Commercial Cock-Ups, Nightmare Meetings & Lessons Learned the Hard Way (EP 282)

Actually, it's from Sophie, who's a commercial lead.

Sophie says, I listened to last week's Leadership Series episode where David Taylor from Costain talked about being sent into a client meeting in his early 20s, completely underprepared and getting absolutely grilled.

It made me wonder what is the hardest meeting either of you have ever had to walk into during your construction careers and what did you learn from it? And I, Chris, I'm going to go first.

And I'll tell you why I'm going to go first.

Because when David Taylor said that in the show last week, I was thinking, because he basically described how I approach every meeting, which is like total too much preparation, I think.

And he basically said, I got grilled.

In this meeting, I was really underprepared.

I never went to a meeting underprepared again.

That was the one time I thought, I can't let this happen again.

And I was thinking in the interview with him, and I couldn't think of the example, but I've thought of it since, particularly with Sophie's question.

Why is it that that's my approach? to all the meetings and I remember that there was a project that I worked on called I think it's called Ashburton Court and I was a trainee QS and so it was one of those Velfact jobs that I told you about but it was me and Harry you know basically I started my career with a very good mate of mine from college who was a site manager I was a QS we were both trainees for whatever reason we got sent to this job in Winchester which wasn't going particularly well.

They thought they'd really resource it with the best of the best, clearly.

And anyway, so this job had loads of variations on it.

And we kind of got sent down there.

Harry used to obviously run the job, me to go a couple of days a week and make sure we got the variation account.

And so I had to submit loads of variations that were like historical, like 20, 30, seemed like this huge variation account at the time.

I couldn't believe it.

Submitted them, wait for this big meeting, turned up at this big meeting and was like, what did you think of my variations? And the guy on the other side who was probably 35, 40 was like, well, let's go through them item by item and you can talk to me about them.

And I was like, Oh, is that how it works? I thought you'd just kind of say yes.

And then, so we went through them and I just didn't really have my ducks in a row, so to speak.

And I think, so going back to David's example, his was different, but I think I went into that meeting completely underprepared on variations.

And now I kind of, not that I do this anymore, but when I was a QS commercial manager, I would always have a pack for each variation, really well submitted, take it with you.

have like a crib sheet of notes.

So that was a bad meeting.

And then the other bad meeting that I went to, which I've also talked about on the show and without wishing to throw old colleagues and counterparts under the bus.

Actually, it's from Sophie, who's a commercial lead.

Sophie says, I listened to last week's Leadership Series episode where David Taylor from Costain talked about being sent into a client meeting in his early 20s, completely underprepared and getting absolutely grilled.

It made me wonder what is the hardest meeting either of you have ever had to walk into during your construction careers and what did you learn from it? And I, Chris, I'm going to go first.

And I'll tell you why I'm going to go first.

Because when David Taylor said that in the show last week, I was thinking, because he basically described how I approach every meeting, which is like total too much preparation, I think.

And he basically said, I got grilled.

In this meeting, I was really underprepared.

I never went to a meeting underprepared again.

That was the one time I thought, I can't let this happen again.

And I was thinking in the interview with him, and I couldn't think of the example, but I've thought of it since, particularly with Sophie's question.

Why is it that that's my approach? to all the meetings and I remember that there was a project that I worked on called I think it's called Ashburton Court and I was a trainee QS and so it was one of those Velfact jobs that I told you about but it was me and Harry you know basically I started my career with a very good mate of mine from college who was a site manager I was a QS we were both trainees for whatever reason we got sent to this job in Winchester which wasn't going particularly well.

They thought they'd really resource it with the best of the best, clearly.

And anyway, so this job had loads of variations on it.

And we kind of got sent down there.

Harry used to obviously run the job, me to go a couple of days a week and make sure we got the variation account.

And so I had to submit loads of variations that were like historical, like 20, 30, seemed like this huge variation account at the time.

I couldn't believe it.

Submitted them, wait for this big meeting, turned up at this big meeting and was like, what did you think of my variations? And the guy on the other side who was probably 35, 40 was like, well, let's go through them item by item and you can talk to me about them.

And I was like, Oh, is that how it works? I thought you'd just kind of say yes.

And then, so we went through them and I just didn't really have my ducks in a row, so to speak.

And I think, so going back to David's example, his was different, but I think I went into that meeting completely underprepared on variations.

And now I kind of, not that I do this anymore, but when I was a QS commercial manager, I would always have a pack for each variation, really well submitted, take it with you.

have like a crib sheet of notes.

So that was a bad meeting.

And then the other bad meeting that I went to, which I've also talked about on the show and without wishing to throw old colleagues and counterparts under the bus.