Production Manager
Liston Design Build
St. Charles, Mo.
Best innovation: We are big on workplace culture, and in the time since I started, we’ve grown to 14 field personnel. So culture is really important. One thing that’s been super productive for our team is to start out in our main office every Monday morning with an hour-long meeting with doughnuts. We spend at least 15 minutes talking about our weekends.
This is a waste of time in that you’re not producing anything, but it’s grown camaraderie by leaps and bounds. Then we’ll spend 30 minutes talking project-specific stuff including best practices, and problem-solving. We’ll get ideas from guys who have never even seen that jobsite. It allows all the voices to be heard at one time and provides an opportunity for us to direct some of our younger guys— the laborers and material runners. So what we lose in that time on a project, we’re making up for with efficiencies later on in the week.