Search

honesty

Honesty is the Best Policy When It Comes to Construction Communication

by

Construction Customers Deserve You Being Brutally Honest with Them

Honesty is something that is in short supply now days. It’s like we think if we say something long enough and loud enough it makes it the truth.

Being honest with people is especially difficult for amiable people with stable “Golden Retriever” characteristics, as per the DISC personality profile. (Take the personality test here) It doesn’t help that 40% of the population is this way. People with this personality just want to get along, they try to avoid confrontation at all costs.

I know this because this is a part of my personality. it’s hard to tell people things they don’t want to hear.

The honesty issue doubles when both the contractor and customer are “Golden Retrievers”. Both parties want to get along, and make assumptions based on their perspective, then are disappointed when things don’t go as expected.

In an effort to get along things get left unsaid.

As a customer you need to be willing to ask questions when you need to know something. Even with written proposals and contracts things are overlooked or misunderstood.

As a contractor you need to take time to go through the paperwork and explain things. Be willing to tell the customer the truth about what to expect through the process. This can be hard, especially when customers wants the project started today and finished tomorrow.

In this fast pace, want it now world, expectations are often unrealistic.

Setting realistic expectations reminds me of an old TV commercial. In this commercial there is a young couple and a “rough and rugged” building contractor in overalls setting at a table in a kitchen.  The contractor is explaining the construction process to them as he is writing.  

He tells them, “…when we get started, we will take out all of your cabinets and then be gone for a couple of weeks. When we come back, we’ll take out the patio door in the dining room and put plastic over the opening. It will be left that way for several days. During that time, it will leak in when it rains. Then when the countertop is installed…it will be wrong. We’ll have to order a new one and that will mean another 4 weeks wait.”

Then he slides the contract over to the couple as they look at each other in disbelief and he says, “But when we’re done, you’ll have the kitchen of your dreams and you’re going to want to kiss me smack dab on the lips.”

Then the tag line for the commercial was “Brutally Honest”. I think the commercial was for a cable company, but I’m not sure. As a contractor I certainly could identify with it though.

This was an exaggeration, of course, but there still is a level of reality in it. Construction projects by nature, with all the various parts, never go as smoothly as anyone would like.

There are going to be some bumps along the way in every construction project.

Construction customers deserve this kind of brutal honesty.

It’s hard to hear things that don’t align with the dream picture in our mind. It’s hard to tell people things that they don’t want to hear.

Setting realistic expectations upfront will reduce disappointment in the end.

Lack of Quality, Honesty and Integrity

by

 

 

 

 

 

The Remainder of the Construction Complaint List

 

 

This is the fourth and final post in this series of building solutions on how to avoid construction project nightmares. Previously I wrote about the most common reasons construction projects fall apart. The next two posts dealt with the high cost of poor communication and what contractor communication should include. This week we’ll focus on the character portion of the list.


We’ve all have had experiences where things didn’t turn out like we had envisioned. This is true in everything, especially construction. Lower standards have become accepted and normal.


The low bar of expectation has become the construction industry standard.


I believe this to be attributed mainly to the focus on price. We should be conscious of what things cost, but when it is the determining factor above everything else, something will give. Most likely that will be quality and service.

 


The second factor is that we’ve become a fast-paced drive-through people. We expect everything to be instantaneous. The cost for this lightning fast speed is the same as price…quality and service.


Raising the bar is simple really.


It starts with an awareness of how low the bar is. It has been moving down in small increments for years. It’s happened so slowly that most don’t even realize how low it is. Raising it up will be a slow process as well.


The remainder of the list of reasons construction projects fall apart is as follows:

 

  • Poor quality
  • Cluttered and unorganized job site
  • Left hanging part way through an unfinished project
  • Lack of scheduling or poor time management

 

Quality, honesty and integrity cover this part of the list. These are character issues. They are about choosing to give as much importance to someone else’s needs as I do my own.

 


Quality – is the degree to which something is produced correctly. It can be somewhat subjective, but the higher the bar is raised, the higher the quality standard becomes.


Honesty – is moral character that is trustworthy, loyal, fair and sincere. It is absent of lying, cheating and stealing. Thomas Jefferson is attributed with having said, “Honesty is the first chapter in the book of wisdom.”


Integrity – is adherence to strong moral and ethical principles and values. One has integrity to the extent that they act according to the values, beliefs and principles they claim to hold.


Poor quality and a disorganized job site are part of the physical construction skill set. These things are skills that should be taught through apprenticeship and mentoring.


The same is true for lack of scheduling and poor time management. These things can be taught. Learning and applying these skills is more difficult, in that they are more directly connected to specific personality traits.


Leaving a job hanging partially finished, however is strictly a moral issue and unacceptable, short of some life altering emergency.


The entire issue of construction projects falling apart is unnecessary and unacceptable.

 


It doesn’t have to be this way!

 


You can choose what you want, it’s up to you. Learn more, expect more. Raise the bar as high as you can reach.

How To Prevent Your Construction Project From Falling Apart

by

 

 

 

 

 

 

Emphasis on, “The Project”, Not the Construction

 

 

You or someone you know has had a construction project, ‘not go as planned’.

 


To get it back on track may have just required a little clarification or…it may have ended up in court. Clarity of the project up front is the most important and most overlooked part.

 


I’ve heard people say the worst experience of their life was a construction project gone bad. It doesn’t have to be this way!


This problem can, and should, be addressed before any actual construction begins. The underlying issue with any disagreement is, different people seeing things differently. A good contractor’s job is to sort through these differences and develop a clear picture of the project scope, design, schedule and price.


Most construction projects fall apart for one of these reasons:


• Misunderstandings due to poor or no communication
• Blindsided by cost overruns or hidden costs
• Completed project wasn’t what you wanted or expected
• Not understanding construction terminology
• Poor quality
• Cluttered and unorganized job site
• Left hanging part way through an unfinished project
• Lack of scheduling or poor time management

 

The number one foundational problem between customer and contractor is –


LACK OF or POOR COMMUNICATION.


The first four…half of the list, are communication related. Good communication takes time and effort. Time and effort translate into additional cost. Additional cost means your project’s price is higher. Price is important and often leads to choosing a lower bid. Full circle back to the importance of communication. If you are aware of the differences and are presented a clear plan, you can make the best decision for you and your project.


The next two on the list have to do with trade skills and a LACK of QUALITY WORKMANSHIP. The level of craftmanship expected has been decreasing for years. I believe this is the result of importance placed on price rather than quality.


The last two focus on the LACK of HONESTY AND INTEGRITY. This is another place where the bar has been lowered and needs to be raised back up. Contractors need to say what they do and do what they say.

 


This entire list of issues can be remedied with attention given to these three overarching areas –


Better Communication
Quality Workmanship
Honesty & Integrity

 

 

Next week’s solution will focus on the number one reason construction projects fall apart – LACK OF or POOR COMMUNICATION. We will look at things you should know and expect from your contractor before any construction begins and throughout the project

 

Share your worst construction experiences in the comments below.

Is Real Customer Service a Thing of the Past?

by

 

It Doesn’t Have to Be

 

Customer service is a term that has been thrown around a lot. It’s often a marketing slogan rather than a core value. In this fast paced, information overloaded time that we’re living in, it’s easier now than ever to become part of the noise and make unrealistic promises.


Customer service is found in the heart, not the head.


When running a business, it’s easy for our focus to be on the bottom line rather than the customer, not that bottom line isn’t important. Bottom line is head thinking. Heart thinking is about serving the customer’s needs. It’s finding out what the customer’s goals are and helping them achieve them.


We all tend to naturally lean in one direction or the other, heart or head. It’s important for us to be clear which we are and adjust accordingly. Once we acknowledge that we can compensate accordingly.

 


If we’re operating our business well, both heart and head will be in sync.

 

 

The problem with heart thinking is that in an effort to help the customer achieve their dream, we over promise. We create unrealistic expectations and then when they aren’t accomplished there is disappointment. We need to be clear with customers and ourselves on what’s realistic and share that with them honestly.


Customer service is not about telling them what they want to hear. It’s about telling them the truth. It is hard to tell someone things that they don’t want to hear, but that’s better than telling them a lie. This kind of honesty is hard for a people pleaser like me. By wanting to help everybody with everything, ultimately, I do the customer and myself both a disservice.


This past week I encountered both sides of the customer service experience.


First – Our air conditioner at home quit one night this past week. The next morning, I made a few calls to HVAC contractors that I use as subs. The only one that answered his phone said that he was busy until later in the day. Then in a few minutes he called back and said that he could be out within the hour. Once there, he diagnosed the problem, it was going to require a new part that he could order and have the next day. Or if I would go to Wichita and get the part he would come back out and put it on. I did and he did, by 1:00 that afternoon the AC was working. Thanks Jim Finney with Finney Heating & Air for great customer service.


Second – I was meeting with a customer about a project that was going to include some painting. I have done a lot of work with this customer over the years and several of them included painting. While talking about the painting the customer told me they didn’t want “that painter” to do the work. When I asked why, they told me about some issues on some separate painting projects they had used him on. These consisted of using lower quality paint than they thought they were getting, scheduling delays, and lying. They had been working with him on a parent’s home painting project that the start date had drug out over two years. They even said they would have been okay with the timetable if the contractor had just been upfront and honest with them.

 

 


We need to start by being honest with ourselves. Figure out who we are and who our customer should be. We can’t’ be everything to everybody and we shouldn’t try.

 

Honesty Is the Best Policy – I Don’t Care How Hard It Is

by

How to Create Realistic Expectations for Customers – Part 2

 

Last week we discussed the importance of communication to creating realistic expectations for customers. This week we will look at three more things that need to be addressed to provide customers with a WOW rather than a woops experience.

 

 

 

• Everything takes longer than you think

There’s a lot of information out there about this. It is a very common problem. The planning fallacy gives some explanation, but I think it is more than this. I think many of us have a desire to help others and in an effort to fulfill expectations we over promise, which leads to under delivery. Especially when doing a construction project with all the pieces that have to fit together. Many of these things are out of my control which makes planning and scheduling more difficult. In an article by Emily Guy Birken she tells of a contractor friend who has come up with “a formula for figuring out a more realistic time frame: Double the number and go to the next unit of time for your estimate. For instance, if you believe your kitchen renovation will take two weeks, according to my friend, it will actually take four months.” This seems a little extreme, but I know everything takes longer than expected.

Solution – There are formulas and systems for determining an accurate amount of time needed to do the work. It will take some experimenting to get a realistic projection for the time to do a project. (Even if it is as extreme as the example above.) Be open and honest with yourself and your customer. It would be better to tell them the longer time in the beginning. This goes for the designing and pricing stages as well. Remember that most generally customers aren’t as familiar with the construction process as contractors, and this makes the realistic time gap even wider.

 

 

• Saying yes to too many things

There are so many things that I want to do. So many great wonderful important things. With all these things drawing us to them with overpowering magnetic force we get stuck and can’t move fast enough or far enough to get away from the pull. Mistake #2 of Michael Hyatt’s blog post “The 10 Biggest Mistakes People Make in Setting Goals” is creating too many goals. He quotes the old Chinese proverb, “Man who chases two rabbits catches neither”. I think chasing too many rabbits is what causes us to us to get lost on rabbit trails.

 

Solution – This solution is simple…say NO. This will be the hardest one to do. Those of us that want to help others struggle with this a lot. In 2014 we did the “Best Yes” study by Lysa Terkhurst at church. She said “Whenever you say yes to something, there is less of you for something else. Make sure your yes is worth the less.” We have to find our specific purpose. Then we have to focus on that. We have to be honest with ourselves so that we can create realistic expectations for customers.

 

 

• Details are worth the wait


Another thing that takes time is craftsmanship. I’ve heard people use the saying, “we’re not building a piano” when trying to move a project forward faster. This may have been true, but I believe we should give the same level of intentional care to building someone’s dream as to building a piano. People have different levels of expected quality. Being a recovering perfectionist, I ‘m going to naturally move toward that. Others may not be expecting that level of quality.

 

Solution – Each customer’s expectations need to be determined early in the process so that the length of time can be determined and communicated. This is one of the hardest to determine. Often, they don’t even know what makes one thing quality and another not. It takes time to build a piano or a dream and we need to help them determine what quality of dream they want to build.

 

 

It’s hard to tell people things they don’t want to hear. That a project is going to take longer than they expected is one of those things. Communicate with them. Be honest about the time needed. Say NO if it doesn’t fit your purpose. Quality takes time.

 

If we aren’t honest with ourselves and others then we are creating unrealistic expectations for everyone involved.

Feel free to share examples of unrealistic expectations in the comments below.