Supervisor Problems Keep Landing on Your Desk

Problems that your supervisors should be able to handle keep coming up the line, first to your mid-managers and then to you. Missed deadlines. Conflicts on the crew. Uneven results from one crew to the next.

Some problems reach you right away. Others stay out of sight until they're too big to ignore. Either way, your time and your mid-managers' time go to decisions that should have been made where the problem started.

And as your experienced supervisors retire, the newer ones will be bringing you even more issues to solve. 

Performance Varies Between Crews  

Same work, same equipment, very different results. When nobody shows supervisors how to lead people, each one figures it out differently, and each crew gets a different result.

Problems Either Come Up the Line or Get Buried

A supervisor who isn't sure how to handle a people problem either brings you everything, or tries to handle it alone, and it gets worse. Neither one solves the problem.

Small Issues Become Big Ones

Information doesn't get passed along, small problems grow, and your days go to putting out fires that never should have started.

Pay is about the same from one company to the next, so people choose where they work. They expect a boss who coaches them and deals with problems instead of sending them upstairs. A crew that trusts its supervisor brings problems to that supervisor early, while they're still small, and the supervisor solves them.

But most supervisors got a Hope Promotion: they were the best at the work, so they were made supervisors, and it was hoped they’d figure out the people-leading part on their own. Nobody showed them how to handle the people side of a problem, so they do what they know. They make the call themselves, send it upstairs, or keep it quiet until it’s too big to hide. That used to be enough, when the boss’s job was to give orders. Today, nobody wants to mess up, so they send the decision to your desk.

You're the one person who sees all of it. The escalations land on your desk. HR reports the turnover. Safety reports the incidents. Each department is working on its own piece. But put those reports side by side, and the same crews show up again and again, under the same supervisors. It all comes back to the supervisor.

Every problem your supervisors can't solve has a cost. Some of it shows up on the books: overtime and rework when small problems grow, missed deadlines, and crews standing around while they wait for an answer.

The rest doesn't show up on any report, and it can cost even more. Your mid-managers spend their days putting out fires instead of planning ahead. Your best supervisors wear out covering for the others. Good employees get tired of waiting for decisions, and some of them leave. Customers notice the missed deadlines.

And while you're solving their problems, nobody is working on where your company is going.

Too many frontline issues at World Class Contracting were being escalated to senior management to solve. WCC put two groups of 15 supervisors through the Academy. After just a few weeks, the calls started noticeably dropping off.

CEO and Operations Manager Colin Mueller came in skeptical, because he's always been an in-person learner. His assessment after two groups: "The Academy was everything and more than we expected."

Founder Jordan Hindbo saw it too: "I could see it in my guys by the end. We're a better company because of this."