Leave Room on the Calendar: A Winning Schedule for Contractor Owners
You walked in this morning with a plan. Three things. Get out the estimate that has been sitting since Tuesday. Look at the numbers before the month closes. Have the conversation with your foreman that you have been putting off since last week.
By a quarter past eight the phone rang, because the wrong material was on the truck. At twenty to nine somebody popped his head in to say hi and stayed eleven minutes. At nine an employee came in with a question he could have asked his own supervisor, and you answered it, because answering it took ninety seconds and explaining who he should have asked would have taken longer. Then there was the mail. Then there was the email. Then a customer called, and once a customer has you on the phone, you are on the phone. Somewhere in the middle of all that you got short with one of your own people, and he did not have it coming. He was trying to get his job done. You were trying to get yours done. The two of you were standing in the same ninety seconds.
Then the day was over. The estimate is still sitting there. You never opened the numbers. You never had the conversation with your foreman. You went home late and you carried the list home with you.
So the list goes to Saturday. Saturday is quiet. Nobody is in the building, the phone does not ring, and you get more done in three hours than you got done all week. That is the proof you keep giving yourself that you can still handle this. It is also the reason you have not had a real weekend since the second truck.
Now count the weeks it has looked like that. Not this week. The last twenty.
The class does not treat this as a character problem
A Winning Schedule treats it as a schedule problem, and it is direct about who owns the schedule. It starts with the weight on you. Your business will rise or fall on your leadership. You are the one who has to learn, think, and decide what leadership to provide, and you are also the delivery mechanism for it. Nobody else in the building can do that part for you. Then it puts time in front of you plainly. We all have the same amount of time. What we do with it determines whether we make progress, and how fast. And what other people do, or attempt to do, with our time influences us. That is where the class names what is actually happening to your week. Other people take our time with their agendas. They control our schedule, which is to say they decide what we pay attention to and when we pay attention to it. They delegate their jobs up to us, which leaves us less time for our own job. Let all three of those run and we have no control over our life as a leader. Not less control. None. So the class makes two assumptions and says both have shown to be true. We can do anything, but we cannot do everything at once. And we can do things much better by focusing and not being interrupted. Which leaves one honest conclusion. Time is the one thing you cannot replace, so time is the thing to manage. Not harder work. Not a longer day. The number one thing that has to move your business forward is you, and you are the thing running unmanaged.
What a leader's week has to hold
Before the class shows you a week, it sets the criteria that week has to satisfy. You have to make time to meet with your key team members on a regular basis. When you know, and they know, that they get private time with you every week, they save their issues for that meeting instead of interrupting you at random moments while you are trying to do something else. You need scheduled time for the basics. Mail, email, phone calls. Those are not going away and they do not belong scattered through the whole day. You need alone time to learn, to think, and to plan. You need open time to work on special projects, to take appointments, and to handle the things that come up. And you have to be home at a reasonable hour, because you have a family and a life that are not optional. Read those five back and notice that only one of them is a meeting. The rest are protected room. That is the part most owners have never put on a calendar in their lives.
Where the room actually goes
The class calls it open time. Leave room on the calendar is just a plain way of saying the same thing. In the sample week the class walks through, the open time is designed in on purpose, and it is not the leftovers. Tuesday morning is open. Wednesday has an open block in the afternoon. Thursday is open from noon to the end of the day, with no mail and no email that day at all, and the phone calls can wait until Friday. Friday is open until noon. Those blocks have work in them. Open time is where you schedule an appointment, work a project through, take a deeper dive into one department or into training, and do the very valuable work of recruiting new and better people. It is also where the thing that came up goes, so that the thing that came up does not eat the estimate again. The afternoons carry the other half of it. The class sends the owner to a remote office. Find a place where nobody can find you. A desk, a good vibe, a laptop, nothing elaborate. There you think, learn, read, and plan the next steps for tomorrow's meetings. Going there does something else that matters more than it sounds. It gets you home on time, because there is nobody parading into your office at a quarter past five with an issue you now have to start handling. And the day opens with ten minutes. Six in the morning, every day, the class calls Shoot the Arrow. You remember what you are grateful for, you review your goals again, you think about the important things you have to do now to accomplish those goals, and you envision your best day. Ten minutes, before anyone can reach you.
The rest of the week is built to stop the interruptions
The manager meetings sit in the late morning on purpose. By ten the crews are gone, so the time is actually yours. The class has the owner sitting down with the production manager twice a week and with the accounting manager three times a week, and keeping a folder for each manager so the things you thought of on Tuesday are in your hand on Wednesday instead of interrupting somebody on Tuesday. When those meetings are dependable, the interruptions dry up on their own. Your people are not interrupting you because they are inconsiderate. They are interrupting you because there is no other time. The basics get blocks instead of the whole day. Phone calls, mail, and email happen at set times. Lunch is with an employee three days a week, thirty minutes, sandwiches brought in rather than ninety minutes lost going out, with your phone off and your attention on the person in front of you. Twice a week, after lunch, you get up and walk the building. Look at what you do not normally look at. Why is that truck parked back there, and what happened to the windshield. And at half past four, every single day, you plan tomorrow. There is one more line in the class that stops most owners cold. Nothing in the schedule has you dealing with customers. Contractors who still deal with customers have no control over their time, because you never know when a customer is going to call, and once one has your number you will get follow-up calls and emails from that customer forever. That is the whole argument in one sentence. You do not get paid for your results. You get paid for the results of your team. You are not the doer. You are the leader of doers, and leading is the work that falls off your calendar first every time the calendar is full.
Then write your own
The sample week is one company's week, not a law. The class hands you blank weekly worksheets and tells you to write out the schedule that will work for you. It also tells you the truth about how that goes. You live through a planned week, you adjust it for the next week, and you keep adjusting until it is dialed in. That is normal. What the finished thing gives you is a rhythm of communication, progress, and accountability, which is a fair description of what your week does not have right now. Go back to the three things you walked in with this morning. The estimate. The numbers. The conversation with your foreman. None of those were ever going to fit into a week with no room in it. They were not going to fit on Saturday either. They fit in a week that was designed to hold them. A Winning Schedule is a Leadership class in the SOE Trades Owners Program. It gives you the criteria, the sample week, and the blank worksheets to build your own.
Start with your own week on paper
Take the Owner Audit and get an honest read on where you and the business actually stand.
Then sit down for a 15-minute Owner Discovery and we will look at your week with you.
Call 866-930-7330.
FAQ
Why is a contractor owner's calendar always full?
Because almost nothing on it was put there on purpose. Other people take an owner's time with their agendas, decide what the owner pays attention to and when, and hand their own jobs up to the owner. A Winning Schedule teaches that a leader who lets all three of those run has no control over his life as a leader, and that the fix is designing the week rather than working harder inside it.
What is open time on an owner's calendar, and how much is enough?
Open time is protected room with no meeting in it, and the class treats it as a requirement rather than a luxury. In the sample week it is designed in as a full open Tuesday morning, an open block on Wednesday afternoon, Thursday from noon to the end of the day, and Friday until noon. It is used for special projects, appointments, a deeper dive into a department or into training, recruiting better people, and the things that come up.
How does an owner stop employees from interrupting him all day?
By giving them a better time. When your key team members know they have regular private time with you every week, they save their issues for that meeting instead of catching you between two other things. The class puts those meetings in the late morning, after the crews have left, and has the owner keep a folder for each manager so the items collect in one place instead of becoming interruptions.
Should the owner still be taking customer calls?
The class is blunt about this. Nothing in the schedule has the owner dealing with customers, because contractors who still deal with customers have no control over their time. You never know when a customer will call, and once a customer has your number you will get follow-up calls and emails from that customer indefinitely.
What is Shoot the Arrow?
It is the first ten minutes of the owner's day, at six in the morning, every day of the week. You remember what you are grateful for, review your goals again, think about the important things you have to do now to accomplish those goals, and envision your best day. It takes ten minutes and it happens before anyone can reach you.
How does a schedule get an owner home on time?
By ending the day somewhere other than the office. The class sends the owner to a remote office in the afternoon to think, learn, read, and plan the next day's meetings, which means nobody walks in at a quarter past five with an issue that makes you late. The class also plans tomorrow at half past four, every day, so the next morning starts on your plan instead of somebody else's.
Where does a contractor owner learn this?
A Winning Schedule is a Leadership class in the SOE Trades Owners Program. It sets the criteria a leader's week has to satisfy, walks through a full sample week hour by hour, and gives you blank weekly worksheets to write your own. Start with the Owner Audit, then a 15-minute Owner Discovery, then call 866-930-7330.