Picking products for a Good Home

When designing a home, there are an almost insufferable number of decisions to make before you even start to consider what is 'good'.

What is a 'good' construction product?

On the list of things to consider are:

• Life-cycle energy costs
• Transportation carbon footprint
• Ethical procurement
• Impact on operational energy use
• Material sustainability
• End-of-life uses

You can spend a lot of time thinking.

The issue is that the true cost of the products aren't necessarily reflected in the price. When we buy a product with a massive carbon footprint, we don't have to pay the price to off-set the impact on climate if the supply chain doesn't have to pay it.

If we buy a product manufactured under oppressive labour laws that don't adequately value human life, and human capital, we don't pay the price of the negative social impacts of low-wages.

It would be much easier for the average consumer, and the general market, if product pricing reflected the true costs.

How to move a mountain

One stone at a time.

Or in the case of property: One property, one purchase, one person at a time.

And if you want to do it faster, just add more people.

What's more important?

Rank these as priorities for your own home:

• Warm
• Dry
• Lots of Wardrobe Space
• Close to shops
• Close to work
• Close to school
• Close to friends
• Close to family
• Purchase price
• Running costs
• Large bedroom
• Nice view
• Multiple bathrooms
• Double garage
• Vegetable garden
• Big lawn
• Well-regarded neighbourhood
• Spare bedroom
• How it looks

What did you spend your money on?

Suburban Redevelopment

Pick up a property. Demolish the building. Rebuild what was there, but better, and make more spaces for more people.

A crucial piece of the puzzle of trying to transform a neighbourhood, is how to get hold of the land in the first place. The Nightingale 3 project in Melbourne took the above approach, you can read about it here.

But how about suburbia? We don't have the option of taking a single-storey building and adding space by building up, but could we take a similar approach? Could we find four connected titles, demolish, and rebuild with eight households?

It could be possible if we used the following principles:

More shared spaces: Shared laundries, storage, workshops, maybe even ditch the cars and use a fleet of electric vehicles.

Smaller spaces: Design for what we really need, learn to live with less, and just generally do bette design.

Common ownership: Whether it is a body corporate, a company structure or some other legal delight, sharing more requires a shift from a 'my house, my castle' property mentality.

Energy efficiency: Environmental considerations aside, this is a smart financial move. Keeping running costs low not only makes a higher build cost/mortgage affordable, it provides longer-term financial security by making living costs less tied to market variations in energy costs.

Around here, a typical section could be around 600 sqm. Four sections would give us 2400 sqm to play with.

I'm sure an architect could come up with an 8-household development using the principles above on 2400 sqm, even if we're limited to two storeys.

Organising for good, better.

There are many ways to work together. McKinsey & Company identified four organisational 'recipes'. Interestingly, their research found that focussing on a single recipe was more likely to be successful than attempting to delivery on multiple fronts.

If we wanted to build a system together that delivered better outcomes for all people through property, which recipe would we pick?

I suspect one of the following two could be a valid approach, and aligns with an emphasis on people working together to solve wicked problems.

The "Leadership Factory".

This approach would rely on developing leaders, entrusting them to do work, and wrapping them in support systems to sustain and grow their leadership and impact. Leadership is necessary when we're trying to move in a new direction, and a coordinated group of embedded, aligned and supported leaders could move us all a long way.

The "Continuous Improvement Engine".

We'd embed and maintain systems that promote continuous learning, knowledge sharing, diverse involvement and high engagement among every person involved. As we're trying to solve and unsolved problem, we know we'll need to learn as we go along. "Build it as we fly it" as the saying goes. And we also know that the more diverse the group of people involved in the learning, sharing and design process, the better the outcomes.

Perhaps, if I may, I'll deviate from McKinsey's conclusion that success requires focus on a single approach and theorise on a hybrid model:

Continually Improving Leaders who Continuously Improve the World

What would happen if we developed leaders who lead in a manner that promotes continuous learning, and who themselves are embedded in a leadership network that encourages knowledge sharing and learning around getting the most from others.

We could solve some wicked problems. Together.

Building bump spaces

Bump spaces have been around as a concept for a while, so if you're new to the idea, a quick google search should bring you up to speed. Or you can jump to this article I found written by a local public property genius.*

There's a general acceptance that micro-collisions between people and the connections that result are what makes up the 'net' in a community network.

Small, simple, spontaneous interactions are both a fruit of, and a creator of, connection. 

So in a community seeking to grow connection, we're caught in a catch-22: How to make bump spaces work without a culture of connection, while trying to use bump spaces to build the culture by creating connection.

The answer, as often happens with many organic people-systems, is to do it deliberately, intentionally, and with purpose, for a while. And eventually, it'll just be what we do around here.

Don't wait for the Council to redevelop the local park. Go and sit on the seat with a cup of tea every Sunday morning at 10am.

Don't wait for the local cafe to set up outdoor seating. Start buying fish and chips every Friday night at 6.30pm. And don't order over the phone.

We don't need to wait for the Council, the Urban Planners, or the Parks Department to make these spaces for use. We can use the ones that are there, and create our own on the dirt we can control.

Cut down a section of the front fence and make a bench seat. And sit on it sometimes.

Set up a book swap fridge next to the letterbox.

Set up a herb garden along the front fence. Or in front of the front fence.

Do any of these things at the local park. Or school.

And perhaps along the way we might figure out how to get bump spaces put into city planning public space design, or a requirement for new subdivisions.

*Disclaimer: This is my own definition based on judgements from a distance. I don't know the guy and I've never met him, although I'd like to.

The beauty of preparation and planning

There are few baseline fundamentals when it comes to making the world a better place. Here's a couple:

1. It works better when we work together.
2. You never know what is coming.

Planning and preparation are key to both of these.

Prepare together. Align your thinking. Uncover your strengths and weaknesses. Learn to communicate. Resolve conflict. Agree on principles.

And then when an unexpected decision-making moment arrives: Check in on each other, check alignment, check strength, and act decisively.

Crucial moments rarely allow time to think everything through. So have 80% of the conversation before the moment arrives. And develop the skills to nail the last 20%. 

Cover off the basics of the decision using pre-established principles, and discuss the details that arrive in the decisive moment.

* This is more about life than about property, but I suspect you could apply a similar logic to a house project.

People lie at the cross-over between software development and community development

Scrum started in the software development industry. But the underlying principles are generic.

If you want to change how property works for your people, in your neighourhood:

1. Do something. Something you can point to. Something that stands alone. Anything. Even the smallest thing.

2. Identify what actions, projects, conversations, and decisions will bring the most value to the change you want to see happen. Do those things first.

3. We don't know how long it will take, untill we start and see how long it takes us. Then we'll get faster.

4. Shift things that slow you down. Spending time this week resolving something that makes you slower will pay dividends when get more done every week for the next ten years.

5. Always pause to reflect, review and share. Share not just what has happened, but how it happened. Tell stories, learn from them, make changes, get better and making things better.

6. Don't forget the most important things: People matter. Action counts. Work together. Learn, adapt and change continuously.

7. Commit. Find others who are committed, and commit to each other. Keep everyone else in the loop, but work with people who are committed.

You, me and Johari

The Johari window is a simple framework that helps describe our relationships. Within the relationship, everything falls into one of four quadrants (of the window)

1. Things about me that we both know.
2. Things about me that I know but don't share (so you don't know)
3. Things about me that you know but don't share (so I don't know)
4. Things about me that I don't know, and you don't see.

These four categories can be labelled as Open, Facade, Blindspots, and Hidden.

One philosophical approach to life using this framework is to propose that our life's work is to fully open our window. This requires sharing, listening to feedback, and reflecting/seeking expert input.

If we use this framework to consider our (my/your) relationship with the idea of property ownership, we arrive at four interested questions:

1. What things are obvious and out in the open for all to see?
2. What attitudes do we have that no-one know's about?
3. What do our decisions, choices and conversations say about what we value in property?
4. Are we aware of our unconscious attitudes and external influences that set up our natural biases?

Critique, questions and thoughts

Social media came through for me yesterday.

I came across this interesting thought piece which rapidly kicked my Friday morning brain up several gears. Thank you LinkedIn.

A few key takeaways and initial thoughts I'll be pondering over the weekend, and I'd suggest you might like to do so too:

Questions:

• What are the unintended consequences of our well-intentioned actions?
• What is our 'origin story'? How have we written the back story to our current state of being, and what does that story encourage in others?
• How can we avoid viewpoints that can be described as totally valid, totally short-term, and totally defeatist, a harsh, but fair critique in the article linked above.

Thoughts:

• Doing things differently, in a way that is better, for more people, more of the time, is hard. Strive to approach problems in a way that is valid (rigorous), long-term, and optimistic.

• Trying to define 'good' is futile, yet necessary and immensely valuable. We won't all agree, and when we do that's because we're missing something. Any definition will always be incomplete, and have exceptions. But the process of discussing, reflection, documenting a definition of good, and then reviewing that definition in the light of the outcomes and decisions that it drives, is healthy. Working definitions work well for getting work done, and then getting more work done better.

• Well constructed, articulated and respectful critique is a gift to us all.

*As a working definition of what good is when it comes to property, I've got a collection of thoughts on what makes a good home.

The clutch is missing in the property system

On the one hand, we have people missing out with the way things are.

On the other hand, we have people with the skills and resources required to move us to the way things should be.

And both sides are aware of the situation. They just don't seem to be coming together in any significant and meaningful way.

What's the clutch?

My hunch, is that focussing on the fringes with a social business approach to property development could bring some pieces together. 

We need a scalable approach, translatable infrastructure, holistic design principles to make an impact. If needs to work for people on the fringes for there to be real systemic change, meaning that it works for all of us.

Which means we'll need to understand alternative ownership models. We'll need to understand the intersection of community development and property development. We'll need to understand communities in general, and our neighbourhoods specifically.

We'll need to think differently, work together, and dream.

The things that draw us together

Connection is what counts in life.

Our homes can help bring us together in meaningful ways.

• When we live small and so share more.
• We we share food.
• And prepare food.
• In celebration.
• When creating, making and crafting.
• And also working, building and labouring.
• Shared silence in the lounge with a good book.
• A smile and wave while walking past.
• A cup of tea sitting on the deck.
• Talking past midnight, then crashing on the couch.

Our homes should help to make more of this happen, more often, for more people.

When the shine wears off

Mismatched and unrealistic expectations cause tension in relationships between people. And it is the same with our relationship with property.

We all have expectations of property. What our dream home looks like. What it will feel like to be a homeowner. What our neighbours will be like. And because we are normal human beings, some of our expectations are unrealistic and mismatched.

In a personal relationship, we have a few options available when we get a hint that things are not as we expected. We can ask questions, clarify expectations, and decide whether we want to (and can) meet them. Or, we can compromise without a conversation, pinning our hopes of happiness on some other aspect of the relationship.

I think our options with our relationship with property are similar. We buy our dream home, then find that working 50 hours per week to pay the mortgage means we're not enjoying ourselves as we thought we might. Or we purchase our first home and discover that responsibility requires effort and attention and instead of feeling free and satisfied, we're constrained and stressed.

Not many of us take the option of pausing, reflecting, clarifying our expectations and whether we want to (or can) have them met. 

I'm interested in what a set of realistic expectations of property would be. To establish an approach to our relationship with land ownership that is mutually beneficial, rather than one-sided.

Bringing the moving pieces together

There's a lot pieces involved in building a house. A lot of different people, a range of skills, a multitude of issues. Finance and city planning. Carpenters and painters. Details deliverers and big-picture dreamers.

Doing property differently requires bringing together a lot of pieces. I'm hoping that when we all come together, we're less of a machine, and more of a creation.