The Brief ⁽⁴⁵⁾

The most damaging thing a leader can do isn't pile on work. It's making people guess. I was once in a role where I was a middle manager of about 80 people. Basically my job was to keep everyone happy. Happy people do good work…

Good people kept leaving my shop. The system I hadn't built was why. Pillar: #Pillar2-Systems When I was building U-Flow I ran into a problem. I kept hiring what I felt were good people who either didn't work out or left. Take for example Mike.

No HR, no process, no lawyer on the phone — just a decision that couldn't wait. #Pillar1-Mindset When I started U-Flow I was involved in every hire. I didn't have the money for an HR person, or really the need for one. It was just…

Your team can't hide from your nervous system — and you can't hide yours from them. Watch a baseball manager on a bad night. His best pitcher — the guy he's paid millions to get outs — just gave up three runs in an inning.

Why the gap in most industrial operations isn't a strategy gap — it's a behaviour gap. Most improvement efforts in mid-market industrial companies start the same way. Leadership offsite. Whiteboard session. A new set of priorities written on a flip chart and photographed for the…

So give it less. U-Flow had grown to 25 employees. We had a specialty product — $5 to make, $100 to sell, solving a $1,000 problem. Good margins. A niche market that wasn't crowded. What we didn't have was a quality system. Positions had evolved…

The dashboard nobody uses isn't your problem. The one everybody stares at is. I walked into a plant a few years ago and asked the operations manager what metrics they were tracking. He pulled up a spreadsheet. Fourteen columns. Downtime, throughput, defect rate, labour hours…

Why the metric everyone in your building can recite is the last thing you should be managing to. Dylan Cease was on the mound for the Toronto Blue Jays. Going into the ninth inning against the San Francisco Giants, he was one out away from…

Holiday's 37, part four — the last nine. Points 29 through 37: legacy, mastery, and knowing when to walk away. With one I'd argue against in a small market. This is the last of four. Over the past few weeks I've run Ryan Holiday's "37…

Holiday's 37, part three. Points 20 through 28 — the ones that hit hardest once you're the one signing the cheques. With one I'd argue against on the floor. The first nine covered how you carry yourself early on. The second batch — points 10…

A couple of weeks ago I ran the first nine of Ryan Holiday's "37 Pieces of Career Advice I Wish I'd Known Earlier" through 25 years of capital projects, plant floors, and turnarounds. The verdict then: more translated than I expected, some needed reframing, one…

She'd spent four years waiting tables. And it showed — in the best possible way. The leader pulled me aside after the plant walk. "Phil, who stands out to you?" I'd spent two days on the floor. Watched the morning startup. Sat in on shift…

The fix isn't better people. It's a better system. Stop and do the math. Ten people in your Monday morning meeting. Ninety minutes. At $80 an hour loaded with benefits and overhead — and in most of the shops I work in, that's a conservative…

Getting through the grind isn't about grinding harder. It's about knowing when to laugh. MBA school has a lot in common with running a $20M fabrication shop. Long hours. Relentless pressure. The creeping sense that you've been in the same meeting for three weeks. Late…

Ryan Holiday wrote 37. Here are the ones that hold up on the plant floor — and one where I'd push back. A few years back I came across a piece by Ryan Holiday called "37 Pieces of Career Advice I Wish I'd Known Earlier."…

The 50% growth didn't come from a better slide. Paint sales were stalling. Not for lack of effort. The company had decks — competitive analysis, selling techniques, product positioning. All of it rolled out with the kind of fanfare that signals senior leadership is paying…

As an operational consultant, I often find myself walking into industrial SMEs facing a common challenge: stalled initiatives. Take the recent case of an ops manager who had been trying to purchase a badly-needed truck for two years, held up by endless back-and-forth on specs.

Why slogans don't create culture - and what does When I first started U-Flow, a speciality manufacturing company, culture was honestly an afterthought. I was laser-focused on designing a great product and landing those first few critical orders. As we grew and added people, I…

And why your last six-figure equipment purchase didn't fix what you thought it would. A steel manufacturer I worked at was in the middle of an oil boom. They were making money faster than they could count it. Smart leadership decided to reinvest some of…

Why your to-do list is lying to you — and what to do about it In this article I'm going to talk about time management. Wait. Do I have time for this? Honestly, I'm not sure. I've spent fifty years reading every productivity book, methodology,…

The rejected order didn't break us. What we did in the next hour decided who we became. Years ago, at a specialty manufacturing company I ran, we welded an order using a part we'd specified ourselves — and the part was too thin. We knew…

You don't need to hire your way out of a performance problem. You need to surface what's already standing at the machine. One of the things I love about working at The Margin Builders is watching people grow. Like the pipe operator whose idea drove…

Why the best ideas in your shop are already there — if you'll ask for them. Walk through any industrial shop floor in Alberta and you'll find the same thing: a welder, a fabricator, a foreman, an operator — people who have spent years, sometimes…

Most consultants arrive with the framework before the conversation. That's the problem, not the solution. You've probably been through this before. A firm shows up with a deck. Nice logo. Confident associate. They present a methodology — lean, six sigma, operational excellence, whatever the current…

Two hats every operator wears — and the one that gets you in trouble when you confuse them. Every few weeks, someone asks me a version of the same question: "What's the difference between coaching and therapy?" It usually comes from an owner or plant…

Fear on the floor isn't a culture problem. It's an information problem. Years ago, in the early days of accounting software, I had a CFO who was petrified to try anything new. Not lazy. Not unintelligent — the opposite. She was sharp, careful, and deeply…

And the simple two-minute habit that flips the script. The Day I Got Booed for Finishing Early Years ago, I worked for a company where the 'staging' area — a notoriously slow, bottlenecked part of the operation — got cleared early under my watch. Not…

What my sister's dogs taught me about coaching humans A few years back, one of our coaches pulled a senior leader aside and started explaining a coaching point using horse training as the analogy. The leader straightened up, looked him dead in the eye, and…

Why owners keep hiring the wrong kind of leader — and how to stop. You're the owner or CEO of a manufacturing, oil and gas service, or construction firm doing $5M to $100M in sales. You've built a real business. You have managers running operations,…

Escaping the trap of external validation to lead with "Strategic Defiance" and authentic purpose. I have to admit that it took me a long time to figure out what I was called to do. I don’t know if its because I was the first born…

It's what your team does when someone else is holding the ladder When I was younger, I didn’t think about culture. If you had asked me what it meant, I probably would have said something about nationality, where you grew up, or religion. I certainly…

Why the real problem isn't your calendar — it's your battery. Over the years, I've gotten good results as a manager, leader, and coach by following a simple philosophy: if people feel good — trusted, respected, not living in fear of losing their job —…

Why your best employees stopped sharing their ideas Most organizations are wired for negativity. Performance management systems, variance reports, and exception tracking are all designed to flag what is going wrong. This is not accidental. Negativity bias is deeply ingrained in human psychology; we are…

Why Your Obsession Is Making You a Worse Leader If you are an ambitious leader or founder, your drive is the engine of your success. You pour your heart into your work, stay late, and consistently push your own limits. When faced with a crisis,…

You're just in the way—here's how to get out If you are running a $5M to $50M industrial firm, you are in the "Squeeze Zone". At this stage, your company's complexity compounds, processes get "fuzzy," and the healthy margins you started with inevitably begin to…

The Architecture of Creative Leadership for Bottom-Line Mastery If you are running a $5M to $50M industrial firm, you are in the “Squeeze Zone”. At this stage, your company’s complexity compounds, processes get “fuzzy,” and the healthy margins you started with inevitably begin to leak…

I love this story. Why? Because it demonstrates that with true dedication, you can overcome almost any obstacle. It is a testament to how being fearless and comfortable with yourself leads to greatness. I first heard this story on the NPR podcast Invisibilia in their…

Recovering 3–7% in hidden EBITDA for $10M–$100M firms through operational precision. If your company is doing between $10M and $100M in revenue, you aren’t struggling with “product-market fit.” You’re likely struggling with complexity. As companies scale from 25 to 200 employees, “margin leaks” begin to…

From Navy SEALs to Silicon Valley, here are the best lessons I've collected on navigating crises, embracing failure, and truly connecting with your team. 1. Bill Campbell and the "Dictator" Lesson When Bill Campbell first took on the role of CEO at the software company…

I sometimes get asked, and sometimes wonder myself, “Why not just use AI instead of a coach?”. Right now, it is incredibly easy to use an AI agent and a simple English prompt to generate a step-by-step implementation plan for improving your team. Within seconds,…

If you are running a growing company in the manufacturing, energy, or construction sectors, you are likely operating in a high-pressure environment. In these arenas, the concept of “assertiveness” is often deeply misunderstood. Too many leaders confuse being assertive with being aggressive, dictatorial, or obnoxiously…

Pillar4-Empowering Teams category. In his book The Trouble with Gravity, science writer Richard Panek reflects on how historical giants like Galileo and Isaac Newton cracked the mysteries of the universe. They didn't start with complex math or immediate causes. Instead, they stripped away the distractions…

The Margin Builders Brief | Philip Uglow A consultant walked onto a fabrication floor in Edmonton a few years back. He'd never welded a bead or run a press brake in his life. Within about ten minutes, a senior tradesman with 22 years on the…

As business leaders, we meticulously plan our quarters. We forecast our revenues, schedule our operational reviews, and build systems to control our environments. But on the journey of life and leadership, adversity does not send a calendar invite. At some point, it arrives anyway —…

The "Hidden Leak" in Industrial Growth Most companies in manufacturing, energy, and construction don't fail because they lack work. They fail because they grow themselves right out of a profit. When you're a team of five, you can see every cent. When you hit 20,…