Focus on Supply and Demand

In this entry, I want to share a mix of reflections, milestones, and lessons that tie into both our industry and life. This blog might feel like it moves in a few directions, but each piece connects to how we grow as professionals and as human beings.

Let’s start with a milestone. We recently hit 50 percent women in our company. This is not something that happened by accident. We intentionally recruit women while hiring based on qualification, not gender. Equal opportunity is the goal. The reality is that the industry doesn’t naturally filter as many women into construction as it does men, so we must be intentional. For me, this milestone is more than numbers. It is about fairness, diversity, and breaking an old pattern in construction.

For years, I have admired companies like Hensel Phelps that have made incredible progress in diversity and created space for women to thrive. Seeing our own organization move in that direction makes me proud because it reflects a deeper belief. Equal is not fair, but fair is equal. Everyone deserves the same opportunities without discrimination.

This milestone reminded me of a Taylor Swift Netflix documentary called Miss Americana. It may sound surprising, but I encourage every male in our industry to watch it. The film opened my eyes to how laws and cultural systems still create barriers for women. It also showed me how important it is to speak up and use your voice. Taylor’s story of finally stepping into her political voice and opposing a candidate who supported policies harmful to women was powerful. It made me realize that standing up for equality is not optional if we want a fair society.

Yes, I am a Swifty, and I make no apologies for that. Beyond the music, the lessons about maturity, fairness, and using your voice are universal. Her story reinforced something I already believed: when we embrace diversity and equality, we become better leaders, friends, husbands, and humans.

This connects to a broader perspective I found while reading A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle. Tolle explains how ego has fueled centuries of domination, war, and control. While some ancient civilizations respected feminine energy, over time patriarchy took hold. That shift wasn’t because men were naturally meant to lead but because the ego found it easier to dominate through men. Women, being more in tune with their bodies and presence, resisted ego more naturally.

The result has been centuries of abuse, suppression, and inequality. Religion, politics, and culture often reinforced these systems. Yet when we strip away ego and fear, what remains is human connection. Without fear, we see people as they are: equals deserving respect and dignity.

This point struck me personally. I used to see the world through a narrow lens, shaped by politics and fear. I believed in male dominance, opposed immigration, and held negative views about the LGBTQ+ community. But life experiences shook me out of that spell. It feels like waking up, realizing how much fear controlled my perspective.

When you truly meet people, when you share a meal or a conversation, it is impossible to maintain those old biases. You cannot hate immigrants once you’ve shared a table with them. You cannot condemn gay people once you’ve heard their stories. You cannot think of women as lesser when you have daughters you love deeply.

This awakening has made me believe more than ever that leadership in construction and in life must be rooted in fairness and truth. Fear sells in politics and culture, but it cannot guide us if we want progress. We must shake off fear and ego and lead with presence.

Let me bring this back to construction. While reflecting on these themes, I have been reading Built to Fail. The book highlights critical points about bottlenecks, capacity, and flow. One principle stood out: in a high-performance production system, the bottleneck can be purposely placed as a control point to regulate flow. Instead of chaos, you achieve balance.

Construction too often falls into chaos with CPM schedules. CPM creates demand-driven documents that don’t reflect supply, leading to overburden, wasted effort, and low hit rates. Studies show that only 15 to 45 percent of tasks planned on CPM schedules actually happen. That is unacceptable. Imagine betting on a system with only a 20 percent chance of success, you wouldn’t do it. Yet CPM continues to dominate.

The better way is to focus on supply-driven systems like takt planning. When you level resources, control work in process, and reduce variability, the entire system flows. This is about respecting workers, avoiding overburden, and aligning demand with reality. It is about designing production systems that reflect what is possible, not just what someone in an office demands.

As I wrap up, I hope these reflections connect. Equality, diversity, fairness, and flow may seem like different topics, but they are deeply linked. Whether we are talking about the role of women in construction, shedding fear-driven mindsets, or improving production systems, the principle is the same: treat people with fairness, respect truth, and design for flow. That is how we build not just better projects, but a better industry and a better society.

Key Takeaway

True progress comes when we strip away fear and ego, embrace equality, and design systems that respect people and flow.