2 minute readDuring even the harshest housing downturns, new homebuilding companies spring up, strong players gain market share, and long talked about “let’s try something new” ideas often get a trial run. Face it, when the chips are down is when some of the best work ever done in homebuilding – for customers, for sources of finance, for communities, and for the sector itself – happens.
Some of this owes to wisdom, striving, experience, who each individual and every team are, and what they’re made of. But not all of it.
In the face of 2022’s specific array of challenges, a fund of acquired wisdom, time-tested relationships, canny opportunism, and lots of practice most of homebuilding’s sprawling collective of 5,000 or more business leadership teams count as their experience with adversity will stand them in good stead for what lies ahead.
What they may need to draw on as well that doesn’t already exist in that deep pool of experience includes what they still need to learn – an equally important capability in light of the future’s already material impacts on consumer behaviors, employee associates’ engagement, Mother Nature’s bigger and more costly list of risks and demands, empowering technologies, and the in-and-outflow of capital.
Business leaders – like epic heroes – don’t necessarily get to pick and choose what their skills and knowledge and ideas will come up against. Homebuilders and their partners especially, given the front-loaded capital intense lifecycle, can find themselves facing daunting challenges that seem for all the world to oppose one another. Choosing to solve either one appears to release the full fury of the other.
Going back to For several years, we had the honor of an invitation to participate with KB Home’s Jacob Atalla, vp, innovation and sustainability, and Dan Bridleman, senior vp, sustainability, technology, and strategic sourcing, as they assembled engineers, product and systems design teams, technologies, architects, and construction teams from these firms. What came out of those learning and discovery processes – which also included partners at Southern California Edison, the Department of Energy, and National Renewable Energy Laboratory – were solutions designed for interoperability, for optimization, and for liveability never before brought to reality by a high-volume production builder. The navigable but delicate balance – between a rock and the hard place and within the intertemporal bind that puts short term interests at odds with long-term mission, purpose, and sustainable profitability – is one of the exciting parts of what happens among homebuilders and their partners when the chips are down.Join the conversation
