Topic(s)
- People-centric leadership
Overview
Story Construction's CEO Pat Greary shares insights on the company's focus on value systems, facilitative leadership, the importance of freedom for growth and Work Standards to develop effective people-centric leadership.
Key learning objectives
1. Respect, trust, collaboration & teamwork: Why are these so important for us?
2. Facilitative leadership & fearless participation: Story’s leadership style
3. The freedom “experimenting” provides to grow people
4. The confidence created in people by using Work Standards and the identification of Red Poster/Green Poster situations
Company
Founded in 1934 as James Thompson & Sons, Story Construction has been in business in Iowa for more than 85 years. These days, Story Construction is an employee-owned merit shop serving a variety of markets, including commercial, industrial, manufacturing, warehouse, senior living, churches, schools, higher education facilities, research labs, government buildings, treatment plants and food processing facilities.
Story Construction has utilized the Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS) since 2012. If you’re familiar with the system, you’ll know it is a company with a direction and a plan to get there. Within this system, the company identifies its core focus:
- Purpose: Its reason for being
- Building: Because people matter
- Niche: What it does better than anybody else
- Leading projects
The Story Construction team believes there’s a better way to design and build better employee retention, better quality of life, safer worksites, reduced project waste and greater project value. They believe in growing opportunities for their people and partners who share their ideals through high-quality performance. With this in mind, the team has developed a lean construction system called Construction Production 2.0. Read more about the lean construction journey here. www.storycon.com
Presenter
After graduating from Iowa State University with a Bachelor of Science degree in construction engineering, Pat Geary spent 32 years at Story Construction Co., a $180M general contractor and design/builder in Ames, Iowa. Geary spent three years as a project engineer, four years as a project manager, five years as an operations manager focused primarily on water and wastewater treatment plant work and the past 19 years as Story’s chief operating officer. With the exception of business development, the balance of the Story organization reports to Geary to include pre-construction, operations, finance and human resources. Geary led the transition of Story to a 100% ESOP-owned organization in September of 2022.
Ten years ago, Geary and Story’s president, Mike Espeset, led the transition to EOS as Story’s corporate operating system, which is still in use today. Geary also led the development and deployment of Story’s lean practice. The first five years of lean work focused on the tools, process and conformance of its employees so they could use those elements correctly. Geary continues to lead the further growth of Story’s lean practice with what is called “The Story Way.” The company’s focus over the last five years has shifted to creating the necessary culture to maximize the growth of its employees as it shifts away from directive leadership toward facilitative leadership and fearless participation that promotes respect, trust, collaboration and teamwork, “The Story Way.”
The Story Way comprises Story’s core values, insights and guiding principles from Shingo, Toyota Kata, TWI and Work Standards that focus its employees on the necessary behaviors in well-designed systems that produce record results in many areas of the business. 
