‘Peers, Not Mentors,’ Lesson From Diversity Workshop

Date Posted: November 22, 2016

Posted In: Discussion, Ideas, News, Workforce,

by Tom Finan, Executive Director, Construction Forum STL

As a practicing Christian, Russ Burns, president of Clayco knows well the maxim, “Walk the talk.” So Burns pulled himself up short recently, when exiting a meeting with group of MBE contractors, having told them that they needed to, “know what your value proposition is every day. I realized that I wasn’t thinking that.”

Russ Burns, left, and Greg Kosicz.

The point of Burns story was that he was learning as much from his interactions with the minority contractors as they were from him. His viewpoint was seconded by Greg Kozicz, CEO and president of Alberici who was participating in the same program.

Burns and Kozicz were interviewed by Kaven Swan, senior vice president at HOK as part of the half-day St. Louis Council of Construction Consumers Diversity Workshop Nov. 18 at Sheet Metal Workers Local 36 Hall.

The pair, along with Scott Wilson, CEO of S.M. Wilson (who was traveling the day of the presentation), are the leaders of the three companies comprising the ACW Alliance, currently working on the BJC Kingshighway Campus Renewal project. They were asked by BJC to participate in a “CEO2CEO” program, designed to introduce MBE contractors to the practices of large majority firms.

Burns and Kozicz bridled at the use of the term “mentoring” They instead prefer the term “peer-to-peer”. They opened access to all of their key personnel and processes. Among the take-aways from their involvement with CEO2CEO was:

• Encouraging the MBEs to grow capacity by hiring other MBEs.
• Telling them not to be shy about crossing out unfavorable contract terms on areas such as payment. “What’s the worst thing that could happen: it becomes a point of negotiation,” Burns said.
• Making a decision to grow capacity by exposing the MBEs to what Kozicz termed “flawless execution: Bidding for the right price, doing it for the price you said, getting paid.”
• Burns said that he considered the effort a true win when he saw MBEs from the program working on a Clayco project in Chicago. “My job is to open the door, whether it’s a minority or not. After that it’s up to you to sell the people that you work with on a day-to-day basis.”

Kozicz spoke of the “shoebox” model of a business, in which a company starts each year with a theoretical box with money in it. If there is more money at the end of the year, it was a good year. He noted that “everybody struggles with the same issues: making payroll every week, keeping cash in the shoebox, finding and keeping good people.”

He said that the principle that guides him in business is to try to find ways every week to help Alberici’s employees be successful.

Both Burns and Kozicz said that their companies had gained as much as they had given from CEO2CEO. “We had a very positive reaction from staff. There wasn’t one person in our building who hasn’t benefited from somebody mentoring them,” Burns said. There would be CEOs in our building and I didn’t know it.”

Kozicz encouraged other majority contractors to embrace the CEO2CEO process. “Up here you’ve got a couple of guys who are running multi-billion-dollar companies. This program did not create one moment of inconvenience in my schedule. It was one of the finest, most personally rewarding experiences I’ve had.”