Guts, data and digital leadership, because 'understanding each other' won't solve it

Pim van Meer hosts a session at the Day of Project Development, which brings together project developers, area developers, housing corporations and developing investors. The theme of the day is Guts and Leadership, but according to Pim we won't get there with that.

The Minister of Housing and Spatial Planning Elanor Boekholt-O'Sullivan, opened the Day of Project Development with a question that really should have lingered all day: if we ourselves say this is a crisis, why aren't we acting like it is?

I thought that was strong. Because that immediately includes everything. Not the cosiness, not the framing, not the neat administrative circumvention - but just the core. If it really is a crisis, you have to act on it.

For me, that's exactly where the excitement of The Day Of Project Development was. The title of our session was almost bad humor: guts, data and digital leadership. Because right now, in a time of staff shortages, housing shortages, nitrogen, stacking ambitions, grid congestion and social pressure, we still too often act as if we can solve the crisis without substantially changing what we do. And yes, digitization is only a means to that end.
But the mother lode.

Guts and leadership, the surely clever title of this year's meeting, we had last year too. And the year before that. And I don't doubt for a second that there are plenty of smart, kind and courageous people in the chain. So if those problems are still there, maybe we should be honest enough to say that it's not just because of that. The world has become more complex. And you have to deal with that complexity.

I also went to a session that day at TU Delft on leadership quality. There the bottom line was that we need to understand each other better. And let me say right away: I couldn't agree more. In any case, the Day of Project Development is often about meeting each other, getting to know each other, connecting, being a little nice to each other. I am absolutely not against cuddling. On the contrary. I think there is never enough cuddling in the chain.

Only: I don't think that solves the problem.

Indeed, if crunching had solved the problem, we wouldn't be sitting here. It is not that not enough coffee is drunk, not enough hands are shaken or not enough understanding is expressed for each other. That happens plenty. So if the crisis persists, apparently it is not due to a lack of good intentions.

What's new is the data.
What is new are the now proven digital techniques.
What is new is that we finally have the tools to not only discuss complexity, but to make it objective.

I saw this very nicely in the session I did myself with Blauwhoed and housing corporation Ymere. There it was not a question of us understanding each other so well because we were cuddling so warmly and humanly. No, we understood each other well because we had listened to each other's information needs and then worked very hard to make the language we speak uniform.

Indeed, this is very important if you want to understand each other. But it is even conditional if you want to use computers to help solve more complex tasks.

And we are only going to make these tasks more complex. Not because I think humanity likes to hurt itself, but because we want more sustainability, more social impact, better neighborhoods and better choices. In fact, I wholeheartedly agree with that. Only you have to be able to bear that extra complexity. And you can't do that anymore on flat drafting and dumb Excels alone.

Oh yes, by the way, the comedian in the main hall did not allow me to say anymore that we need to make data-driven decisions. He felt that digitization is slowly taking over our world. To be honest: I even partially agree with that. I hardly have any social media apart from LinkedIn, so I am the last person who wants to digitize everything for the sake of digitizing. But to shout in a room of a thousand people that digitization is actually uncomfortable, while I am then standing in a small room explaining to administrators that this is exactly the time to embrace digitization and actively steer for completeness, quality and uniform language - yes, that felt a bit lopsided.

Because people make mistakes.
That's not a bad thing, but at the same time it feels mega uncomfortable for many people when the computer says that the square footage is wrong. Or that the rent points don't come out. Or that the data isn't complete. But why do we make such a big deal about that? We once started working more transparently so we could see problems earlier. But now that we are indeed seeing them earlier, suddenly it gets exciting.

I can understand that somewhere. For me, this was once new too. So I'm happy to explain it three times. But I also think it's taking a damn long time. And I also see that there is still more enthusiasm for the fun, funny stories than for the story that says: guys, we really need to make different decisions.

Not for myself.
But for my children.
Because if I have to explain ten years from now that we didn't solve it even though we knew the solution direction, it's not a lack of knowledge, but the lack of courage to question the status quo. Questioning the status quo and saying that making decisions on flat drawing and silly excel is no longer enough - that's guts and leadership.