Women Thriving in Construction (Ep 18) | Sam Clark

Sam Clark, CEO of Clark Construction in Lansing Michigan, candidly shares his organization's six year diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts. Would you like for your organization to have a 99% engagement score? Or to grow from $200 million to $500 million in three years? Understanding "dominant culture" and learning how to build an inclusive organization has women and minorities beating down their doors and has significantly contributed to these business results. As Sam states, this isn't "white male bashing". It's understanding the barriers to success that people outside of the dominant culture face, addressing these barriers through inclusivity, and unleashing the tremendous innovation of diverse organizations.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Welcome to Women Thriving in Construction, a podcast of the International Institute for Women in Construction. Interested in building a global movement? We are. We want to help solve the global construction talent shortage by highlighting organizations, associations, unions, teams, and individuals who are implementing strategies that help attract, develop, and maintain women in construction. Join us as we reshape industry thinking. Please note that this episode was originally recorded as an episode of the Greatness Podcast. This is Gretchen Gagel, and I am so excited to welcome Sam Clark, president and CEO of Clark Construction in Lancey, Michigan, to the Greatness Podcast. Welcome, Sam.

SPEAKER_00 0:49

Thank you. It's great to be here. I'm excited about taking part in it.

SPEAKER_01 0:54

Yeah, thank you. Sam and I sit on the Associated General Contractors of America Diversity and Inclusion Committee together. That's how we met. And before we dive into our important topic that we are going to discuss today, Sam, I love starting with my guests in talking a little bit about their passions. How did you end up in the construction industry?

SPEAKER_00 1:18

Well, um, my grandfather started our company in 1946, and my father and my uh uncle John ran it for quite a few years. And to be honest, I wasn't sure this is really where I wanted to be. It's a family business, and you know, is this the right place for me? And I worked in the field as a laborer and I got to know our superintendents pretty well, and I enjoyed those summers and ultimately decided to go into construction. And I like to build things, I like to improve things, um, and there's a lot of room for that kind of thing in construction. And I've also found that, you know, I hate to even think of it as conflict, but differences of opinions, and if you can sort through those things and come up with solutions that satisfy everybody's needs, it's it's very gratifying. And I later found that I really have a passion for, you know, the culture and strategy and our business.

SPEAKER_01 2:13

It's so interesting. I actually left the industry for eight years. I'm not, I don't know, you may not know this, and mostly because my kids were seven and eight and I just needed to get off a plane for a while and ran a nonprofit foundation and was assistant dean of a business school and then came back in the industry. And my my girlfriends were all like construction. Like many of them knew I hadn't been in, you know, didn't know I'd been in construction for 20 years before that time. And and I said, Yeah, you know, um, do you like driving on roads or sitting in restaurants or charging your cell phone? Or, you know, we we really build and maintain the assets of society and in a very humble and kind of low-key way that maybe people don't really give us the appreciation that we need as an industry, but I love it so much.

SPEAKER_00 3:01

It's very gratifying to be involved with really uh cool projects and it brings back memories of people and you know you learn stuff from every one of them. It's just uh it's a great industry.

SPEAKER_01 3:12

So we're gonna talk a little bit about your organization's diversity, equity, and inclusion effort. I'd love to start back at the beginning because I was thinking about this conversation and I thought, I don't really know the answer to this question. So you started an initial diversity, equity, and inclusion um effort, maybe that wasn't quite so successful, but what prompted you to even start way back when thinking that your organization should think a little bit more deeply about diversity, equity, and inclusion?

SPEAKER_00 3:46

Um well, that initial effort really came out of uh uh our our company has always been a progressive company since you know when my grandfather started it. It's always been that way. And we wanted to be a more diverse company, and and I think most of the thoughts, honestly, around that were just doing the right thing, but also looking more like our clients, seeing the world change. Um, but we really didn't understand how to do it and and really all the benefits that it would bring. And um uh we made the mistake of you know not having the CEO, you know, leading the charge and putting a person of color in charge of it, and uh really uh uh not putting enough leadership behind it and putting that person in a bad spot, frankly. We'd have conversations about how we can become more diverse, and it just didn't uh uh it didn't have the feel of an inclusive conversation that people felt safe and comfortable. Not that they, you know, that it was negative or bad, but you really need to lay the groundwork for people to feel safe and in that environment to to contribute, you know, to say things that you know uh might not land well with the with the executives um uh just because they don't have the the sensibilities to to hear what you have to say.

SPEAKER_01 5:14

Yeah, it's interesting. Way back in the 80s when I came out of engineering school and was running manufacturing plans, TQM, total quality management, became a big thing. And people kind of thought, well, we'll we'll make a we'll put a TQM manager in place, right? And that's how we're gonna implement TQM. And and what I really learned is that TQM is everybody's responsibility. You really had to embed it into the culture of the organization. It really had to come from the top. So it sounds like that was a similar situation where you know, delegating to a person, um, and and especially when you put a person of color in a position where they're not you're not a highly diverse organization, that can that can um sounds like that might have backfired a little bit, which it's important to talk about those things that don't work so well. That's how we learn our lessons about things, right?

SPEAKER_00 6:05

Yep. Yeah. So that progressed. Um when we started to get some traction. I had a conversation with a with a woman in our company, and she uh she was the first project manager, female project manager in the Lansing region, um, maybe even in the state. So um she was uh a groundbreaking kind of person. And uh women used to go to talk to her, which is a good thing, but we didn't understand that. Like, what are they going to marry for? She's you know, they're they're they're she's causing problems. So I mean that that wasn't necessarily going on between my years, but I heard it a fair amount. And I went to talk to her about it one day, just some issues that I saw in a survey, you know, words like you know, group think and um you know, bro culture and that sort of thing. And I I had no idea really what that what that was. And she said, it's really she says, yeah, there's issues here, but they're not issues that are any different than any other company, and this is a good place to work. I think now today, I think she just didn't have the the bandwidth to try to explain it to me because I wasn't gonna get it. Um and uh that didn't sit really well with me. I mean, I just I was uneasy about it. I wanted to understand it better. And I was on a uh I was in California in transit to a conference, and I stopped over at my cousin's place in Santa Cruz, and he works for Lockheed Martin, and I was explaining this conversation to him in the surveys, and he said, Oh yeah, that's white male culture. And I said, That's what? What'd you say? And he went on to tell me about how Lockheed Martin sent him, and they sent a lot of people to this program called the White Man's Caucus. And I said, Well, that sounds like a punishment. How did, you know, how did you get on that list? And he said, Well, that's what I thought. And he said, I thought that I was uh pretty progressive and that I, you know, didn't have any biases and I, you know, I was in favor of diversity and have any negative thoughts about that whatsoever. He said, But after going to it, I was wrong. There was a lot of things that I didn't understand, and he started talking to me about that, and I was intrigued by it. So when I got back to my office, we got uh on the phone with white men as full diversity partners, and uh they did a presentation for us, and uh we signed up, and three of us went, and it was everything he he said it was. And when I after going through that program and learning about dominant culture and you know how we can change that and be more inclusive, and it really dawned on me that trying to introduce diversity into a company that is not doesn't have an inclusive culture was backwards. It was not, it just wasn't gonna work. And uh so uh we had a theme for the year of inclusion, and we talked about that at every meeting and did some training on it. And it's like anything, it feels like you're not moving the needle very much, and then all of a sudden, you know, things start changing in big ways. And and uh so that was really the catalyst for our success and our culture for our company and our diversity efforts is was the the awareness that I got from the white man's caucus.

SPEAKER_01 9:31

Yeah, and I want to dig more deeply into that, but it's interesting, you know, of like safety. Like we talk about safety at every meeting, like our our board meeting at Brinkman Construction starts with safety, right? And and what you lift up as a leader becomes important to everybody. So when you say you talked about inclusion at every meeting, that I I don't think there's that many companies out there that are that are doing that. I want to go back to this um white man's caucus training and white white men as full diversity partners, that's the name of the organization, I think. Um and it's interesting, I think they've done some work here in Australia. I reached out to them because the the book that you recommended, Four Days to Change, I read. And um it's it's a fascinating book. I would recommend it to any of our listeners out there. But what I mean, you so you go off to this training. What happened? What what were those big light bulb moments that went off for you when you attended initially? And I know that's probably it's an ongoing learning journey, so it's not like you went off to training and you know everything about diversity, equity, and inclusion. Um, you know, I did a training on institutional racism 20 years ago, and you know, I'm still understanding what that looks like. But what were those first initial light bulbs that went off for you?

SPEAKER_00 10:53

That's a good question because there's so many of them, but probably the one that uh the one light bulb that was I see opportunity here was um the realization that some of the things that we do cut into uh the dignity and productivity of other people, and particularly women, because we have a lot of women here. And I thought, you know, we're putting all these hurdles in front of women, and uh uh in in some small ways and some big ways, but every day, these little things that you know uh uh distract them from their work, you know, when people are making comments about their appearance or when they're uh talking over them, not listening, not recommending them for promotions, uh maybe in their reviews, misassessing their talents because women tend to be more reflective and better risk managers, and that can show up as uh you're not willing to take a chance. Somebody else, you know, this is the man's job to take the chance, you're worried about all these problems. So, in not really recognizing the value and and and the way women think differently, and uh that's tiring. So if we can make our leaders more aware and chip away at some of that, we can't we can't fix all the world's problems that are affecting women, you know, and we have to recognize that. You know, I can't affect how other people in the world uh treat women. Uh, I can at the company. And so my thought process was if we can knock down some of these hurdles, women can be a lot more effective and they and we'll attract all these talented women in our business because I don't know very many construction companies that are paying attention to this. And that has in fact happened. One of our executives said, you know, he told me later after going to the caucus, he said, You told me that when, and he told he actually this occurred to him when he was having an interaction with a woman that works for us. He said, Uh you said when we do this, women are gonna want to come to work here in minorities. And I thought that is a bunch of BS. And they said he came back from the caucus and I was talking with with Tracy, and I told her what I had learned, and she goes, I can't believe I'm hearing this from a white man's mouth. I'm gonna tell my friends they're all gonna come and work here. And he goes, I can't even believe it. I was only back for a day, and that's already happening. So it's pretty exciting.

SPEAKER_01 13:18

Yeah. Well, and and people, I mean, I've I've been in the industry for 40 years. We don't want to turn this podcast into stories about hurdles that have been put in front of me. But um, when I was hired as president of Continuum Advisory Group, what's that 2014? Mark and Clark hired me. They we all worked at FMI together and they had broken off from FMI and started another company. And so people would ask me um if we were a woman-owned business, and I would say, no, you know, we're not. And and literally they would say, Well, why did Mark and Clark hire hire you as president? I as if the only reason would be to be a woman-owned business, right? And I'm like, uh, because I'm the most qualified person to be president of this company. I mean, we've worked together before, and here's what they hired me to do break back into this market and put some infrastructure in place in our company. And but um, you know, a male would never experience that. And I think that's a little bit of um when I talked to you about it when I read the book, because you're in the white male culture, and this is not white man bashing. Can I just make this clear? I I love men, I've been married to two of them. Um it's but you're in the bubble, you can't see what's happening outside the bubble, like you're in it, and so you don't experience things like that on a regular basis.

SPEAKER_00 14:40

And that's a key, it's really not white male bashing. It's you know, when we talk about white male culture or dominant culture, it's not it's good or bad, it's it is, and all those traits have are positive, but if you use if you utilize your strengths all the time, some they become a weakness. And uh to recognize that um, you know, sometimes you're you're better off to say, I don't know, than to pretend that you do know and that so that you look strong, you know. So it's uh uh it's helping white men also recognize the box that we put ourselves in or that we're put in by the dominant culture. Not everybody fits neatly into the dominant culture, including white guys. So it's it's allowed uh uh a lot of men in our company to you know be themselves as well.

SPEAKER_01 15:35

So the thing that was very intriguing when you when I first heard you talk about this, is are the business results you attributed to this because people think, well, we need you know, we need to be nice to women or people of color, you know, transgenders or whatever it is out there, um, you know, gender identification. But it it really this is really a business decision. So tell us about what's transpired. I think it's been three years since you started on this journey.

SPEAKER_00 16:05

Well, we we uh well we I went to the caucus in around 2016, I think. So we had started those, you know, really in earnest then in uh in 2016 with uh the culture shift. Um uh but uh from a business perspective, um so uh actually at that time we were a couple hundred million, and by 2020 we were 500 million, and we had started a self-perform business from zero to to 30 million during that period of time. Wow, and we had profits that were two and a half times after adjusting for inflation better than we've than we've had in our history in 76 years. Um is it all because of diversity? Of course not, but a significant piece of it is, and my grounding for that would be that um in creating the culture, it's become more engaging. So we did a uh a Crane's cool places to work uh survey, and the results we got from it really blew me away. And I I get that you know it's a marketing thing, people in your company are trying to make the company look good, but uh we had somebody else that worked for another company that did this program with Cranes, and they she said we could never get above 45% on engagement, and we were at 99.

SPEAKER_01 17:26

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 17:27

So even if people are doing it just to make the company, I I don't believe that's what was happening across the board. But what we had out of those engagement questions, there were three questions that everybody in the company said yes to, and it was I'm proud to work for this organization, I'd recommend this organization's products or services to a friend, and I would recommend that a friend come to work here. Every single person in the company said that, and the overall score was 99. So when you have a high level of engagement, that generally leads to uh people taking care of our clients and client satisfaction, which leads to return business. And our our business results are are much more consistent and on an upward trajectory since we did that, aside from the dip we had from the pandemic, which we're we're climbing out of right now. Um so it's it's increased the talent level, it's it's increased the uh the feeling of belonging and safety for everybody in the company, and and that creates positive results. And so there's a lot of other things, a lot of talented people here doing a lot of different things. And the the uh the culture of inclusion in the background and the you know, in the foreground with um diverse people is has uh made a significant impact. And I would say without it, we wouldn't have those business results because you you just don't get the same kind of communication, the same sensibilities that come from different people, uh, talents that uh uh we didn't have, frankly, before. Our our VP of marketing and business development is a woman who used to run a large architectural firm in Michigan, and she came to work for us, and she's transformed the way we think about business development. And in our business, a lot of operations people view business development as something that the used car salesmen do. You know, I build and people hire me because I'm a good builder, and not recognizing that that's part of their growth and about you know the success of the business. And she came up with a program called Trust Builders, and it's a business development program. We didn't want to call it that. And uh we trained 10 people a year, and it's about a nine or 10-month course. And uh after the first year, we had 25 people apply for it, and we could only take 10. And so we had to explain to 15 people that we, you know, you'd have to wait till the next one, which is unimaginable to me that you know we'd have people beating down the door to become business development, you know, to develop their their ability to win work. And I think that's that's a pretty cool thing. And I'm I'm not saying a man couldn't have done that, but um the the the talents that she brought to that were instrumental in making that work. I mean, we didn't do it for 75 years.

SPEAKER_01 20:17

So yeah. Well, and you do bring diverse thinking when something I stumbled across during my PhD studies, you know, studying leadership and change and org culture, and there's a lot of research on what makes smart teams, and it's not the collective IQ of the people on the team. That is not what defines, and a smart team is a team that's able to overcome a challenge more quickly and more innovatively. You know, they measure this. And the number one differentiating factor is whether there's women on the team or not. And it's interesting, I was sitting in a job site trailer with nine men uh a few months ago, not one other woman in the trailer thinking, wow, is this the smartest team that we're putting forward? We don't have any diverse thinking on this project team. We have nine white guys sitting around the table. Um, I want to talk a little bit about, so you go off and do the training and you did it with two other people, two other leaders in your organization. And did ever did all three of you drink the Kool-Aid? Did everybody kind of come out with the same? I know it's not going to be the same experience, but was everybody kind of bought in, all three of you, when you came out?

SPEAKER_00 21:25

Um there were different experiences for all three of us for sure. Um, one of the guys was our chief operating officer at the time. He's retired now. And and after our first meeting, our first day, uh uh discussing, you know, women, uh, he said, Oh my God, dude, women must hate us. It's like, well, Gerald, for sure some do because of the way we are, but most of them just accept that we are the way we are because it's you know uh tough to you know to change. But now you're you're armed with this new. Information you can show up differently. And uh so he was definitely impacted. The other person that was there was um uh had a positive experience as well that he would like to go back because I I think he he had some doubts at the time, um, just you know, being honest, and and uh we weren't in a great place as a company back then either. Um, but that person is fully bought in now. They're you know, he he he hasn't been back to the caucus yet, um, but he's fully engaged in it and an owner in the company and um uh definitely helping us move the needle forward.

SPEAKER_01 22:36

So you come back from this training and and you're like, oh, you know, I'm I've been enlightened in some way. How did everybody react as you start? And I think you've sent 18 people through the training now.

SPEAKER_00 22:48

Did you we just did that last year? Yeah. Um we wanted to do it a couple years ago, but the pandemic made it uh we didn't want to do it remotely. Um because we you you kind of get one shot at some of this uh most of the time. And and so we waited until we could do it in person. Um and and it was a it was a great success. Um, you know, for one thing, it got a bunch of leaders in our company together uh and uh helped them open up and you know learn things about one another and uh learn about the culture and why we're doing this, and uh uh really changed the lives of a lot of people. But early on, after I came back with with this information and trying to get this ball rolling, uh there was, you know, uh there were a lot of people, understandably, that didn't understand why we were doing this. And I had an executive come in my office on a Friday afternoon and we spent about two or three hours talking about it because he's getting questions from people like we've got all these problems. Why are we focusing on diversity? That's not even a problem in their minds. And uh so I I did my best to explain it to them. And, you know, admittedly, he said I, you know, after he went to the caucus, he went before this big group. He he said, you know, I didn't really understand your vision. I thought I did, but I said I was only getting about five or ten percent of it. And he's like, This stuff is is amazing and it's critical to the business. And it had already made an impact before before uh that group went. It was two two guys. But when they came back, it it was clear that we had we had more allies and more horsepower. And and for somebody like me, a third generation uh uh in a business, uh, to try to tell, you know, explain this to somebody that grew up, you know, farming and working with their hands and you know, kind of the uh uh, you know, didn't have the same kind of privileges that I've had. It's it doesn't land the same as it does coming from one of their peers that has come up the ranks and and had their eyes opened. And and so that's been very impactful. So then when we saw how that happened, we thought, well, we need to get the rest of our male leaders through this program so we can uh make a real difference.

SPEAKER_01 25:09

That's awesome. And it's interesting. Um it's an experience early in my career when I was put in charge of a failing manufacturing company with 12 months to turn it around, and we implemented self-directed work teams in a in a culture that had been very much check your brain at the door. And one thing I learned, um, you know, you kind of had that, I I think of the boat as leaving the dock, and you have people that jump in the boat, wow, this is awesome. I totally get it. And then you kind of have people with a foot in the boat and a foot on the dock, and people on the beach, and you know, you're just trying to get the people in the boat, yes, this is gonna work, this is a good thing. And then sometimes you have someone who's standing on a mountain 50 miles away saying, I'm never ever getting in that boat. Um, my young egotistical self thought I could get people off those mountains. I learned the hard way that that's very challenging to do. And sometimes they just need to go find a different boat to get in. How did how did you handle people that didn't maybe that didn't buy into this?

SPEAKER_00 26:16

Well, we still have some people out there, I'm sure, that just aren't buying into it. And they're they're doing good work. They don't, you know, they're not at a position that they, you know, that's touching a lot of people necessarily. Um we've had some people leave, uh, probably not crazy about the the change in culture. There was a there was a there's a period that started actually before we really started this uh uh uh culture change and the way we did, uh, where people were were moving around and uh you know when you go through a leadership transition, there's some of that. So we would have about uh you know 10% of the company turnover each year. And that's high historically for us. And and after implementing this, it it went down to you know, we're 200 uh 180 salaried people, and we'd lose two or three people a year. And uh this year was a little heavier year uh than most. Um I think we may have had six people, um, and and a lot of times they're leaving the industry. Um, so we haven't had a lot of time, a lot of situations where we are saying you're on that mountain peak, you you know to go find another boat to jump on. We haven't really had to do that yet. Um we've kind of brought people along, and as we've as we get surveys back, we'll hear things like, well, I don't know why we treated the pandemic the way we did, and I'm not agreeing with the diversity direction, but the direction of the company is good, and I trust the you know the leadership. So, you know, we clearly have some people that you know aren't understanding it, but they like the the positive changes they're seeing, and they may not even attribute it to inclusion or diversity. Um, but whatever it is, it's changing for the positive. So they're you know, it's generally a positive experience.

SPEAKER_01 28:18

Yeah. So Sam, I could talk about this for hours, but we're coming to towards the end of our of our time here together. So I'm I'm out listening to this, and I don't know where to start. Obviously, I mean the book Four Days to Change is really enlightening because it does talk a little bit, it talks not a little bit, it talks a lot about the the process. And this isn't a an advertisement for the white man's caucus training. There's a lot of different trainings out there that help people understand, but what would you recommend to people, especially in our industry? I mean, I've spent 40 years in construction. My dad was a construction equipment dealer. I've really spent my, you know, I kind of um grew up in the industry too. What would you recommend for people that are thinking about, I don't even know where to start?

SPEAKER_00 29:05

I well, it isn't a is not an advertisement for the white man's caucus. It's what I know. I've been to it and I feel like I'm advertising for them sometimes. Um, but getting educated and not just, you know, it's it's natural uh to think that you understand diversity and inclusion and that you, you know, you're not part of the problem. That's other people, or that was, you know, from the 60s, or you know, uh that's natural. What isn't natural is the subtleties that you pick up from that, that that when you open your mind and you go to a program that's as you know, there's three and a half days and pretty intense, you just can't get that kind of uh um change in your belief system in a two-hour diversity training. Um you know, these people are highly skilled at it. And if if you don't have those sensibilities and you're trying to change your culture and you're trying to be more diverse, it's very difficult uh because you're tripping over things you don't realize are are there and uh it's frustrating and you start to wonder, is this are we really, you know, is this really worthwhile? Should I spend my energy on something else? If you don't if you don't understand that um the power of of this culture and and of this this information to be able to change the to change your company for the better and make it uh a better place to work, a more profitable place, um, and you don't feel that passion, you you you need to work on finding the training and the you know the education to get yourself there because once you do see the light, it's bright.

SPEAKER_01 30:46

Awesome. Sam, thank you so much. I I know you're incredibly busy. I really appreciate you carving out time to share your story with the Greatness Podcast today. It's um it's a it's a great story. I'm I'm really glad that um fate brought us together to serve on the AGC Diversity and Inclusion Committee together because once I heard your story, I thought, oh my gosh, I need to dig into this a little more. It's a very unique story in our industry. And I hope that um a lot of the listeners out there will take heart that they can um can um gain knowledge about dominant culture. I think that's a great way of phrasing this. And whatever that dominant culture is, how hard it is for people that aren't inside the bubble with everybody that's in that dominant culture and the business results that can be achieved by really embracing inclusion. Sam, thank you so much for joining us today.

SPEAKER_00 31:41

Thank you for having me on. I you know, I appreciate the opportunity. And you know, for our industry to get more diverse, it's gonna require more guys like me to get educated. So hopefully at least one person does as a result of this.

SPEAKER_01 31:55

Awesome. Thanks, Sam. Take care.

SPEAKER_00 31:57

You too. Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 31:58

Interested in finding out more? Visit the International Institute for Women in Construction website at iiwic.org. Follow us on LinkedIn and Instagram, and definitely connect to our founder and CEO, Dr. Gretchen Gable. Thank you for listening.