Principles of change management with the Breakthrough Academy

Bre Ferris:

Welcome to “The Better Way,” a podcast by Buildertrend. Here you’ll learn to simplify and establish processes that will make meaningful changes to your company and help you to achieve your goals. There’s a better way to run your construction business – the Buildertrend way. On this season of “The Better Way,” we’re doing things a little bit differently. We know you don’t want to just hear from us – you want to hear from other pros. That’s why in addition to our experts, we’re also inviting industry leaders to help teach best practices for successfully implementing software and getting your team on board.

On today’s episode, learn more about the principles of change management and how to implement them with Paul Atherton, business coach at the Breakthrough Academy. Paul started his career managing large construction processes and has since devoted his time to helping other pros in the industry achieve and exceed their biggest business goals. Paul, thank you so much for joining us here on “The Better Way,” season seven. Can you tell us a little bit about what Breakthrough Academy is, what you guys do?

Paul Atherton:

Yeah, for sure. And thanks for having us on, Bre.

Bre Ferris:

Yeah.

Paul Atherton:

Yeah, so we’re a coaching and training organization that works with construction companies to give them tools, skills like community and support to help them achieve their goals.

Bre Ferris:

Awesome. Well, let’s dive in here. I would love to hear your take on change management. So if you can go a little bit into what change management is and then how Breakthrough Academy helps builders achieve this, and where a software like Buildertrend fits in and comes into play.

Paul Atherton:

Yeah, for sure. So change management, it’s a term you hear thrown around quite a lot, but in a nutshell it’s a very collective term. I think it’s a collective term used to describe how you work with people to implement strategies, new processes and, in our case, new technology into their organizations.

Bre Ferris:

And then from a Buildertrend standpoint, where does that come into play when we’re speaking about change management?

Paul Atherton:

Man. OK, I’ll just answer it the way a business coach like myself would look at that question. There’s so many areas that we would use Buildertrend to implement change in a very positive way in construction companies. I kind of put this into two camps. In one camp are the people that haven’t caught up to 2023 yet, and they don’t even look at technology. So those people I say right away, hey, we’re just going to get a CRM like Buildertrend to just understand what’s going on in your business and then help further utilize your resources and time better to achieve a very optimal result at the end of your year.

Bre Ferris:

Gotcha.

Paul Atherton:

There’s people in that camp – they don’t have any technology. And then there’s people in another camp that are using Buildertrend, and these are actually my favorite because they want the technology. But when I look at how they’re using it, I see that there’s just a lot of ways that we can gain ground in their organizations through not a whole lot more effort.

Bre Ferris:

Gotcha. So kind of maximizing on some of the-

Paul Atherton:

Yeah, totally. So we just make an assessment of where they’re at, and then we focus on getting them to utilize Buildertrend in a way that reflects the highest-performing companies that we work with.

Bre Ferris:

Beautiful. So when you’re going through that process and speaking with builders, whether they have or are super familiar with software or not, or using Buildertrend even, when implementing that change, how do you help builders or how do the builders decide what they should stop doing and change versus what’s working right?

Paul Atherton:

Yeah, I mean, if I understand your question correctly, you’re saying, hey, when you look at a company for the first time and you’re working with them for maybe a few weeks or a month, and then you’re trying to decide, OK, there’s like 50 things you can go do. What’s the thing that you should go do first? You’re asking, hey, how do you assess what the low-hanging fruit is? Well, construction companies have to be very, very strong in five core areas. Human resources is one, how they recruit, onboard, train and professionally develop their team. Another one is leadership. How good are they at leading staff at the field level and how good are they at leading leaders?

A third area is how efficient their sales and marketing is. A fourth area is how well they manage their financial controls, because that’s the backbone of their organization. Strategy is useless unless it’s backed up by the numbers, so that’s a really important bucket to look at. And the fifth one, and my favorite – and this is where Buildertrend comes into play a lot – is how they manage their projects. Just to add color to that, we look at how effective they are in those five areas, and then generally we pick off the one area where they can gain the most ground the quickest, and we attack that.

Bre Ferris:

Do you see typically when the people that you’re working with are using Buildertrend that they get those processes implemented quicker and heighten HR, the financial standpoint, all of those things, it’s coming together a little bit quicker for them?

Paul Atherton:

Oh, 100%. Yeah, 100%. I mean, if you think about it, Buildertrend has invested millions and – I’m assuming. I don’t know what they’ve invested. But millions and millions of dollars to build a software to help companies, construction companies specifically, allocate resources, energy, time in the most optimal way. That will inevitably impact how the company is perceived by the marketplace, how it’s perceived by potential recruits, how they manage projects, how money flows through their organization, how they lead their staff. It impacts everything.

Bre Ferris:

And when we’re going through those five chunks there, what are just the beginning stages? If you could touch on just a few of them, a few of those steps that builders should take to drive that organizational change. Because it’s kind of a holistic approach; you’ve got to hit all of those things. So what do some of those steps look like?

Paul Atherton:

So let’s say you identify that the first low-hanging fruit that a builder should look at is, OK, let’s be perfect at using software like Buildertrend. Let’s implement it at a level that’s like, we’re using 99.99% of the system in our company. So once we’ve identified, OK, this is the thing you need to go work on hard for the next six weeks or eight weeks, what you’re asking is, how do they go about doing that successfully?

Bre Ferris:

Exactly, yep.

Paul Atherton:

So this is always a fun conversation because generally, for me at least, if people say, “Hey, I want to go implement this change in my company.” I go, “Cool, how are you going to do that?” And then they’ll go on to Google and they’ll come up with a big list of change management. Like I said, it’s a collective term that’s thrown around quite a lot. And more or less usually what they’ll get back is a seven- to 10-step process that makes no sense, at least to me. And I do this for a living. Not to say that you’ve got to throw out everything, but to a builder working in the real world with all this stuff coming at them, the stuff you find online, it just doesn’t make sense.

And I can quickly list them off: you establish a sense of urgency, you create a coalition, you develop a vision, you communicate the vision – do you want to keep going? You empower your people, you secure short-term wins, you consolidate, you move forward, and then you anchor the change. And generally you’ll see people talk about all these things, but it’s like, what does that mean? I don’t really like coaching people through that. I find that I can get the ball down the court a lot further if I kind of summarize it this way instead. So I’ll say, “First of all, if you want to implement the change successfully, pick implementing Buildertrend and utilizing the software to its full capacity.” I’ll say, “No. 1, the biggest thing as an owner is you need to first commit in your mind to implementing that change.”

One of the commonalities that you see with builders who are hitting $20 million a year, 15 to in the low 20s net profit, and they’re having lots of fun with their staff and they just have a really good company, one of the commonalities that you see with those owners is they commit in their mind that they’re going to go and do something and they don’t mind being bad at it at first. They roll up their sleeves, accept that they’re inadequate, and they just get to work. They don’t mind feeling like a 6-year-old for a few weeks until they figure something out. That is really hard. Most people, they want to feel competent every day. They wake up in the mornings, they want to clap their hand and feel competent in what they’re doing. But the true operators, the truly brilliant operators out there, they’re OK going, “Hey, I don’t know this thing, but I’m going to learn it.” That’s the first thing.

So I say, “Galvanize in your mind that you’re going to make this change.” The first thing, it starts with you as the leader. Next, identify what good looks like. Because going and saying – let’s use Buildertrend as an example here – that hey, I’m going to implement Buildertrend and execute it at a very, very high level is not enough. Just downloading the software and paying a monthly fee, that’s not enough. You need to see for yourself in your own eyes, go look at how a company just like yours is using software at a world-class level using 99.9% of the system.

Look at that because you need to understand where you’re going. If you’re going to implement a change, you can’t just take your ship and set sail out to sea. You need to understand where you’re going. So that’s the second thing. Third, and this is my favorite, is you recognize that people in your company are going to resist change most of the time because they’re automatically, and this is the way humans are, they’re automatically going to assume that the future will be bad.

I’ll give you an example. If you finish work, you go out to your car and someone walks up and hands you a $50 bill, you’re like, “Sweet.” That’s a change in your life. You’re going to spend that $50 on some coffee with your friends or something like that. Go see a movie, who knows? But that’s like a nice change in your life. Hey, I just got this $50 bill for nothing. This person just gave it to me. But that’s because when they gave it to you, you went, oh, the future’s going to be good. I’m going to go have a nice time downtown with my friends. If someone were to say to you instead, “Hey, Bre, I want you to use new software for tracking your time or expenses at your company.” You go, “Ah, man.” Future is going to be bad, right?

Bre Ferris:

Yep.

Paul Atherton:

Generally, that’s the experience that owners are going to have when they go and tell staff, “Hey, we’re implementing a new change in our company.” Right away, most people are going to say, “Hey…” Subconsciously their minds are going to tell them the future is going to be bad. So as a leader of change in your company, you need to first of all recognize that people are going to think that, and then you need to identify reasons why they think that change will be bad and then alter it and then alter their perspective to say this change is actually going to be good.

Bre Ferris:

And that’s huge. I think that’s something that we see pretty often internally here at Buildertrend. And we understand change can be scary, but it kind of comes from the top. If the owner is thinking, I don’t think this is going to be good or I’m nervous about this, it’s going to trickle down to everybody, all the employees. So I think that is a great call-out there.

Paul Atherton:

Yeah. It’s communicating the why. You’re selling people on it. Yeah, so that’s a really big one. It’s a sales process. And this is easy for construction company owners, because typically they’re amazing at sales. You’ve just got to sell your staff on the idea, right?

Bre Ferris:

Right, absolutely. But create that buy-in at the same time. No, that is a great … I think my favorite step.

Paul Atherton:

For sure. So once you’ve identified, OK, why are people going to resist the change and you’ve dealt with that, the next thing that you want to do is you want to find somebody in your organization who’s going to be what’s called an early adopter. You don’t want to just roll the software out all at once to everybody because it’s a high likelihood that you’re going to have naysayers and people that have a negative outlook, and they’re going to slow down your momentum. And there are going to be bugs to iron out. So the first thing that you want to do is find out who’s going to be an early adopter, a couple of people that are going to be early adopters, and just work with them, polish the system, work with them, figure everything out, iron out all the kinks, then roll it out with your team.

And then once you’ve done that, you have your vision, you’ve communicated the why really well to people in a way that they’re going to have their buy-in. You’ve already polished the system with early adopters in your company. Then when you roll it out with the rest of the company, you’re going to have just a lot less friction in the process. And then, yeah, finally you want to identify very small wins. So as people are taking the time to learn the system, you want to identify things that they’re doing really well and thank people for their efforts.

Bre Ferris:

Yes. A system as robust as Buildertrend, I think that’s huge. So whether it’s one feature or just a chunk of that feature, just recognizing that you’ve kind of hit that plateau and then overcome it. I think that’s huge. So that is also a great point.

Paul Atherton:

It sure is. It sure is.

Bre Ferris:

So to piggyback off of that, when working on a change project, what are some of those key performance indicators or goals builders should have when working on that?

Paul Atherton:

For sure. Yeah, so KPIs to track. So these fall into two categories. There’s performance metrics and personnel metrics. So personnel metrics, you’re just tracking how satisfied users are with the system and how much they’re using it. And then performance metrics, that’s the one that business owners tend to be very interested in. Those are financial metrics, project schedule metrics. Things like how much gross profit your company is taking in per job, whether or not you’re hitting your budgets on each project. And I will say every single time people I’ve worked with have implemented Buildertrend and executed at a very, very high level, you see all those metrics improve very, very quickly in the company.

Bre Ferris:

That’s the goal.

Paul Atherton:

That’s it, right?

Bre Ferris:

Absolutely.

Paul Atherton:

It’s a very efficient piece of software. You want to use it to its full capacity.

Bre Ferris:

Absolutely. Breaking it up into chunks definitely helps. And setting those smaller goals on both ends of the spectrum helps to get you over that hump.

Paul Atherton:

And actually, another thing that I didn’t touch on and that we’d probably want to ask about, when we talk about change management, I do tend to send people to the customer success managers. Because we use Buildertrend as an example, I do tend to send people to the customer success managers at Buildertrend all the time. I think you guys have a wonderful team.

Bre Ferris:

Thanks.

Paul Atherton:

Over there. I met all you at IBS and it was amazing. So yeah.

Bre Ferris:

Yeah, we try. Again, I know I touched on this earlier, but we understand that change can be hard and it’s something new coming at you, and everyone is super busy. That’s why you’re coming to us in the first place. So we’re here to help. So help relaying it to the team, teaching the team, helping with that entire process. That’s what we’re here for. So we appreciate the kudos.

Paul Atherton:

Yeah, of course.

Bre Ferris:

So one other thing that I did want to touch on, because they’re inevitable. How can you try to avoid mistakes throughout this entire process? Or what are some of those key things to look out for that might be some red flags?

Paul Atherton:

High level, again, I want to cement that before doing this process, you have to know what good looks like. You have to be very clear in your mind, and you have to make sure, if you have a leadership team, make sure they’re clear in their minds. And you have documented, written down – what are we doing here? Why are we here? What does good look like? You probably will make some mistakes along the way, but your mistakes will be far less if everybody has alignment on what your destination looks like.

So high level, that’s the destination. Get clear on what your destination is and make sure everyone’s rowing together to get there. You will make mistakes, but at least you’re going to have alignment. Two, another big way to avoid mistakes, and I said this a couple minutes ago, is to go call a customer success manager at Buildertrend and just use their time to the full capability, what makes sense with your schedule and their schedule. And then once you have it implemented, higher level even, go to Buildertrend University. You pay however much, and you get that back in two months, less than that even, of having this system working more efficiently and optimally for your team. So I would say those two things. Another way to avoid mistakes is follow the process that I generally laid out. It’s six things to really galvanize in your mind and in your team.

Bre Ferris:

And really buy into them. Yeah.

Paul Atherton:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Get that buy-in.

Bre Ferris:

Yeah. And I think both ends of the spectrum there, we kind of see the same thing as just like if you make a mistake or something doesn’t go quite as you expect, don’t just give it all up. You want to circle back, figure out what happened. We can help you identify, you can help identify where we went off the rails and then get you back on and keep plugging along.

Paul Atherton:

Yeah, for sure. Just pick yourself back up, forgive yourself. Not everyone’s perfect. And just clap your hands, get up and move on, right?

Bre Ferris:

Yeah. Shake the dust off. Heck, yeah.

Paul Atherton:

Heck, yeah.

Bre Ferris:

Can you tell us a little bit about some of the free resources that you guys offer?

Paul Atherton:

Yeah, for sure. So we have a very strong change management plan that outlines basically what I talked about that you can download, like many of our channels. And it’s just a good template for clarifying in your own company what the gaps are and asking the right questions so you can just put a rough framework together. And of course, if people have further questions, they can always call someone like me and I’d be happy to talk with them.

Bre Ferris:

Awesome. Well, Paul, relatively short and sweet here today, and I appreciate your time. Thank you so much for being here and giving us a little insight on the Breakthrough Academy and change management. We appreciate the insight.

Paul Atherton:

Awesome. Hey, yeah, had a lot of fun, Bre, thanks for having us.

Bre Ferris:

Awesome.

Paul Atherton:

Had fun.

Bre Ferris:

Hey, thank you. Till next time.

Paul Atherton:

Till next time.

Bre Ferris:

We’ll see ya. Thanks, Paul.

Paul Atherton:

See ya.

Bre Ferris:

Thanks for listening to “The Better Way.” If you’re a Buildertrend customer, schedule a training session to learn more tricks for applying software within your business. All listeners, be sure to rate, review and subscribe to “The Better Way” wherever you get your podcasts. Visit Buildertrend.com/podcast to sign up for the email notifications when the next season drops, and explore our original podcast, “The Building Code.” Don’t miss our next episode where Joe Christensen and Adam Schaffer will be joining us again. This time, they’ll be talking about how they tackle Buildertrend scheduling and walking through how they template their jobs so they’re supccessful from day one.