Why do most construction strategies fail (and how to fix them)?

Helen: The data we are collecting today is going to feed the predictive models of tomorrow. So we've got to have good data governance within our organizations, and that's a big gap. It's a skills gap, and, uh, it's a governance and procedural gap as well in most construction businesses.

Sasha Reed: Will the decisions of tomorrow be created by the data we're collecting today? Well, according to 80% of the construction professionals we've surveyed, historical data is essential to their future success. Today we're going to speak to a leader who is not a stranger to strategy and learn how some of that strategy could be applied today to ensure your future success. Welcome to the Power of Construction. I am your host, Sasha Reed, and today in sitting in place of Krislin Giza is my colleague, Brett King. Brett, welcome.

Brett King: Great, Sasha. Thanks. It's awesome to be here. And, uh, I'm so glad the podcast has made it across the Atlantic and sitting in the uk I know we welcomed it with sunny weather, but as always, you'll have sunny, rainy, sunny, rainy. And that's exactly what we get here,

Sasha Reed: a bit of rain. It's never a trip to London if there isn't a little bit of rain. Yeah. So, like Brett was sharing, we're here in London. Um, we've been having conversations with leaders around the future state of construction. And based on the survey that Procore created, and this was a global survey, we talked to leaders across the globe. And what we've understood is that although our, uh, geo regions may be specific to cultural differences, the challenges that the construction business experiences are pretty much the same. And today you have. I remember when we first started with the idea that we're going to film here, you said, there is a woman we have to have on the podcast who is. And I think the words you said is the best strategist you've ever met. So not to, uh, not to set the bar so high, but why don't you go ahead and introduce?

Brett King: Yeah, I mean, look, so I've known Helen for quite a few years now, and I just remember Helen back in the day when we, I think we were in a meeting room and you had set the meeting up and I walked in and you just have a connection with someone and I absolutely felt. Felt that with you. And yeah, so it's grown into a friendship, which I'm really appreciative of. Uh, there's a good amount of banter in all of our, in all of our dialogue. So, um. But, yeah, I think I suppose time to introduce Helen properly a little bit more Formally. Um, so Helen, founder, strategist, uh, transformation expert. Um, I know your background was in media, so tech and digital before joining construction in 2017. Um, and then you worked for GKL Scaffolding and you were uh, strategy director there where you helped them improve their um, competitive market positioning and business operations. And I know you took them through Covid, so that was a real challenge and I remember it was very luck. It was kind of profound how you helped that business navigate that. So we'll definitely touch on that. Um, and then, yeah, where you and I met. So you were the director of strategy and Innovation at isg, um, where you led implementation planning for um, the purpose, led strategy for ESG and um, operations, operational improvement. And then from there you moved on to um, group strategy and development director at Silafield, which is the largest structural steel group in the uk. Ah. And there you led a review of the strategic infrastructure to balance financial objectives, um, with again improving operational performance. So there's a real theme of operational performance.

Sasha Reed: Simple, simple things.

Helen: Yeah.

Brett King: And now kind of the role where I think you should have always been, if I'm perfectly honest, you founded your own consultancy. So building strategy and the focus is on helping improve business operations with a culture first. The culture really important, um, implementation ready solutions for construction companies. And like I say, it's where you should be.

Helen: I think so.

Sasha Reed: Well, welcome to the podcast. I'm so excited to have you.

Helen: Thank you for inviting me and um, thank you for the uh, good feedback. Brett, I will pay you later for saying nice things about me. He doesn't usually say nice.

Brett King: Yeah, this is all on recording. We are best versions of ourselves.

Helen: We are going to be on the best behavior today.

Sasha Reed: We will hold you to that.

Brett King: Yeah. So I think, I mean, just to set the scene. So Helen, um, to kick us off, you basically specialize in bringing strategies to life within businesses. And more recently, obviously those construction businesses. Are construction businesses strategic enough?

Helen: I think that you know, to be fair about uh, construction businesses, I think businesses are trying to be strategic. But our uh, market forces and the inconsistency, uh, in the nature of our industry because we are very, very vulnerable to those economic forces, the market forces, political decision making, the contractual terms that we work to. So I think for a lot of organizations it is difficult to be strategic in the traditional sense. Um, but I think, you know, one thing I always come back to is, you know, we, we know that the industry is unpredictable. You know, we, we know that we're going to end up in cycles of, you know, you Know, economic difficulty, et cetera. So how do we actually plan our businesses around that so that we can be more resilient during um, during those periods of uncertainty? Because uncertainty seems to be the norm pretty much, you know, but particularly at the moment the industry is going through, you know, and I, and this is something I've said often and it sounds a bit bold, but I think we are going through the biggest period of change since the Industrial Revolution because we've got, you know, we've got regulation changes and legislation here in the UK which we're all having to set our businesses up to um, to accommodate, which is obviously causing significant challenges with the gateway system. You know, we've, we, you know, we're turning our heads towards competency and being accountable for competency. Um, and we are trying to improve efficiency within our organization. So digitalizing, using data, ah, automation, all of these things which are going to improve how our businesses are performing. And we've been doing things for the same way for a really, really long time and let's face it, successfully, you know, it's not like we haven't been able to build buildings, you know, we haven't been able to build infrastructure. So that um, you know, that, that real leverage for change hasn't been there because we've still been able to do what, what we're doing. So I think organizations need to understand not just how to, to plan for their business in order to be resilient and then lead into transformation, but how to implement that, how to cascade that. Because what I, what I tend to find in organizations is that strategy becomes this, this thing, It's a buzzword that's going to build a strategy. Yeah. And you give it a brand name and it's, and it's got some brilliant objectives which will sit on your wall.

Brett King: Put a logo on it.

Helen: Yeah, yeah, stick a logo on it. Sadly it's true and it's brilliant because people will engage with it but then they don't know how to work with it, they don't know what it means or you will find a strategy is something that's just very deeply embedded into the financial performance metrics of an organization and just lives in your annual report and it doesn't creep out of your annual report. And when you speak to people in the organization they don't really know what the strategy is or you know, sort of what those financial metrics mean for their day to day job. So I'm less interested in the strategy and more interested in how you implement and embed a strategy. And I think that's what the challenge is.

Brett King: Yeah. Helena, I think, like, you hear this not just with strategy, but m. So many times in construction, people are saying, like, what the problem is, but there's not enough of the how do we fix it? Or how do we get to that end goal? And it definitely ties in with strategy. I think the other thing that always resonates with me is like, I think if I look at a strategy, I always think, oh, uh, what. What would Helen do?

Sasha Reed: What would Helen say?

Brett King: And the words that come in, and I thought you were going to say this, that's not a strategy. It's just digging that little bit deeper in strategy all the time.

Helen: It is.

Brett King: And Absolutely. How are you going to make that come to life?

Helen: Absolutely. Because you, you know, I'm. I'm not usually brought into businesses to, to put a strategy together. I'm usually brought in to fix a problem or to look at a particular issue they've got. And then you sort of. You unpick it and you unpick it, unpick it and it goes back up to strategy. You know, the strategy not being right at the top of the business. So you're right. I'm very often saying that's not a strategy. You know, it's a marketing campaign or it's your financial objectives. Um, so I think, you know, sort of going back to your question, understanding what a good strategy actually is, is really, really important. You can slap the word strategy on anything. And I'm seeing that in people's job titles much more now than when I joined the industry eight years ago. I think I probably was the only person that I knew of at the time, eight years ago, that had strategy in their title. Now, when you see it in people's titles, it will usually be connected to a business development role or maybe a sort of financial strategy role. But actually, strategy is so much more holistic. It's what sits right at the top of the business. And it starts with people and culture and it thinks of, you know, it considers everything beyond the financial metrics. You know, how you're going to operate, how the people within your organization are going to make decisions and perform, what resources you're going to need, what technology you're going to need. Um, and, you know, we have very traditional objectives that sit at the. The top of businesses, which are usually financial metrics, which are your lagging indicators, what are the leading indicators, what are the dials that you really need to shift in order to make sure your business is performing at an Optimum level,

Brett King: Helen, like just scratching under the surface a little bit more. Like you said, people don't even know what a good strategy looks like. Well, how do we even begin to start? Well, what I know you've touched on a few points, but people just don't know. And you don't know what you don't know. And people think they're building great strategies, but how do you even begin to disseminate what a good versus a bad strategy is?

Helen: A good strategy will be based on a very good and honest understanding of the market and the economic environment that you're working in. Um, a lot of strategies tend to be very bold and very ambitious and, you know, sort of working towards this utopia which, let's face it, in construction, is very, very difficult for us to achieve. So those big, bold objectives are great as a marketing tool, but the realities of what we're working with, um, can make it very difficult for people to engage with. So I think just having a very honest view of your market, I mean, I've reviewed strategies where, um, business leaders and boards have said to me, that's just not a market we recognize. And I'm like, you know, we've got rampant price inflation, labor inflation, we've got the Building Safety act coming in. How can you ignore this? You know, and they've, you know, they've won some good projects, they've got a good pipeline, so they're feeling really optimistic, but forgetting the realities of the market, what's going, you know, of where it actually comes from. So I think having a very honest, very critical view of your market is really important. Understanding what your competitive position is within that market, understanding where you add unique value to your customer and client base is really important. And understanding the challenges that you're going to have, embedding this within your culture and with your people, and making sure that your strategy is actually a people and culture first strategy in terms of implementation. Because you can have, you can have the best digital transformation program in the world, you can have the best people and wellbeing strategy in the world, but if you don't have the right culture, none of that is going to land in the way that you want it to.

Brett King: And that's just the hardest thing to influence the culture piece, isn't it?

Helen: That's what people spend.

Brett King: Well, you can spend a lifetime trying

Helen: to change your business culture, but it's something we need to do more to understand. And I think traditionally, because I was doing some thinking about this recently, most of the strategic models that you know when you get consultants coming in and, um, will come and look at your business and we'll build a strategy for you. They will use, um, tried and tested strategic models, even if they've been evolved a little bit. Most of those strategic models were developed in the 50s, 60s and 70s. Um, and in large part they work and are still relevant. But we know so much more about occupational psychology now than we did then. Our workplaces are different.

Brett King: Workforce is changing.

Helen: They're all completely, completely.

Sasha Reed: So.

Helen: So I. You, uh, know, I think as a strategist, one thing that I do is, you know, because people will say, you know, what. What is your process? What is your method? I don't know until I come in and feel your business and sense your business. And then I will choose what sort of strategic framework we use, and it won't be off the shelf. It will be adapted to what it is your business needs. Because I know that I will need to start with culture, and I know that if I use anybody else's framework, it will not touch on culture in the way that I need it to. Because we will add culture to a strategic framework to tick the box. We don't really know what to do. Um, which is why planning for strategic implementation is so important. That's where you start with.

Brett King: I remember when you joined isg, you spent all of that time, your upfront time was having those meetings like where you and I met. I remember you trying to get that feel of the culture which, and in fairness, ice, she had an absolutely amazing culture in many elements. And yeah, you could feel it was like this palpable thing. Yeah, Always the sadness, I think, for me is that, like, when a company like that would go under, that. That culture's. It's gone now. But those people do go to other organizations. But, yeah, hopefully they influence the culture at those organizations too, you know, And

Helen: I'd say, you know, if you, you know, you use a business like that as an example, you know, a lot of us have stayed. I probably have the most work friends from isg. You're probably the same.

Brett King: I thought I was your only one.

Helen: Oh, no, sorry,

Sasha Reed: sorry.

Helen: This is awkward. But, you know, a lot of us have stayed in touch and a lot of, uh, us actually, um, Louise Deville, who we worked with, she introduced me to, um, the concept of having a tribe, you know, and it's, you know, how important it is to have a tribe of people who kind of share your beliefs and, you know, your, Your vision for the future and, you know, people that you can trust and lean on. And I think that that, that's, that tribe has, has remained from, from some of the, the pockets of that business. But I spent a lot of time, um, engaging with different departments within that business because we, you know, we did have a strategy that was, um, that, that was very sort of unspecific. You know, it was, you know, it landed well in terms of the messaging, but it was the kind of what do we need to do? And I had to translate that into, you know, this vision of kind of how it, how it, you know, how it links to your specific job and kind of get all of the departments on board with that. Um, and, you know, that's what I spent my time doing. And it was, you know, and so we did have a group of people, people who were kind of bought into the concept of it. We just had to put the plans in place to, um, really get people engaged and really making decisions that would align with that overall objective.

Sasha Reed: One of the things I want to do is kind of take a step back and think about this now. As we look at the future state of construction report, the primary reason we created it and wanted to have those global conversations with business leaders was we recognized that there are external factors and there are some major shifts and transitions happening within the industry right now. And so our intention was, well, why don't we speak with leaders like yourselves who have these essential frameworks for change, um, and have conversations with them in order to create a roadmap or even more importantly, maybe create a shared vision of what that future is going to look like. And because this is a global podcast and we have listeners from. Of that all, all over the globe, I want to make sure we do give some time to the specific challenges that you're experiencing here in the uk. And so, Brett, I didn't know if you, you could maybe walk us through from your side. You gave us a little bit in the introduction, uh, Helen, but I don't know if you could walk us through a little bit on your side. What are the specific external factors having a, um, big impact on the business here?

Brett King: Yeah, and I think, I mean, Helen did touch on them, and the good news is that you can see we speak. Speaking in the same language, so that's great. But I mean, the UK construction industry at the moment is on a bit of a knife edge, I guess. So on one hand we're looking at like a projected compound annual growth rate of just over 3% through to 2030. Um, and yeah, that sounds healthy, but until you kind of scratch under the surface there. So it's not all smooth sailing. There's this classic high growth, high risk um, scenario. Um, and yeah, we've got. You touched on it like so there's regulations, there's volatile costs, there's increasing pressure to deliver more with less. So productivity, when we look at productivity, it's been stagnant in this industry for how long? And like I don't know, my challenge there was always like well how are we even defining productivity sometimes in this industry? But um, yeah, I think when we looked at that, the procore, um, uh, ah, the report, the future of state of construction report, we focused really on four like sort of key areas and it was all around smarter decision making, the future of design. Well, what does design look like? Um, a better skilled workforce and, and really like sort of I guess high productivity at the end of day which I already touched on. But none of that's possible. And we've touched on the culture piece. None of it's possible without focusing on people, platforms and the data. So data is becoming that increasing, like that currency that we.

Helen: Yeah, yeah. And it's. And you know what, when I've been looking at uh, organizations, digital transformation strategies, the one question I would always ask, what about the data? You know, we weren't, you know we weren't explicitly building strategies around data and it seems to, as we've got excited about digital platforms, um, that seems to have been the forgotten piece. But actually without the data feeding everything else, you know, without good data strategy, without good data governance, you know, the data we are collecting today is going to feed, feed the predictive models of tomorrow. So we've got to have good data governance within our organizations and that's a big gap, it's a skills gap, um, and ah, it's a governance and procedural gap as well in most construction businesses.

Sasha Reed: And I think Brett, you touched on this earlier, um, around you calling out it's not a real strategy. One of the things you said and our conversation leading up to this, which I thought was hilarious, was you said good strategy is like starting a cult. It is. If companies don't have a real strategy, what do you see? What do you see that's been driving the industry if it hasn't been strategy up to this point?

Helen: Um, you know, well it's kind of, it has been strategy in the sense that you know, you will have a leadership team or quite often owner operator who kind of knows what we need to achieve. But you know, we are, we will tend to think, you know, sort of project by project Basis. It's kind of, you know, just those cycles and um, you know, so we have a very sort of survivalist approach to, to doing business. And you get through the next project, thank God that's done quick. You know, you don't even apply the learnings and then you just kind of take the next one and you move on. And you move on. Um, so there isn't that sort of kind of stepping back and going, right, what, what do we really need to do to make sure that our business is healthy? Because resilience is the first part of building a good strategy. And um, resilience usually in construction businesses just means, you know, good cash flow, just kind of keep, keep the revenue coming in and just keeping it moving. But resilience is a lot of other things as well. It's about your people, it's about having the right processes, it's about all the things that you're talking about. Um, you know, and only then can you start thinking about transformation. And I think a lot of time what happens is that, you know, it's in the head of the owner of the business, but it's not translating clearly to everybody else within the organization so they can't help and support the strategy. So my reference to a cult is, you know, and it would be a good cult as well. I wouldn't hurt anybody. You know, it's, we're making here, it would be a really nice cult. Um, but you know, the idea of being sort of a cult like leader is like being able to kind of create that vision of the future. And you remember when we worked together, you know, I used to talk to businesses and go, imagine walking on site and everything's, everything's working on time. The ah, trades know what they're doing. Uh, you know, it's safe, you know, there's very little snagging and rework to do. You know, imagine that, you know, sort of taking everybody to, to that future. You know, you've got something on whatever device you're using which is telling you exactly what it is you need to be doing, you know, you know, today and in the future and just sort of creating that vision. And people go, God, yeah, is, is that possible? You go, yeah, it is possible. So how do we make it happen? And so that is, that's what I'm talking about. That's what a good strategy will do.

Brett King: Would you say there, like there's a, there's an element where we need to just maybe simplify things a little bit because like you said, you refer to it as it's a great marketing plan

Helen: or something like that.

Brett King: But when you try and sell something, you tend to over elaborate on things and then you can lose the message. And when you say that important thing is that your strategy translates to people out on site, they don't care about the marketing spiel. They just want to come do the job. And if that element of the strategy is sitting with them and they know how they can help achieve it, of course that's away.

Helen: And I think sometimes, I mean, you know, as, you know, Brett, I fall out of love with words. I fell out of the love with the word innovation. I've fallen out of love with the word transformation. I've fallen out of love with the word strategy as well, even though it's in my title because it becomes this very specialist thing, you know, then. And most construction businesses are thinking, well, actually I don't have time to sit and work through a strategy and have consultants in or whatever. I have a strategy person in my business. So it becomes something that just seems so of like another thing to do. But actually what a good strategy is, is, is just a way of working. You know, it needs to be the, you know, the analogy I always use is the neurological system of your business. Yes. You know, you've got the leaders at the business who kind of, who know the direction that the business should be going in or understanding the market forces. But then how does that feed through to every limb and touch point within the organization and the organization first feeling like they're part of that strategy as well. So those touch points that know what's going on in the market, sending the messages back up again. So the leadership know, oh, actually we're in danger here or we're not as healthy. What do we need to do? How do we evolve to, to manage the environment that we're in now? Um, and that, you know, it doesn't need to be called a strategy, it just needs to become part of how we work. So that infrastructure needs to just be built into the processes and the communication channels and the culture as well. If you've got a culture where people are then comfortable feeding information back into the organization, back into the leadership, and you don't have a no bad news culture which some organizations have, then you're going to be able to encourage everybody to take part in that strategy and help the um.

Brett King: I feel like I'm surrounded by two of the best storytellers I know at the moment. But um, Helen, you mentioned like that, um, every limb and touch point and I Think what I've seen in business is the limb and touch point often stops at a department head or function head and it doesn't stretch to the fingers and things like that. So that piece is often what's missed m in businesses, isn't it?

Helen: Yeah. And you know, strategy, you know, if we're going to call it strategy, it's not something that's set in stone and you know, you kind of, you know, you write about it in your annual report and it stays there for five years. It's got to live and breathe, it's got to iterate. It's an organism. Um, it's, you know, it's part of, you know, sort of the health of your organization. Um, and that's why it's really, really important to include your entire organization in keeping that strategy alive. And you should be comfortable changing it. If the objectives aren't working, you change the objective objectives.

Brett King: If I bring this back a little bit to like a data piece and like, and I want, definitely want to talk about data a little bit more because the data that we collect is those people, it's the fingers, it's the boots on the ground that ah, feed that and that, that, that data makes its way up to the board level.

Helen: Yes.

Brett King: So if that's wrong and when we talk about AI and all that would do to bad data is amplify the bad data. Helen, you and I have had a number of conversations through the years around data and like what it good data strategy means and I think businesses get quite stuck on that too.

Helen: Yes.

Brett King: Could you help like sort of map that out for us a little bit?

Helen: I just, I, you know, we've like, you know, like digital we with something new, we tend to kind of put it in a, in a, in a, in a silo within an organization. Um, and I've seen, you know, with digital transformation strategies, it will sit in a particular team or there will be a new team, um, built up and that's the same same for data as well. And actually what we need to be doing is democratizing accountability and the skills availability and the training availability for these sorts of things. Data should be embedded in everybody's job now, you know, because everybody at some point will have a responsibility for. Even if you're not actively using data, you're probably collecting data. And do you understand why that data collection is important? Do you understand why the quality and context for that data is really important? Have we got good governance in place so that when we're using data we know it's the Right data and that we're making the right decisions because at the end of the day going to link to a contract at some point, so somebody's going to be held accountable for it. So data strategy, like good digital transformation strategies, need to be democratized. It needs to be part of everybody's job and people need to understand the why. You know, we are, we're, you know, change management isn't done well in our industry and it's probably because, you know, we've been working a certain way for so long and then we go, oh, we need to be doing some digital stuff, we need to do some data stuff. And oh, let's say we're doing some. Something on AI. So you kind of throw it into the business like a grenade and then it's like, oh my God, that is visual, isn't it?

Sasha Reed: Because it's. And it's so relatable.

Brett King: You see it all over, you know,

Helen: and then, and then you have your casualties. You've got people running away from it, you've got people who've been burned by it, and then you've got the people who are the heroes who are going to embrace it, um, but are kind of going to use it as a bit of a political tool to leverage their position.

Brett King: Then you've got the cleanup team who has to go and pick up the pieces.

Helen: Exactly. It's probably you guys. So it's, um. So we just, you know, we're really bad at that change management. And I think, you know, we've, we've got, again, we've got to think about the people and it's got to start with the people. So for them to understand why, you know, a good data strategy or good data management is going to be important to the business, but more importantly, how it's going to help them. You know, everybody wants a personal benefit, you know, that's absolutely. And you know, that marginal gains of kind of, you know, if we can just improve what you do 1%, if we can save you half an hour a week, you know, you know, is that something you can then get on board with? So choosing the elements of data strategy that are going to have an immediate impact or an immediate benefit on the people you are wanting to collect your data and manage your data for you is an excellent way of starting to change the perception of using data and

Brett King: digital platforms within people buy into something that they help create. At the end of the day, absolutely.

Helen: Including people is just so powerful.

Sasha Reed: Well, let's touch on that a little bit because I think one of the things that we uncovered in the report was that 42% of the leaders that we spoke to, they believe that driving the upskilling of the workforce is really going to help, um, the digital transformation. But you said something in that last uh, statement which really stuck with me, which is not having a no bad news culture. And in our past conversation you've talked around productivity, the productivity gains direct connection to psychological safety. Can you tell us a little bit about that and how you see that kind of keystone cultural component really unlocking everything else? We're talking about the data that's collected, leveraged, etc. How does that really speak to performance and transformation?

Helen: We've got a blame culture in our industry. Um, and um, that's not going away. It's getting better. We talk about psychological safety a lot more. Um, but as somebody who joined the industry eight years ago from tech, where we sort of, we very, sort of were very open and very collaborative in terms of how we work. And you know, it occurred to me, I think it was probably the first year that I was working with GKR because we'd built some, um, working at height risk aversion training in virtual reality, which is a whole different conversation. Um, and it was an amazing tool. But the way that um, myself and Peter Cullen, who were the health and safety director ran the training is that the operatives would spend their time in the headset where, um, they are external exposed to high risk environments and they've got to make decisions, um, within. Oh, it's super cool. Um, but we would spend time talking to them afterwards because what we want, the message we wanted them to take out of that was the importance of not walking by, the importance of reporting near misses so that we could learn about hazards and you know, where we potentially were going to have incidents on site. We needed them to speak up. Um, so we had these sort of amazing informal conversations with them as part of the training. And you know, bearing in mind we did all of our operatives, of which we had about 300 and we did them in groups of four. So it took quite a while to go around and do it. It's very sort of intimate conversation you'd have with them in every single conversation. And I'm not exaggerating, somebody said, but who gets the blame if I speak up, if I tell you that that's not right, am I going to get in trouble? I don't want to get my friend in trouble. It was in every single conversation. And I remember sitting down with Peter and going, we've got a Blame culture. And he went, yeah, yeah, we have,

Sasha Reed: it's like truly, it is how we're designed to see each other.

Helen: Yeah, absolutely. And as much as, you know, as an organization, um, you know, sort of our health and safety function were, you know, very much about collaboration and wanting people to speak up. The environment, you know, the, the contractor's environment on the site was, you know, that was, you know, blame, you know, and then when you sort of dig down to even our commercial relationships, you know, contractual, uh, relationships and conversations, it's all about passing around risk and blame. And you're responsible for that and you're responsible for that. And so the penny dropped. And it made me think about, you know, sort of a lot of the work that we, it was done in tech. Google did a project, project Aristotle, where they looked at the features of high performing environments and discovered, you know, psychological safety was the foundation of. That mirrored the Amy Edmondson work where she had, um, you know, she is the godmother of psychological safety, but she's a professor of leadership at Harvard. And when she was doing, and this was a very long time ago now, but when she was doing research of, you know, sort of what makes a high performing environment, she was looking at some high risk environments like ours. Um, and the data's coming back and saying that the high performing teams are reporting more mistakes. And she's like, that can't be right, that's a mistake. And when they go back and look at the data, it's actually, no, they're not making more mistakes, they're just reporting a mistake. The leader of that team doesn't have a blame culture, is encouraging people to speak up, is encouraging people to share ideas. Um, and so therefore they're able to fix things faster, faster, they're able to move ahead, they're able to drive improvements much quicker. So it's something that I've been talking to the industry about for a long time. M. Um, it's one of the things I probably speak about most regularly at conferences and I'm so passionate about it because the health and safety, uh, community within construction have very much embraced it. And I think, and they will always say there's much more work to be done, but they have done so, so much over the last few decades to improve safety performance by understanding behavior and culture. Um, and we can learn a lot from that. But psychological safety isn't just about speaking about safety issues. We improve our efficiency and our productivity. If people are speaking up about what's not working, you know, we will improve our Quality. It's absolutely everything. So I keep coming back to the fact that, you know, we are not going to hit these performance targets, these, this utopia, these ambitions that we have for the industry, unless we get around this no, this blame culture. We have this no bad news culture. And I've worked in environments where the people at the top of the business, they don't want to, you know, they want to know that everything's fine, everything's fine. And that's not helpful because we then don't know what to prioritize to fix. You can't fix something you don't know about. And so we've got to be so much more open within our cultures and we've got to encourage our people to speak up, but we've got to create the right environments for that.

Sasha Reed: There's something so interesting that. And you talk about creating the right environment. Um, I want to touch on next, but honestly, the first lesson I remember learning coming into construction from our operations team was cover your cya. I'll leave the last word off. Um, and that was drilled into my head from day one. And so, um, luckily, I worked for a company and a woman in particular in operations who interpreted that as, you need to go above and beyond to make sure the person you're communicating with has all the context they need in order to make the right decision. But I think how it's often translated in other terms or in other hands is we are going to be blamed for the thing. So you have to make sure that you can have a scapegoat, somebody else to blame. And that has absolutely made its way into the psychology of. And the culture of construction. But you've touched on something about creating that right environment. And it's a little bit of a rabbit trail I want to take with you because I think it is important you talk about neurodiversity. And the number of people who choose construction as a career are actually neuro. Yes. Divergent or neurodiversity.

Helen: Yeah.

Sasha Reed: Tell us a little bit about, if you could. About the education and the upskilling, but how you created that as a place and creating a sense of belonging.

Helen: Yes.

Sasha Reed: Um, to accommodate those learners, which I think we may not as an industry even recognize.

Brett King: What a great question.

Helen: Yeah, it's, um. Again, this was, you know, obviously GCAL was the first company I worked for in construction and sort of being able to work directly with operatives. I learned a lot about. About people and what drives motivation and how people communicate, et cetera. Um, but, um, GKR had a And still do have a training academy for their supervisors which they'd ran very successfully for a couple of years. And somebody external would come in, they got a qualification. It was like, you know, sort of. And it was all training in um, team building and leadership. So supervisors, you know, you can imagine you're part of the team and all of a sudden now you're supervising. So you need some of those skills to be able to do that. But the training that we, we gave was very traditional classroom based learning. And before I joined the business, it had ran very successfully for a couple of years and it, you know, sort of came under my remit. And um, sort of, we were sort of looking at the new cohort coming in and the guys that we were approaching about taking part in the academy were saying, I'm not very good at learning. I'm dyslexic, you know, I've got adhd, so I can't sit in a classroom all day. Um, you know, I'm not good at writing, you know, so there was just, you know, I'm not good at learning. There was just all of these things.

Brett King: Were they even happy to share that though? Were they?

Helen: Oh yes.

Brett King: Okay. No, because you still have that people are too proud sometimes.

Helen: Yeah, yeah, it's. Yeah. And I imagine with some groups of people that would be, you know, that there would be a stigma. The scaffolders I worked with were very, very open and honest with me obviously about absolutely everything. Sometimes too much.

Brett King: So.

Helen: So yeah, so they were very, very bold and very, very honest about, you know, sort of their own ability, you know, their perceived ability. And I'd know, you, uh, know. And I could see already from working with, with some of the operatives that there were some self esteem issues. You know, I would get. I mean, I remember taking one of our guys to a client meeting. We were demonstrating the virtual reality. So I used to take some of the operatives with me because they would help with the headsets and be able to talk to the client about, um, how, how you sort of been for them. And I remember one of them saying to me, thanks for bringing me to this meeting. I'm just a scaffolder. And there I was with, you know, with Mace or whoever else and I, and I, you know, and I'd go up to him and say, if you say just one more time, I will punch you in the face. Threatening violence, not endorse. Yeah, yeah.

Brett King: Just so we clear, you've done that

Sasha Reed: with me quite a few times.

Brett King: I never say just anymore.

Helen: But it's like, you know, that sort of just a scaffolder was like kind of like look at what you do. You know, you're cantilevering a scaffold off the top of the Battersea power station. It's like, you know, that's something I couldn't do. So, so I was aware of kind of self esteem issues and then I suppose that the penny just dropped because having worked in tech and being used to working with very neurodiverse teams, like openly neurodiverse teams, you know, working with startup founders who um, you know, who were autistic development teams who were ah, on the spectrum and it was, you know, and I even had a CTO at once saying he'd go, we needed some more system admin people. And him saying can we put in the job ad that it would be preferable if they had autism and he was autistic himself. And I'm like, we could probably say we're neuro inclusive. But he went on to tell me about this, you know, just the wiring of the brain made, you know, meant they were really good sysadmins because they could spot the errors in the lines of code really quickly. And it was just. And so I was used to it being seen as a science skill, as a benefit sort of that neurodiversity in a team and I. And so the penny dropped. This is what we've got in construction and of course they're going to choose construction because you know, you're making stuff, you're fixing stuff, it's kind of, it's absolutely, you know, ingrained in tangible, deliverable dyslexia, certain neurotypes. You know, you can't take somebody with uh, ADHD and expect them to kind of sit at a desk for eight hours a day. That's not what they want to do.

Sasha Reed: Or.

Helen: But also as well I was thinking about the learning style because obviously if you're in the sort of job where you're making stuff and building stuff all day, pretty much guarantee you're a kinesthetic learner, you're probably not going to, you know, be the sort of person who sat going through a book and making notes and whatever else.

Brett King: Every second paragraph.

Helen: Yeah, absolutely. So I did a bit of an experiment to start off with and I um. So we had about 40 super. And they did the um, learning profiler, um, the vark learning profiler to work out where they were visual, auditory, read, write or kinesthetic for about. And I can't remember the data. It was round about 85% had kinesthesia within their mix of learning style because you will usually have more than one, but for one in five, it was their only learning style. Can you imagine what school was like? Sit down, be quiet, read that on the board, write your answers in on the exam paper. Don't ask any questions of the person next to you because you should know the answer. So you don't collaborate. Can you imagine? So you're going to leave school going, I'm just. That's what you're going to leave school thinking. I'm not good at learning. I'm just whatever it is. Yeah. And it's just that we have not taught them for their learning style. So. So I knew that some of those were, um, neurodiverse as well. Others I suspected might be, and they suspected they might be as well, but just had never been diagnosed. So the neurodiversity was laid onto sort of this kinesthetic learning style.

Brett King: I mean, many, uh, of them wouldn't even have known what those words mean at the end of the day. So just this kind of highlighting it to them is the first, first time they absolutely. Oh my word. Someone who understands me without me even, uh, having a word for it.

Helen: And those, those sessions where I actually, you know, showed them the data and we talked about school and them to go, oh my God. Yeah, I can imagine. It's like, oh my God, it's those

Brett King: floor dropping moments, isn't it? Wow.

Helen: Yeah. So then what I did after that was totally rewrite the curriculum and the way that we taught the academy. So bearing in mind I needed them to be confident doing the supervisor's job, labor planning, reading programs, those sorts of things. But I also needed them to be able to manage conflict, manage their time, be a good team leader, et cetera. So how do I then create a curriculum that is appealing to kinesthetic learners and takes into account neurodiversity as well? So I had to think about the environment. So the training room that we used in the office, um, I changed the acoustics so we had all the right padding on the walls so that those, you know, because you've got, if you've got like 10 male voices in there because all of our scaffolders were male, you know, it's, it, you know, it resonates. So you've got. So change the acoustics. The walls were white, so light blue. Our brand colors were blue and red. Red can have a bit of a fluorescent flicker for some people who are neurodiverse. So I Didn't use red in any of the, um, materials. Um, I kept written materials very light. But where we did use it, we used a dyslexic friendly font. We had, um, gadgets and fidget stuff around the room. They were encouraged to move all of the modules. So, for example, labor planning. So there's very little sort of rewriting. So labor planning, you know, I had scaffolded Top Trumps created so you'd have to do your labor planning with, you know, Vin Diesel and Harry Styles. Styles, Sean Bean.

Sasha Reed: And it's sounds more fun.

Helen: Oh, it was so much fun

Sasha Reed: engineering.

Brett King: Exactly.

Helen: So they were, you know, so doing the labor planning and then sort of, you know, you pop up a text from Harry Styles. He's not coming in because he's got a hangover. Oh, Harry's let us down again. Who's going to, you know, who's going to be on that scaffold today? So we did fun stuff like that. And we were able to, um, look at more complex stuff like, um, you know, the, the idea of, um, you know, when we were m. Thinking about managing conflict, for example, because that's something that, you know, happens in everything.

Brett King: Yeah.

Helen: Um, you know, sort of how do you manage yourself, um, during those, those moments where you might have tension and conflict. And so I introduced the Professor Steve Peters chimp paradox theory, which is about, you know, the fact that we, all of us have a chimp in a human part of our brain and we have a computer which kind of, you know, stores how we, you know, usually should behave in certain situations and how to understand our chimp. Because it's always going to be the chimp part of our brain that reacts.

Brett King: Reacts first. Yeah.

Helen: And, um, you know, and so we were kind of having like, conversations about neuroscience, you know, in a fun way. And I knew that it had stuck when the following week after doing that and sort of one of our guys, we sort of. We were about to go into the training. I could tell he was on a phone call that was a bit tense. He was obviously having his phone call and he popped his head and he goes, I'm going to be five minutes late. I need to have a walk around the block. My chimps playing up.

Sasha Reed: Oh, I love it. Giving language to it to reduce the stigma, normalize it and give them the autonomy and control to then say, this is what I need, and actually vocalize what they need.

Brett King: And then it's okay to have this chimpanzee.

Helen: Yeah, totally. You know, and it just, you know, just, you know, just to run that training in a very sort of authentic way. That kind of, that was just fun. Got everyone talking, got everybody active. And um, and I'm really proud of that. And that's something I will be doing more of. But it's um, you know, for uh, you know, a community of people within construction to just go, you get me, you understand me. And I am smart and I can learn and I enjoy learning. So that was my overall objective. I wanted them to realize that they can learn and that they enjoy.

Sasha Reed: This is directly connected to productivity.

Helen: Absolutely, 100%.

Sasha Reed: And it's also directly connected to our mental health crisis.

Helen: Absolutely.

Sasha Reed: And I loved when you shared this insight with us because I think it is not explored enough in our industry. And I think what you shared here today is going to create a lot of aha. Moments for our audience and light bulbs over their head. Um, and I could talk to you about this forever and anyone who knows me knows that I could. But I want to be mindful of time. And I believe at this stage we have what we call our rapid fire questions. We're going to ask you five rapid fire questions. Uh, they're meant to be short, succinct, top. What's top of mind for you, Brett? Playing the role of.

Brett King: I'm going to take this away.

Sasha Reed: So today. Take us away.

Brett King: Yeah. So Helen, what's uh, a book you would most recommend?

Helen: The Fearless Organization by Amy Edmondson. Psychological Safety.

Brett King: I know. There's a few I've seen on LinkedIn. Helen drops his little book nuggets.

Helen: But that is the book that I recommend the most. Amy owes me some commission, like totally. Um, she. Yeah. And. And in some cases I've bought the book and sent it to People Distribution.

Sasha Reed: Yeah, that's her list. Yeah.

Helen: Yeah.

Brett King: Next one. What is your go to source for gaining a different or informed perspective?

Helen: Oh, my tribe. M. My tribe. You know, you've been part of that tribe. Um, yeah. You have a network, but you also have a tribe. Yeah.

Brett King: Love that.

Helen: I love my. Yeah, I love my tribe.

Sasha Reed: Okay.

Brett King: If you could give your younger self one piece of advice, what would it be?

Helen: Trust yourself.

Brett King: This lands with so many people.

Helen: Trust yourself.

Sasha Reed: Mhm.

Helen: The amount m like even now. And I'm not young now. You know when you have those moments and you kind of go, okay, is it me? And then. And then a few months pass and you're like, I was right. Yeah, I was right.

Brett King: Trust yourself and just do it. Like, yeah, what's the worst? You know what I mean?

Helen: Trust it in. Absolutely.

Brett King: You go with conviction. When you have that trust in yourself, don't you? Okay. What's one trend or innovation that you think will shape the future of construction?

Helen: Oh, do you know what? I really don't want to say AI, because that's what everybody's going to say. I wish I had something different to say, but I would say if I. To drill down from AI, specifically automation, predictive analytics. Because if we can get our bloody data right. Game changing.

Sasha Reed: Absolutely.

Brett King: And again, just going back to that point, if you have bad data, AI will just amplify that. Bad.

Helen: Absolutely.

Brett King: Okay, last one, before we let you off the hook here. Um, if construction as an industry had a tagline, what would it be?

Helen: Do you know what? I've thought about this before. Yeah, I have thought about this before because one thing I say quite often is, is construction needs a, uh, rebrand or a brand, you know, that really engages people. But I think that, you know, the tagline would be something along the lines of, you know, creating the societies and communities of tomorrow. Because that's what we do. We build the places where we get well, we build the places where we learn. We build the places where we work, where we raise our families. Yeah, that as a message is amazing. Is engaging. I think so. Uh, that would be.

Brett King: And you see this in people when they build in, maybe like a hospital or whatever. And they might have had a loved one who had cancer treatment. You see a passion in those people when they rock up every day. They like. No, they're building something that would have helped their family member. So I 100% resonate with that sounds.

Sasha Reed: I think that was well done, Helen. Thank you so much for joining us today.

Helen: I've loved it.

Sasha Reed: I really want.

Brett King: Can we do another one? I'm already keen.

Helen: I really want conversation because I can

Sasha Reed: tell the subtext was heavy in this one. Well, and thank you to those who joined us as well. Um, if you want to learn more about the conversations we've been having across the globe in our future State of Construction report, you can download that on our website. And if anything that was shared here with you today resonated, please, like, subscribe and share or comment and share your thoughts and ideas with us. Share. And we'll keep bringing you the stories of leaders who are reshaping our future, harnessing the power of construction.