This evening I was at my alma mater, the Rotman School, for a conversation between Roger Martin (the former dean of the school) and Canadian-Jamaican billionaire, Michael Lee-Chin. Michael is one of the most disciplined, consistent, and charismatic people I have never met. (The soothing Jamaican accent probably doesn't hurt.)

One of his points this evening was about compounding. Not just compound interest, which is what many of you are probably thinking, but compounding in life. The thing about compounding is that the real benefits come later on. That's why personal finance people will tell you that the key to financial freedom is to start saving and investing early on.

The problem with this is that, well, the real benefits come later on. And it can be frustrating when the rewards don't seem to match the efforts. That's why grit is so important and why some have suggested that it is a far better predictor of future success than things like IQ or a GPA score. There's no substitute for hard work.

In the development business, projects tend to take a long time. We started working on Junction House back in 2016 and here we are now in 2019 planning for construction. So I thought this evening was a good reminder that there's lots of value in long-term goals and that more of us (including companies) should be thinking along these lines.

Thanks to this blog, it’s pretty easy for me to go back and look at what I was doing and thinking throughout the year. That’s one of the benefits of writing a daily blog/journal. And as is usually the case, 2015 was a year of ups and downs.

For my annual ski and snowboard trip with the guys, we went to Banff (Alberta) and Revelstoke (BC). But we got stuck with unseasonably warm weather in the west (the opposite of what’s happening this winter) and I got injured on day 3. That put me in the emergency room and knocked me out of snowboarding for the rest of the season – as well as from the gym for a number of months.

Shortly after that I also got struck with some family health issues. That was pretty scary for a good solid month, but in the end, everything seems to have worked out. What a relief.

Towards the end of March, I did a brand partnership between Architect This City and Porter Escapes, which brought me to Quebec City for a weekend. That was a lot of fun and gave me the opportunity to be a real flâneur in one of the most interesting cities in Canada.

In April, I left my real estate development job at TAS and shortly after I joined CAPREIT (TSE: CAR.UN) to help build out their (real estate) development platform. Previously their/our focus had just been on acquiring existing rental assets. But now it is time to build.

Later this month I also participated in the Toronto filming of a documentary called Waterfront Cities of the World. That was a lot of fun. But come to think of it, I don’t think I ever watched the final video.

In May, I started lobbying hard for the removal/replacement of the eastern portion of the Gardiner Expressway East here in Toronto. If you’ve been reading this blog since the summer, I am sure you remember this period. With the help of a colleague of mine, I even started a petition that ended up getting presented at City Council.

But in June, Toronto City Council voted to demolish and then rebuild the elevated expressway along our waterfront. I am still surprised by that. What a shame.

In July, we (CAPREIT) announced our first joint venture development project. A mixed-use project – 506 rental apartments on top of about 160,000 square feet of retail – in Toronto’s Liberty Village. 

In August, I went back to Philly to relive my Penn days. I do that every couple of years just to make sure that Bob and Barbara’s is still offering up “The Special.” The Special is a can of PBR and a shot of Jim Bean for $3. It’s famous in Philly, but it always sounds like a far better idea the night before, as opposed to the morning after.

In this same month I also hit the 2 year mark here on Architect This City. That’s 2 years of getting up every single day and staring at a blank blog post screen and thinking of something insightful to say. 

The following month on September 11 (I’ll never forget this date), I got laser eye surgery. More specifically, I got custom wavefront LASIK. And today it’s pretty hard to imagine that I used to have to reach for my coke bottle glasses as soon as I woke up every morning.

Later in September, I also gave a talk at my alma mater, the Rotman School of Management, to a delegation of about 70 urbanists from Portland. It was an honor to be invited alongside rockstars such as Richard Florida and Jennifer Keesmaat.

In October, I featured a guest post from the former mayor of Toronto, John Sewell. I don’t often do guest posts on my blog, but John had just published a new book and I thought it would be a good way to change things up here. John and I aren’t necessarily on the same page with many urban issues, but we did agree on the Gardiner East.

For the remainder of October, it was basically just the Jays.

In November, I spoke at a Product Hunt event focused on real estate + tech. It was incredibly encouraging to see so many entrepreneurs here in Toronto focused on the intersection of real estate and tech. There are lots of opportunities in this space and I am sure that there are many success stories in the making right now. Toronto is the perfect place for real estate + tech innovation.

And finally, in December, I crossed something off my bucket list and attended Art Basel Miami Beach. I have wanted to go for well over a decade; pretty much since I started studying art history in undergrad. I don’t know what took me so long.

Oh, I also announced that I was writing a book on becoming a real estate developer. 

What a year. I can’t wait for 2016. 

What do you have on your to-do list for next year?

After yesterday’s post about speed, price, and quality, a friend of mine from Rotman emailed me and said: but what about integrative thinking?

When I was doing my MBA at Rotman and Roger Martin was the dean, integrative thinking was a significant part of the curriculum and the messaging for the school. 

Here’s how Roger explains it:

Over the past six years, I have interviewed more than 50 such leaders, some for as long as eight hours, and found that most of them share a somewhat unusual trait: They have the predisposition and the capacity to hold in their heads two opposing ideas at once. And then, without panicking or simply settling for one alternative or the other, they’re able to creatively resolve the tension between those two ideas by generating a new one that contains elements of the others but is superior to both. This process of consideration and synthesis can be termed integrative thinking. It is this discipline—not superior strategy or faultless execution—that is a defining characteristic of most exceptional businesses and the people who run them.

So what my friend was getting at is why – when it comes to speed, price, and quality – do you only get to “pick any two?” Doesn’t that go against the rules of integrative thinking? Isn’t that a failure to look for a more holistic and integrated solution?

It’s a great point. And it’s a thought that crossed my mind while I was writing yesterday’s post. The fact that “something had to give” made me second guess myself.

In general, I’m a believer in integrative thinking. I think there are lots of opportunities to create new hybrid solutions and models that are superior to what might exist today.

But what I was getting at yesterday was perhaps a bit more low level in thinking.

Let’s say for instance you’re a developer constructing a new building and you and your construction manager are in the process of tendering for curtain wall. You receive 3 bids back and 2 of them are roughly the same, but one them is $5 million cheaper.

My immediate thoughts would be: Why is that one bid so much lower? Did they bid on the same scope? Are they missing something? Will the curtain wall arrive on-site on time? And if it does, is it going to leak like a sieve?

I’ll be the first to admit that the construction process is fraught with inefficiencies and ready for integrated solutions. I’m certain that the trade-offs between speed, price, and quality could be better managed.

But more often than not, a rock bottom price usually means that something did in fact give. After all, great integrative thinking is a pretty rare trait.