Welcome everybody out to podcast number 1361. In this podcast, I'm going to talk to you about a concept that I think is pretty relevant when it comes to solving problems. I think you're going to love it, so stay with us.

As he encourages you to do better, live a remarkable life and expect more. Let's go. Welcome everybody. 

I hope you're doing well and staying safe out there. I've got some really cool things going on. Just got the preface or I don't know if it's a preface or for either one.

Done by Felipe Engineer in the CPM book. I'm doing really great on the general superintendent outline. Kate is almost done. 

We just went through edits for the TACT planning book. There's like 25 new pages, like I said, in completely new formatting. You're really going to want to check that out.

And then the field engineer book is doing really well. I'm going to be reaching out to Brandon Montero to schedule some time. We're going to sit down in person and really go through this.

Anyway, I've got a YouTube shoot coming up on Wednesday for 20 more videos that are specific to topics that people have asked about. So that's really, really exciting. And this morning at 5 a.m., I was on with Daniel, a director of innovation at Lean TACT.

And then Kevin Rice, the chief visionary officer with us, my partner, or I'm his partner either way. And we were on with Paul Akers and Mommy Sun, preparing for the Japan trip in October. And it was quite remarkable.

So things are going great. And I've got some cool things that I want to share with you here today. Let's go through the builders code here just a little bit.

And I like to cover these because they're so good. They're quotes that I do every day on LinkedIn. But I do want to share them here and give my podcast peeps some love as well.

Here it is. Always have buffers. Buffers don't waste time. 

They save time. Pushing work, moving up start times unnecessarily, and stacking work does not make work go faster. It creates a mess.

Flow has and always will be associated with work that progresses with buffers in the system. So real quick, just to comment on that, like if you have a trade that's finishing a little bit early on Friday, please don't try and move up the Monday scheduled trade up to Friday. That creates so much variation.

But we cannot be afraid of buffers. Even when we're doing tax simulations and people have been taught about buffers, they get freaked out about buffers. And it's literally a plastic 3D printed set.

And they still get freaked out about buffers. We've got to stop being freaked out about buffers. Your heart or sorry, your bloodstream has buffers.

Your breathing has buffers. Your heartbeat has buffers. Like everything around you has buffers.

Cells have buffers inside of them and around them. Like we can't be afraid of buffers. Buffers create flow.

I heard a really irresponsible comment the other day that an owner said, I think I told you this, but said, I don't allow buffers. All buffers do is encourage complacency and laziness. That's the most ridiculous and stupid thing that I've ever seen and heard in my entire life.

I hope people don't go out there sharing that garbage with people. In lean construction, you set a target and you work to that target with innovation. And when you work to that target with innovation, you remove waste.

But inside that innovation and inside that target, a part of what you're designing is not something to full capacity, but something with buffers. Buffers are different than waste. And people need to understand that.

It's a huge concept that we really need to grab. So there we go. Let's talk about some feedback from our listeners.

Jason, your post regarding failure as part of life resonated with me in a deep personal and professional level. As an early career professional in the construction industry, the pressure to be perfect requires relentless pursuit and discipline, hard work, sacrifice, and commitment. However, it was comforting to see your post displaying transparency that even a successful construction professional has made mistakes and use them as a catalyst for growth and development.

Thanks again for the encouragement, sincerely. You know, I was really happy about that, the fact that people could benefit from that. I think that's quite remarkable and I'm so glad.

All right, so let's get, oh, real quick. I have got some concepts that I want to clear up just before we get started here. Just a couple of clean up things here if you don't mind.

So let's go ahead and let me read this. Hey, Jason, I just listened to episode 1360. Oh, by the way, let me give you an intro here.

This is a bit of feedback that I got from a post and I thought it was kind of neat. I'm still thinking about it. I haven't changed anything.

I'm not asking you to change anything, but here it is. Hey, Jason, I just listened to episode 1360, roadblocks and PPC. I'm with you on PPC.

I actually avoid briefing it at our progress updates. And if they actually need a number, I just give them the percentage of time that has elapsed off the original plan. Nobody cares and the owner's CM team never uses it anyway.

But there are really three types of roadblocks, constraints, limitations and obstacles. Constraints are placed on a construction team by a higher echelon, such as supervisors, customers or enforcement agencies. Examples are budget workforce allocation, safety requirements, noise control or working hours.

Limitations are the extent of your teams or your equipment's capabilities. Examples include people's knowledge and experience, poor rate, drawing time or maximum load. Roadblocks are issues that can slow down or stop the work.

They include things like long lead procurement, accidents, equipment failure, change orders and those unknowns that pop up all the time in my world of commercial remodeling. I hope that helps explain things. I really like that.

You know, constraints, separating that out and understanding what limitations are that's really nice. I like that. And it aligns perfectly.

So I'm going to, yeah, I'm going to keep this. This is really quite nice. So I appreciate the person that gave the feedback.

I didn't get permission to mention his name, so I won't, but super love it. There's a couple quick things that I wanted to talk about before I talk about the concept. And these are just little things that shouldn't be podcast episodes themselves.

Let me talk about one. I heard a quote, well, I think it's kind of a quote, it's like a phrase, that better explains the excellence, not perfection concept. Because in the excellence, not perfection concept, there are things where you really need to be perfect.

You know, perfect safety is quite remarkable. You know, perfect track or driving record is remarkable, right? So I'm not demonizing perfection, but this says it better. Approximately right, not precisely wrong.

That's better said, don't you think? Approximately right means that we get to the point where we're excellent enough to be right and we're not so focused on the illusion of perfection that we're precisely wrong on something. So I did want to share that with you. I thought that was quite remarkable.

There's another one, too much control is ineffective, not enough is disrespectful. So people talk negatively about control all the time and it's very, I really don't want to be toxic anymore, but like it just really shows a lack of understanding of the real world. Somebody said the other day, nobody has any business controlling anything.

And you just have to laugh. I really appreciate that like enemies, this was a person that self declared themselves my enemy and I just always love, it's always nice when your enemies and detractors are idiots at the same time. Like it makes things so much easier.

Like if I had intelligent people fighting against me, that would be difficult. That'd be one thing, but having people with idiotic thoughts, they're completely misguided, actually kind of laughable at times. And this individual said, nobody has any business trying to control anything.

Like immediately I was like, okay, so we shouldn't control the thermostat in our house. We shouldn't control our hands on the wheel when we're driving. We shouldn't, you know, like you could just keep, you know, you shouldn't control whether or not you lock your door or not when you're in a hotel.

That's so stupid. Like human beings control things all the time. Here's the bottom line, too much control and too much is generally when you're trying to control people.

Not enough is disrespectful. Meaning if you don't have control of your job site and you don't have control of the safety and the cleanliness and the respect for people, then you're just disrespecting people. And that's just bottom line how it is.

So I wanted to share those two things. And thank you for letting me be a little bit petty about the responses to people. Meaning like to the detractors, the people of the taking it upon themselves to be our enemy, which is rather stupid.

It's really a disadvantage because most of the things that we talk about are tested and right. And so for anybody to argue with us, they have to take up the wrong position, which is really quite sad. That sounds arrogant, but it ends up being the truth most of the time.

There's one other thing that I want to talk about before we get started. The other day somebody was like, I work on data centers. Or something like, we want our projects to be like our data centers.

Or somebody said about this hospital, all you need to do is see how we do it on data centers. And let me just be clear real quick. Seeing a lot of data centers, super not impressed.

I wouldn't compare anything to a data center. Probably the best thing that you could do, like I'll give you an example of somebody that does it right. Like Mortensen, on the data centers that I've been with there, it's clean, safe, organized, beautifully run the whole night.

But that's not how they do work on data centers. That's how they do work in general, right? Like they do just remarkable job. Data centers, they don't start soon enough.

They don't have enough people. The contractors bidding them don't have enough experienced people. They claim that they have experience, but they really don't have enough people to transfer that experience.

They're still using CPM, which is dangerous. Usually the methods are classical management with rush, push, and panic. And most of the time, they're disrespectful.

And it really just ends up being this, like I said, this classical management era one, era two nonsense. I wouldn't compare anything to data centers. Now, if you're on a data center and you're like, Jay Money, you just hurt my feelings.

I didn't say you were bad. I said there's nothing inherently, oh, I can say this real quick. There's nothing inherently good about data centers, and I'm not impressed with what I'm seeing.

Now, are there people and teams and groups of humans that are doing great jobs on data centers? Yeah, but if we're going to, if that's the case, then we just need to be bragging about the team. If you're like, hey, there's this one team that runs this data center, well, oh, yeah, that's great. I love people.

I think they're great. But I wouldn't compare anything to a data center just as an FYI. I think we should stop that right now.

Just because there's a lot of them doesn't mean they're being done well. Now, let's get into the podcast at hand. Problems can lead to improvement or suspicion and criticism.

Now, this is a really important topic, and the reason that I really want to talk about it is because it comes down to how the business is being run. And so if you are a business leader, and I've had to analyze this for myself, you've got to set up the right environment, and then the people have got to approach this the right, excuse me, the right way. So first of all, in a company, more lean companies where leadership is closer to the people boots on the ground and making decisions and spending money on their behalf.

Okay, if there is that kind of feedback loop, then there's really no need for suspicion and criticism when the problems arrive. We can improve it because there's a connection. And then there's the employee side, which is all human nature, mostly genetic wiring in my opinion, and so I'm not going to criticize it very much.

But if you see a problem in a company, you can either be like, oh my gosh, these freaking people, why did this company do it? They're trying to hurt me. How irresponsible. I'm telling my parents, I'm going to go home and kick the dog and complain to my spouse, and I'm going to secretly put something on social media to complain, and I'm going to talk to my peers about it, right? Okay, that's one method.

Wouldn't recommend that one. The other one is, oh, there's a problem. Hey, we're doing some Paul Aker's style lean.

We've got a leadership team and owners that are listening. We've got a company where we're allowed to make improvements, so let me go at this with a positive attitude and try and fix some things. Now, here's the key for leaders.

If you don't have the feedback loops and the communication channels, then people's only option is to be pissed off, suspicious, or critical. If you have the feedback loops and you're able to solve problems collaboratively with the team, then it can be the positive, hey, let's improve this together. But I will say there is a difference.

So we're talking about continuous improvement. If you don't have a way to improve, then it's going to lead to negativity, anger, suspicion, and criticism, because people are naturally programmed to come from a place of fear. And so I just wanted to make sure that that was an approach that both sides can learn from.

And I would recommend, even just as a general standard practice in life, to try and do it from a positive way and actually enact real change. And there are times when somebody can bring up something and they don't have to have a solution. And it's more important to just bring it up than it is to bring it up and have to have a solution.

But I would say if you do have a solution or can have a solution, please do so. It's so much easier to work from that direction with the genius of the team than to just have somebody complaining all the time. So I hope you've enjoyed this podcast, and on we go.

Please join us next time in elevating the entire construction experience for workers, leaders, and companies coast to coast. If you're enjoying the show, please feel free to share with your construction colleagues and help us spread the word by rating, subscribing, and leaving a review on your preferred podcast listening platform. We really appreciate it.

We'll catch you next time on the Elevate Construction Podcast.