Want to be celebrated as an industry leader?  You have to jump in and get the scars.  Then, connect with me, because I want to hear and share your story.

The Harvard Business Journal captured this idea recently in their post on The New Arithmetic of Collaboration.  The article explores different levels of engagement between firms revealing that the results are minimal or exponential based on the level of trust within the structure.

Consider the difference in the 2004 Olympic Basketball team and the 2008 team.
 

In 2004, it was all about the best players. In 2008, it was all about the best team. What could the possibilities be for the AEC industry in adopting this approach?

What would it take to walk away from a 50 year old strategy of success?

Patrick Doyle, the new CEO for Dominos, shares how their company confronted the brutal facts about their pizza and began a campaign of change. It is interesting to hear the process.

1. Acknowledge reality – the pizza just isn’t very good
2. Change the pizza formula and process
3. Change the internal culture
4. Get the word out by going to the very channels that were criticizing them – social media

When the world forces change we all resist – at first.

Confronting the “brutal facts” is hard but also the 1st job of leadership.

In a recent ENR article a respected industry leader dismisses the rise of Integrated Project Delivery and calls it hype. Nowhere, however, is there any acknowledgment of the miserable track record of the 50+ year formula for design and construction. The formula once worked, and worked well. However, in an era of speed and complexity the old model becomes inefficient. That inefficiency leads to conflict and conflict erodes into systemic dysfunction. The by-product is tremendous waste and dissatisfaction.

I’ve been tracking IPD’s rise for five years along with the different emerging components driving change in the AEC industry.

First – it works. There are 18 case studies in The Commercial Real Estate Revolution showing the results of the various elements of IPD. The AIA recently published 6 case studies of “pure” IPD projects.

Second – any leader who challenges the reasons that owners are adopting IPD (because the pizza is lousy) needs to also demonstrate what they are doing to improve the poor coordination, conflict and waste in the current model.

I picked Dominos example because it parallels the kind of passion and willingness to confront the brutal facts that AEC leaders need – before a real dialogue can take place.

I also picked it because pizza makes the analogy simple. There are still skeptic – this is for them.

Click HERE for the video link.

Domino’s Pizza : Interview with Domino’s Pizza CEO, Patrick Doyle from Petrus Hansen on Vimeo.

Construction, architecture, FF&E and all related stakeholders have seen their businesses drop 20%, 30%, 40% and some even more.

Some hope that this recession will be like others; hunker down, wait a while and then a new resurgence will emerge. But is this like recent recessions?

Here are some factors to consider:

1. There a large excess of inventory (buildings).
2. $3 trillion in financing is up for renewal this fall. It is estimated that 1/3 of these loans will default.
3. The credit rules have changed requiring more equity from developers by a factor of 5 and more. That means fewer more selective buildings.
4. The green steam roller is in full gear. Old buildings will be devalued and fewer, smaller buildings will be the new strategy.
5. Corporations are divesting of their fixed overhead and new mobile technologies will be the beneficiaries.
6. The warts of our industry are under full scrutiny and owners are demanding lower cost, higher quality green buildings.
7. There is a digital generation (70 million) who are stepping into the workplace and their agenda is not their mom and dad’s agenda.

There is a new normal coming. But I see little innovation (changed life style) in the wake of this industry wide near-death experience.

What will your business look like in 2010? What will your new markets be? Where will your new customers come from?

Here is a short clip from Dr. James Canton, author of Extreme Future.

Mindshift began as a simple dialogue about the current and future state of design and construction. It took a little time for our conversation to get beyond the thinking that the current state was a simple fact of life. When we looked outside our current system we arrived at the following conclusion:

Conventional design and construction is broken. It seems obvious. We all say it to ourselves and express our exasperation at our various networking gatherings. The odd dynamic is that when you get a room full of stakeholders together – for the first time – we talk as if we came from some alternative reality. Our projects all go smoothly, on-time and within budget.

I like to quote one of the executives from our first Mindshift gathering; “We all have good companies, good people and happy clients. We begin each projects with good intentions and high hopes. For some reason there is something about the system that gets in the way of all of our best efforts.”

The system clearly creates a lot of waste and conflict. That seems obvious. What was less obvious is that this waste and conflict is the result of a system that is fragmented, assumes distrust and is designed to defend against that distrust.

So here was our “aha!” We asked, “How do you create a system that assumes trust and is designed to foster it and lead toward integration?”

That is the story told in The Commercial Real Estate Revolution.

This video enhances the theme – innovation through developing a capacity for the obvious. This is Paul Bennet presenting at the TED conference.