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

Welcome, everybody, out to podcast number 1277. In this podcast, well, first of all, I'm excited to be with you all. In this podcast, I want to talk to you about what happens when our field plans are misaligned with reality.

And I'm going to give you a really nice little analogy, so stay with us. This is the Elevate Construction Podcast, delivering remarkable content for workers, leaders, and companies in construction, wanting to take their next step. Get ready to step out of your comfort zone with Jason Schroeder, as he encourages you to do better, live a remarkable life, and expect more.

Let's go. Welcome, everybody. I'm excited to be with you.

I'm going to read some feedback from our listeners here before I move on, and I think you're going to like it. Good evening, Jason. I know you guys are busy and go through so many courses that remembering any one individual would be very difficult.

I felt compelled to send a follow-up email here because your course initiated a profound change in my life. You know, I never really had time to explain who I was or my background with such and such company, but I've been involved with every project on some level on the electrical side with the business owner, the ones that he has done in Okanagan, whether it was with West Canada in the beginning or Aurora and Bets today. After meeting you all and hearing your program, I decided I would need to leave my job and align myself with someone I'd be proud to work for and as well enjoy being at work with every day.

I'm within such and such company now, a company I worked for many years ago, but we have an Okanagan division now and we're looking to grow. I don't have the business owner's email, but I would welcome any opportunity to introduce to you all what we're all about and why I think we're the electrical contractor that most aligns with your values. Again, either way, I can't say enough how much I appreciated that conference you led.

It just totally changed my life for the better and I thank you for that. Well, that's awesome. I'm going to have to figure out where this message came from because I think I copied it and didn't realize that I need to respond right away.

I'm going to look into that anyway. Great stuff. He was at the former boot camp in Palona and obviously enjoyed it greatly.

Everybody up there in those boot camps is fantastic. I want to give a shout out to High Street. They are so fantastic, so kind to their trade partners and absolutely amazing.

I want to go dive right into the topic at hand. This is interesting. I'm not being critical of West Palm Beach, Florida.

I might be being critical of Apple Maps. Kevin Rice is always teasing me about how Apple isn't as good as Google Maps or this and that. I'm always like, Kevin, you're just jealous.

After this trip to West Palm Beach, Florida, I think maybe I might agree with him. This has been absolutely a nightmare. As I was driving from Miami to West Palm Beach, there's obviously construction, but that shouldn't excuse anybody.

There wasn't a single road that matched the maps. I'm literally like, Kate and I are trying to figure it out while we're driving in a new area and figure out what in the world, where am I supposed to go? Wrong turn, wrong turn, wrong turn, oops, oops, wrong turn, wrong turn. I'm like, this is insane.

This is so stupid. If you don't know where you are and you don't know how to anchor yourself, you don't know where you're going. You're going to get lost and you're going to have lots of detours.

It kept happening over and over. Apple maps, you need to up your game big time because this is just not okay. We barely made it.

What I mean by that is without so many delays, we just give up and go back to Miami. I'm being dramatic, but it was that bad. The maps were that disconnected.

Apple maps would show four lanes and there were really six. It would show two forks in the road when there were really four. It was absolutely ridiculous.

What I realized then is if you don't know where you are and if you're not anchored, you have no idea where you're going. I know that that's a simple thing and everybody's like, Jason, duh. But that's the point.

A couple of times I've realized, and this doesn't matter whether you're using tact or CPM. It doesn't matter what you're using. If you don't have alignment between what's happening and the look ahead in the weekly work plan, all of your tools are worthless.

You're completely wasting your time. If you're paying a consultant, if you're paying us, if you're doing it yourself, if you have a scheduling team, you're wasting your time and theirs if you're not aligning. It doesn't make any sense.

The best projects have mostly or the majority of their areas. They have alignment with the look ahead in the weekly work plan. Here's what you can do.

You see exactly where you are. You know the progress. You see it real time.

You see problem in real time. Because you know where you are and you can anchor it to the current context, you can form a path forward. This is such a big deal to me.

And let me just say that. Scheduling isn't just a plan for where you go in the future. It's also an as built to tell you, to help you identify problems and fix problems.

And it is a plan forward because you need a path forward, but you can't make the path forward if you're not in the current context. This is such a big problem for me that if I ever see this with our clients or with anything that we have involvement with, I'll pull a hill or what would you call that? Pull the hand on, freak out, go-do field walks to align every single area so that we know exactly how to work with the trades to win the last planner system to make a plan forward and make sure that it has trade flow and that we're protecting everybody and that it is accomplishable and that we have the materials. Otherwise, if you don't do that, everybody's going to be heading in different directions, going in the wrong directions, not aligned and especially not know where to go.

And when they do know where to go, it will take longer, just like my trip to West Palm Beach in Florida. And so this is a big issue for me. We've got to know where we're going.

One of the things that I want to talk to you about is there's a story, and I don't want to be too negative with this, but I do need to kind of get some self-therapy here by ranting about this just to sketch you back. I'm in a boot camp, but Brandon's helping me. We've got other helpers, a massive boot camp.

I was asked to hop onto a meeting to do a tactical introduction with a company that wanted to know about it. And I guess there's a possibility that they would help us, ask us to help them with services. And I have to move heaven and earth to get this done.

I've got to delegate and accidentally dump everything on Brandon, get additional help. Kate's in there helping. I'm borrowing her computer.

The kids are in the room. Livy's watching the kids babysitting for us. Like, it's a complete maneuver show.

And I hop on, and I'm giving this free training to this company who wants to know what's going on. And the scheduling team and some of the executives are insulting me, like throughout. And I asked at the beginning, what would you like me to do? 25% through, asked where do you want me to go? Nothing, nothing, nothing.

And then when I asked one time, they were like, I hope this starts to make more sense, like insulting me. And we've like really worked hard to get these things perfected and jamming out. And boy, this is a long story for a short point, but stay with me if you want to.

And so then that keeps going. And then more digs, more digs, more negativity. And then a really high up with the organization spoke up.

It was like, well, you know, your examples are much different than this type of a building. And started to like be really rude and disrespectful and dismiss the experience. And I was literally thinking, like, excuse me, sir and ma'am.

Tax is not on trial here. And the other thing is if you're like, oh, tact is hard to implement, last planner is hard to implement. Well, what do you think you're doing with CPM? Your company's not implementing that either.

How do you think you're doing with all of the other systems? If the company that you hired, if the contractor you hired and the leaders are so uneducated that they can't even use the garbage type in activity systems that you've already tried to shove down their throat, then they're obviously never going to get tacked in last planner, but don't blame it on tacked in last planner. They're not even doing CPM. My point here is that when people are like, oh, blah, blah, blah, tacked, this is new, I've never heard about this before.

Negative, negative, negative, waste my time, which I don't appreciate. The truth of the matter is every single other person on that call, that team, they don't know CPM. They don't even know Gantt charts.

They don't know any system. They don't know how to schedule at all. Tacked in last planner are not on trial here.

My point with that is that when you think about aligning the look ahead in the week they were playing with the field, when you think about this podcast, when you think about the effort, when you think about all the things I'm asking, it's not like there's a better solution. It's not like, well, it was easier. We were already jamming out with CPM.

Nobody's successful with CPM. Only 15 to 45, and 45% of the most of CPM activities hit on time. That was a horrible track record.

74, 76% of projects with CPM fail. It's been well studied. It hurts people.

It overburdens work. It rushes and pushes and panics people. Everyone hates it.

Everyone's been abused by it. So why are we defending this abusive system? And why would a contractor that's getting free training from a kind, generous, loving, and good-looking person like me start insulting me over the phone? If I had the presence of mind during that call, I would have said, excuse me, ma'am, are people on your team accustomed to tolerating your behavior and sympathy voting? Or does anybody ever call you out for your toxic and abusive behavior? If I had my presence of mind, that's what I would have said. But I didn't.

So I didn't say it, which is kind of sad. And then I get an email from the person that invited me to do the free training, basically blaming me that I was explaining too much theory, and they want more detail and examples. Let me give everybody a tip here.

When somebody doesn't want to do something, they'll find any excuse. If you talk about theory, they'll say it should have been more technical. If you talk about technical, they should have, they'll say you should have talked more about theory.

If you have a balance between it two, they'll say, well, it was your visuals. Well, it wasn't your visuals. It was the way you said it.

It was the internet connection. Oh, it doesn't work on, it works on a $1.5 billion job. Well, what about, this is different.

We're on a $2 billion project. We're at a $200 million project. Oh, that's a data center.

We're healthcare. Oh, it's healthcare? We're something else, right? Everybody's got an excuse. It's multifamily.

It's residential. It's what? It's concrete. It's still tough so you don't understand it.

Here's what people don't understand. And this is going to come off of there again. Look, woman, you're talking about hospitals.

I love that for you. I'm a hospital builder. That's what I do.

I build hospitals. I build laboratories. Pretty good at airports, pretty good at high rises, really good at concrete.

And I happen to consult on a lot of different types of buildings. So when you say to me, oh, Jason, there's a big difference between data centers and hospitals. Yeah, no shit.

I know how to build hospitals better than you do. So why don't you shut the fuck up? So like, I'm a little bit annoyed here. If you hear anybody in this industry, bad mouthing tacked, bad mouthing lean, bad mouthing last planner, it's because they don't know what they're doing.

And instead of admitting that they have a comprehension problem, they're going to blame everybody and everybody else. And they're probably going to be rude to you and waste your time in the meantime. So let me just go ahead and get that off my test for my therapy.

And so just let me tell you, like, when I am talking about these concepts, aligning, look ahead, aligning weekly work plans, aligning all this stuff. And people are like, oh, that's a lot of work, Jason. Yeah, any kind of planning is a lot of work.

Any kind of doing your jobs, a lot of work, any kind of construction, a lot of work. Why don't you go over there and type in activities in your CPM schedule, logic time and have fun and create worthless pieces of paper for trades that don't matter that nobody's going to use so that you can blame them and basically point a contractual gun at them and never be responsible for anything that matters. Don't waste my time because I don't need your business and I don't need the money.

I'm sorry, everybody, for being so snarky, but thank you for letting me get that out because I feel so much better. Love you all. On we go.

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