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Focus… It Works!
By: Mike Bolen

Focus

1. A position in which something must be placed for clarity of perception. 2. A center of activity, attraction, or attention.

That's what Mr. Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary has to say on the subject, and you have certainly heard McCarthy management preaching focus on a number of subjects for some time now. So what's the big deal?

The big deal is something that a few of us have been studying for several years now (you might say we have been focused on it), and I believe that we may have stumbled onto a new physical law of the McCarthy universe. It seems that nearly every time we put our collective minds and energy together to focus on a particular issue, good things start happening with more frequency, or bad things start happening less often. And what's really cool is the longer we focus on it the better things get.

My favorite example by far is safety. Twenty-five years ago when I started with this Company as a carpenter, our incident rate for accidents was 35. That's right — for every 100 people who worked a full year for McCarthy, 35 of them went home hurt, or worse, some didn't go home at all. The situation really didn't get much better for the first ten years I was here. We had all the standard excuses — “this is a dangerous business”, “we don't have time to work safe”, “safety programs are too expensive, and they don't work”, and my personal favorite “only wimps worry about safety”. Then about fifteen years ago we concluded that this was all a bunch of crap and decided to do something about it. It wasn't easy and it isn't done, but by focusing everyone we changed our culture, and we dramatically changed the outcome. Today McCarthy is one of the two or three safest builders on the planet and our Company goal for safety incident rate this year is under 2.5 (which is still too damn high!). Oh by the way, while we were spending all that time and money making McCarthy a safer place to work, the Company profitability increased by 300%. How did we do that? You got it — focus. In fact we have gone well beyond focus on this issue and become safety fanatics. It's a core value of McCarthy culture.

There are many other similar examples of the same process producing great results. Initiatives like quality, training, gross margin, Parking, Industrial, K-12 Education, relationships, Laboratories, Employee Ownership. You get the picture — focus works.

Okay Big Guy, down off your soap box for a minute. What exactly is your point? Well the first point is that some really exciting things have happened to McCarthy in the last few years, and we are poised to enter into a new era for the Company. For example, we have just come to the end of our first Five-Year Strategic Plan with really solid results, and we now own the Company. Our five-year average for sales has topped $1.75 Billion. Our backlog of uncompleted work underway is steady at $1.75 Billion. We have completed our conversion to an S-Corporation, and Fiscal Year 2003 should be the Company's best ever financial performance. Fiscal Year 2004 is setting up to be even better than 2003. Preparations are well underway to complete a new Five-Year Strategic Plan (Vision 2008) this summer, and we are right on track to pay off the balance of the transaction debt. As we said in December at the Winter Seminars, “The table is set”. What could possibly go wrong?

Well, as the Old Wise Man said (he's the big Irish guy — white beard) — never, ever, ever challenge worse. Worse will always win. Lots could go wrong. Anything could go wrong. Some-thing will go wrong. That wonderful back-log of work is complex, difficult, loaded with risk, and spread out all over the country. A very tough challenge for operations. That same backlog will “burn off” at a rising rate of more than $100 million per month, which means that Marketing and Estimating will have to run pretty hard to replace it. Every month! Management is tasked to come up with a new strategic plan that both feeds our machine and fuels the Company's growth goals. And make no mistake, McCarthy will grow. We are on an exciting but very fast-moving train, and there is simply no room for a lack of focus anywhere in the Company.

Now to the second, and most important point of my little rant here. I would like to make a bargain with each of you. We know that focus works here at McCarthy. What we focus on will improve. With this in mind, let's each make a pledge to one another as we go through this exciting but dangerous time in our journey to becoming the Best Building Company in America. The Producers pledge to really focus on execution. Block, tackle, play great defense. The Planners pledge to really focus on producing and implementing well founded, solid plans which reflect our collective vision of a spectacular future. Do we have a deal?

Yep, on reflection Mr. Webster has it just about right. We need to seek clarity of perception through centering our attention and activity on the main attraction. Focus works at McCarthy. Carpe Diem Partners!