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Last Christmas Eve, I broke a 10-year family tradition.

For a decade, Christmas Eve in our house meant one thing: settling in to watch a classic holiday movie. It’s a Wonderful Life. The Bishop’s Wife. The kind of films my wife and I loved.

But last year, about 20 minutes into the movie, I noticed something. My wife was checking her phone. My teenage daughter was fidgeting. They’re both active people, constantly on the go, and I could see them getting antsy sitting there for two hours.

The tradition we’d held onto wasn’t making the evening better. It was making everyone restless. So I said, “You know what? Let’s skip the movie and go walk that neighborhood with all the Christmas lights instead.”

They looked at me like I’d suggested canceling Christmas entirely. But we bundled up, grabbed hot chocolate in to-go cups, shared a blanket, and went. And it was perfect. We walked. We talked. We laughed at the over-the-top decorations. Everyone was engaged, present, enjoying it. When we got home, my daughter said, “Can we do this again next year instead of the movie?” I’d spent 10 years doing something that didn’t make sense anymore simply because “that’s how we’ve always done it.”

Sound familiar?

The Contractor Who Spent 3 Hours a Day on Paperwork

Let me tell you about a Arizona GC we started working with last year. Every single day, his project managers spent 2-3 hours manually transferring data from field reports into Excel, then into their accounting system, then into separate documents for clients.

Three. Hours. Every. Day.

When I asked why they didn’t use project management software that could automate most of this, the owner said: “We’ve been doing it this way for 20 years. Everyone knows the process. Why would we change it now?”

Here’s why: his PMs were spending 15 hours a week on data entry instead of managing projects. That’s almost 40% of their time pushing paper instead of solving problems on jobsites. But he’d invested so much time training people on “the process” that changing felt harder than continuing.

Classic sunk cost fallacy.

We finally got him to pilot new software on one project. Within two weeks, those PMs had their evenings back. Within a month, the entire company had switched. His exact words: “I can’t believe we tolerated that for so long.”

Why Construction Professionals Resist Pivoting

I’ve worked with Arizona’s construction industry for over 20 years. And I see this pattern constantly:

Smart people tolerating terrible processes because changing feels harder than suffering.

It’s not laziness. It’s usually one of three things:

1. The “We’re Too Busy” Trap
   “Jack, I know our estimating process is a mess, but we’ve got three bids due this week. We’ll fix it after this busy season.” Except busy season never ends. There’s always another bid, another deadline, another fire to put out. Meanwhile, the broken process keeps you busy. It’s a vicious cycle: you’re too busy to fix the thing that’s making you so busy.
2. The Age & Technology Factor
   Here’s the uncomfortable truth: age can be a barrier to accepting change, especially with technology. I’m not saying older professionals can’t learn new systems. I’ve watched 60-year-old supers master iPads faster than some 30-year-olds. But there’s often a psychological barrier. “I’m too old to learn this” or “I’ve done it this way for 30 years, it works fine.”
   
   Except it doesn’t work fine. It works okay. And “okay” is expensive. The good news? Once people actually make the switch, they’re almost always amazed at how much easier life gets. The fear of change is always worse than the actual change.
3. The Comfort of Familiar Pain
   This is the sneaky one. Your current process is painful. But it’s familiar pain. You know exactly how bad it is. You’ve adapted to it. A new process? That’s unfamiliar territory. What if it’s worse? What if it doesn’t work? What if we waste time and money? So you stick with the devil you know. Even when the devil is costing you tens of thousands of dollars a year in lost productivity.

When “Wait and See” Becomes “We Should’ve Changed Years Ago”

I talk to contractors every week who are tolerating IT headaches they’ve lived with for years:

• Email systems that randomly drop messages (“We just make sure to follow up on everything twice”)
• Disconnected software systems that require triple data entry (“It’s not that bad once you get used to it”)
• Field crews without real-time access to drawings (“They just call the office if they need something”)
• Estimating spreadsheets held together with duct tape and prayers (“Only Jim knows how this works, but it’s fine”)
• Backup systems that haven’t been tested in years (“We’re pretty sure it works”)

These aren’t small annoyances. They’re business risks disguised as “the way we do things.” And the longer you tolerate them, the more normal they feel, until something breaks catastrophically.

The Framework: When to Pivot vs. When to Persist

Here’s where this gets practical.

Not every frustration deserves a pivot. Some things are worth pushing through. Real progress requires commitment, and constantly changing course destroys momentum. So how do you know when to course-correct versus when to stick it out? I’ve adapted this framework from a tech founder’s recent pivot decision. It’s saved me from both premature abandonment and stubborn perseverance:

• Step 1: Pause
  Don’t make the decision while you’re reacting. Step back and take a breath. When you’re frustrated with a system or process, it’s easy to want to burn it all down. But emotional decisions rarely lead to good outcomes. Take 24-48 hours. Get perspective.

• Step 2: What Are the 1-3 Core Problems You’re Trying to Solve?
  Not surface annoyances. The actual business problem.
  Bad example: “Our project management software is confusing.”
  Good example: “We’re losing 15 hours per week per PM to administrative work instead of managing projects, and we have zero real-time visibility into project status.” Be specific. Quantify it if possible.

• Step 3: Why Are These Really Problems?
  This is where you get brutally honest. Would solving these problems materially impact your business? Or are they just annoyances you’ve convinced yourself matter? A clunky interface that costs you 30 minutes a week? Annoying, but probably not worth overhauling your entire tech stack. A disconnected workflow that’s costing you 15 hours per person per week? That’s $50K+ in lost productivity annually for a small team. That’s material.

• Step 4: Will This Change Actually Solve the Underlying Problem?
  Here’s where people go wrong: they change something, but not the right thing. We once had a client switch project management software three times in two years. Why? Because the software wasn’t the problem, their internal processes were broken. No amount of new tools will fix bad workflows.

  So before you pivot, ask: “Will this actually solve our core problem, or are we just changing for the sake of change?”

• Step 5: What Will You Regret in Six Months?
  Play it forward both ways.

  Scenario A: You stick with the current system. Six months from now, what’s the consequence? More wasted time? Lost productivity? Team frustration? A catastrophic failure?
  Scenario B: You make the change. Six months from now, what’s the consequence? Implementation challenges? Learning curve? Cost? New capabilities? Better efficiency?

  Which regret is worse? For that Phoenix GC with the manual data entry nightmare, the answer was obvious: six more months of 15-hour-per-week losses per PM versus a one-month learning curve to save 15 hours per week forever.

Real Examples: When Arizona Builders Pivoted (And It Paid Off)

The Super Who Stopped Fighting the iPad
We had a 58-year-old superintendent who refused to use the company’s project management app. He printed everything, took handwritten notes, and had his assistant manually enter updates. It drove everyone crazy. But he insisted: “I’m not a computer guy. This is how I work.” His PM finally sat down with him for 30 minutes and showed him exactly three features: daily logs, photo uploads, and punch lists.

That’s it. Three features.

Within a week, he was fully onboard. Why? Because those three features saved him an hour a day and made his job easier, not harder. He’d been fighting the change because he thought he had to learn everything at once. Once he realized he could start small, the resistance disappeared.

The Firm That Stopped Tolerating “Good Enough” IT Support
This one hits close to home.

We took over IT for a mechanical contractor who’d been using a break-fix provider for years. When something broke, they’d call. Someone would show up eventually. Maybe it got fixed. Their systems were held together with duct tape. Backups were spotty. Security was non-existent. But switching IT providers felt like a huge commitment. What if it didn’t work out? They finally made the switch during a slow December. We spent two weeks properly documenting their network, fixing accumulated issues, implementing real security, and testing their backups. The owner told me later: “I didn’t realize how much stress I was carrying about our IT until it was actually handled. We were one malicious attack away from catastrophe and just hoping it wouldn’t happen.”

The Holiday Season Is Actually Perfect for This

Here’s something most contractors don’t think about:

The holidays are the best time to pivot.

Why? Because things slow down. You actually have bandwidth to think strategically instead of reactively. That super who finally learned the iPad? Did it during a project lull in December. The mechanical contractor who switched IT providers? Made the change when they had time to handle the transition properly. You don’t have to wait until you’re in crisis mode to make changes. In fact, that’s the worst time.

Use the slower season strategically. Audit what’s not working. Make the pivot while you have the breathing room to do it right.

Here’s what I’d challenge you to do:

• What process, system, or tool are you tolerating because “that’s how we’ve always done it”? Be honest. Where are you suffering familiar pain because changing feels harder than enduring?
• What would your team say is the biggest time-waster in their day? Ask them. You might be surprised. The thing driving you crazy might not be what’s actually costing you the most.
• If you could wave a magic wand and fix one workflow issue, what would it be? Don’t worry yet about whether it’s possible. Just identify it.
• What will it cost you to do nothing for another six months? Seriously calculate it. Lost productivity. Wasted hours. Team frustration. Business risk. Then compare that to the cost of actually fixing it.

Perpetual pivoting destroys progress. You can’t build momentum if you’re constantly changing direction. But stubborn perseverance kills businesses too. Sunk cost fallacy is real, and “we’ve always done it this way” has destroyed more companies than bad markets.

The key is making the distinction between moving strategically and moving emotionally. Most people have a bias one way or the other:

1. Some people change too quickly, chasing every shiny object and never letting anything mature
2. Others dig in their heels and refuse to adapt until they’re forced to

The contractors who thrive? They’re the ones who can tell the difference between a temporary frustration and a fundamental problem that needs fixing. They’re willing to question their assumptions. They’re open to change when it makes sense. But they’re also disciplined enough not to pivot just because something feels hard. The companies crushing it in 2026 won’t be the ones who refuse to change. They’ll be the ones who figured out when to change, what to change, and how to do it without destroying their momentum.

The question is: which one will you be?

Computer Dimensions has been serving Arizona’s construction and AEC industry for over 20 years. We help builders implement technology that actually works for how construction teams operate, from knowledge management systems to field-ready mobile solutions. If you’re thinking about how technology can help you capture expertise and bridge generational gaps, let’s talk.

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