Owner Leadership: The Hidden Variable

by: Tom Richert, RisingTerrain, LLC

Within the same Owner organization, some projects consistently succeed while others struggle despite similar resources and project teams.

The pattern becomes visible when you step back and look at several years of project history. Some Owner organization teams create conditions that consistently support alignment, rapid problem resolution, and coordinated decision-making. Others unintentionally create friction through delayed decisions, fragmented communication, unclear priorities, or inconsistent leadership engagement. 

These differences are often subtle while a project is underway. Viewed across a portfolio, however, their cumulative impact can be substantial.

This raises an important question for institutional leaders: why do projects within the same organization, sometimes using many of the same external partners, produce dramatically different experiences and outcomes? 

Can Behavioral Science Help Owners Deliver Better Projects?

by: COAA Communications Committee

You ran your selection process. You hired the best architects, the best engineers, and the best GCs. They have great professional credentials. And then, as researcher Joe Powell puts it, you assume that means they are going to collaborate. But great professional credentials don’t necessarily lead to great collaboration. 

Powell would know. He has been chasing this dilemma for a long time, most recently as Chairman of the University Research Institute (URI). "We've been trying to figure this out for about 22 years," he says, and he is the first to keep his own work humble. "People like us, we study things, but we don't actually do anything," he says, reaching for an old Mark Twain line that "a man who's carried a cat home by the tail has far more information than the man who's only read about it." 

The point of URI’s recently published "What Great Owners Do" paper was never to put everybody to sleep with stuff they already know. It was to search the topic for "subtleties and interesting observations that people these days can actually use and relate to."

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Great ideas don't always come from a conference session, webinar, or project meeting. Sometimes, they come from a good book.

We asked COAA members what they've been reading lately: the books that have challenged their thinking, influenced how they lead, helped them approach their work differently, or were simply too good not to share.

What follows isn't an official COAA reading list or an endorsement of any particular book or author. It's a collection of recommendations from COAA members, for COAA members.

Take a look. You might just find your next great read.

Got one to add to the list? Tell us what you're reading and why you'd recommend it in the eForum.

by: Ashley Dale, COAA Marketing & Communications

Historic squares. Spanish moss. Incredible architecture. Great food. A city built for walking, talking and lingering over one more conversation.

Sounds like a pretty good place for COAA Connect.

This fall, the COAA community heads to Savannah for three days of education, connection and experiences designed around what COAA does best: bringing Owners and their project partners together to learn from one another and build better projects.

COAA Connect has never been about sitting through a parade of project case studies. The question behind the program is much more useful:

What can another Owner take home and actually use?

The conference opens with sessions examining a data-centric approach to delivering the University of Georgia’s new School of Medicine, the realities of digital twins and how Texas Parks and Wildlife Department approached Design-Build delivery. Workshops dig deeper into lifecycle planning, project team culture and the decisions Owners can make before design begins to set a project up for success.