Operations · 21 min read
Understanding Scale
Efficiency does not rise smoothly with size. It climbs in steps — and the valleys between them are where builders get stuck.
Articles & insights
Ideas made useful.
200+ articles on homebuilding strategy, pricing, operations and leadership. Browse a sampling of 12 here.
Leadership · 7 min read
Get an Attitude
Why a good attitude is a portfolio, not a dial — and what happens when one of the five holdings runs to zero.
Read articleStrategy · 11 min read
Homebuilding is Warfare
Sun Tzu, Napoleon and Clausewitz on land, cycle time and the fog every builder operates in.
Sales · 12 min read
Selling Value When Others Sell Price
Eleven rules for premium builders competing against production builders — and against the pickup-truck builder down the road.
Leadership · 7 min read
Five Modern Thinkers Every Executive Should Understand
Kahneman, Foucault, Drucker, Rawls and Harari — plus the translators who made their ideas usable.
Pricing · 11 min read
The Psychological and Emotional Aspects of Pricing
Value perception, scarcity, charm pricing and anchoring — what actually moves a buyer, and how to price for it.
Sales · 4 min read · October 2022
Conceding Correctly
How to give away less, and make customers feel better about it. A worked example on a stalled spec home.
Strategy · 3 min read
At the Intersection of Expected Value and Economic Utility Theory
Expected value says the land deal is good. Marginal utility asks whether you can afford to be wrong.
Pricing · 2 min read
Your Salespeople Do What?
Four arguments against letting sales reps set their own lot premiums — in decreasing order of importance.
Leadership · 2 min read
When Truisms Collide
“The good is the enemy of the best” versus “the perfect is the enemy of the good.” Both are true. Context decides which one applies.
Operations · 2 min read
Binary Problems in a Graduated World
Some problems give partial credit. Many of the ones that cost builders the most do not.
Leadership · 3 min read
A Half Dozen (More or Less) Thoughts on Leadership
Written in the depths of the great recession, revisited now. Great leaders do not take counsel from their fears.