These days my sons have freed me from all the day-to-day rigors of running and maintaining the business. My request to them as I may have said before, was to make me a ghost by May this year and they seemed more than excited to accomplish the task. So now with many extra hours in the day with very little responsibility I have plenty of time to wonder if we are staying the course and continuing to serve our clients with the highest standard of excellence. I am confident that my sons are the best there is in the business at what they do as well as dedicated to a high standard of excellence, it’s just that I have been at the helm for so long with my hands in every pot it’s hard to know for certain that we are “maintaining a high or higher standard” in all that we do with out me being this involved. I begin to start thinking of ways to install policies and procedures that hold us accountable to the highest standards. The boys are not bashful in asking me if I have too much time on my hands and ask, “Don’t you have a tee time or doctors appointment?” I guess after 30 plus years at building a business you may finally reach some resemblance of success– now you want to maintain that degree same degree of success and I’ve found that it starts with the search for a high standard of excellence. Where do we start with this new challenge and how do put it into action?
I decided to call a few of our regular General Contractors and find out were we may be falling short and how can we increase our standard of excellence. This may be a risky thing to do and you need to be prepared to hear some things that you may not want to. Our goal as I have said in other blogs is to prepare our foreman for success, I w ant to set my sons up for the same success in “maintaining a high standard of excellence” in serving our clients. What I heard from our clients was, safety first, quality second and meeting the schedule is very import but not at the top of the list. In fact several have said that they felt that meeting schedules were our strong point; but we did need to strengthen our safety and we could use some improvement in our quality control. Some of this was due to our need to train a new a wash down sub and add new workers to our team to meet the new demands. These were things I didn’t want to hear but after doing some investigating I found that some of what they were saying was true. The first thing we did was contact our safety consultant at 360 Safety and schedule a mandatory company safety workshop. This was also a great opportunity for our company to come together and it encourages team work and camaraderie that we can’t achieve out at the site with it’s constant challenges. We have been working very closely with are wash sub at DC restoration to get to the pristine finishes we are after with chemical washing for our clients. I am also working with the office staff to fine tune the art of internet communication and how to communicate with all our clients and venders with a high degree of respect.
These are just a few of these areas that we are challenging all our employees to continue to work at the highest level of excellence we can achieve for our clients. In the future I will have to find some other things to do with my extra time besides being on a constant vigil for sustaining this high level excellence. As for now I am challenging myself as I challenge other managers, not to grow weary in well doing or fall asleep at the wheel. All of us should remember that 2008 gave all of us a false sense of security and were not prepared for the challenges that took place
the following years. If you stay alert and pay attention to details you should not be caught off guard again. So this is the challenge; to constantly look for improvement, train and encourage others to do the same and stay alert constantly working towards maintaining a high level of excellence. Enjoy the fruits of your labor and pay attention to detail, you will continue to reap rewards in the future and be ready for any new challenges to come.
“Cornerstone in the Work-zone”
Sincerely, Larry Bonife, President 