Many building contractors build successful businesses through hard work, technical ability and strong relationships with clients. In the early days, the owner often does a bit of everything: pricing work, managing projects, sorting out problems on site, chasing payments and keeping customers happy.
That approach can work well when the business is small. But as turnover grows, the number of decisions, people and projects grows with it. Before long, the owner can become the person everyone relies on to get things done.
The result is a familiar problem. You may have a healthy order book, a good reputation and a capable team, yet still find yourself working long hours, dealing with day-to-day problems and struggling to find time to think about the future.
The challenge is not simply to work harder or become better at managing your diary. It is to change how you spend your time so that you can grow and develop the business, rather than remain trapped in its day-to-day operation.
1. Understand what the business needs from you now
Every business goes through stages of growth. The priorities of a contractor employing five people are different from those of a business employing 30, and different again from those of a company with several project teams and managers.
In a small business, the owner may need to be directly involved in pricing, winning work and delivering projects. As the business grows, however, the owner needs to develop other people who can take responsibility for these activities.
This is a natural part of business development, but it does not always happen automatically.
Harvard Business Review's article, The Five Stages of Small Business Growth, explores how businesses develop and the management challenges that emerge as they grow.
The important lesson is that the way you manage a business must change as the business changes.
Ask yourself:
- What stage has my business reached?
- What are the biggest obstacles to its next stage of growth?
- Which activities genuinely require my involvement?
- What am I doing simply because I have always done it?
- What should I stop doing, delegate or arrange for someone else to do?
Your time is one of the most valuable resources in the business. Use it on the activities that will make the greatest difference to its future.
2. Find out where your time actually goes
Most business owners believe they know where their time goes. In practice, it is easy to underestimate the time spent dealing with interruptions, answering messages, resolving problems and switching between tasks.
Before trying to improve your time management, spend a week or two recording what you actually do.
You do not need an elaborate system. A simple spreadsheet will suffice, recording the activity, how long it took and, ideally, whether it was planned or an interruption.
Alternatively, you could use a time-tracking tool such as Toggl or explore other options through GetApp UK.
The objective is not to account for every minute indefinitely. It is to establish a realistic picture of where your time is being spent.
You may discover that a surprising amount of your working day is taken up by:
- Emails: repeatedly checking your inbox and responding to matters that could wait.
- WhatsApp and phone calls: dealing with queries that interrupt planned work.
- Meetings: attending meetings without a clear purpose or making decisions that could be handled by someone else.
- Interruptions: being the first point of contact for every problem on site or in the office.
- Procrastination: putting off difficult decisions or conversations.
- Distractions: switching between tasks and losing concentration.
There is nothing inherently wrong with any of these activities. The question is whether the time they consume is justified by the value they create.
Once you understand the problem, you can look for a solution. Searching online for ways to reduce email overload or overcome procrastination can produce plenty of useful ideas. But the time log helps you identify which problem you actually need to solve.
3. Decide what to do, delay or delegate
Once you know where your time goes, the next step is to decide what deserves your attention.
A useful starting point is the Eisenhower Matrix, which separates activities according to their importance and urgency.
For a business owner, I would adapt the model to help answer four questions.
Do it. Is this important, urgent and something that genuinely requires your involvement? Deal with it.
Plan it. Is it important to the future of the business but not urgent today? Put time aside for it. This is where strategic planning, developing your team and improving the business often sit.
Delegate it. Can someone else handle this effectively, perhaps with some initial training or guidance? Give them responsibility rather than simply passing on a task and continuing to supervise every detail.
Reduce or eliminate it. Is the activity neither particularly important nor urgent? Consider whether it needs to be done at all.
You can watch a short introduction to the Eisenhower Matrix or explore apps based on the model.
The key is to be honest with yourself. Business owners often convince themselves that everything is urgent, or that nobody else can do a task properly.
Sometimes that is true. Often, it is a sign that responsibilities have not been clearly allocated, people have not been trained, or the owner has become accustomed to retaining control.
Delegation is not about abandoning responsibility. It is about ensuring that the right person takes responsibility for the right activity.
4. Use your numbers to decide what to delegate or outsource
Time management is not just a personal productivity exercise. It has direct commercial implications.
If you spend hours each week on administration, routine project queries or activities that could be undertaken by someone else, that time has a cost.
Your management accounts should help you understand the cost of running the business, the overheads it carries and the returns generated by different activities. Combined with your time log, this information can help you decide whether a task should remain with you, be delegated to an employee or be outsourced.
For example, you might discover that:
- You are spending too much time preparing routine quotations when someone else could handle the initial work.
- Project managers refer everyday decisions back to you because they lack clear authority.
- Administrative tasks are taking up time that could be spent pricing profitable work or developing client relationships.
- The business needs additional management capacity to support its next stage of growth.
The answer is not always to employ another person. Sometimes a better process, clearer responsibilities or a small amount of external support will solve the problem.
The important thing is to make the decision based on the needs and economics of the business, rather than simply adding more work to your own day.
5. Understand individual personalities and behaviour
Delegation becomes more effective when you understand the people you are working with.
People do not all communicate, make decisions or respond to pressure in the same way. A direct approach that works well with one employee might leave another feeling criticised or uncertain. Some people welcome responsibility, while others need more reassurance or clarity before they feel comfortable taking it on.
Understanding these differences can help you adapt your management style without lowering your expectations.
There are several personality and behavioural models that can provide a useful starting point.
- Jung's personality preferences explore differences in how people take in information, make decisions and interact with the world. These ideas underpin several widely used personality approaches.
- Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) develops this approach into a framework of personality preferences that can help people reflect on their working styles.
- DISC focuses on behavioural preferences, including how people approach tasks, communicate and respond to their environment.
- Insights Discovery uses a colour-based framework to help people recognise differences in behaviour and communication.
- Lumina Spark offers another approach to exploring personality, strengths and behavioural preferences.
You do not necessarily need a formal assessment to start having useful conversations. A simple introduction to personality preferences can help a team recognise that people may interpret the same situation differently.
These models should be used as aids to understanding, not as rigid labels or substitutes for good management. A personality profile does not define someone's ability, and people can adapt their behaviour to different situations.
The practical benefit is that you can become more aware of how you communicate, how others respond and what support might help them perform at their best.
Managing performance and having difficult conversations
Understanding personality is only part of the picture. You also need to establish whether people are meeting the standards required by the business.
A useful management approach is to consider both behaviour and willingness to take responsibility.
Someone who is willing but inexperienced may need training, clear instructions and regular support. Someone who is capable but reluctant to take ownership may need a different conversation about expectations, motivation and accountability.
When performance falls short, avoid immediately assuming that someone is incapable or does not care. Establish what is causing the problem. Are expectations clear? Do they have the necessary skills, resources and authority? Is there an issue with workload, communication or motivation?
Difficult conversations are an unavoidable part of management. Leaving problems unaddressed usually creates more work for the owner and makes matters harder for everyone involved.
The ACAS guidance provides a useful framework for handling performance concerns fairly and constructively, including discussing problems, setting expectations and agreeing improvements.
The objective is to help people succeed while ensuring that everyone understands their responsibilities and is accountable for their performance.
6. Understand team composition and how teams work
A group of capable individuals does not automatically make an effective team.
In a construction business, you might have an excellent project manager, a capable quantity surveyor and an experienced site manager. Yet if their responsibilities overlap, communication breaks down or nobody takes ownership of the overall result, the project can still struggle.
Two aspects are particularly important: having the right balance of skills and contributions, and understanding how a team develops over time.
Team composition: getting the right balance
Belbin Team Roles is a useful model for considering the different contributions people make to a team. Some people are particularly good at generating ideas, others at organising work, evaluating options, building relationships or driving tasks through to completion.
The purpose is not to assign everybody a permanent label. It is to consider whether the team has the range of contributions needed to do its job effectively.
For example, a team made up entirely of people who enjoy starting new initiatives might struggle to finish tasks consistently. A team focused entirely on delivery might be less effective at challenging assumptions or identifying better ways of working.
In a contractor, this might mean looking beyond technical competence when appointing people to management roles. Someone may be an excellent tradesperson or project specialist but need support to develop the planning, communication or leadership skills required of a manager.
The key question is not simply whether each person is good at their job. It is whether the team, collectively, has the capabilities it needs.
How teams develop: forming, storming, norming and performing
The Tuckman model describes four familiar stages of team development:
- Forming: people come together, get to know one another and establish what they are expected to do. Roles and responsibilities may still be unclear.
- Storming: differences emerge. People may challenge decisions, disagree over priorities or compete for influence. This can be uncomfortable, but it can also reveal issues that need to be resolved.
- Norming: the team develops shared expectations, clearer ways of working and greater trust. Responsibilities and working relationships become more settled.
- Performing: the team works effectively towards its objectives, with people taking responsibility and resolving many issues without needing constant intervention.
These stages are not always neat or sequential. A new manager, a change in personnel or a difficult project can disrupt an established team and require it to work through some of the earlier stages again.
The important point is that team effectiveness develops. It cannot simply be assumed because people have been appointed to the right jobs.
As the owner, your role is to help establish clear objectives, resolve unproductive conflict, encourage constructive challenge and ensure that people understand how their work contributes to the overall result.
This is particularly important when delegating. You may need to provide more direction and support when a team is new or responsibilities have changed, but you should aim to build its ability to operate independently over time.
7. Create time for leadership
There is an important difference between being the person who keeps the business running and being the person who leads it.
A contractor can be busy every day without making much progress on the issues that will determine its future. You can resolve problems on individual projects while overlooking the underlying reasons those problems keep occurring.
Leadership means stepping back far enough to ask the bigger questions:
- Are we winning the right work?
- Are our projects producing the returns we expected?
- Do we have the right people in the right roles?
- Are we developing the next layer of management?
- What needs to change if we want the business to grow?
The well-known Dancing Guy leadership video provides a simple illustration of how leadership can inspire others to get involved and how an initial follower can help turn an idea into a wider movement. Watch the video here.
For a construction business, the practical lesson is that leadership is not simply about telling people what to do. It is about giving people direction, setting an example and creating the conditions in which they can contribute.
Staff engagement matters. People are more likely to take ownership when they understand the objectives, have the authority to act and believe their contribution is valued.
Leaders must be engaged if they expect their staff to be engaged. This is a subject in its own right, but it is also fundamental to effective delegation and building a business that does not rely on the owner to resolve every issue.
8. Build a business that does not depend on you for everything
There is another reason to address these issues: the long-term value of your business.
If the business depends on you to price every job, maintain every client relationship, solve every project problem and make every important decision, it may be difficult for someone else to take it over.
A business that can operate effectively without its owner being involved in every detail is generally better placed to support growth, provide greater freedom for the owner and prepare for a future sale or succession.
That does not mean the owner should become detached from the business. It means building a team, management structure and systems that allow the company to perform without constant intervention.
A potential buyer will want to understand how much of the business's performance depends on the current owner's personal involvement, relationships and knowledge. Reducing that dependence can make the business more transferable and may strengthen its appeal to a buyer. A premium valuation is never guaranteed, but a business that can stand on its own feet is in a stronger position.
The work begins well before you decide to retire or sell. It starts by changing how you manage the business today.
Where should you start?
You do not need to change everything at once. A practical starting point is to:
- Understand your current stage of growth. Identify the main obstacles preventing the business from moving forward.
- Record your time. Find out where your working week actually goes.
- Prioritise your activities. Decide what to do, plan, delegate or eliminate.
- Review your management accounts. Understand the cost of the activities you undertake and the resources the business needs.
- Develop your people. Give people clear responsibilities, the skills and authority to perform them, and appropriate support.
- Build effective teams. Consider the balance of skills, individual differences and how well people work together.
- Make time for leadership. Protect time each week to work on the future of the business, not just its immediate problems.
The objective is not to eliminate your involvement in the work you enjoy or the areas where you add the most value. It is to ensure that your time is spent where it makes the greatest difference.
How can bespoke business advice help?
Sometimes the hardest part is recognising which changes will make the biggest difference. You may know that you are too involved in the day-to-day running of the business but be unsure what to change first, who should take responsibility or how to make the transition without disrupting delivery.
Working through these questions with an experienced adviser can help you identify the priorities, understand the numbers and develop a practical plan that fits your business and your team.
The aim is not to introduce unnecessary management systems or make the business more complicated. It is to make it easier to run, more profitable and better equipped for its next stage of growth.
Your business should create opportunities for you, not become a job that you can never step away from.
At Profitable Contractor, bespoke advice can help you identify where your time is best spent, improve delegation and management, and build a business that is better able to grow without relying on you for every decision. For a no-obligation discussion, contact Peter.Searle@ba4cs.co.uk
