3 minute readA French novelist
A new Pew Research Center analysis of census data finds that in 2019, roughly four-in-ten adults ages 25 to 54 (38%) were unpartnered – that is, neither married nor living with a partner.1 This share is up sharply from 29% in 1990.2 Men are now more likely than women to be unpartnered, which wasn’t the case 30 years ago.”
This factor will surely impact what economists, experts, and analysts currently debate as a fundamental indicator in housing supply and demand. Already, the math of household income and wealth correlated with the household composition has begun to alter the calculus of household formation’s impact on new-home demand.
Looking across a range of measures of economic and social status, unpartnered adults generally have different – often worse – outcomes than those who are married or cohabiting.
Now, where our own particular analysis heads from here is to a non-complicated conclusion:
Homebuilding’s business leaders, and their partners’ strategic leadership, and their investors’ leadership, as well, stand in the throes, now, of difficult, sometimes-conflicting, priorities. These priorities make mincemeat of linear, critical path tactics, and call for multi-dimensional, simultaneous, critical system strategy, management, and responsibility and accountability.
Getting through today may have more to do with those toy-like stacks of shipping containers and what’s in them or not. Equally compelling priorities stem from managing team member engagement in a context that presents – each passing day – a new emergent challenge. Team members, already running on fumes and adrenaline to keep coming up with the latest day’s workarounds, are an organization’s front-line, and many have toiled the past several months in a “reality distortion-field” environment. What happens with them, for them, and to them in the weeks ahead may set the tone for what a homebuilding enterprise will or will not be able to accomplish in 2022 and beyond.
Here’s an uncannily appropriate case example of the kind of instance where a leader’s presence and messaging could tap into to strengthen engagement with those critical front-liners before it’s too late:
A few years ago, I watched the CEO of a public company scream, “I will not accept this forecast!” at the president of one of his divisions, laced with some angry profanity. In the days that followed, the CEO and division president went back and forth, revising the revenue projections upward to more “acceptable” results, until the CEO finally OK’ed the next quarter’s forecast. While the numbers looked better on paper, they were not based on any real progress with customers or any reality within the business.
Fast forward to the end of quarter. The CEO was furious because the revenue numbers didn’t match the revised and more acceptable (to him) forecast. Ironically, the results were exactly on track with the initial forecast. As a result, the CEO abruptly initiated a round of layoffs and cut important internal investments to help the business operate more efficiently with customers. The numbers were telling the true story from the beginning, but the CEO wouldn’t accept and act on a reality he didn’t like. This created an avalanche of problems for employees and customers that negatively impacted future value of the business.
If this scenario even vaguely resembles anything going on among homebuilding firms and their partners’ organizations now – and word is, variations on this theme have occurred and continue to happen – have a look at an alternative way to keep the foreground, middleground, and background in better balance. Check out this link.
You don’t have to give up being results-focused to accept reality. In an environment such as the one we’re in, accepting reality and instilling trust may be your best option to achieve those results at the end of the day.
