John Wooden famously began each basketball season by teaching some of the best college athletes in the country how to put on their socks and tie their shoes. At first glance, that seems almost absurd. These players had spent their lives playing basketball. They came to compete at the highest level, not to relearn something they mastered as children. But Wooden understood something important. A wrinkle in a sock could create a blister. A blister could limit practice. Limited practice could affect preparation. Poor preparation could affect performance. The lesson was never really about socks, it was about building a culture where nothing was too small to matter if it affected the team.
Construction projects are not that different. We can have talented people, detailed drawings, strong schedules, good contracts, and experienced trade partners. But if we do not intentionally build the culture of the project team, small things become big problems fast:
- Unclear expectations become frustration.
- Poor communication becomes rework.
- Unresolved conflict becomes distrust.
- Late decisions become schedule pressure.
- A lack of trust becomes defensive behavior.
Instead of collaborating for the benefit of the client and the community, project teams can find themselves spending too much time writing finger-pointing memos and letters.
Of course, the technical work matters. We cannot be successful without it. But technical skill alone is not enough. Great project teams pair technical excellence with a culture of trust, communication, accountability, and shared commitment.
At the start of a project, we know success requires effort. We need a good project plan. We need clear drawings. We need reliable estimates. We need thoughtful schedules and logistics.
But it is just as important that we are intentional about creating and maintaining the right project culture. Our teams need to understand:
- What does success look like for the team?
- How and when will we communicate?
- How will we make decisions? How will we handle conflict?
- How will we deal with bad news?
- How will we make sure the people closest to the work have a voice?
- How do we build trust before things get tough?
These aren’t rhetorical questions for us, they shape how we actually set projects up. A few practices we’ve leaned into:
- We start with a roles and responsibilities discussion with every teammate. Confusion rarely comes from a lack of talent or effort; it comes from people operating on different assumptions about who owns what. Getting clear on roles and responsibilities early removes that ambiguity before it can cause friction.
- We work hard to keep communication moving across the entire project team. That means daily huddles, weekly project team meetings, and weekly owner meetings, not monthly ones. Problems surface and get resolved while they’re still small, and everyone stays aligned on what’s happening and what’s next.
- And increasingly, we’re involving trade partners in developing the project charter and norms from the very beginning, not after the trades are already mobilized. The people doing the work should have a hand in defining what success looks like and how the team will operate together. Our company’s core values give project teams a foundation to build on, so the charter and norms aren’t starting from a blank page, they’re a natural extension of who we already are, applied to how this particular team will work together.
It’s worth saying plainly: a project charter isn’t the latest trend in pop psychology. Team science has studied for decades what separates high-performing teams from struggling ones, and a clear charter; shared purpose, norms, and expectations set before the pressure hits is consistently a strong predictor of how well a team performs.
None of this replaces the technical work. But like the great John Wooden basketball teams, successful projects are rarely the result of technical skill alone. They come from talented people operating inside a culture of clarity, trust, discipline, and shared commitment.
The little things matter. And on a construction project, little things become big things fast.
I’d love to hear how you’re building great project cultures on your own teams.
