Seeing the Mountain - Levels of Detail

You will find a clear path to the top of the mountain faster as you build your ability to situationally vary the resolution you see the world in.

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This applies to the construction of a project, the building of a contracting business and to life in general.

Leadership Tools: Seeing the Mountain. Top Down or Bottom Up?

Whether you see the “Big Picture” or the “Operational Minutia” matters little.  It is the ability to rapidly zoom in and out as the situation dictates that makes the difference.  

Looking at Mount Everest as an example.  From basecamp one level and radius the mountain is about 428 billion cubic yards of material.  That would require CAT-740’s dumping material at a 1 minute cycle time around the clock for 25,000 years!  

If you built a point cloud at a 1 square foot resolution out of sand it would take 70 cubic yards.  For reference this picture is less than 0.001% of that resolution.  

It is typically better to start developing your mental model as a bigger picture even if it is fuzzy.  You may be trying to climb the wrong mountain and it is much better to see that before starting to fill in the details.




Production Tracking - Changing the Language
Your productivity will start to really improve as it becomes a culture and not just a tracking system. You will first notice this as a change in language in the field and across the whole project team.
Market Forces - Surviving vs. Thriving
Construction contracting is a highly competitive business in a rapidly changing market. The “Invisible Hand” of the market is constantly demanding that construction projects are delivered:
Profitability Trends
When you are looking at your scoreboard, remember that industry average benchmarks and single points in time only tell part of the story.