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You know that owner or operations manager who rolls into the Monday morning meeting with that look in their eye? The one that says, “I had an idea over the weekend.”
Maybe it’s a new project management platform. A different way to handle RFIs. A revised pre-construction process. Or a shiny new estimating tool someone mentioned at the last ABA mixer. The idea sounds good. It probably is good. So leadership gets fired up, calls the team together, and pitches it with enthusiasm: “Alright, let’s make this happen.”
And because construction people are doers by nature, the team buys in. “Yeah, that makes sense. Let’s go.”
But here’s the problem: two weeks later, there’s another idea. Then another. And none of them ever get fully implemented. We call this the “idea drive-by”. Rolling up on your team with good intentions but leaving a trail of half-finished initiatives in your wake.
Sound Familiar?
This pattern is everywhere in AEC companies. A GC owner reads about a new takeoff software at a conference, gets excited, and mandates the switch before the team has finished migrating to the last platform. A superintendent wants to try lean construction methods on one project while the company is still standardizing its existing workflows. Each idea, on its own, is solid. But ideas compete for the same limited resources: your people’s time, attention, and energy.
Here’s the uncomfortable truth: there will always be more good ideas than there is capacity to execute them. And in construction, where 98% of projects already face delays and the average project runs 37% longer than planned, your team doesn’t need more initiatives competing for bandwidth. They need focus.
What Happens to Your Team
Over time, idea drive-bys create predictable damage. Your team stops getting excited. They’ve been burned too many times investing effort into something that gets abandoned two months later. So when you pitch the next great idea, they nod politely while thinking, “Here we go again.”
Worse, they never get to see their work fully implemented. They put in effort on the new scheduling system, then get pulled to learn a new safety protocol, then get redirected to a CRM migration. All that effort? No fruit. No results. Just frustration and the creeping sense that their work doesn’t matter.
This is how good people burn out, not from hard work, but from work that goes nowhere. And in an industry already facing a labor shortage with a weak pipeline of younger workers entering the trades, you can’t afford to demoralize the talent you’ve got.
The Execution Curve Nobody Talks About
Every new strategy, every new tool, every new process follows an exponential curve:
- Phase 1: It’s harder than expected to get started. There are unforeseen challenges, learning curves, and resistance.
- Phase 2: Execution is rough at first. Nobody does it perfectly out of the gate.
- Phase 3: With enough time and refinement, the curve bends and you start seeing real results.
Leaders who are “idea factories” often abandon initiatives during Phase 1 or 2 right before they’d pay off. They never see Phase 3 because there’s always a newer, shinier idea demanding attention.
Bezos Had the Same Problem
Early in Amazon’s history, Jeff Wilke, a manufacturing expert came to Jeff Bezos with a blunt observation: “Jeff, you have enough ideas per minute, per day, per week to destroy Amazon. Every time you release an idea, you’re creating a backlog, a queue, work in process. It’s stacking up, adding no value, and creating distraction. You have to release work at a rate the organization can accept it.”
Bezos admitted it wasn’t obvious to him at the time. But once he heard it, he started prioritizing ideas better and holding them back until the organization was ready. The same principle applies to your construction company.
What Actually Works
The solution isn’t to stop having ideas. It’s to release them at the rate your organization can absorb them.
- Start an idea bank. Keep a simple note on your phone or a shared document. Every idea goes there first. If it’s still compelling after a few weeks, it might be worth pursuing.
- Designate a filter person. This could be your COO, your operations manager, or a trusted project lead or someone who can push back and say “not yet” or “let’s finish the current initiative first.“ This filter protects your team from idea whiplash.
- Commit to completion. Before starting anything new, ask: “What’s still in progress that needs to be finished?” Treat incomplete initiatives like unpaid invoices, they’re liabilities until they’re closed out.
- Make “done” the goal, not “started.” In construction, we measure success by completed projects, not groundbreakings. Apply the same standard to internal initiatives.
Your Checkpoint
Here’s a quick gut-check for leadership:
- Are your ideas fueling execution or killing momentum?
- How many initiatives are currently “in progress” versus “completed”?
- When was the last time your team saw a major initiative through to full implementation?
If you’re not getting the results you want despite having plenty of good ideas, this might be your bottleneck.
The Bottom Line
Your ideas can be rocket fuel for your company or they can be the thing that grinds it to a halt.
The difference isn’t the quality of the ideas. It’s whether you give your team the time and focus to actually implement them. Too many white hats on a jobsite creates confusion. Too many initiatives at headquarters does the same thing.
So before you roll up on your next Monday meeting with that new idea, ask yourself: “Is my team ready for this, or am I about to do another drive-by?”
Your people and your projects will thank you for it.
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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.
Let’s Build Together!
P.S. If you’re heading to the Arizona Builders Alliance or ASA events this quarter, come find us. We’d love to hear what technology challenges you’re facing on your jobs. Sometimes the best insights come from conversations, not blog posts.
