Jim Whitt, Contributing Editor

Making a Bigger Pie
I guess you could say I met Bob Workman on the radio. I was driving down the road, listening to the news while he was being interviewed about The American, a 21-story statue that was to be built on a hill overlooking Tulsa. He said the project may not get off the ground for a lack of funding. This was disturbing news for me. I had just completed the manuscript for my new book, Riding for the Brand: The Power of Purposeful Leadership, which is set in the year 2030. In the first chapter I had described Tulsa as it looked in the future and had written The American into the story. Now, it looked like I might have to do a rewrite.

I fumbled for my cell phone, dialed the radio station, got the number for Bob Workman and gave him a call. That call was the beginning of our friendship. I learned that Bob was the spokesman for The American. He invited my wife, Sondra, and me to his offices in downtown Tulsa to discuss how we could collaborate to help fund the project. He got my attention when, during our visit, he said, “I learned three things from Sam Walton.” I interrupted him and leaned forward in my chair. “Excuse me. You knew Sam Walton?” That question prompted Bob to share his story with us.

Bob grew up one of eight children on a Missouri farm and, after high school, attended Kansas State. But Bob chose architecture instead of agriculture and not only has made quite a mark in that field, but has become a businessman extraordinaire. He is the cofounder and chairman of BSW International, Inc., founder and president of BOX Master Builders, Inc., cofounder and director of Lucernex, Inc., and cofounder and president of SOL, Inc. Since 1985, BSW, an architectural and engineering firm, has completed over 8,000 projects worldwide. Their client list includes companies such as JC Penney, Texaco, Hallmark, Office Depot, Circuit City, Albertson’s and Wal-Mart, where Bob became well acquainted with Sam Walton. Here I was visiting with a man who had a business relationship with the man who built the world’s largest retailing empire. I asked Bob to tell me how BSW applied what he learned from Sam Walton to help the company become so successful. Here’s what he told me.

1. Volume changes everything! Architects and engineers are trained to think one project at a time. Volume meant thinking hundreds of projects at a time, which in turn changed everything about the way we shaped our teams, our information management, our processes, our relationships, our commitment, our communications, our quality focus, our end product, our thinking, our training and our attitudes. In the end it changed everything about everything we thought we knew about service. To build a volume operation requires incredible faith and trust in all the players across the board. The blame games of the other world had to change completely to one of willingness to make mistakes, to take responsibility, to learn and to improve without scapegoating others. We learned that to build volume you need to build trust, to be in charge, to take responsibility and to have an opinion. The only real danger one has in running toward responsibility is to avoid being trampled by the masses running away from it. Instead of being more and more specialized and narrowing how you view the world and your place in it, you begin to think and view all things more strategically, globally, to often see disparate, segmented, confusing specialties as one continuous pipeline that just needs cleaning up, cleaning out and filling up to be something powerful, meaningful and amazing. Taken far enough, one can see the entire world as “one thing.”

2. A little bitty part of a great big number can still be a great big number! Stuck wit h producing only one project at a time and not knowing if another project is coming, most architecture and engineering firms will try to get the highest margin possible with the least effort from the one project or contract. After all, you may never see this client again! In fact, given that attitude, it is almost a self-fulfilling prophecy that you won’t. Taking a lower margin against a larger, constant influx of work means spreading your costs as well and actually increasing your overall profitability as an operation. It’s better to have a little bit of a lot instead of a lot of a little bit.

3. And, a little bitty number, repeated often enough, can be an astronomical number! See No. 1! Take a lower margin per project; do a great job of marketing by executing the last project well, thus insuring a constant and considerable volume of work through your pipeline; pay attention to the product quality and the processes that deliver it to the point of being fanatical about constantly improving both. Train your people to pay attention to the details while keeping their focus on the general objectives. Build an ever increasingly efficient work force and work flow, reduce your time and costs to market and pass some of those savings on to your client. Drive up your volume of work while increasing your capacity to produce quality work that’s done right the first time. Do these things, and more, and you will find that the little bitty numbers get repeated often enough to produce an unbelievable result for you, your client and your associates.

While Bob’s companies have been extremely successful, he understands that they are still only making a small dent in a huge market. Bob describes real estate development as an extremely segmented industry with one segment making money at the expense of another segment. He says there is very little trust between the players of the different segments. The result is that everyone is fighting each other to get a bigger piece of the pie. Bob’s idea is to make the pie bigger, enabling all segments to profit and prosper while better serving the customer. To do this, he and a couple of partners have formed a development company that will bring players from the different segments together to form an alliance of like-minded partners who share a common purpose.

OK, if you see the parallels between the real estate development business and the beef business, go to the head of the class. Continually fighting to get a bigger piece of the pie is a losing proposition. It’s a struggle for survival that makes for winners and losers. If you think you’re smart enough to win all the time, you need to go to Las Vegas. If you want to move from survival to success, you have to change your mentality from getting a bigger piece of the pie to making the pie bigger. You have to see others in the industry as partners instead of competitors. Make the pie bigger and everyone wins. Why? Because volume changes everything; a little bitty part of a great big number can still be a great big number and a little bitty number, repeated often enough, can be an astronomical number.

Please e-mail comments to Jim Whitt jim@whittenterprises.com

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