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...lot of challenges in farming," he says. "The weather, market changes, pricing--there are lot of unknowns."
Accepting the fact that you can't control everything, learning to be flexible, and looking for ways to make things work through every challenge are keys to success, Rutt says--in residential construction as well as in farming.
Seems to be working so far. This fall, Rutt's company, Keystone Custom Homes, was named a winner in the 2005 America's Best Builder competition, earning the 12-year-old company a record third win.
The accomplishment is even more impressive when, as Keystone's director of information systems Steve Holzer notes, the company's top managers had little to no industry experience during its first to years.
He, like others at Keystone, points to Rutt as the driving force behind Keystone's success. "He does not take no for an answer," says Mike Cahill, Keystone's director of production.
"He's always selling," says his financial manager Doug Hostetler.
"He is almost continually saying, 'Keep striving for excellence!'" says Keystone's director of estimating and options James W. Hostetter Jr.
Rutt has a simpler answer: "I write things down."
Not only does he carry a notebook in which he writes every phone call to be returned and every to-do task, but last year, the company began writing down everything it does--and tracking the results.
It started with formalizing standard operating procedures for every aspect of the company. "We needed these because of the size we're becoming and the quality of what we were trying to achieve," Rutt explains.
Today the company uses printed checklists that both outline every step required for every...
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