While I’ve been away, our business has been undertaking some very large challenges. They have forced us to pause and open ourselves to new ways of doing things. This has been quite an amazing experience with many lessons learned, and a lot of work on defining roles within our team. We have shuffled, changed, stretched, grown, and have just begun to move forward with our new mindset and responsibilities. It was during this process we found our strengths and weaknesses and have focused on changing our roles to suit those, rather than the stereotypical roles we had adopted.

In doing a few simple exercises, we have found that The Builder is best suited to building, and I have found a love and reignited a passion for management, most specifically project management. This has prompted a change in our responsibilities so that now our ‘jobs’ more accurately reflect the strengths we individually possess, while giving opportunity for our weaknesses to be built on.

This change has meant that I have been acting as the project manager, and the contact for our clients once project has commenced. I am loving this new challenge, and learning so quickly how very important exceptional communication is in any business sense. It has however highlighted a hole in my knowledge, most specifically my technical knowledge though we have been blessed with the addition to our team of a fantastic site supervisor, who’s expectation for quality is equal to our own.

It was a battle to find such a person, and after a false start with another, our new site supervisor landed in our lap at the perfect time! While I am now managing our projects, this is really a behind the scenes kind of job, and our site supervisor is somewhat the daily face to our business. Our site supervisor is comfortable working within our current business structure and happily reports to me daily. It has been refreshing to have him sweep into our business with his positive can do attitude and a firm hand on the technical knowledge I don’t have, thus freeing both The Builder and myself up to do what we do best.

These changes have highlighted a few new issues, that we had thought to be old ones. We have found the sexual stereotypes to be raising their head again with some clients and sub-contractors discrediting the work I am doing; however, we are fortunate enough that our site supervisor absolutely believes in what we are doing and fully supports every decision I make.

We are in the process of making more changes to reflect our new direction with continual shuffling of sub-contractors and staff to ensure we are all working to our best ability. It’s been a time of challenges and change, with fantastic results for us personally and in our business.

In the next week or so, we should begin to settle into our new format and I will be able to get back to what I really love, talking to you! Thank you for your patience during this time of growth and a special thank you to the many of you who took the time to message during my absence.

Nicole xxx