Much like every family has a black sheep, every corporate group has a rebel that goes against the grain. This rebel is your biggest weapon. They break the rules that need to be broken and start the conversations that need to be had. The average employee avoids rule-breaking and conversation starting because it’s uncomfortable and…
Author: davidmusic_6fsw2h
Academics versus Experience – do you take one path or blend multiple?
Most people approach problems from one of two ways: Academics or Experience. The Academic looks at the problem theoretically breaking it down into its component parts. The Experience path looks at the problem through the lens of what they have done before. I fall squarely into the “Gray-area” camp. Most of the time it is…
You cannot build something you do not understand.
Architects need to be more than just creative people. They need to understand form and function, structural and material engineering, thermodynamics, and many more things to succeed. An architect must understand these areas because without the understanding they are likely to introduce some fundamental flaw. This thought came after watching Ready Player One on a…
That moment when everything is going wrong is often the moment that everything turns out right.
There’s a point in every project when things look the bleakest. It’s the moment when everyone on the project team starts wondering whether it will all come together or not. Questions rain down from leadership, the business questions why they are being impacted, there are no clear answers to anything. It’s in that insanity that…
It’s easy to collect new ideas, it’s hard to take them through implementation.
It’s really simple to put out a suggestion box to get the ideas from your customers. This is a visible way of showing that you care about their perspective. People see a suggestion box and think to themselves about all the things that will be coming from their thoughts. Most suggestion boxes lead to stacks…
I can’t believe I have written 1,300 posts over 7 years.
Another year passes. I cannot believe that I’ve been posting regularly here for 7 years now. There’s a catalog of 1,300+ posts that reflect my sometimes fleeting, sometimes wrong, sometimes insightful, sometimes poorly written but occasionally alright thoughts. It’s up to each of us to make the most of what we are given. Whether you…
Plan for failure so that when it happens you aren’t blindsided.
Failure is always an option. Sometimes, failure is even the best option. A good project manager plans for all likely contingencies which should include the many routes that leads to a catastrophic conclusion. There are always far more ways that things will go wrong than for things to go right. The path to success is…
I dream of a day when #CRE is not a broker driven industry.
The biggest problem with CRE is the false belief that it’s all about the lease. It’s a natural position for both clients and service providers to take because that’s where the money is. Commissions and brokerage rules are set out in regulations and laws making them something that can’t be touched. It’s sad because the…
How do you quickly build the trust needed on a new project?
Trust is a big word. It carries a lot of connotation within it. Ask 10 different people what it is and how you prove it, you’ll get 10 different answers. Everyone knows that it is important, but everyone has a different way of building and evaluating it. Working within project teams requires lots of different…
Communication requires more than just the headlines
It’s easy to fall into the communication trap of only reporting on the headlines. Big stories catch the audience’s attention and have meat to them. It’s easy to fill a meeting with chatter about these headline items. Many meetings seem to be focused on simply filling the slot with stuff. Real communication is about the…