Keep it Simple, Stupid
In year two of business, I read "Uncontainable."
Written by Kip Tindell, he explains how he's built the Container Store into one of America's most successful retail operations. Their most impressive metric is not revenue or year-over-year growth but employee turnover.
Their turnover averages about 10%, compared to a 60% retail industry average, with some beyond 100%...
How? That's what the book's about — their operating system and training methodology. But to save you time, they start with meaningful values that they train and reinforce nonstop.
The concept of values hit me like a ton of bricks. BuildWitt needed values, so I went to the drawing board and sketched a system of values upon which we'd build our team.
After five years of iterating, we've got ourselves a damn good set of values that we reinforce whenever possible.
We've got them prominently displayed in our office, we teach them during onboarding, we recognize people monthly based on our values, and not a day goes by with me failing to mention one or more in conversations.
A team or company cannot go too far regarding values. Great cultures don't happen by accident, which is why they're rare.
One of our core offerings nowadays is BuildWitt Training, a video-based educational platform for the Dirt World. Instead of the same tired videos from the 80s, we've developed 1,500+ few-minute videos ranging from equipment walkarounds to having difficult conversations.
Not only do we preach the value of daily training to the Dirt World, but we've implemented it ourselves.
This leads me to the core point of this email — I asked our training content team to produce micro-training videos for our BuildWitt Values.
The first? KISS, or Keep it Simple, Stupid.
In business and life, communication is everything. But there's a big difference between communication and EFFECTIVE communication, and the biggest difference between the two starts with simplicity.
I have made this longer than usual because I have not had time to make it shorter. — Attributed to Blaise Pascal in 1697
You'd think simplicity is common sense, but I rarely see it in business or life. School and "business as usual" ironically teach the opposite, so we've realized we must work it out of everyone who enters our doors.
Complexity is constantly trying to weasel its way into every organization, and only those with the anecdote that is simplicity can truly innovate and build great teams.
As I am now at risk of compromising KISS with the length of this newsletter (originally 506 words, now only 442), here's the first of nine BuildWitt value videos produced by our INSANELY talented team…
Dirt Talk Podcast
In this episode Aaron is joined by Ben Winsor, a Managing Consultant at Aperture LLC. Ben and his team specialize in analyzing data from construction projects that are going through the litigation process. Construction consultants like Ben forensically analyze project data like schedules and cost reports, assist with claim preparation, write reports and provide expert witness testimony at trials.
Ben is not a lawyer, but he is someone you want on you and your lawyer’s side during litigation. Ben and his team help their client calculate damages and identify entitlement for those damages. Ideally matters can be settled before a courtroom or arbitration is needed. Settlement can potentially save contractors lots of time, money and headaches so they can do what they do best- build. If the matter must be decided by the terms of the contract Ben will testify as an expert witness to assist the trier of fact in understanding the evidence put forth by each side. If you want to learn more about the legal side of contracting this episode is for you. Connect with Ben on Linked-in if you need assistance on your project or have a question on how the process works.
Vlog
While visiting Westrac Caterpillar, the official Cat dealer in New South Wales, Australia, they let me play with one of their coolest toys — the Cat remote operator station.
The station, comprised of the same seat and controls inside a machine, combined with a sports bar-level TV screens, can operate remote-enabled machines from ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD.
Cat first pioneered the technology for dangerous applications, like working near a high wall, unloading barges, and removing nuclear waste.
I've seen the technology a few times before, but this was the first time I was allowed to operate a remote machine, thanks to Westrac's insanely cool technology experience center.
I'll see you next month! Don’t miss out!!
