-   Various consultants (QS, Architect & Engineer) 

-   Operate under the same roof but perform individual business and collaboration 

-   This could save drowning small firm 

-    The overhead can be shared 

-    It would be a stronger team of professionals 

-    One-stop service center for clients 

-    The best way to export services overseas 

-        Meaning that there will be no job titles like seniority, managers or executives within an organization but in a sense that every employee are seen as equal 

-        With this management style, the employer not only focusing and put more efforts and training on those potential/talented employees, but every single employee within the organization. This mean that every employee has equal chance to learn, improve and give the best back to the company. 

Why flat organizational structure/management 

-        Improve communication because the level of management within an organization has been reduced and subsequently it enables fast decision making as the power and responsibility are evenly distributed within the organization. 

-        Improve transparency in an organization as every employee have the equal opportunities to involved in every important meetings/conversation. 

-        Improve employees’ motivation. This is because they can choose/free to do anything that they want as long as they use all their skills and knowledge in servicing the best to the company and able to achieve the desired results. 

How to make this management style more practical in the industry? 

a)     Implementing cross-generational mentoring 

In an organization, there will be different employees with different background, generation and experiences. Under this management style, every employee is seen as equal. Therefore, in order to ensure every employees’ growth continuity on their knowledge, the cross-generational mentoring would be the best suit for this. The methodology of this method is that a person from one generation will be paired with the other person with different generation where both participants will act as mentor and mentee simultaneously. The objective of this method is to ensure both of them are able to learn from each other and growth together. 

How it works in Quantity Surveying Firms 

-        Since the organization do not have any managers or executives, meaning that there will be nobody to instruct the work to you. Therefore, with this management style, every employee can see what projects are being worked on currently and able to choose and join whichever projects that is interested. 

-        If an employee wishes to outsource or handle other projects, he is allowed to do so and he will fully responsible in handling everything or maybe build his own team to assist him. 

Create a lead generation system. 

Building leads is the fuel of your entire business. Without leads, you don’t get any projects. So, lead generation should be your #1 focus in running a successful construction company. 

There are various ways of increasing your lead, such as using lead generation services, visiting method to find potential client and introduce your company or use media social such as linkedin. 

Using this method also shall focusing on marketing. In order to do so, the owner should: 

·         Change into optimistic way of thinking. If you think this will be a good year for business, then it will be. But if you think it will be a bad year, then it will be bad. 

·         Hire good salespeople. 

·         Market your company aggressively. Become the king of marketing in your area, and quickly stand out from your competitors. Sponsor seminars with your local chamber of commerce, write articles, speak to the local service club, redesign your website and frequently stay in contact with prospects and customers. 

·         Teach all staff good customer service. More than one sale has been landed by a personable and well-trained receptionist after the official salesman had failed to close the deal. A sale starts when anyone enters your establishment. 

·         Train your sales staff on prospecting. In business-to-business sales, the telephone should be your sales staff’s best friend. You will have more than enough prospects to turn into sales if you teach your salespeople how to find prospects in their everyday activities.( Prospecting is the first step in the sales process, which consists of identifying potential customers, aka prospects) 

In this style, management takes a hands-off approach to leadership. 

Staff is trusted to do their work without supervision, and they are left to control their decision making and problem-solving. 

Management is present at the delegation and delivery stages of work, but otherwise steps back and gives staff the freedom to control their workflow and outcomes. Management is only involved during the process if the staff requests their assistance. 

1. Delegative management style 

In this style, the manager is only present to assign tasks, although they still are responsible for tasks being completed successfully. Once the task is assigned, then the employees are empowered to do their work as they see fit. 

After the task is complete, the manager steps back in to review the work and give advice about how to improve future projects. 

Pros: 

·         Innovation and creativity are fostered by this system, especially in organizations with highly skilled workers. 

·         Problem solving and teamwork are strengthened, as staff are given space to handle their own issues and will work together to solve them. 

·         Job satisfaction may be increased in those who crave autonomy in their workplace. 

- Neither top-down nor bottom-up management styles
- Concerned with the development and training of employees who can in return develop and train others in the future 

- Focus on nurturing a vibrant and supportive community that helps employees thrive 

- Superiors are willing to share their expertise and knowledge with their subordinates – improve together 

- Promote strong collaboration and communication within company – prevent silo working 

- A loyal team of creative and talented employee united by a common mission will be generated – employees will be motivated by the managerial support provided by firm 

How will it work in QS firms: 

- Every employee is given the opportunities to increase own professionalisms and evolve to become an industry leader 

- Departments/teams within company share information/knowledge with other colleagues they work with despite under different projects 

Why center-out management is still uncommon: 

-       Slow 

-       Difficult 

Prestige management styles 

- The democratic style 

                This style involves the freedom of speeches between managers and employees in meetings or during working hours. The employees have a choice to voice out their opinions without any hierarchy judgement to create a variety of ideas in completing a work. This style is suitable and important especially for a firm with many millennial employees, as millennials’ idea are sometimes out of the box and can benefit the firm in many ways. 

- Implementing this style in quantity surveying firms 

                Implementing this management style in quantity surveying firms will see many ideas to be voiced out especially from the novice quantity surveyor regarding the works and services that can be used in an ongoing project. 

 

Pros 

- Encourages open communication between everyone regardless of the roles in the firms 

- Generates many great ideas that can be implemented on the works 

Cons 

- time-consuming as it can involve many meetings 

-        Lack of innovation (Resists to change)

-        Lack of collaborative culture (highly fragmented)

-        The need for change in construction industry is essential to either modernize or die.

-        Built Environment should learn the from others bombing industry such as IT and Fintech by implementing transformational leadership.

 

A transformational leadership is a management style focuses on creating an environment that supports innovation. Leaders with this style often encourage, inspire and motivate employee as well as organizations to create substantial change that will help grow and shape the future success of the company. 

Eg: Transformational leaders able to inspire followers to change expectations, perceptions, and motivations to work towards common goals. Thus, leader will set and reach stretch goals to push their employees out from comfort zone to motivate them to reach past their full potential and aim for greater professional growth.

According to Bass (1985), transformational leadership can be classified into 4 components.

-        Leaders serve as a role model for followers. Followers going trust, admire and respect the leader as they emulate this individual and internalize his or her ideals.

-        Leaders provide a clear vision that energize, motivate and inspire their followers to go beyond self towards achieving the desired goals.

-        Leaders stimulate followers to be creative and think outside the box in exploring new ways of doing things.

-        Encourage followers to challenge assumptions and approaching old situations from new perspectives.

-        Leader acts as a mentor or coach to provide sufficient encouragement and support in helping to develop themselves further.

-        Pay attention to follower’s concern and offer direct recognition of the unique contributions of each follower.

 

-        Employees willing to change, improve and always finding innovative ways to stay ahead and reaching their full potential.

-        Employees are open-minded and more adaptable towards drastic industry change. Eg: digitalization 

-        Encourage creative thinking, stimulate workers to try new approaches or methods to solve the old problems.  

-        Workers usually high skilled and able to do well in problem solving and decision making without micromanaging.

 

-        Transformational leaders give support, motivate and attention to every individual in the company

-        All workers feel like they are the vulnerable part in the organization and strong engagement between leaders and employees creates a strong bond between them which help reduce in employee turnover.

-             Transformational leaders train their team member to be energized, keep develop themselves to a greater accomplishment and act for the good of the company

-             Leaders ensure the workers and growth together with the company towards a singular and common vision for the future of the company which able to enhance the quality of the output and maintain long term productivity growth

-        Encourage open communication among team.  Every worker to have equal opportunity to voice out their idea and share their innovative opinion without criticism.

-        Increase business performance as the effective communication provide clear instruction to team member which can reduce unnecessary mistake and error when performing task.

-        Too focus on the bigger picture (not realistic vision)

-        Employees burn out (overstress employee)

-        Need continuous communication ( time consuming)

Therefore, with the aid of data, the algorithm will tell us who should we hire, who should get a promotion, and who might quit due to demotivation. 

By using data in managing human-related matters, the analytics will tell us :