PROMOTE ME

Steven Cesare, Ph.D.

A business owner from Colorado called me the other day to talk about her Construction Manager who just offered a proposal that he could add significant value to the company if she and her co-owner husband would simply promote him to Chief Operating Officer. The company has an annual revenue of $6 million, has made a series of impressive improvements operationally and administratively over the past several years, and is perched to have a breakthrough transformation as long as the owners stick to the plan.

The Construction Manager has been with the Company for less than one year, was highly recruited, and possesses experiential knowledge of organizational systems. Making a salary well above $100,000 with bonus potential, he has brought standardization to the company and assumed many daily responsibilities enabling the co-owner husband to focus on higher level concepts required of a true executive.

Out of nowhere the Construction Manager presented the business owners with his sales pitch to oversee the entire field organization, thereby allowing him to “have even more impact,” as an executive, on the company (e.g., maintenance, enhancements, irrigation), than simply being confined to only construction projects. His inane proposal was completely generated by AI, replete with trite euphemisms and banal buzzwords, devoid of actual content specific to the company itself. Naturally, as an executive, he wants a 50% pay raise with additional bonus potential. Oh, by the way, did I tell you he has been with the company for less than one year, and as such, has not yet received his first annual performance review?

I think there is another word for this type of “confidence.”

Needless to say, the impromptu proposal caught the owners by surprise, forcing them to discuss the Construction Manager’s strengths, weaknesses, and value to their company earlier than they expected. The ongoing discussions we have had about the Construction Manager have been fruitful, to say the least.

As stated previously, the Construction Manager brought fundamental improvement to the Construction Department. He has implemented standard operating procedures, reporting structures, clearly defined performance expectations, and functional prowess as the lead decision maker for the department. Those key strengths have been well received by the owners, allowing them some long overdue work-life balance.

Upon closer inspection of his job performance, leadership capabilities, and role modeling of the company culture, the owners’ collective view of his value proposition is…well, let’s just say the glass is not half full. Not even close. As a capitalist, I wholeheartedly applaud their critical thinking, objective assessment of his value, and longitudinal discernment of what he would be like as an “executive.”

Here are a few of the flashing red lights the business owners have identified. His disproportionate ego is bereft of humility when working with other company staff, failing to understand or even listen to their positions when they contradict his opinions. Despite being “in charge of snow operations’” he frequently abdicated, sorry I mean delegated, operational responsibility to his Field Supervisor during several major snow events, so he could spend time with his girlfriend for out-of-town events. Also, he “asked” several field employees to move his personal belongings to/from a storage facility on a weekend, that he regarded as them doing a favor for him, while they expected to get overtime pay. Despite multiple coaching events from the co-owners, he is routinely late or absent from morning team meetings, to the point now the team is surprised when he does show up. Most critically, he has demonstrated a “convenient relationship with the truth” across multiple lies told to the owners, approximating insubordination, with a hint of superiority over the male co-owner, and an inveterate inclination toward sexist contempt for the female co-owner.

Like most green industry business owners, the Colorado couple is fair minded, future oriented, and people focused. Their prescient ability to bypass reflexive wishful thinking, by evaluating the Construction Manager’s holistic work performance will serve them well as they hone their own coaching skills as part of his much anticipated performance improvement plan, and recalibrate their evolving expectations of what they want their executive team to fully represent, all the while reemphasizing the importance of integrity, role modeling, and professionalism to their maturing company culture.

How would you respond to the Construction Manager’s proposal?

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