Today I become Chief Executive Officer of The Shaw Group.  It is a great privilege and responsibility.  Many of us don’t need an introduction. We’ve worked together for years. We’ve solved difficult problems together, disagreed with one another, celebrated successes, and learned from failures. You know how I work, what I value, and that I care deeply about this company and the personal success of every Shaw employee.

As I thought about what I wanted to say in my first message as CEO, I realized it wasn’t strategy, financial targets, acquisitions, or new lines of business that were most important. Those things matter, and we’ll discuss them at length in due course.  

What matters first is how we’re going to work together. Because in the long run, how we work ultimately determines how much we will accomplish together.

The Bedrock Foundation

Let me begin by being absolutely clear.  Our Mission, Vision, and Values are not changing. These principles are the foundation of Shaw. My job is not to replace them. My responsibility is to ensure they become more deeply embedded in everything we do.

The Shaw Standard

Over the coming months and years, you’ll hear me refer often to The Shaw Standard.

It isn’t another slogan. It is simply a shared understanding of what excellence looks like. Over the course of my career, I’ve come to believe something very simple: if something is worth doing, it’s worth doing with excellence. It means caring enough about your work to do it well.

Whether you’re writing an email, returning a phone call, preparing a proposal, leading a customer meeting, reviewing a drawing, fabricating a pipe spool, assembling a module, developing a schedule, correcting a safety issue, assembling a turnover package, maintaining equipment, or cleaning up the facility before a customer arrives, your work says something about you. It reflects your preparation, discipline, pride in quality work and excellent craftsmanship, and an unwavering determination to succeed.  Our individual reputations are built one piece of work at a time. Our customers don’t experience Shaw once. They experience Shaw thousands of times, one interaction at a time. Our collective reputation at Shaw is simply the accumulation of thousands of individual promises kept.

What Excellence Means

People often talk about excellence without defining it. I want us to define it very clearly. At Shaw, excellence will always be measured in two dimensions.

The first is how you achieve results.

· Do you uphold our values?

· Do you strengthen our culture?

· Do you operate with integrity?

· Do you prepare?

· Do you communicate honestly?

· Do you help the people around you become better?

The second is what you achieve.

· Do you deliver results?

· Do you solve problems?

· Do you create value for our customers?

· Do you keep your commitments?

· Do you improve the business?

Both matter.

You can produce results while damaging the culture. You can embrace the culture while consistently failing to deliver. Neither is enough. The Shaw Standard requires both. That standard will never, ever be compromised.  It is the standard.

An important message to our leaders: one of my fundamental responsibilities – and a critically important responsibility of every leader at Shaw – is to develop people by teaching, coaching, challenging, creating opportunities, and recognizing and rewarding excellence that embodies The Shaw Standard.  High standards without investment in people isn’t leadership, it’s simply demanding more from people without helping them become more capable, and that does not meet The Shaw Standard.  

The Shaw Standard applies equally to every one of us, not just our leaders.

It doesn’t matter whether you’re a helper, tacker, welder, pipefitter, ironworker, electrician, blaster, painter, engineer, document controller, quality specialist, scheduler, estimator, cost controller, designer, maintenance specialist, material manager, project manager, accountant, equipment operator, administrator, superintendent, executive, or any other of our many important roles.

Every role matters. Every interaction matters. Every piece of high-quality craftsmanship contributes to our reputation. Excellence isn’t reserved for certain jobs. It’s expected in every job.  Every person contributes to The Shaw Standard. No matter what your job is, be the very best at doing that job. 

Winning

I love to win. But what motivates me even more than winning is helping other people experience what it feels like to be part of a truly high-performing organization.

If you’ve ever worked on a team where people prepare thoroughly, communicate honestly, keep their commitments, solve problems together, and consistently deliver quality work, you know exactly what I’m talking about. Those teams are different. Customers notice. Trust begins to grow.  Enduring customer relationships are built on trust.  These relationships can last a lifetime.  

As we continue to build an organization that truly operates at a high level, your expectations will change forever. You stop accepting mediocrity. You stop accepting poor preparation. You stop believing unanswered emails, missed commitments, sloppy work, and reactive problem solving are just part of the business. You expect more because you’ve experienced more. Because once you’ve experienced excellence, it’s impossible to be comfortable with mediocrity again. I want to permanently raise the expectations of everyone who works here.

Why This Matters

Doing quality work and keeping basic commitments should not differentiate us. But the reality is that this fundamental blocking and tackling is differentiating.  This creates an enormous opportunity for Shaw.  The basics, done exceptionally well, are a competitive advantage. 

Every interaction with a customer either strengthens or weakens the trust we’ve spent years building. We don’t earn trust with what we say. We earn trust by consistently doing what we say.  

We don’t always control the outcomes. We control the standards we hold ourselves to every day. We control how prepared we are. We control the quality of our work. We control how hard we work. We control how we treat one another.  If we relentlessly pursue excellence in those things, the outcomes will take care of themselves.

The Uncompromising Shaw Standard

The Shaw Standard does not demand perfection. Perfection is unattainable and can often be the enemy of orderly progress. Mistakes will happen. Our work will encounter unexpected challenges. I will make decisions that, in hindsight, I wish I had made differently. 

What will be uncompromising are the standards we hold ourselves to.

The Shaw Standard demands relentless effort.

It demands mental toughness and resilience.

It demands preparation.

It demands transparency.

It demands truthfulness.

It demands integrity.

It demands ownership.

These demands do not change because a project is difficult, a customer is demanding, or the schedule is compressed. The Shaw Standard is not measured on our best days. It is measured by what we do every day, especially when the work is hard. The standard doesn’t change because the circumstances do – The Shaw Standard never changes.  

I don’t expect perfection. I do expect relentless effort and the courage to confront difficult problems directly.

Looking Forward

I’ve spent a great deal of time thinking about what success should look like.

Shaw will become much larger than it is today. It may become public. It may acquire many other companies. 

None of those things concern me nearly as much as whether our culture and our identity endure.

I want us to build an institution whose principles are so deeply embedded, whose way of working is so distinctive, and whose will to succeed is so uniquely unbreakable, that our culture cannot be damaged no matter what happens around us. 

Every person who joins Shaw should grow stronger during their time here. The Shaw Standard should become something people carry with them for the rest of their careers. That is when we’ll know we’ve built something. It will have become part of the people who helped build it. That is the kind of enduring institution I want us to create. Not for the next five years or for the next CEO.

For the next hundred years.

Matt Rodgers, CEO The Shaw Group