Watch this video and think of what you might see if your data now had time, location, duration, volume and whatever other variable you can think of represented in a dynamic graphical way.

Stunning!

How does this perspective make you view your firm’s approach to incentives?

Clarity of purpose is a desirable goal.

Garr Reynolds, in his book, The Naked Presenter, answers the question, “what does it mean to present naked?”  He says, “Being naked involves stripping away all that is unnecessary to get at the essence of your message.  The naked approach embraces the ideas of simplicity, integrity and passion.”

For those of us leading companies on a quest for transformation, “simplicity, integrity and passion” are worthy goals.

Take a few moments this week to define “all that is unnecessary” and take steps to strip it away.  In pursuing simplicity, you may find that integrity and passion follow.

It is hard to miss the dialog about social media–much less the media itself–but the topic unexplored is how this is changing the way your team thinks about technology.  What used to be the realm of “the IT guy” is now embraced from receptionist to CEO.  Frustrations will arise from technology solutions that aren’t as simple and intuitive as iPhone or Facebook. And you will find the demands from your staff for technology solutions will rise.  Of course, the positive side of this is that they become more and more technology savvy and capable.

Amber Case–a cyborg anthropologist– is examining the way humans and technology interact and evolve together. Like all anthropologists, Case watches people, but her fieldwork involves observing how they participate in digital networks, analyzing the various ways we project our personalities, communicate, work, play, share ideas and even form values.  Her research explores how we are using “tools” to extend our brains.  Case’s 8 minute talk on TED is fascinating…

The basic dynamic of accidental adversaries is this: “When our success depends on mutual cooperation, we end up working against each other, turning into adversaries.” Architects and MEPs (Mechanical, Electrical, Plumbing) are a common example, as we saw in the last chapter. Accidental adversaries are created when parties focus on internal parameters of success, such as architects revising plans to reflect the latest understanding of the clients needs, without seeing or considering the external impact on other stakeholders, like eating up the fee quoted by their subs to respond to those revisions.

One remedy a trust-based system would provide is pretty simple: The architect and MEP would sit down together before the project starts to better understand how each performs their work. They could then see ahead of time how their demands on each another might create unintended negative impacts, and devise a cooperative scheme for working together that avoids problems instead of causing them.

The basic dynamic at work a vicious cycle is escalation. This happens when one party perceives the actions of the other as threatening or harmful and becomes defensive. The opposite party sees these actions as threatening or harmful, and responds with the same.

This can happen right at the beginning. For example, an owner who creates a “tight” and punitive contract will drive suppliers to insert disclaimers and look for any loophole they can find. This kind of power imbalance naturally leads the less-powerful party to find overt or covert means to regain balance or control. Contractors respond to explicit contracts with opaque cost structures and methods. In the end, it takes experts and specialists like contract auditors to penetrate that kind of opacity.

To explore more on Accidental Adversaries in the AEC World, check out The Commercial Real Estate Revolution.

McGraw Hill reported that 2009 construction billings dropped 45% and built-out square footage dropped 50%.

Architects experienced their deepest drops in late 2008 and through most of 2009 with some stabilizing signs of recovery.

Speculative projects are off the boards for three to five years.

Architects are trying to shed risk and contractors seem eager to take it on. There are early signs of contractors absorbing architects and providing vertical integration. This absorption reflects not only the architect’s retreat and desire to shed risk but also the source of greatest risk to contractors. A contractor’s risk is not primarily the cost of subs or materials. It is in the coordination of work and eroding quality of drawings controlled by the architect.

These are some of the firms that have moved toward vertical integration: Stantec (public), Balfour Beatty, AECOM, The Beck Group, Jacobs, URS, Cannon Design and Callison. Turner has purchased and BIM design firm and is continuing to expand Turner Logistics as a procurement arm. Many see this as a continuing trend that will leave a handful of mega players and a diverse group of regional, niche and/or boutique firms.

The architecture profession has become a monoculture in terms of its business model and service offerings. That narrowness is one of the root causes for its current crisis. One AEC consulting firm projects that unless the profession undergoes dramatic change design will become a loss leader and the role of the architect will narrow to primarily design delivery.

The industrial design industry experienced a similar crisis in the early 1990s and out of it emerged firms like IDEO and RKS. They successfully redefined their business as leadership decision making with industrial design (or design thinking) as their medium. The contract furniture industry faces similar challenges of a mature model with little diversity in solutions or value propositions.

There are significant opportunities for the AE community if it can shift its focus in reducing the waste in the system. Construction delivery waste, estimated from $300 – $500 billion, is more than 10 times current fees. This gap provides a lot of room for AE firms to increase fees by removing waste.

What is your firm doing to change and adapt to this new ecosystem?

In the book Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell reintroduces the concept of the 10,000-hour mastery threshold. He explains the need for investing 10,000 hours of study, practice and performance to become a master at a skill or leader in a domain.

Lean Construction offers a good example. Lean provides foundational values, some operating principles and a set of tools that have proven effective. I’ve attended the training and the sessions are primarily group simulation exercises. Many try to simply take the tools and turn those into a recipe with meager results.

Lean practitioners display a distinct set of values and language. When you ask one of them, “How does it work?” The answers are more like riddles and stories. It is hard to penetrate the Lean veil unless you actually sit in on project meetings and go to different job sites. I also found that many of the top practitioners have strong backgrounds with “systems thinking.”

The implications of this kind of learning, apprenticeship and onsite experience is a factor to consider when developing a training program. At some point people will have to log in their 10,000 hours or what we find as an equivalence. When I hear pilots talk about their training they speak in terms of flight time and different levels of certification. There are levels like Student Pilot Airworthiness, Pilot Certification, Instrument Rated and Type Rating (certain kinds of aircraft). The learning process for flight has many parallels to what we’re describing.

In looking at your team, plot how they might fall along the 10,000 hour continuum. The hours are arbitrary but reflect different threshold levels. 2,500 hours represents a grasp of the concept, issues and players. 5,000 hours represents being able to fully talk-the-talk with and among practitioners. 7,500 hours represents being able to participate and contribute to a project. 10,000 hours represents the ability to initiate and lead a project or train others.

In pursuing lean construction, where are you on the 10,000 hour continuum?

There is a new role for people and organizations who can visualize data, highlight the correlations and take complex ideas and make them simple. The digital world is especially conducive to telling stories visually. For example, CNN’s interactive graphic showing the global usage of power or Jonathan Jarvis’s video explaining the credit crisis:

The Crisis of Credit Visualized from Jonathan Jarvis on Vimeo.

What is your company doing to communicate your data and story visually? What innovations do you think are on the horizon?