The smell of damp cedar is thick. It is a sweet smell. It is also a sour smell. I stood by the exterior wall of the clinic. I install medical equipment. I know how machines fail. This wall was failing.
The cedar was gray. The gray was uneven. I pushed my thumb against a board. The board yielded. The board felt like wet cardboard. Water lived inside the wood. The wood was old. The owner of the clinic stood next to me. The owner did not look happy. The owner had paid a lot of money for this wood. The wood was supposed to last.
The company that installed the wood is gone. They are not out of business. They simply do not look back. They have a conference room in the city. The room has a large table. Four people sit at the table. There is a screen on the wall.
The View from the Conference Room
The screen shows a chart. The chart shows revenue for the last quarter. The line on the chart goes up. The people in the room are happy. They talk about the close rate. They talk about the profit margin. They talk about the 90-day window.
The Short-Term Feedback Loop: “Success on Paper”
Nobody in the room talks about the clinic wall. Nobody in the room knows about the smell of the wood. The project is a file in a computer. The file is archived. The company measures the job at the final invoice. They see the payment. They see the signed completion form. They call this a success. They think the customer is happy because the customer is silent.
I once pretended to be asleep in a breakroom while a contractor talked to his helper. They were fixing a ceiling. They were talking about a job they did the year before.
“The flashing was wrong… the water would get in eventually. It was not my problem anymore. The check had cleared.”
– Anonymous Contractor
The window of measurement had closed. He was not a bad man. He was a man who lived by a short clock.
The Lesson of the Liberty Ships
In the , the United States built Liberty Ships. These ships were made to carry cargo across the ocean. The builders were fast. One ship was built in four days. The ships looked strong in the harbor. The steel was tested in the shipyard. The welds were checked at the dock. The builders received their money. The ships were a success on paper.
Then the ships went into the North Atlantic. The water was cold. The steel became brittle in the cold. The ships began to crack. Some ships broke in half. The engineers had measured the strength of the steel in a warm lab. They had not measured the steel in the environment where the ship actually lived.
The interval between the action of building and the consequence of the cold water was too long for the shipyard to see. The shipyard saw a ship leave the dock. They did not see the ship break in the dark.
Why Silence is Dangerous
Construction is like the Liberty Ships. A company sells a product. A contractor installs the product. The sun hits the product. The rain hits the product. The temperature goes up. The temperature goes down. This happens for . This happens for . The board expands. The board contracts. If the board is wood, the wood begins to die.
The business does not see the death of the wood. The business sees the revenue goals. They see the referral rate for the current month. If a customer does not call to complain, the business assumes the product is perfect. This is a mistake.
The customer does not call the original company. The customer is tired. The customer is disappointed. The customer blames the weather. The customer blames themselves for choosing wood. Then the customer hires a different company.
The Cycle of Blindness
“They are data-rich and they are blind. They are blind because their feedback loop is too short.”
I see this in medical imaging too. A technician calibrates a sensor. The sensor works for the first ten patients. The technician signs the log. The technician leaves. But the sensor drifts. It drifts slowly. By the time the images are blurry, the technician is in another state. The hospital does not link the blurry image to the calibration ago. They just call it a bad day for the machine.
We Need a Longer Clock
We need to look at the wall in year seven. The wall at the clinic is being replaced. The owner is not using cedar again. The owner is using a different material. The material is a wood polymer composite. The material does not absorb water. The material does not have the sweet smell of rot. The material is part of a system.
SlatSolution makes this material. The material is called Composite Siding. The boards are made to resist moisture. The boards are made to resist mold. The boards are made to resist the sun. I looked at the samples.
Weathered Teak
Peruvian Teak
Arctic Oak
Graphite Charcoal
The colors do not fade. The boards have a shiplap profile. The boards overlap. The overlap keeps the water out. The water cannot sit inside the joint. When a builder uses this material, the feedback loop changes.
The builder should still go look. The builder should see that the Graphite Charcoal Gray is still the same color. The builder should see that the American Walnut has not warped. The builder should see that the Brazilian IPE still looks like timber. The All-Weather Composite Siding System is a contemporary profile. It is smooth. It is clean.
The “Happy Path” Trap
Most companies track the “Happy Path.” The Happy Path is the route from the lead to the sale to the installation. The Happy Path ends at the invoice. The Real Path is much longer.
The Real Path starts at the invoice. The Real Path includes the first frost. It includes the heatwave of the third summer. It includes the day the owner realizes they haven’t touched the wall in and it still looks new. If you only measure the Happy Path, you are just a salesperson. You are not a builder.
The clinic owner chose the Weathered Oak finish. The boards went up last week. The boards look like wood. They do not act like wood. They act like a shield. I watched the installers. They used the overlapping profile. The profile was tight. The lines were straight. The elevation of the building looked continuous.
The Score that Matters
I thought about the people in the conference room. I thought about their charts. I thought about the 90-day window. They are missing the most important data. They are missing the data of the things that stay the same.
A good business should have a budget for looking back. A business should spend money to visit a job from ago. They should not go there to sell anything. They should go there to touch the wall. They should go there to see if the Graphite Charcoal Gray is still charcoal.
If you do not look at the old jobs, you are guessing. You are guessing that your materials are good. You are guessing that your installers were careful. You are guessing that the climate is kind. The North Atlantic was not kind to the Liberty Ships. The sun is not kind to Cedar.
“The silence from this customer will be a real silence. It will be the silence of a man who has forgotten he ever had a problem with his wall.”
That is the only metric that matters. But you have to wait a long time to hear it. I am a medical equipment installer. I see the long game. I see the parts that wear out. I see the fatigue in the metal. I see the decay in the wood.
When I see something that does not decay, I pay attention. I pay attention to the wood polymer. I pay attention to the shiplap profile. I pay attention to the things that outlast the invoice.
The people in the conference room are still talking. The line on the screen is still green. They are happy today. I wonder if they will be happy in year seven. I wonder if they will even be there.
The wall will be there. The wall is the only thing that keeps the score. If the wall is made of the right stuff, the score stays high. If the wall is made of the wrong stuff, the wall will tell the truth eventually. It will tell the truth in the smell of the rot and the soft feel of the board. By then, the invoice will be a very old piece of paper.