(Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai. Go Unlimited to remove this message.)

Welcome everybody out to podcast number 1418. We have the man, the myth, the legend, Mark Story with us today and we're going to be talking about trust. If you're into that, stay with us. 

Welcome everybody. I hope you're doing well and staying safe out there. I'm super stoked to be on here with Mark. 

Mark, how are you doing my brother? Are you doing good? I'm doing great. Thank you. How are you? I'm doing great. 

It took us a minute to get the internets figured out here, but thank you for being patient with me. I'm sorry about that. I'm doing great. 

This week it felt like it's kind of like been all over the place, but good things keep happening. So I'm pretty stoked. And you know, Mark, last week we got a book out, created a manual for tact and CPM, got a new tact, steering and control video out, creating things constantly, get to be on podcasts with people like you. 

So I'm freaking stoked. Jake, Jake Smaley got busy. So we have to pause on his for a while, but I still got you. 

So good. Okay. So concept trust. 

Can you tell me what's on your mind? And then I'll start to ask questions from there. So that's okay. Yeah. 

So Jason asked me kind of what topics would you like to talk about? So I sat down and wrote some things down and we typically talk about, you know, things that we're going through right now. Right. And so I think about just our world, right, with lots of, and I don't want to get into politics or anything like that, but we always, you wonder what is real, right? You look on the internet, what is real, look on all those social media things and on the news. 

And so it got me thinking about trust and trade partners, you know, and a project that I'm currently on right now, and actually something that I'm, you know, figuring out as a consultant is it'd be really easy for me to go onto a job and point fingers, you know, could cause a divide. And as an authentic person or leader on a job, how do you bring trust, how you create trust and bring folks together? And whether I'm a consultant or I'm working as a GC, I think you'd agree with me, Jason, like there's always a bit of lack of trust between some of our trade partners in the GC, right? And I think that's part of our environment. Everybody's trying to protect themselves and things of that nature. 

I said in a meeting earlier, well, I think it was last week with your team explaining tact and how we really wanted all of our trades to be successful. And the reason we're doing this is that, you know, when our trades win, we're winning, right? And so how do you create that culture? How do you show up every day so that you, when you start winning and getting that trust, how do you maintain it? How do you keep it? You know, those things are what's on my mind. I love that. 

By the way, is my audio still coming through clear? Yeah, it's great. All right, perfect. I was on the podcast just when I did a recording just before this with Hal Makeover. 

He's like a lean mentor to me. And he mentioned, and I'm not sucking up to you, Mark, when I say that, he mentioned something that I now know that you do. He said, build a mood on the project where people can do what they need to do. 

And then he said something that actually taught me a lot. He said, created that mood where the project turns into a learning system. And this is what blew me off my, and it ties into your topic, perfect. 

It blew me out of my sock, whatever, whatever the saying is. Make, allow your team to make mistakes while being in a good mood. And I was like, whoa, whoa, like, because really, and that is something you were talking about before we started the show was like, there are people that just want it done. 

And we'll just delegate and tell you to get it done. But your method, Mark, is is to enable the people to get it done themselves. And then I'm not I'm just telling you what I'm hearing from the things that you're saying. 

I'm not preach. I'm not trying to preach to the choir here. And one of the things that hell said was people don't learn or rise to the occasion. 

Well, if they're not able to do it in a good mood with trust. Oh, let me say one other thing. You had mentioned these trades are coming in and right. 

And they don't want to share because the mood to your point them, and I'm just putting in a different words. You already said it, but the mood on the other job with hide everything because somebody is going to come chew me out, right? Hide, hide, hide, hide. And so we, you, Mark, are pulling them into this collaborative, integrated, trusting, flow based visual system. 

But they're still they're bringing their mood from the previous project. And the mood or their trauma is what's making them resistant to new systems. And so like you're topic about building trust, like, it's probably the only thing that we need to talk about at the beginning. 

Otherwise, there ain't any system that's going to stick, right? Like that's what you're saying. Yeah, yeah, that's exactly right. So here's an example. 

So on our project, we made our first pour. We targeted a certain amount of yardage. We didn't quite get there. 

Still made a significant pour, which was awesome, right? It was a win. And it's our first pour on the job. So there's there's opportunities to learn, right? And so we had a debrief kind of lessons learned after that. 

And we brought all our trades in our entire team in. And through that conversation, I was just asking questions and asking questions trying to get to basically, how could we do this better, right? So not not just that we hit a date, right? Because you can hit dates by making it painful and stacking people in there and making it unsafe. We want to hit dates with consistency and flow and minimal amount of workers and and less stress and you know, that good culture that we're talking about. 

And while I was having the conversation, it was on our electrician. The question was to our electrician. It wasn't that the electrician made a mistake. 

We all made a mistake, right? We could have all done this better. And my team members, I kept asking Ryan questions, and he answered them. And one of my team members says, man, stop picking on him. 

I'm like, I'm not picking on him. I'm just asking questions. I want to get to the answer. 

What did, what did we miss to help him, you know, be successful. And today, I went up and talked to Ryan and said, Hey, man, I hope you don't think I was beating up. And he's like, Oh, are you kidding me? Do you know what I've been through on other GCs? That was a good conversation. 

So to your point, they're bringing their attitude or lack of trust from the environment they experienced last to our environment. So how do we break that now? How do we build trust? And, and we've only got five or six trades on the job right now, just getting started. And we're going to continue to build more, but or bring more on, obviously, but I just really want to figure out how to crack that nut as soon as possible, because that's, that's where we really get the benefit from our trades sharing with us what they need.

I completely agree. I think that's a great example. The, the either. 

So one of the things that hell was saying, and I'm I think these two tie together really nicely. So I appreciate you. Let me let me do this. 

He said, we're always trying to make work easier, make work better, make it faster. But one of the things he said was humans really won't latch on to that unless you make it more interesting. And if you look at that, that placement that you all did, you're taking pictures, you said it is a milestone. 

I'm, I'm not telling you, I'm celebrating what you all did. You rallied the team, did a debrief, and asked lessons learned, and you're doing it as a group. So this ceased to be, oh my gosh, this is some toxic thing I got to do for Mark, to we are stepping up as a team. 

And that is interesting. For the neurotypical people, they get a hit of dopamine. For the people that don't get the hit of dopamine, they are interested in working with the team and the team aspect of it, it speaks for itself. 

So somebody could say just like you already said, I feel like I'm repeating everything you said, but did somebody could say, Oh, it was just a placement? No, it wasn't. That was the team's first major win. Yeah, yeah.

And yeah, 100%. And I would you allow me to share one other thing real quick? I like that. I'm going to build on that on the major wind. 

So go right ahead. Well, I'm getting all this stuff from you. I'm glad that I was able to talk to Hal before this one because they talked together. 

Something he taught me that you like, like, there are times where you got to pull in a general superintendent or I mean, you can call yourself a general super but you're, you know, VP of field ops, whatever you want to call yourself, right? There's times where you got to pull somebody in. And I never knew why. Sometimes you got to do that.

And this is what I got done talking about in the last podcast is the the general super has and the project executive have got to set the mood. But we already talked about the mood and have got to start to talk in a way. I by the way, if I sound volume like I'm loud volume, it's because I'm trying to be clear retainers have got to start to tell stories, tell the story of the project and encourage people to know that it's going to get better and set up the right mood or else nothing else can happen. 

And then I realized that I never understood the impact of, you know, because some companies and we won't mention if some companies, the project executive is just some, I'm gonna go sell other work and see go on to the job. Yeah, but project executives, project directors, general super is done right. Enable every other team on the project to win. 

And I never knew the impact. So I'm seeing it with you hearing it from how now it comes together. Because we always talk Mark, right? Like, if you don't have a good owner, you're forced, you don't have a good company support, you're forced, you don't have a, the goal, the project isn't right, you're forced, you're, you're the structure and the rules are wrong, and everybody's fighting together, you're, you're, you're screwed. 

But who sets that? That's the general super and the project executive. And that's what you and I won't mention is, I don't know if he gave us permission, but you and the pre PX that you're working with are doing on that job. And I'm so stoked that I get to hear about it, learn about it and see it when one time. 

What are your thoughts there? So, so when you asked me three topics, or asked me what the topics, right, one of them was company and team culture, because, and I bring that up, because they can be two different things, right? Yeah. Or they can be a blend or whatever. But you just swapped the word that I was looking for, you know, we all use the, the buzzword culture, but moved on the job. 

And this is really going to help me to take some of these things back to the team. So I'm really, I'm really glad that we're talking, because we just did a whole, like the team, the leadership team of the project, you know, like, not the small leadership, but kind of the overall leadership team, from field and project manager, executive kind of level. And we're just kind of, we're doing, we're doing that whole norming, storming kind of thing, figuring out how to work together, all that good stuff. 

And I think the mood of the job is a really good word to use, because I think we're all trying to work towards what we feel like the mood on the on the projects that should be. I think everybody's like heart and minds are in the right place. But we're just not there yet. 

And I think this conversation will help me to help the team to get there. What's what's our focus? What's our goal? You know, and I do believe that that good mood on the job. People feeling like they're trusted to make decisions, make things happen. 

They feel confident. Trades feel confident in sharing what they need or what they're not getting. Yeah, which can I say real quick, you already said this. 

They are putting themselves at risk, asking for what they need in the old system in the previous job that they were on it. They've got, they've got to learn now that yes, exactly. And if people can't seem work on their on the audio, but he's holding his hands up, right? They were to your point, they were taught that. 

So like, it's, we can't look at them and be like, well, hey, I'm like, what the hell, you know, no, that's a learned habit from a previous job. This is different. You are now in a different place, right? We're going to share and I keep going back to that. 

Like you said, mood is a good word. I like that make you everybody's got to feel free to make mistakes while being in a good and a safe mood, right? Safe environment, right? Safe environment is somebody gonna the 800 pound gorilla gonna come, you know, climb it over top of me and crush me because I made a mistake. And honestly, the debrief that we had yesterday, I had a lot of fun in it and I learned. 

And that was the thing like that, those debriefs or lessons learned, that is a, that should always be a safe environment to share openly what went well, what did not go well, what could we have done better? And by the way, it's a, it's a train or right to talk lean, right? We're all part we all have a box car, right? So when one of them goes off the rails, what happens? We all go, right? Yeah, you know, dude, I've never thought of that. Okay, okay. And you just blew my mind. 

This has been such a good podcast day. All right. This is what I heard you say. 

So we you and I always tell people like it doesn't matter how fast your fastest trade is going. It matters how how slow your slowest is, right? So stop following some imaginary critical path, go find your bottlenecks, right? And just tied that to the team. Our team is only as wet going as well as our most disconnected team member. 

Boom. And that's why like, that's why that concept of like everybody matters is so important is like somebody could say, you know, I remember General Superintendent's Mark, they would come on the job and just like rip into everybody and just go solve the biggest problem. And your approach is hop in the project and make sure that everybody matters, everybody feels safe, and everybody's clicking because you in a couple of months, Mark, and I'm not I'm just telling saying this out loud. 

So the podcast listeners can hear it, because you already know this. In a couple of months, you're going to have a full team of people that feel enabled and they feel the autonomy to go do great things. Whereas if you took the other command and control approach, this project would just be yours to deal with for five years. 

You know what I mean? Like, or however many years. Yeah. Trust. 

Yeah. I was freaking like, this has been such a good, I'm not saying we're not stopping, but like, hell. So what are the sorry to interrupt you. 

So like, let's talk about some of the benefits, right? Just talking out loud. What are the benefits when your team and your trades trust you? Well, so what I don't know if you're saying that hypothetically, you're asking, but like, I got a note here that says, go from people covering their backside. That's previous, right? And then the benefit is to getting out in front of things because they're willing to bring up problems because they feel safe, right? So we said, you and I always say more like, the plan isn't actually the plan isn't actually the goal. 

The plan, the goal is to find problems with the plan so that we can get rid of them before they hit us. And they ain't going to bring up their problems to your point, unless they feel safe. Yeah, the other part is that was in my mind, and I agree with you 1000%. 

Right? That's that's the environment that I'm striving for. I and I believe that our team members are. The other part is what is the old way, right? Yeah. 

The old way of just kind of browbeat and yelling at people in command and, you know, control and command is what you said, right? The amount of accountability that comes along with trust is so much easier to have that tough conversation, no matter what it is, right? Hey, Joe, you were supposed to have your box cover here yesterday, what's going on with it, you know, and then they can feel safe to open up and be honest with you. And I just had this experience today, one of our trade partners, I was asking him a question. He's like, Hey, just between you and I. And he shared with me some stuff, right? Yeah. 

So with that kind of what immediately went through my head is that this person is trusting me, may not trust their own leadership, right? And you're going to pull them in to where eventually there can be trust everywhere, right? Yeah. Yeah. But that's a, that's a red flag for me that, oh, yeah, yeah. 

That there's a problem. Okay. I'm there, right? So I got it. 

I've got to also understand that and keep those conversations to me, because if I or between myself and that individual, but if I share that information anywhere else, then I'll lose that trust from that person, right? And then that person will have who will they trust, right? Doesn't feel like they trust their own office and they would not trust me, right? So that person gets in a pretty fragile spot, right? And then starts holding the cards close to their vest again, right? Or chest again, probably won't say that. So you know, real quick, if you don't mind me picking up on something here and then pretty soon I'll give you the final word on this so we can wrap this up in a bow. But like you talk about Jocko a lot, which is great and that his pattern. 

Well, what you just said, I'm just going to say to all the podcast listeners, what Mark just said is the pattern. If Mark, I'm just, I'm talking to the universe now, like the ether or the listeners out in the podcast, not lecturing, but like trying to share the, if Mark says, hey, go do this thing. And they screw it up.

Mark can't hold him accountable. But if Mark does what he does and says, hey, can you go come up with a plan here? I'll help you review it. I've got your back. 

I got your back. It's your plan. Then accountability no longer to your point looks like brow beating somebody.

It's like it was their plan. They feel accountable. They will report back and you can actually ask them to improve because it was their plan. 

They bought into it. They came up with it. They were all the way in.

Right. And if you, the first method doesn't work. The second one does. 

And that's why Jocko always says like build that team first, make it be there, simplify it, make it be their plan, prioritize and decentralized command. Now and only now can you hold them accountable. I think we need so much more of that Mark. 

I love it. Yeah. I couldn't agree more. 

I wish we could. It's tough right? Our environment in the construction world moves really fast right? But you know I've shared your books. I've shared a bunch of the Jocko books here just recently. 

I try to share them to any new team members that I that I work with and that would be one of the trainees that I would love to get. You know the extreme ownership and dichotomy of ownership or leadership. Like how could we fast forward those kinds of trainees to a bigger group of people quicker? I think our industry would be a whole lot better.

100 percent. Well Mark, let me ask you a question. What's your challenge? If you had to give everybody a challenge as we're closing this out.

And it could be anything. I guess sometimes people choose a different challenge, same challenge, whatever you want. But like leaving this podcast, people are fired up.

What would you encourage them to do? Yeah that's my question. Well so I guess it goes with what I just said right? I wish we had more of that environment in our industry because you know that that electrician that I talked about earlier he was like oh wow well that wasn't bad at all. You should see some of the some of the you know GCs I've had to deal with right? So would you rather, on your next job, would you rather all of your trades come with a more open book or a more trusting feeling of the GC right? And the only way we're going to do that is by all of us starting that on all of our jobs right now. 

Whether you're in the middle of a job, end of the job, starting a job. And then maybe and you're going to work with especially if you know I think back to working in Arizona or working in a certain market right for a long period of time. You're going to work with the same trade partners over and over and over right? And you know and I'm also as I'm talking I'm thinking about the travelers and I'm thinking about a certain group of folks that just traveled the country torching trade partners right? And the amount of effort it took to get those trade partners to come back to work for us after we burned them.

It took a long time but I'm thinking of certain trade partners in Arizona right now that I have a great relationship with. But it took a long time. They were really guarded you know.

So I guess here's the thing if you as you go out there tomorrow think about this. How do you build a trusting collaborative environment on your job with your trades and by the way it doesn't matter the size of your job right? It's all scalable. Trying to figure out where you start. 

Do you start internally? Do you start with just the trades you're working with? How do you how do you how do you grow that organically across your project? And you can do it whether you're a PE an assistant superintendent project director. It doesn't matter what level or what size and project you're on. I love that. 

The other thing is like if that's it like we it can't be just every now and then it takes six months to get the trades feeling safe then they go get abused again. Like for crying a lot. Would we rather know we have stage one cancer now or by the time it hits stage four? So let's treat trades on all jobs to where they bring problems to the surface and talk to.

You know Kate says that to me about the kids. It's like okay. Especially as they're getting older like hey Jason do you want to be a place where they come to you when they need help or a place where they don't? Yeah. 

All right and the answer for me is I wanted to come to me. Absolutely. Here's the thing. 

So that's a really good point. In my best trade partners over the years and I think about Paul Colombo right now. He's a he's a flooring guy.

You met Paul. Oh yeah and he came so his boss brought him in my office and said hey I'm going to be back in a way I've given you know having Paul take over a lot of my clients and Paul came in and he's a really forward guy, good guy and he sat down and he said what do you need for me? And he was just like open the book right? And I said Paul just share with me what you need. Don't BS me. 

Don't tell me something you can't do. If you tell me you're going to do something and for some reason you can't do it. Come to me. 

Share it with me because I'm going to find out anyways. It all comes out anyway so share it early and often so that we have an opportunity to get in front of the train wreck right? That's batching, waiting, waiting, waiting and batching or just wherever you look at it's freaking garbage. Like tell us.

Yeah tell us now. Mark, absolutely phenomenal. I can't wait to cover the other two topics with you my brother.

Everybody I hope you've enjoyed this time with Mark and on we go.

(Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai. Go Unlimited to remove this message.)