An awful lot needs doing, You can’t do it all.

What is necessary right now?

We’re all very busy trying to get back to normal, but what if there is no normal anymore?

It’s probably easiest to grapple with the short term.

In the short term, sites will have to be managed with a higher level of control.

How will you keep workers a safe distance from each other?

If that’s impossible, what PPE do you need to keep them safe?

How will you devise protocols, get buy-in from the supply chain, and make sure the protocols are followed on site?

This overlays new risk and hassle onto an already fraught and risky way of working.

You’re going to have to get on top of it before it gets on top of you and hurts your business.

What will the industry look like?

But moving further out in time and up a level of complexity, we may be looking at a new construction business environment.

Some projects in your pipeline may be delayed or cancelled. Some sectors you rely on may stop commissioning projects altogether.

How will clients’ expectations change? Who will understand and respond to these new expectations first? Will it be you?

Will the strengths that served you before be the strengths that serve you tomorrow?

You need help. We all do.

It may be that the construction businesses that are thriving in two years will not be the construction businesses that were thriving 12 weeks ago.

Getting your business ready for what comes next is your responsibility. But you can’t do it alone.

You’re going to have to enlist the talent around you to achieve something that is not ordinary, something that none of you have ever done before.

This is where delegation comes in.

Propagating radical new capability

I was blown away when I learned that my book, Deep and Deliberate Delegation, had made it onto the recommended reading list for the Hult Ashridge Executive Education programme. Here

The Financial Times ranks Ashridge 18^th in the world this year for customised executive education, ahead of such household names as Oxford and Wharton.

I hope what they saw in the book was its fresh take on delegation.

It’s not about dumping your stuff onto someone else so you can put your feet up.

Instead, it’s about propagating radical new capability, and accountability, in the under-used talent around you – in order to achieve extraordinary new outcomes.

It’s not a route to net less; it’s a route to net more. Everybody stretches.

Real delegation helps you pull yourself and those around you out of ruts to respond to a threat or opportunity.

It stops you doing what others should be doing, and gives you headspace to think about where the business needs to go, which is your job.

It unleashes the talent your business is going to need, so that the necessary things are happening, even if it’s not you doing them.