As a custom builder, the demands on your time are tremendous. You are responsible for building quality homes and keeping clients happy. You manage strategizing, marketing, sales, and production. You are responsible for communicating with clients, trades, architects, and staff. Often, the overworked custom builder feels like he has to do it all and so tries to do everything at once, a phenomenon known as multitasking.
Although decades of research indicate that the quality of a job decreases with the number of tasks a person attempts to juggle at one time, this doesn’t stop the busy custom builder.
Yet the drive to multitask actually slows us down. Clearly people who drive down the road applying make-up or checking e-mail are not “present” to the road or the car. They have allowed other tasks or circumstances to divert their attention.
When your attention is split between production, estimating, answering e-mail and the mobile phone, and family time, how good is the job you do in any one of those areas?
The drive to multitask is great because the demands on your time are great. But what if you could balance those responsibilities in such a way that each thing you do has your full attention when you are doing it? Better yet, what if you gave up “doing it all” and instead asked for help doing the things that need to be done?
Imagine living in the present, being a full participant in meetings, on the jobsite, with the person on the telephone, on the car ride home, or at dinner with your family. It is possible, and all it takes is a slight shift in how you operate, a commitment to staying focused, and an agenda that keeps you on task.
When you live in the present, you become a much better listener, communicator, problem solver, manager, planner, parent, and spouse. Your creativity will soar, you will become a better manager of your time, and you will find that you are getting just as much, if not more, done each day. (Are you convinced yet to stop looking over your e-mail as you read this article?)
The Art of Delegation
Just because you have the ultimate responsibility for something doesn’t mean you have to do it all. Yet, so often, custom builders run at 100 miles per hour believing they have to be in control of everything. What’s missing in this way of thinking? Teamwork!
The concept of team is not a new one, but for those with super-human multitasking abilities, putting a team into action seems like too much work; after all, it is one more thing to juggle. However, when you do everything yourself, refuse to ask for help, and believe you are the only person who can do the job, you not only get used up and tired out, you also deprive those on your team from learning and growing in their jobs.
Delegation—giving up some of your workload—is the only way you can actually find time to focus on your most important professional and personal issues and give your staff the opportunity to expand their skills. If you are having difficulty with the idea because you feel your business is solely your responsibility, think again. Delegation is not a dumping of your responsibilities onto another person. It is actually quite the opposite. It’s including him or her in the success of your business.
Your job as team leader is to delegate to able individuals and to provide them with the tools they need to do what you are asking of them. Clearly communicate your expectations and then follow up to see that team members are doing what they said they would. In the end, you retain the responsibility for that which you delegate.
Multitaskers believe they can actually control everything by doing it all themselves. Yet, the converse is true: The more scattered your attention is, the less control you really have.
Choose to operate from a place of full and complete communication, accountability, teamwork, efficiency, creativity, and productivity. Commit to being present, then watch your—and your team’s—productivity soar.
