Author Elinor Moshe
In the Construction Industry Secrets: The Most Important Principles of the Industryindustry leadership coach Elinor Moshe distills the wisdom and narrative insights of more than 30 AEC professionals to create what she calls a “timeless” toolbox for the next generation.
“There’s a lot that needs to be said,” says Moshe, who is a Sydney, Australia-based construction thought leader and mentor. “Creating a platform, a vehicle, that surpasses all of us in book form, that’s how it started.”
The anthology includes entries on a range of topics in the construction ecosystem, including design and architecture, professionalism, career advancement, workplace challenges.—contributed by construction managers, home builders, CEOs and entrepreneurs. Moshe explains that they were all asked the same question: What is the one thing you would tell someone breaking into the construction industry?
“There is a part of the industry that has earned its battle scars, and wisdom only comes from experience,” says Moshe. “If I have an hour with you, I can tell you 50 things. But if I have such a short period of time with you, I need to give you something that has so much substance and value that it forces you to stop, think, and introspect. That’s really what I wanted to bring to the industry.”
Moshe spoke with ENR about how the collection of personal and professional insights in the book created a microcosm of industry voices.
ENR: The book includes the personal and professional opinions of the contributors. What direction were they given in developing their answers?
The settings I had were very loose. It had to be a timeless and perennial answer. I have to be able to pick up the book in 20 years, and it has to be just as relevant. There are some themes that will expire or have been done so long that it is no longer fresh. We’ve heard it before. Other than that, it was a creative shower. I didn’t tell people, it can be technical or personal [or] professional However, all directors began to weave a common fabric between them.
Thought was given to the social demographics of the book—how many women vs. men, age, ethnicity, etc.?
For me, it was about character and competence and people proving themselves over a long period of time. I’ve been in the industry for a long time, so you see people over a long period of time. That was the most important thing. The package they came in was irrelevant because none of the people here have used it—whether it’s their gender or their background, to get where they are. People really earned their own stripes in their own way, and that was very important.
There is a lot of dialogue in the construction business about next generation readiness and a huge knowledge gap. How do you think this book will help prepare the next generation?
You are absolutely right. There is a chasm, and it’s also a growing chasm because the people coming in and out are from a very different paradigm. They are cut from a different cloth. They want different things. They value different things. And this was also one of the drivers [of the book] because there are great people in the industry doing wonderful things that aren’t necessarily on the way in the next decade. But how do we find them? If someone is reading a chapter in the book, their network can begin to open. It starts to create that level of connectivity or awareness of people who practice to a fantastic standard, what they stand for, the work they do and where that can lead in terms of mentoring, coaching or partnerships. Whatever it looks like is part of what this book offers. It is the beginning of the conversation between these people in the industry and the people who are looking for it.
Think of it as a toolkit. You don’t always need to use a hammer. You don’t always need to use the saw, sometimes you need to use the leveler. So what tools can you pick up based on where you are right now? And that’s what makes it green too. There are so many different things that are so timeless, that no matter where you are at this moment and how you try to orient yourself, it’s up to you to decide.
That’s a question we ask many of our companies in our Top 400 and Top 500 lists. What do you think is the most pressing challenge facing the construction industry right now?
I see that any industry is also a microcosm of what is happening in our collective. You could go on and on with the most pressing challenges, there are many structural problems, but the structure will not change. It has to be like this, as you cannot ask a multinational to change its culture. It is the individual who needs to return to himself, more and more into himself. If they want to see some structural change.
We can all sit here and advocate for things outside of ourselves to change, but that’s not how energy works. So if someone wants to experience more wealth, more opportunity, more anything, whether it’s in their career or in their life, the only place they can look is deep within themselves, and how that’s supported, or how this narrative is woven into the industry. , is getting people to do this inner work within themselves, but people don’t want to do it because nobody’s paying you for it. No one will give you a promotion for that. But if each individual took radical responsibility for where they are and what they want the industry to be, it would be unrecognizable in 60 days.
Construction Industry Secrets: The Industry’s Most Important Principles Revealed is available on Amazon.
