Ty Peterson: Teamwork, Culture, and Collective Knowledge

Coming from an athletic coaching background, Ty Peterson believes in qualitative approaches to culture, building a team’s success on ideas such as collective knowledge and general cohesion. Ty believes that if a movement is to have an impact it must belong to those who join it, not just to those who lead it. This is the approach he’s taken in his many roles at CCE, since he began 6 years ago. Ty sat down to discuss his ideas with me, giving insight into the backbone of Capitol City Electric, its culture, and the CCE way.

“My whole goal has always been to take care of the guys in the field. Working with people and individual personalities can be hard, but that’s what makes it fun,” says Peterson. “I’m interested in changing the industry. It’s all geared around development, cohesion, and collective knowledge. If everyone can figure out the magic of working together at all levels – simply put, to have the attitude that we are all in this together, and have the attitude of “how can I help you today?”, then everyone will win.”

Ty continues, “It’s a no-brainer to me. Aside from improvements in technology and architectural theory, the actual process of carrying out construction has not changed in over a hundred years. You get the job, you try to do it as fast as you can, as cheap as you can, while hopefully getting no one hurt. There’s obviously more to it than that, especially on the process/development level. What I’ve found out while working here, is that I cannot be more impressed with the intelligence of the guys that we have. They’re phenomenal. The guys in the field are some of the most intelligent professionals I have ever worked with. I always tell these guys that they have Ph.D.’s in what they do.”

“Some of these guys have been working in this field for twenty or thirty years. They might not have a fancy certificate to hang on the wall that says they have all of this experience or any other “special credentials”, and that doesn’t really mean a lot to these guys anyways. If I have a Master’s degree, I can say I have a Master’s degree and it’s “supposed” to mean I know what I’m talking about. Our guys just get out there and GSD and show everyone that they actually do know what they are talking about!  There’s nothing they can’t fix, which is in part due to their overall development, technical experience, and the collective knowledge of the teams they are working with. There are only a finite number of problems out there, but an infinite number of solutions, and if we can continue to find better ways to work together and tap in to the collective knowledge of everyone on our team, then we will be unstoppable.

“In a roundabout way, that’s been my goal: to perfect our team approach on everything we do as well as consistently tap into the collective knowledge of the whole. It’s kind of impossible to spell it out through line items, but you just have to find the little areas that you can improve on and not be afraid to ask for help along the way. If you have this in mind and approach everything with a growth mindset as opposed to a fixed mindset, then over time, that becomes our ‘why’ and the way we do things.”

Ty’s current official title at CCE is Vice President of Personnel and Continuous Improvement, a title that almost accurately displays the vastness of Ty’s roles within the company.

“I’m more of a qualitative than quantitative guy. The things I do are difficult to quantify. I can’t tell you that I’m going to make you x million dollars more a year. But over time, research shows that the more cohesive you are, the more you utilize the genius of your employees, the more successful you will be and the more money you will make. If employees are happy, and motivated enough to be accurate and efficient, then everyone wins.”