Think strategically
Whatever the project might be, Pedersen needs people who can take a strategic approach to meeting the goal. It’s why technical or specialty skills are often not the priority when it comes to making hiring decisions.
“You can never hire enough skill sets if you’re hiring people for tactical things,” Pedersen says. “You need some of those, but if you find people who are more strategic than tactical, then they can adjust. They can start looking at what are the new strategies you need to put in place to do things and from those strategies, you can derive tactics and goals and everything else that follows from there.
“You’re going to need the tactical people to help you with the specific details. But you need the strategic people to tell you how to build it and put it in place.”
Focusing on the strategic mindset has made it easier for Webcor to transition into doing public projects. Identifying that mindset in the interview process requires that candidates be put in situations where they demonstrate whether they have those skills.
“There is no way of knowing other than putting people into a situation that is commensurate with what they would be doing and seeing how they react,” he says. “And then seeing from that reaction how well that fits with the culture or what we would like to see when people are trying to solve problems.”
Customer service is another factor. The mindset of some contractors is to scan project documents for deficiencies and then insert a claim to ultimately gain a higher fee.
“We’ll ask someone, ‘If you come upon these different conditions on a job site, what do you do?’” Pedersen says. “If that person is answering, ‘I go ahead and pull together the documentation so I can submit a claim and derive a greater fee for the company,’ we know that’s not our guy. We’re the fixer. We find those things early and help the owner or architect mitigate them before it becomes a big cost issue. We try to find ways to maintain that partnership.”
Perception or reality?
When Pedersen became president and CEO at Webcor in 2012, he was not new to the company. He had been there and helped lead the organization through its transition to taking on more public work. He had also seen flaws in the way Webcor approached the overall strategy of the company.
“If you’re not open about everything that is taking place, there is always something going on in the background,” he says. “There is some element of politics or lobbying trying to push an agenda. You have to have candor in its highest form so that everyone is willing to say what they need to say and what they think. Either it’s reality or perception. If it’s perception, tell me what you’re thinking and let’s dispel it. If it’s reality, then we should all find the right way to solve it.”
Every company needs to take an open approach to where it is headed or it will miss little problems that left unaddressed, turn into bigger problems that threaten the company’s ability to operate effectively.
“In a strategic plan, you have to start with your vision, you align your values with it, you cement the mission of the company and then you start coming up with some of the goals and the tactics around them,” he says.
“You look for ways to free people up so you don’t micromanage them and you trust them. But they have to know where you’re going and know how to make those decisions themselves. You try to give them the tools to do that so it’s a more efficient system with less oversight needed. That drives efficiency and cost in itself.”
The ability to develop a plan and have the discipline to stick to it no matter what hurdles come up along the way is a difference maker.
“Any time you’re trying to initiate change, you have to keep pushing,” Pedersen says. “The spring is going to keep bouncing back to where it was if you aren’t always on that spring trying to say, ‘No, we’re not going to do that, we’re going to do this.’
“One of my biggest jobs is to be out there trying to push our strategic plan and where we want to go and show people in continuous incremental ways how we’re going to get there and getting them to change behaviors so we get there as an entire company.” ●
Takeaways
- Find the opportunity in every threat.
- Hire people who can think strategically.
- Don’t let little problems become big ones.
The Pedersen File
NAME: Jes Pedersen
TITLE: President and CEO
COMPANY: Webcor Builders
What was your first job? My first paycheck was in the construction industry. I got my welder’s license when I was about 17. I was working with structural steel, but it wasn’t really sustainable during the school year. During school, I would work in the food industry as a combination bus boy and waiter. In the summertime, it was working in the construction industry.
Did you envision going into construction? There has always been something cool to me about construction. You look at a set of drawings and you can visualize what the structure is ultimately going to be. Then through the efforts you put in, something very demonstrable comes from the thoughts that are brought about from the design or a preconceived idea of what it’s going to be. I didn’t know that I would ultimately do it and that’s why I tried to explore a little bit in college. But it was very natural for me. I stayed with it because I enjoyed doing it, I was natural at it and there were a lot of rewards from it.
How much pride do you take in the work Webcor has done? That is one of the hallmarks of a construction company compared to a legal firm or something else like that. You’ve got something very demonstrable for all the effort you put in to make something happen. It’s really rewarding to see the spaces you make be used for recreation, for education, for families or creating things in other companies. There is just a huge variety. It’s always rewarding to have that.
