Women Thriving in Construction (Ep 22) | Barb Jackson

Few people are as focused upon transforming the leadership and culture of the construction industry as Barb Jackson. Barb joined the podcast to share her observations on an industry that she describes as "full of noble, hardworking, well intended people" but that is at times "visionless", focusing upon management instead of leadership. Barb's Women Building Change Leadership Program, and her new podcast, Stirring Up Dust, are two excellent resources for those interested in leading transformation in our industry.

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 thrilled today to welcome Barb Jackson, Director of Burns School of Real Estate and Construction Management at the University of Denver, founder of Women Building Change, and just an amazing change agent in the construction industry focused upon how we transform leadership and culture. Barb, welcome to the Greatness Podcast.

SPEAKER_00 1:02

Thanks, Gretchen. It's so great. It's great to be here on the Greatness Podcast.

SPEAKER_01 1:08

Yeah, we got a lot of G's in there, don't we, with the Gretchen Gaggle and the Greatness. And Barb and I have had the good fortune of being friends for nearly a decade. Barb, I will never forget when Hugh Rice said to me, there's an amazing woman that just moved to Denver. You need to meet her. And when he tells me to meet somebody, I can't pick the phone up fast enough to um call you. And we had the shared experience of both having worked at the University of Denver. Um, I before we get into the fabulous things that we want to talk about with the way you are transforming the AEC industry, I always like to ask guests, how did you end up in construction? What was the path that brought you to this industry and your passion for the industry?

SPEAKER_00 1:54

Yeah, well, that's always a great question, too. And, you know, I have to say it it probably begins mostly with family. I have a I had a dad who was a carpenter and a stepfather who was an electrician, and I have brothers, no sisters, and really, you know, I became very, very quickly my dad's quote-unquote right-hand man. And um from a very, very young age. I mean, I remember jumping off the back of his pickup truck right on to a nail sticking up out of a board right through my foot, and literally got off. No, didn't feel a thing, was great until I saw a little bit of blood. And then, of course, I was in a panic. But that's literally, I was the trash man on his jobs. I, you know, helped him clean up the sites, I watched him. I, to this day, Gretchen, to be honest with you, if I smell, you know, that that smell of sawdust in fresh sawn lumber, all my uncles had a sawmill. We milled our own logs, we did all those things, and I hung around that forever when I was a kid, and I loved it. I loved the smell of the wood. I love it. Uh, I just love it. And so when I went through school, and it's really funny because I I didn't know the business of construction. My family wasn't in the business, they worked for other companies. So I I didn't know that side of it. I just knew what they did on weekends, right? Whenever I got to see them. And I like that. And I so liked hanging out with the men doing that work instead of in the house with my mother and aunts doing the dishes. And um I just stayed out as much as I could, but I didn't know the business. So when I graduated from high school, and I graduated a year early, I graduated as a junior, and I hadn't really thought about going to college or anything. It wasn't no one in my family had done that. So it it wasn't like top of mind at all, but I remember thinking I was good at math and I was good at art. And then one morning, you know, I decided I guess I should go to college or something. Um, and I started in art. I was there for one full quarter, that's it, and find found out I had no talent to be a fine artist. And then I went into interior design and I said for one full quarter, and I said, you know what, I don't want to get a project after somebody else has messed it up and then just try to fix it in the interior. So then I stumbled across a very unique major called housing and design. So the housing piece was mostly like around policy, and the design piece was, you know, it was architectural drafting, it was all of those things. And part of that design component had me taking several courses in the new major called ICM, Industrial Construction Management. Well, those two or three electives ended up being like 15 courses. Like I took every course I could get my hands on because now we're talking estimating and scheduling and quality control and safety. Now we're talking the business, right? And um, that's kind of what happened. And I, in a way, I fell into it. I already knew that I liked building stuff, but I didn't know the business of building until really I got into college. So it was kind of an by accident, which is it's funny because it's how many people get into construction because they start in architecture, engineering, and then they discover construction management at the university and say, I didn't even know there was a major.

SPEAKER_01 6:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 6:01

It actually led uh Gretchen to me writing a construction management jumpstart book. Because here's the thing it's a great career, you can make really good money, and nobody knows what it is. Right. And I thought somebody needs to write a book on this, and so I wrote back in 2004, I wrote Construction Management Jumpstart, and I just completed the third edition in 2020, I guess it was. But that book's gone strong, it's read all over the world.

SPEAKER_01 6:33

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 6:34

It's just a simple little book. Well, it's not simple, it's now about I don't know, an inch and a half thick. But that's how I got into it. And you know, I'll tell you this. I'll share with you what I share with a lot of people. I it's not the concrete and steel I love about this business. I love the people. It's filled with noble, hardworking, well-intended people. And I just think they're the salt of the earth. They are nothing exists without them. I've shared this with you before. There'd be no housing, no health care, no transportation, no nothing without these people. And so I really think that's the thing that draws me to them.

SPEAKER_01 7:17

Yeah. Well, it's interesting. When I left the Women's Foundation of Colorado, I'd taken a break from the industry and then worked at DU briefly and then came back into the industry. And my girlfriends were all like, wow, you work in construct. Like, they didn't know that I'd worked in construction and manufacturing for 20 years first. And I and I said, We build and maintain the assets of society. Do you like charging your cell phone? Do you like having a baby in a hospital or driving on a road or flying out of an airport or all the things that we do to um support society? It's such an amazing industry. And Barb, one of the things I respect most about you is like this book that you just mentioned, which is great to hear that third edition is out for that construction management kickstart. I'm going to mention that book name again.

SPEAKER_00 8:07

Jumpstart, jumpstart.

SPEAKER_01 8:08

Jumpstart, sorry, jumpstart. And but that you've been so focused on cutting edge transformation. And I think about the Design Build Institute, for example, and the concept of design build. I remember when I joined FMI in '94. When was DBIA founded? Late 90s. Yeah. So it was right about that same time. And people were going, hey, there has to be a way to accelerate construction. And instead of designing the whole thing and then bidding it and building the whole thing, what if we were building as we were designing? And um, that's one of my uh favorite memories of you of thinking about how do we transform the industry?

SPEAKER_00 8:54

Yeah. Well, you know, it's funny. So again, professionally, I started um working, you know, for a home builder for a little bit of time. And it was a home builder, and he also owned his own supply company. So I got the building side and I got the supply chain side sort of concurrently in those first jobs. And then I went from there to commercial construction uh a little bit, then I went into engineering for a couple of years, then I worked for an architecture firm for a couple of years, but I came back to construction. But it was always the con it was always design and construction, design and construction. Um, but the thing is, when when I was again, when I was young in college, um sophomore, maybe maybe sophomore year, I heard about this concept of design build. Uh back then it was more EPC, engineer, procure, and construct, and um for industrial and process construction, but design build for vertical commercial construction was coming online way back when. And and I remember this was in the 70s, um, mid-70s, and I remember somebody referencing that as design build. And as a young sophomore in college, I thought, why would you do it any other way? It just that's logical, right? That makes perfect sense to me. So I went out into the industry and I did it the other way for 10 or 11 years, and then finally in 1984, actually it was 19, yeah, about 1984, I stepped out on my own and created a company called Design Build Services. So think about that's nine, 10, 11 years before there was a DBIA simply because I knew it was a better way.

SPEAKER_01 10:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 10:54

And with that, the other piece of it was, you know, it was Design Build Services Incorporated, and uh I had my own architects. I had two, so grand total of two. We self-performed about 80% of our work. I didn't have in-house engineering, but I I so I still outsource that. Um but but think about it, you know, we we we were able to be a one-stop shop, really. And um, you know, I said our motto was when you serve people, you don't have to sell them anything. But the funniest, the fun, the most fun thing was I had a a former client who brought in a new potential client. They sat across from me. And the former client says, Barb, tell him what you do as a company. And I'll never forget this as long as I live. And I started to talk, and he stops me. The the the former client stops me, says, No, no, I'll tell him what you do. And he looks over at the person he brought in the office, he says, She does magic, that's what she does. And and I I'll never forget it because it he'd been to that that former client had been to architects and contractors and all of this. But the problem is, is that you know, they never they never provided that one-stop shop. They never provided all the services, they kept sending them somewhere else and sending them somewhere else. So we had this segregated experience. And the thing about design build is it is an integrated experience. Think about it as when you're kids and you're talking, you know, you you whisper something in one person's ear and they whisper it in the next person's ear and the next person's ear. But what comes out on the other end and what you started with are two different things, that's segregated services. Yeah. But when it's integrated services, the message you begin with is the message at the end. And that's the thing that I so, so, so love. And when you can provide that for clients, I I guess it is magic at some level, but that's what that client, that was their experience of what it was. And that's what had me fall in love. And like I said, at that point, there was no design, there was no DBIA. That I did not become familiar with them until 2000. And when I went to the first event, which was in Tampa, Florida, I was so thrilled because it was this entire organization filled with like-minded people like me. And I thought, this is my the these are my people, right? To this day. We all have our one, I uh I affiliate with all of them, right? AGC, CMAA, all of them. But my people, my fundamental people, are with DVIA. And, you know, I just I just love them all. I love AGC, I love them all, but I just have this affinity with the design build mentality.

unknown 14:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 14:09

Yeah. I have to tell you a funny story. Barb and I, I mean, one of the the joys of being inducted into the National Academy of Construction was that you're in my cohort. So we got to do that together in Colorado in October. I fought my way back out of Australia again and I was playing in the golf tournament. I'm gonna butcher this person's last name, Mike Ludkowski.

SPEAKER_00 14:30

Lulaski, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 14:31

Lulaski.

SPEAKER_00 14:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 14:32

And he looked at me after about three holes because I had two different careers in the industry, and he goes, Were you a keynote speaker at the Design Build Institute of America in the early 2000s? And I was like, wow, Mike, that's a really, really good memory. What a great person he is. So, Barb, talk to us a little bit about your current passion around transforming leadership and culture in the AEC industry. And and I'm I'm just love hearing your vision and your passion for where the industry needs to go, how you'd like to help transform it.

SPEAKER_00 15:10

Yeah, so um again, a long story short, but you know, so I'd had this company, I worked in commercial construction, then I started my own company, and in 19, oh golly, uh January 1996, I went back to the university to get a master's and a PhD. And the reason I did it is because I wanted to teach design build. I wanted to teach a better way to do this business, and it's not design build the project delivery method so much, as the concept of integrating design and construction as a process. Um, the contract model is the whatever we come IPD, design build, P3s, what have you. But it's that notion that we do it as an integrated function. And um, I'll never forget it. When I went back, so I'm back in graduate school. My son is a freshman in college. I'm back in graduate school, mom's over at Colorado State, my son Jason is at the University of Northern Colorado. Um, and I go in to register for classes, and you got to understand, this is 20, 25 years of being in business as a licensed class A contractor in the Commonwealth of Virginia. And I go in and they start showing me the classes advanced estimating, advanced scheduling. And I'm like, what? No, no, no, no, no, you don't understand. I don't need any more estimating, I don't need any more scheduling, I don't need any more building systems. I've been doing that for 25 years, and my advisor says to me, Gretchen, he goes, So, what is it you want to do? And I looked him square in the eye and I said, I want to transform an industry. And he leaned back in his chair and he says, Well, you got more courage than I do. I'll go ahead and help you do whatever you want to do here. So I started taking classes in organizational behavior. I took a class called teacher as actor. I took a class in all kinds of things, the psychology of this, um, curriculum development, uh, all kinds of things. And they let me write my own curriculum, which I was thrilled with because I sure didn't need any more estimating and scheduling. But from that moment, and this is what I saw, Gretchen, when I was in business, that's what I was out for to transform the way we do this business. But what it what hit me was I'm never gonna do this one project at a time. I'll never achieve that goal one project at a time. And I thought, bingo, if I can get to the next generation of architects, engineers, and constructors, I'll have a chance to influence how this business is done. That's why I went into academia, um, you know, been in it uh 15 years at Cal Poly. It will be nine years at Du, and that'll be enough there, right? So I've done that, I've influenced, I've influenced, I created design build curriculums. I um, you know, I was very, very fortunate to to to um you know to to receive the Bruno Lesky Lifetime Achievement Award from the Design Build Institute of America in 2019. So that that work has been done, and now it's this last piece, the way I see it, and that is really uh focusing 100% of my time on those things that I think will have the greatest impact to now take that transformation to, I'm gonna call it a more serious level, like initiatives, um game-changing thought, uh, all of these things that now will actually have that impact. So the first piece was about awareness that it needs transforming, and the second piece is about influence and impact. And that's where I'm taking off with this new business under my own name, Barbara Jackson LLC, doing business as women building change and with the intention of transforming leadership and culture in the AEC industry. And that to me is the biggest when I looked all those years, what's the two things where we could have the greatest impact to actually cause and facilitate a transformation? It's leadership and it's culture. And uh I'll just care carry on a little bit here, but uh there's two things I see about the industry, and this is an industry I love, so this is not meant to be listened to as a criticism. This is just the kind of the what's so. This is the construction industry is an industry without vision. It's what I call it's visionless because we are so focused on management and the control of process that there's no room for vision. It's without vision, and it's an industry that should have tremendous vision but doesn't. So there's a gap between the leaders we have and the leaders we need. And that's one area that I want to focus on because we need to have leaders who can speak a vision, can speak us into a future that currently doesn't exist. We don't have that kind of leader. I I mean, maybe here and there a little, you know, a little, little bit of observation of it, but not much. Um that's really what I'm hoping to do. And here's the other piece of it. I happen to think after all these years, I've never done anything just for women, but six years ago, I created a leadership boot camp for women in construction. And it's specifically to help advance women into leadership roles because I think that they are actually the key to the transformation of the industry and will actually save its future and generate that vision for it that doesn't exist right now. And I I believe that is as much as you know, I I know that actually as much as I know my own name. And that's where I plan to. Spend the next decade or so or two or whatever doing that independent of the university environment, where now I think I can have the most impact directly on industry itself. So that's the transformation. I've been at it since what 1996. When I just decided, when that advisor asked me, what do you want to do? And I said, This is what I want to do. So since 1996, to this moment, right here now, speaking to you, um, this is this is kind of what I'm up to.

SPEAKER_01 22:36

Yeah. And so, you know, when I when I came back into the industry as president of Continuum Advisory Group, and we developed our vision statement, which was to transform the industry, construct worldwide construction industry through revolutionary innovation. And we had this big debate about the word revolutionary because it scares some of our partners. And I said, if it's not revolutionary, I'm not interested in doing it. So you hired the wrong president of your company. But this passion that you and I share, if it's not systemic, if it's not moving a needle, if it's not kind of taking our industry in leaps and bounds in a different way. And uh, it's so interesting that you say that about vision. I sit on the construction industry culture task force for this country of Australia, and it's been really interesting to be sitting in Australia looking at the world from a different viewpoint. I was telling someone the other day, I finally realized it's like I moved to a different chair in the room. You know, you're sitting in one chair and you only see one thing, and now you're sitting in a different chair and you see the whole world differently, including the United States, but that these are systemic across the globe. And that's what this construction industry culture task force is trying to do is shift the culture of the industry here in Australia. And if we can learn from each other around the world, I want to make sure that people can find your boot camp. If someone out there listening wants to go to your boot camp for women leaders in the industry, how do they find that?

SPEAKER_00 24:05

So, great, great question. So the uh it's now called Women Building Change Leadership Boot Camp. They happen three times a year. Uh, typically February. We just completed one, another one in May, and another one in September. So you can the fastest way to find it is to actually go to my website, barberjackson.com. Just that. Um, right in the middle, down scroll down in the middle, you'll see boot camp, or just click the boot camp button, and it will take you and give you a little background, and then there's another link directly to the to the boot camp site. Uh again, we've been doing them for six years. They are four days long. Um, well, actually, three and a half days. It's really a conversation or a dialogue for about three and a half days. It's about aware the individual person, the individual woman, uh, her becoming very, very aware of a number of things. Um, her own self-imposed barriers to leadership, for example. Um, it's about uh her her strengths, um, recognizing that and the weaknesses and what a weakness and strength really is, because it's not what we think it is. Um but ultimately it's really about her learning how to stand in her own power. And the thing that's so fascinating to me is who the individuals are when they come in and who they become over as little as three and a half days.

SPEAKER_01 25:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 25:43

And I mean this when I say it. There are many, many instances where they go back to their companies and somebody will say to them, What happened to you? You show up differently.

SPEAKER_01 25:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 25:56

And I I think the thing is just taking away, we call them the sticky notes. So there's there's sticky notes all over us. Like somebody said something to us once we were in the sixth grade. You're not smart enough to be an engineer, or they said, Um, you know, you'll never amount to anything, or you're too pretty to be doing that dirty work, right? And it sticks to us like a sticky note, as if it's the truth. And we own it as if it's the truth, and we live our lives as if it's the truth. Because as young people, especially children, if it's said to you at five and six and seven, you can't discern whether that's true or false. Right. You just own it as if it's true. Unfortunately, as adults, we don't recognize they're all over us, right? And so I literally spend half a day having them discover the sticky notes and take them off and rip them up if they haven't empowered them. If they have empowered them, I say keep it on. But if they haven't, I take it off. Yeah, and you should see the you it's like weight has come off them, right? Right? And this is nothing but distinctions of communication. That's all it is. It's like the human aspects of communication affect us, affect us. And I'm even gonna use maybe a strange word, Gretchen, but it's kind of a spiritual thing almost, in the sense of when you start to get who you really are as a power, it is something happens to you. Um, you just start speaking up, even as shy as you are, and this is the way I say it, you can no longer tolerate those things that aren't okay with you. Yeah, you just can't. And I say the other piece of boot camp is we get you as close as we can in touch with what you're up to, really, because it's not your job. Your job is just the vehicle by which you are getting to do this other thing that you're really up to. And I said, it's kind of like toothpaste getting squeezed out of the tube. Once it's out, you cannot get it back in again.

SPEAKER_01 28:25

Right.

SPEAKER_00 28:26

And I spend four days, Gretchen, getting that doggone toothpaste out of that tube. So they become very aware, very aware of what they're up to, what their power is, so it's no longer okay with them. And I'm telling you, some of the initiatives after six years that have come out of this boot camp are game changing for the industry. No kidding. And so this June, all of the boot campers are invited to a reunion where we're gonna highlight some of these initiatives, and now we're getting toward that making more noise stage of the boot camp. Right. So hopefully you'll be reading about it, hearing about it. They're game changers, all led by women for the industry, for the industry, not just their own individual promotion or something like that, but for the industry as a whole, including their company, but they're going beyond the company out to to um influence the entire industry.

SPEAKER_01 29:34

Yeah, that's so amazing. So, Barb, as we wrap up, I know you and I could you you and I could talk for two or three hours on all these topics, and I'm so excited about what the next decade will bring for you and the industry, the impact that you'll have on the industry, because I'm 100% confident that it will continue to be tremendous as it has been. One of the reasons I wanted to invite you on the Greatness Podcast is that you have a new podcast, and I wanted to be able to promote your podcast to those in the industry that are looking for um other even other avenues to listen. So tell us about your new podcast.

SPEAKER_00 30:12

Well, the new podcast is um, you know, a component of the overall website where there's blogs and those sorts of things. And starting uh in March, shortly in the after the end of February, the name of the podcast is Stirring Up Dust. And um uh it really is just again, none of this for me, Gretchen, has ever been about gender, it's not a gender issue. It's really a workforce issue, it's an empowerment issue, it's a vision issue for the industry, it's an acknowledgement of all the people in it and the hard work they do and their significance. That's what the stirring up dust is about. It's stirring up dust so that we begin to acknowledge and recognize what this industry is and who the people in it are. It's really, really important to me. Um and I just think it's time. So, yeah, I think if anything, one of my um marketing people a long time ago, he says, Barb, you come up with the most salty topics. He says, You gotta keep it salty. So, this is what I can tell you. It's going to remain salty, okay? But not at all, you know, meant to it's meant, it's truly meant to have people just think. Just think. Um, and you know, it's not meant to be critical, it's not meant to be anything, because this is an industry, uh, anything negative. It's an industry I love. I just think we need to start making some noise in certain directions, and um, that's what it's about. I'm going to do a lot of just some uh thinking out loud together, uh, thinking out loud and sharing some of my observations and thoughts. There'll be some interviews involved. I may even introduce some uh what I think are game-changing technologies and those sorts of things that may impact the industry, but it's mostly just thinking together out loud.

SPEAKER_01 32:19

Yeah, it's so interesting, Barb. I'm reminded I just wrapped up the construction news or roundtable construction industry institute owner study for the year. Just presented it last weekend, getting ready to write the white paper. And one of the big, large owners that I interviewed said, we're not talking about what we need to be talking about in the industry. I hope we start. And Barb, you are somebody that is going to continue to push to have the right conversations, the transformational conversations. I'm I have unbelievable admiration for you and am so grateful to call you a friend. Thank you so much for coming to the Greatness Podcast today.

SPEAKER_00 33:02

Well, Gretchen, you are one of the most connected people I know on the face of the planet. And that I was able to connect with you, thank goodness, uh, through Q, our dear friend. And I just uh every time you come back, I know you reach out. I want to be, uh I want to be able to connect with you whenever I can. So thank you again. This is the second time I've done a podcast with you, and it's always fun. And once mine is up and running, you can expect a reciprocal invitation. And um I want to hear about some of these studies and other other work that you're doing. Because you're you're overseas. I'm here in the States. This is my pond. You've got a bigger pond, and we just need to keep making waves all along the way. So I really appreciate it. Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 33:52

Yes, we do, and we'll get another one of those wonderful dinners we've had in the past with a nice glass of wine when we can have when we can figure out how to be in the same uh country and the same city at the same time. Thanks so much, Barb.

SPEAKER_00 34:05

Thank you, Gretchen.

SPEAKER_01 34:07

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 Gagel. Thank you for listening.