Entertainment, business, political, science, and cultural legends are often asked this question, which is equally relevant to the homebuilding industry and its leaders.

What's the one piece of advice you would give today to your younger self?"

Familiar?

After 20 or more years of covering homebuilding's business community, I can confidently say that there is now no more critical question for time-proven leaders to ask themselves than this.

With all they've gained in experience, wisdom, and knowledge – staring the future and its uncertainties straight in the face – how would they counsel their younger, purpose-driven, super-focused, problem-solving selves?

Perhaps as important, however, what might it be equally critical for those towering business successes to learn was that younger self here to peer out at today's quilt work of challenges, opportunities, risks, threats, and superpowers and offer a take on how to move forward resolutely?

This will be the gist of our Focus On Excellence leadership development workshop, which will be held Oct. 28-30 at the Hyatt Regency Lost Pines Resort in Austin. We're grateful to have as co-hosts for our event Constellation HomeBuilder Systems' annual Build Smarter conference, which provides operational leadership and management attendees with the latest industry insights, product innovations, and technical knowledge to prepare businesses for the year ahead.

For information and to register for The Builder's Daily's Focus On Excellence workshop, click on this link.

Focus On Excellence is designed for one precise purpose: to challenge leaders with business success, operational experience, and wisdom to work shoulder-to-shoulder for two-plus immersive days with younger data, technology, and digital-native rising stars. For what there is to learn is always more than the sum of what even the wisest, most experienced, and proven successes can ever know.

Think less talking-head panels, pitch decks, and didactic monologues ... more roll-up-the-sleeves, candid workshopping, discovery, and sharing successes and failures. It's a leadership "retreat" whose participants will come away with new, people-centric approaches to evolving improved performance in their respective teams.

Here's the outcome we're committed to engaging in with our strategic leader participants:

Sustainably better business performance.

Plus, the capability to drive growth amidst our current and future homebuilding landscape's rapidly changing, complex, and often ambiguous requirements.

Framing the context of our conference will be two vitally timely keynotes. One, on the eve of one of our era's most consequential Presidential elections, we'll have CNN senior political analyst Ron Brownstein, sharing perspectives on the upcoming 2024 US election and its potential impact on the economy and housing outlook, both in the US and Canada.

Two, we'll have best-selling author and recognized thought leader in the science of motivation, Cara Brookins, presenting cutting-edge strategies to build highly focused teams primed to move forward confidently through turbulence and adversity.

Building off that context, our summit will shift into hands-on, fully-engaged workshop mode. We've engaged a team of facilitators from Higher Echelon, a global advisory group proven to empower organizations to perform better in rapidly changing, complex, and often ambiguous requirements of today's homebuilding environment.

Higher Echelon specializes in working with business teams, and has already been on the ground working with homebuilding organizations:

• Developing Resilient and Adaptive Leaders
• Implementing Transformational Engineering & Technology Solutions
• Modernizing and Enhancing Processes

Our Focus On Excellence sessions will tap into an extraordinary knowledge- and wisdom-base of proven leaders, including:

• Chris Graham, President, Constellation HomeBuilder Systems
• Cory Boydston, Former CFO, Ashton Woods
• Don Dykstra, President, Bloomfield Homes
• Deborah Flagan, Vice President, Community Engagement & Giving, Hayden Homes
• Ken Pinto, Founder, Kenzai USA
• Larry Webb, Co-Founder, and former Executive Chairman, The New Home Company
• Robert Broad, Senior VP, Development, AMH
• Tony Avila, CEO, Builder Advisor Group
• Scott Davis, Former Regional President, Trumark Homes
• Clark Ellis, Principal, Continuum Advisors

Here are the deep-dive workshops we'll queue up during our two-plus day leadership development summit:

Focus on the Future: Homebuilding 2025-2035

• America’s Seismic Shifts
• Migration and Immigration
• Workplace
• Generational differences
• Consumers, demands, and expectations
• Customer Experience
• Competition

Speaker/Facilitator:
Dr. Donnie Horner, SVP Human Capital Services, Higher Echelon

Focus on People: Building Resilient Adaptable Leaders

• Calm through Chaos
• High Performance Mindset
• Resilience

Speaker/Facilitators:
Dr. Eric Bean: Director of High Performance, Higher Echelon
Don Dykstra: Chairman, Bloomfield Homes
Clark Ellis, Principal, Continuum Advisors
Ken Pinto, Founder, Kenzai USA

Focus on Your Company: Building High-Performing Teams

• Thriving in the Midst of Major Change
• Characteristics of High Performing Teams (Organizations)
• Building the Proper Culture

Speaker/Facilitators:
Dr. Angie Winter: Program Operations Manager, Higher Echelon
Tony Avila, Principal, Builder Advisor Group
Scott Davis, former Division President, Trumark Homes
Larry Webb: Principal, The Webb Group

We're committed to making this an unmatched leadership development experience. This will be true, whether you are in your current position of proven wisdom, knowledge, and success or, instead, your younger self, waiting for that wise advice. Perhaps it is the chance for that younger self to unveil new ideas, learn, and discover what will work. Please join us.