Solving the Housing Crisis
Solving the Housing Crisis
What can business owners learn from other industries to boost productivity?
For me, it's about making a meaningful, positive impact in the world. When my dad passed away at a relatively young age, it reminded me of how short life is. We only live for about 5,000 weeks, so I had to ask myself how I wanted to spend that time.
For me, it’s about knowing what problem I’m passionate about solving and making sure I'm aligned with it. But solving big problems isn’t easy. As Elon Musk has said, producing a car is hard, but creating the system to build cars is a thousand times harder. We’re working to build a system that produces housing.
Looking at other industries, manufacturing has improved labor productivity by 760% over the past 60 years and agriculture by 1,500%. Meanwhile, construction has only improved by 10%. So, we're taking lessons from industries that have seen significant productivity growth and applying those to construction. As a result, we're starting to see some of the success those industries have experienced.
How can streamlining the construction process lead to faster project completion and cost savings?
In construction, it's a very segmented industry. You have different companies for each aspect—one for electrical work, another for plumbing, and then separate companies for the owner, property manager, developer, and supply chain. If construction companies were building cars, it would be like having a different company for the windshield, the door, and the wheels. The wheel company would call you and say they're delayed, shutting everything down. Manufacturing industries look at us and think we're crazy, but this has always been the way in construction.
One of our first things was to bring all the work under one roof. We manage everything, including supply chain, engineering, manufacturing, and precast concrete production. This approach unlocked new efficiencies for us. For example, while you can’t put a building on an assembly line like cars, you can move the workers through the building. Every five hours, our teams shift to a new unit, and every five hours, we complete a brand-new apartment. This technique shortens project timelines from 15 months to nine. And there are thousands of small improvements like this that, when combined, have a significant impact.
Why should team members' strengths align with their roles?
I had to figure out what my true passions were. In the first year or so, my work with my dad wasn’t perfectly aligned with who I was. As a team, we identified where I could best serve the organization, and I shifted into that role.
The key lesson I’ve learned is that it’s not enough to assign tasks or hire people to fill roles. You need to identify each person’s core genius and align their role to match that genius. It may not require a major change—sometimes just a small tweak—but when you align a person’s strengths with their role, you get much more meaningful output.
What can business owners do to hire the right people for better performance?
I thought I could save money by paying people less. We even hired employees through a temp labor service to cut costs. That approach did not work. A mentor came by, saw the issues we were facing—teams not working well together, people unhappy, and constant frustration—and said, "Mike, you've got this all wrong. The root of these problems is that you're not hiring the right people."
That feedback and some books we were reading made us realize we needed a complete change in perspective. Almost overnight, we laid off 80% of our staff and rehired an entirely new team. This became the most important lesson I’ve ever learned. Before this change, we were growing at about 10% per year. Afterward, we doubled in size for many of the following years. It was a radical improvement.
*This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.*
