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.

D. Brown Management Profile Picture
Share

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.




Project Delivery - CM at Risk
The Construction Management at Risk (CMAR) delivery model combines the best elements of Design-Build and Design-Bid-Build and eliminates many of the negatives.
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:
002 - The Construction Contractor Business Model (Intro)
As contractors grow, their business model complexity evolves, affecting structure, management, and people. Visualizing this reveals bottlenecks. Includes 3 hours of examples and 50+ resources (tools, books, training, articles) to help your business grow.