Chapter 1 - The “Why” behind developing Substacks on ‘Vocation Mastery for Purpose’, ‘Supportive Leadership Structures’ and ‘Vocational Milestones’ with ‘Conflicting Strengths’

My career as a construction manager with a large nationwide construction general contractor has certainly been rewarding but it certainly didn’t start out this way.  While my views and ideas are going to be explained through the lens of a career construction manager, I believe they are also a model for almost all industries.  As I developed in the business, I slowly started to piece together concepts that could help me to understand our growth in the business.  Over the years of training and mentoring people, they all tell me that these concepts resonate with them.  My goal is to capture these hard lessons so that you in your development can maybe find some quicker answers, instead of working for the next thirty years and never finding them. 

Things really changed during my years while I was working on the Pentagon project.  It was during this time that I hit the lowest point in my career confidence and the point were I also significantly changed my career path and leadership style.  So, it will be good to explain how these things happened so you to can understand the pivotal time. 

I was assigned to work on the Pentagon Renovation program on September 9^th of 2001.  I was also promoted to be an Area Superintendent on the job at the same time.  I was overwhelmed and excited with the idea of being on the project.  We had a pre-teaming meeting on September 10^th and our first day in the building was on September 11^th.  As we walked along the outside of the building on the early morning of the 11^th, it struck me on how massive the building.

Our original four-man team, Tom Miller, Byron Woods, John Cowan and myself, were walking through the building at 9:00 in the morning.  We walked through the Wedge 1 Renovation area which was wrapping up as we wanted to see what the previous team had built.  The building is made up of 5 floors and 5 rings.  The innermost ring is A ring, and the exterior ring is E ring.  Our team walked down corridor 4 towards E ring and then along the outside E ring and ended up coming down corridor 5 and we crossed A/E drive.  A/E Drive is the active roadway that separates A&B rings from CD&E rings.  We walked into A ring and on a whim entered the Pentagon library which is on the low side of Corridor 5 going back towards Corridor 4.

As we entered the space, everyone was silent and looking up at the television screens in shock. I looked up to see the second plane crash into the second World Trade Center tower and that is when we got hit.  There was a massive crescendo of sound and an equally large buildup and shaking of the building.  The only thing I can equate it too is an express subway train passing a station.  Things then went completely quiet, and the security guard giggles a nervous laugh.  Then the alarms began going off and it was at that moment, we decided it was time to go.  As we spilled out into corridor 5 and started to head towards the outer E ring to exit, we were met with injured people trying to exit the impact zone.  We then followed groups of people as we attempted to exit the building.  It was like being in a dream or more like a nightmare. 

A few items to recognize from that day.  The smell of jet fuel was incredible as well as the smoke from the fires as we entered the main courtyard while we were trying to get out.  The orderly way that everyone was exiting the building was eerily calm.  The moments we finally got out and the Pentagon Force Protection Agency, PFPA, police cruiser that came around announcing that a second plane was in-coming and we should get away from the building.  Me looking around and trying to figure out where I would go if another plane was really coming in.  Moments later a phone call from Harmon Anderson, who was an old Project Manager of mine, as he was checking to see if I was still alive.  I told him, my new theory about a ‘Big Sky and Small Airplanes’ which was a play on the Infantry term of a ‘Big Sky and Small Bullets’.  Gallow humor of course.  I also remember coming home to my hysterical wife, who could not reach me on the phone, as she greeted me at the door, pregnant and with our one-year-old daughter in her arms.  I later learned that what we saw on the television screens in the library was actually a replay of the day’s early events.

C Ring Wall looking back toward Outer E Ring

A few weeks later, I was walking with my Operations Manager, Tom Schwieger. He took me out to A/E drive near corridor 5.  As we stood there he asked where our team was on the morning of 9/11.  I explained that we where in A ring just on the low side of Corridor 5.  He calmly points to an inverted A that was painted on the outside of the B ring wall and states, “That upside down A is the final impact of the plane as it exited that hole on the interior side of C ring wall’. I turned and looked at that hole and it was then that I discovered just how lucky we had been that morning.  I also contribute my life to the structural reinforcing work that Physical Securities had done the exterior of the E ring walls and have told Ken Hayes from Physical Securities that I owe him my life. If their structural betterments were not there, the plane would have punched through the remaining 3 wythe of brick and a few books and we would have been flattened.

B Ring Wall looking towards the A Ring and the Library

The days and weeks after were everything you could not imagine.  I was born and lived in New York City and worked around the Trade Center in the subways while employed by the NYCTA.  I felt very attached to the events up there and to the events around the Pentagon.  A few days later we were called back to the Pentagon site to start figuring out how to engage to help clean up the mess.  One thing I’ll always remember was how quiet it was around the building.  The roads on both sides of the Pentagon were shut down and Reagan Airport as well.  You would come to work, and it was silent except for the constant cawing for the crows.  Then one day they left, and it was just silent as the work crews performed their tasks and tried not to interfere with the FBI’s investigations or get run over by the US Marshals patrolling the perimeter.

There were some other crazy events that occurred after 9/11.  One day they began to bury the deceased men and women that had passed from the events in Arlington. The Navy suffered the most as their command center had been manned. One day they had a fly over for the fallen and when those planes came in on a low-level pass, everyone in the building thought it was another attack as we all came running out of the building.  The threats of subsequent attacks or the rumors of the same swirled around the project constantly. On another day, Dwane Evans and I were on the north side of the building after they started to let commuter planes to land at Reagan Airport and a commercial airline with Arabic writing on the side came in on the approach path.  This path is very low as it’s a small commuter path and the PFPA police were running as their radios were going off in response. Dwane and I braced for impact and it seemed forever before we saw the plane veer off and circled back to get onto the correct approach. 

On another day, Dave Hutt and I were coming back from a meeting and the Pentagon was being vacated for a bomb scare.  Our staff was ordered out the 18 wide complex. Dave and I directed everyone to go rally at the local Irish pub at the adjacent mall.  As Dave Hutt and I walked into the bar at around 11 in the morning, we asked how many hostesses and bartenders they had.  The staff at the bar thought we were crazy as we told them that it was going to get busy in a few minutes.  The entire HP and supporting staff showed up which was probably close to 120 people.  My Operations Manager got an expense statement for around four thousand dollars a few days later.  He wasn’t happy but that was just another day at the Pentagon. 

So enough of the stories.

We completed the renovations from 9/11 at the end of 2001 and in early 2002 we were starting the renovation work that we were originally contracted for.  Nothing was normal in those early years on that project. The speed of construction and the size of the building was overwhelming.  The project was over 5 million square feet with a schedule now spanning approximately 14 years and a contract value that was approaching a billion dollars due to various impacts from 9/11.  To make things even crazier, Congress wanted us to remove 4 years from the schedule so that the project would complete in December of 2010. The current Wedge, we were building. was Wedge 2 and it was 1.2 million square feet with over 8 different phases.   

By the mid part of 2003, I had been a project manager for approximately 6 months and was very frustrated with the staff and how they were operating.  The staff was large and difficult to manage.  Even though I had been in the industry from around 10 years and felt I had the confidence to lead the team, something wasn’t working.  It seemed the more I pushed the more they failed.  And the more they failed the more stuff I took away from them so I could complete it.  I was working harder than I had ever worked and felt that for every step forward we were moving two back.  I also believe the staff was equally frustrated as I wasn’t really leading them the way a real leader would.    

I was working late one night in the massive trailer complex in my tiny office nestled in the middle of complex.  It was well past 8PM and I was struggling to figure out what was wrong.  I started to reflect on what was making me so miserable.  As I was wallowing in my self-righteous pity party and blaming my staff, I recalled a Catholic Priest once saying, ‘When you have one finger pointing out, there are three fingers pointing back’.  Well that really struck me and it was at this moment that I realized I was the one that was failing my staff and not the other way around.  I began to look at how I was failing and the reasons why.  I then started to flesh out how I would change things. 

The very first thing I came up with, was that ‘my job was to support the staff’, and therefore my organizational chart in my head was upside down.  I was thinking that the staff worked for me and not the other way around.  The staff on the job was pushing close to 70 people and it was divided into two groups, the Field and Office. In the main part of the 18 wide trailer complexes, we had a huge corkboard with pictures of the staff on it and their names and positions.  Of course, it was organized as a Top-Down Management structure.  That night I took all the pictures down and reorganized the pictures so that I was on the bottom and everyone else was supported by me.  

This became a Supportive Leadership structure vs a Top-Down Management structure.   It was while I was doing this that I also started to notice the various positions and where the people were in their career paths.  It then occurred to me that the strengths needed for the various career or vocational milestones needed to change over time and that these strengths were also conflicting. So much so that the idea of ‘What got you here, Will not get you there’ came to mind.   It was during this night that I started to sketch out the concepts of Supportive Leadership structure and why that is so different from a Top-Down Management structure.

On a side note, I also flipped the Field teams photos so that the General Superintendent for the job was on the bottom.  It didn’t last long as after a few days I noticed it flipped back to a Top-Down Management structure.  This subtle change struck me, and I realized he was leading with ego and that forced me to spend the next 20 years working to not have ego involved in my Supportive Leadership style.