It's that time of year when underperforming college football coaches get the ax. It's also that time of year where "hot" coaches get brought in for ever increasing salaries to replace recently axed coaches. This occurs on a 3 to 7 year cycle for most major universities that have national championship aspirations for their football programs. Why do things go this way? I think it's because university leaders and boosters get caught up in a combination of infatuation with extreme but brief periods of success in previous positions and coaching pedigree. I grew up in Austin and an example as fresh as today is Tom Herman at the University of Texas. He got hot for a brief period of time at a lower level university and had the right coaching pedigree through his time at Ohio State with Urban Meyer. Leadership at Texas got a bit excited and paid him ton of money to be mediocre for the last 4 seasons. Even though he got fired, he'll even get paid by the school for atleast a little while. Another example at my Texas A&M University is Kevin Sumlin. He got hot at the same university as Tom Herman before being hired by A&M for a decent but not excessive contract. Johnny Manziel then lit it up for 2 years which was long enough for him to get a massive increase in pay. He fizzled out there, then got paid after being fired and got paid well by another university to be a mediocre head coach for a few years.
What does this have to do with construction?!? Well, guys that do well early in their career often get promoted and move up the ranks for years after their early performance. They might have been a pretty good PM but most likely they had a great team, maybe a good mentor, a good client and a little luck that lead to a strong performance early on. Maybe a mentor advanced and brought them along or maybe short term strong performance got them to the next level. Either, way their skills might be overmatched leading to struggle and potential failure. Another issue that arises is that position advancements might require very different skillsets and leadership abilities. This similar to when head coaches at smaller universities or coordinators move into big program head coaching jobs. When everyone reports to you or the lights get a lot more bright, success comes differently and is a bit more challenging to attain.
So what does this have to do with the average construction pro? Maybe not much. Construction leaders should avoid getting caught up in past success and the halo of success that follows some advancing construction pros to seek out the right builders for big jobs and positions.
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