

I want to be clear about something. This is not a “bad superintendent” problem. This is a leadership and systems problem. And that should actually give you hope, because you can build systems. You can shape culture. You can create alignment. You can do it faster than you think when you stop guessing.

Why I Care About This So Much

Before I go deeper, let me share what I shared in the podcast. Right now I get to plan a mega project, $170 million plus. The company took it over from another contractor, and it is huge. I love those kinds of projects. The logistics, the scale, the systems, the ability to plan like you are in the military, taking ground, building control, creating order. There is something beautiful about walking into complexity and turning it into flow.

On this project, we are setting up deliveries to come into a single point of entry where a deck extends over to the flatbeds. The project engineers will inspect materials before the gate lifts and the trucks come in. That is a system. That is respect. That is control. How often have we wanted to conquer material inspections in our industry? This is what I mean when I say we can build better. We can plan. We can stabilize. We can create an operating environment where people can win.

And that is exactly why I get frustrated when people treat culture like a “soft skill.” It is not soft. It is hard. It is production.

Culture Is the Engine of Progress, Not the Skills

I said something in episode 109 that I want to repeat here because it is the center of the message. Progress on a job comes from the creation of the culture, not just the skills of the people onsite. We have a whole industry that thinks the answer is more technical training, more technical tools, more technical oversight. Then we wonder why we still have silos, politics, turf wars, and teams that will not communicate.

Patrick Lencioni has said it better than most: organizational health is not touchy-feely. It is real. It is measurable. It changes outcomes. How many times have you been around a team where there is dysfunction, hatred, hidden agendas, lack of feedback, and people who refuse to communicate? That is not a personality problem. That is a cultural environment problem, and it will crush your schedule, destroy your quality, and burn your people out.

Now, imagine the alternative. Imagine a project trailer where the team respects each other, where healthy conflict is truly healthy, where people over-communicate, where the plan is visible, and where people actually like coming to work. I would rather have the problem of a team being so connected that we have to coach balance so they also go home and enjoy their families, than have the problem of a team that hates work and drags that poison back to the people who love them.

That is why Elevate Construction exists. We do not want people surviving construction. We want people thriving in construction. We want clean, safe, stable projects that have flow. We want teams that represent the company.

You Built a Job, Then You Asked for a Career

Here is where I am going to say something that might sting, but it is meant to help. If your superintendents act like this is “just a job,” it might be because the company has set it up as a job. In the podcast I shared a quote I once heard about a retirement party where a person said, “They could have had the work of my heart and not just the work of my hands, but they never asked me.” That hits hard because it is true.

Think about what makes leadership exciting. When you go home, you are excited because your opinion matters. You get to decide. You get to lead. You get to solve hard problems. You are not being told what to do all day long. You are not being used like a warm body.

Now, think about how many superintendents get treated. We dispatch them here and there. We give them trade partners they did not select. We tell them what to do. We need them to babysit. We need coverage and presence. Then we ask why they do not come to company events or why they are not emotionally invested.

A career includes the mind, the heart, and the hands. A job uses the body. If you built a “body-only” role, do not be surprised when people behave like a body-only employee.

That is not blame. That is accountability for leadership systems.

Hours Are Not a Measurement of Buy-In

Let’s also clean up a big misconception. Leaders will say, “They show up, put their time in, and at 4:30 or 5:00 they go home.” That sounds like the problem is hours. It is not. Hours are not a measurement of effectiveness. In fact, the more hours someone has to work to run a project, the worse the system is and the less capable the leadership is at creating flow.

I know that statement gets reactions. Let me say it cleanly the way I said it in the podcast. If a superintendent has to work more than 60 hours, they are not that good at what they do. If they can run it in 50 to 55, they are doing well. And if we had perfect safety coverage systems and robots handling emergencies, most of us could run a project in six to twelve hours because the meeting systems, planning systems, and visual controls would do the heavy lifting.

Now, I am not recommending that. Superintendents must be present. There are safety realities. There are emergencies. But the principle remains. We should not be worshiping overwork. We should be building systems that create stability so people can go home, recharge, and come back sharp. Burnout is a design flaw in the system, not a badge of honor.

People Check Out When They Are Invisible

Here is the heart of why this happens. People are not “unvested” because they are lazy. Most of the time they are unvested because they are invisible. They do not feel relevant, they do not know how they are being measured, and they are disconnected from real relationships in leadership.

Here I recommended a simple but powerful framework from Patrick Lencioni, often titled either The Three Signs of a Miserable Job or The Truth About Employee Engagement. The names are different, but the message is the same. People need relevance, measurement, and connection. Without those, they become anonymous. When people are anonymous, they stop caring. When they stop caring, they stop representing the company.

I shared a story from my own career to make this real. I once worked for a great company, one of the best I have seen. I had autonomy. I could spend money on training. I could travel. I had freedom. People assumed I would thrive. But I did not have those three things. I felt anonymous. I had measurement without meaning. I did not feel relevant to the organization’s purpose.

And to make it worse, I was constantly dispatched to fix problems. I am good at recovering projects, stabilizing chaos, and turning things around. People leaned on that. But that was not what I wanted my whole life to be. My genius is building systems, training leaders, and creating stability so we do not have fires in the first place. The system used me as a firefighter, then wondered why I was not fulfilled. That is not a people problem. That is a design problem.

If that can happen to me, it can happen to your superintendents. They might be capable, but they are disconnected. They might be loyal, but they are exhausted. They might be showing up, but they are not engaged. Engagement is not a motivational speech. Engagement is a system.

Build Engagement, Then Build Coverage, Then Build Cascade

So what do we do? We build the operating system in the right order. First, we must create engagement through relevance, measurement, and connection. Then we must create project coverage systems that reduce burnout and remove ambiguity. Then we must create a company cascade so operations represent the company everywhere.

If your project needs superintendent coaching, project support, or leadership development, Elevate Construction can help your field teams stabilize, schedule, and flow. That is not a slogan. That is what we do. We coach leaders in real time, onsite, with systems that work.

Let me explain the coverage system because it solves a huge portion of the “locking up” and “ownership” problems immediately. A project team needs an actual coverage plan. In the team meeting agenda, you talk about PTO, Saturday work, coverage, and who is closing. You assign coverage by day. One person has the closeout responsibility on Monday, another on Tuesday, and so on. The closeout person does the walk, verifies everyone is out, locks gates, secures the building, and communicates it. If there is after-hours risk, they monitor the camera and send alerts if needed.

That is only possible if the day plan is visible. Foreman huddles and worker huddles must produce a clear day plan on a board so anyone can step in. When the plan is visible, the team can cover for each other without fear. When the plan is hidden, the superintendent feels trapped onsite because nobody can cover. Then people burn out. Then they check out. Then leaders blame them.

Coverage systems are respect. Team balance is respect. Stability is respect.

Now let’s talk about the company cascade because this is where most organizations fail. They pay consultants to define mission, values, core behaviors, and “secret sauce.” They talk about culture at the executive level. Then it never reaches the field. That is like coaching your kid’s team, only talking to two players, and expecting the whole team to run the play. It is ridiculous, and yet we do it constantly.

A real cascade takes the mission and turns it into visible human systems. The company defines what is most important right now. That includes the thematic focus and the defining objectives. Those defining objectives show up on meeting agendas. They show up in daily huddles. They show up on huddle boards. Each project team aligns their goals to those objectives. Then leadership ties the behaviors to incentives and performance conversations.

This is where people actually start caring. Not because you threatened them. Not because you emailed them. Because the system made the priorities clear, measurable, visible, and connected to what the team is rewarded for.

There are a couple of behavior examples that fit naturally here. If you want better customer experience, you measure and reward customer “wow moments.” If you want better continuous improvement, you measure and reward implemented improvement ideas, and you can use LeanTakt routines to make that normal. If you want proactive safety, you measure and reward safety observations and rapid correction times. If you want quality protection, you measure and reward issues caught and communicated before the owner discovers them. You do not punish people for surfacing problems. You reward early visibility and fast correction. That is how Toyota thinks. That is how real Lean leaders think.

To make it practical without turning this into a checklist, here are a couple of examples that leaders can choose from when building incentives, and these are not meant to replace the paragraphs above, but to make it easier to picture the application in the real world:

• A project team can be recognized and rewarded for consistently executing daily huddles with visible day plans and documented closeout communication, because that builds stability and reduces risk without adding overtime.
• A superintendent group can be recognized and rewarded for implemented improvement ideas that remove friction from field operations, because that creates flow, reinforces LeanTakt thinking, and makes excellence repeatable.

When people see that the company actually means what it says, they change. When people see that the “culture talk” is real and tied to how we lead, how we meet, how we measure, and how we reward, they stop acting like it is a job and start acting like it is their craft.

Practical Guidance That Actually Works in the Field

Let me say it the way builders need to hear it. If you want teams representing the company, you have to stop hoping and start building. You have to build engagement. You have to build coverage. You have to build cascade. You have to train.

This is why I talk about immersive training and boot camps. Most corporate training is a slideshow and a lecture. It is boring, and it does not change behavior. Real training is explain, demonstrate, guide, and enable. It pulls people out of a rut and gives them a new operating system. I have seen superintendents come in numb and burnt out and leave with energy, clarity, and a plan. People do not need motivation. They need systems and skills that make success possible.

When we support companies at Elevate Construction, we do not just tell them what to do. We help them create the human systems, the meeting systems, the field routines, the coverage plans, the alignment structures, and the coaching rhythms so that the culture becomes stable. We do this with Lean thinking, with team health principles, and with production-based scheduling systems that create flow, including LeanTakt when the project needs that level of reliability and rhythm.

Make It Dignified to Care Again

There is dignity in construction. There is dignity in being a superintendent. There is dignity in building something that will outlast us. People will care when you make it dignified to care again. They will care when their opinions matter. They will care when success is measurable. They will care when they are known. They will care when the system is fair. They will care when the load is shared and the plan is visible.

If you are reading this and you are an executive, ask yourself a simple question. Have we created careers or have we created babysitting jobs? Have we built a system where our best builders can win, or have we built a system that burns them out and then blames them?

Elevate Construction exists to help field teams build stable operations that protect families, respect workers, delight customers, and create flow. That is the mission. That is why I show up every day. That is why we write, train, coach, and support projects.

I will leave you with a challenge. Pick one project and make it an example. Build the engagement system. Install the coverage plan. Create the cascade. Then tour everyone through it. Let your teams see what “representing the company” looks like. Once people see it, they start believing it is possible.

And remember this principle from W. Edwards Deming that applies perfectly here: “A bad system will beat a good person every time.” Build the system, and your people will rise.

FAQ

What does it mean to “get superintendents bought in”?
It means the superintendent is engaged with the mission, understands how to win, feels connected to leadership, and takes ownership of the customer experience through stable routines and clear expectations.

Why do some supers treat the role like a job instead of a career?
Most of the time it is because the company has structured the role like a job where they are dispatched, not consulted, and used for presence instead of leadership. Without relevance, measurement, and connection, people become anonymous and check out.

How do coverage systems prevent site security failures?
A coverage system assigns clear daily responsibility for closeout, supported by a visible day plan so anyone can cover. It removes ambiguity, reduces burnout, and makes secure closeout a normal part of operations instead of a hope.

What is a “company cascade” and why does it matter in construction operations?
A cascade is how a company’s mission, values, and priorities become visible in meeting agendas, daily huddles, and team scoreboards all the way to the field. Without cascade, the field never feels or sees the company’s real expectations, and operations become inconsistent.

How can Elevate Construction help a company improve superintendent performance?
Elevate Construction provides superintendent coaching, project support, and leadership development by installing stable meeting systems, coverage plans, alignment cascades, and field-proven Lean routines so teams can schedule, stabilize, and flow.