If you’re a subscriber to this newsletter, you may remember last issue I teed up an important topic. I asked you, like we at Story ask ourselves, what is your purpose? Why are we here?
At Story we utilize what’s called the EOS – the Entrepreneurial Operating System. We use the EOS to format our answer to that question this way:
- Purpose: Building – because people matter.
- Niche: Leading projects.
- 10-Year Target: Self-perform our work on all of our projects.
Allow me to go a little deeper…
Purpose: Why are we here? Why do we do this? Because people matter. The people in our company matter, and so do their families. Our trade partners and the design teams on our projects matter. The owners we build for matter, as do the communities their facilities serve. We do all of this in the service of people. We build because people matter.
Niche: How, then, do we apply our purpose to our industry? What do we do better than anyone else that helps fulfill our purpose? We lead projects. This is a bold statement to make in an industry full of good companies and great people. We have great people too. The thing we have that sets us apart is a system – Construction Production 2.0 – that allows our people to consistently deliver, and their unwavering commitment allows us to develop it over time and apply it to many elements of our work. We do not claim to have arrived at perfection, but we are routinely told by partners in the industry, owners, and our own team members that we consistently do a better job of leading projects than others in Iowa.
10-Year Target: Our roots tracing back 85 years are that of a self-performing general contractor, and we continue that philosophy today. However, our labor force has downsized through time, largely because of shifts in the industry and demographics rather than a conscious choice. For the last several years we have been building a support team and infrastructure to help us grow our workforce again. Now is the time to make it happen. Subcontractors are important – we’re on the same team! We just want to rely on our team first, and provide the workforce when needed to pace our projects from a schedule, quality and safety perspective.
That’s it. That’s our purpose, our niche and our 10-year target in a page. What’s yours?
