When the owner-CEO of a regional housing powerhouse opens the hood and talks about what’s inside, two things stand out. One of these is Peter Drucker’s mantra: “You can only manage what you can measure.”
The other, amid a whirlwind of buzzwords, truths and abstractions, is the total absence of jargon, which stands out for its clarity, honesty and accuracy.
Just listen to one of those regional business leaders in housing construction.
“In my experience, if a builder doesn’t have real-time information, they can’t manage their business,” says our owner-CEO. “You need to have a benchmark to judge your decisions and see what works.”
Without buzzwords, without abstractions. No mumbo-jumbo. There’s no fake sound in it.
“You have to do that at the city level – and not at the macro level – for accounting purposes,” he continues. “No real change can be made if you don’t have the right reports to measure every home.”
Measure each house.
Our homebuilding company’s management details the ‘basic’ weekly, monthly and quarterly reports, and the reporting framework works because it cuts out jargon, avoids noise and focuses on the data that shows whether the business is building well, selling well and taking care of customers. Each metric has a precise definition, a clear owner and a direct link to on-the-ground actions.
What he describes – almost clumsily – is something deeper. It’s the operationalization of data discipline at the ground level, a shift that’s taking shape among homebuilders and developers across the country. Not in talk tracks. Not in tech decks. Not in AI conference sessions.
But in the day-to-day execution of business operations, those who have learned the hard way are that in volatile markets, clean, consistent and simple data is often the only thing that prevents unforced errors, failed closes, failed budgets, missed underwriting assumptions, unhappy customers, costly rework and tighter capital.
It has become one of the most consequential steps forward in 2025 homebuilding.
Across the industry, builders and community developers are coming to the same conclusion from different angles: data discipline is not just a software project. It is a management system. And the ones who act fastest are the ones who present it in simple language rather than technical jargon.
This is exactly the point that John Cecilian, Jr. emphasized in his work with builders and developers across the country. Cecilian’s advice to executives reflects the instincts of the homebuilding CEO: no discipline, no results; no clarity, no improvement.
[Hit the “play” arrow below to catch our short TBD Player one-to-one conversation with Cecilian Partners co-founder and CEO John Cecilian, Jr.]
As Cecilian puts it:
“To get the most out of data, this four-letter word I talk about all the time is not about anything sexy. It’s discipline.”
Instead of conceptual abstractions about ‘digital transformation’, Cecilian focuses on what disciplined operators actually are Doing– what they track, how they track it and who is responsible.
He describes the builders and developers who were most advanced in 2025 as those who viewed the life cycle of a building as a continuous chain of decisions, each requiring its own scientific basis. No loose approach. No ‘silver bullet’. Not a vain hope that software alone would be the solution.
These operators share one pattern: They know exactly what data matters, where to store it, and how it flows across land, sales, construction, and warranty. And they use that discipline to compete.
For example, Cecilian highlights Hillwood Communities and Beazer Homes as two companies demonstrating this discipline.
“You can see it at Hillwood Communities in Dallas. You can see it at Beazer Homes out of Atlanta,” he says. “This idea of really investing in every stage of the cycle, making an effort to understand what engagement looks like, how data is collected, and making sure that data is structured and actionable to make better and more informed decisions.”
Hillwood’s own president, Fred Balda, in conversation with The builder’s newspaperrecently underlined this point in practice rather than theory. Hillwood doesn’t chase noise or hypotheses. It measures conditions on the ground – market by market, sponsor by sponsor – before deciding on capital investments.
Balda says clearly:
“We’re constantly benchmarking different markets and different sponsors, and this is another way to do the same thing.”
He does not view this as an exercise in analytical fashion. Rather, this accuracy is a core function of risk management and long-term value creation.
Builders and developers often assume that “data strategy” means an overhaul of the tech stack. Cecilian comes back hard on this. Software alone does not create discipline. Leaders do.
His premise is almost surprising in its simplicity:
“Believe it or not, and as a technologist, I think it comes down to grabbing your proverbial notebook or pad and putting pen to paper. What are the outcomes you’re trying to achieve as a builder or developer?”
From there, the discipline takes shape: understanding the actual workflows, the actual systems already in use, the actual handoffs between people, and the actual gap between decisions and the data that support them.
This fits perfectly with the builder-CEO’s candid clarity. You don’t start with a system; you start by defining the work. You don’t start with AI; you start with clean reports. You don’t start with technology; you start with the benchmarks the team wants to manage.
And you don’t change what you can’t see.
Cecilian emphasizes that data integrity – the daily practice of entering consistent, structured information – is where many, if not most, homebuilders fail. He sees the consequences up close.
As he puts it:
“What you don’t want to happen is the idea of ’garbage in, garbage out’. That is no longer the case. It’s really about making decisions across departments… what does that look like for all those stakeholders in the company? And how do they manage and measure themselves against that every day?”
This is the silent revolution taking place within the best-managed builders and developers: various departments – land acquisition, development, sales, marketing, operations, warranty – are aligning not with technology, but with definitions.
- What counts as a start?
- What counts as a finished home?
- What counts as a completed plot?
- What counts as an orientation-ready home?
- What causes a variance purchase order?
- When does a lead become a prospect?
- When does a prospect become a sale?
If the definitions are clear, the data is clean. And when the data is clean, management becomes reality.
This is what the weekly-monthly-quarterly reporting model offers the regional builder CEO. It is not an analytical philosophy; it’s a simple, shared scoreboard. Variations, days in construction, quality checks, warranty claims, conversion rates, costs/budget, cash flow, house-level profits, warranty variances, product-level sales trends – everything is rooted in real-time accuracy, not stories or impressions.
Cecilian sees the same pattern among the top performers he advises.
“You want to make sure you get the most out of the investment in your software, and that the software within it can talk to each other,” he says. “Nothing is worse than investing in software… and the pieces don’t fit together.”
In 2025, the race is no longer who has the most systems, but who has the fewest blind spots. The companies that gain ground are the ones that see the cycle sooner and adapt faster.
This is why Cecilian’s insights on AI are so valid. He doesn’t sell magic. He warns leaders to avoid self-inflicted wounds.
As he puts it:
“AI is being used as a sidecar across departments…absolutely changing the way we work without a doubt. It’s creating net new efficiencies. It’s creating insights into your business in a way you wouldn’t have otherwise.”
But the prerequisite is data discipline. Without structured input, AI becomes noise.
His other important warning is one that many builders need to hear:
“What gets people excited is that they start using different types of AI tools and suddenly consider themselves a software developer or an engineer.”
If the sector has learned anything from the last cycle, it is that shortcuts eventually emerge as burdens.
The real progress happens on the ground: clear reports, simple language, aligned systems, shared definitions and leaders who communicate without jargon.
Cecilian even goes deeper into the language itself. AI, he notes, responds best when the input is pure – down to the sentence level. As he puts it:
“The nerdy secret of AI… is the simplicity of language. Builder websites are very colorful and flowery. They are not simple. When I say basic, I’m talking like Dr. Seuss: really, really simple language.”
With a nod to Peter Drucker, he noted that good management is not just a matter of numbers. As he and Dr. Seuss might agree, quantitative measurements are only a necessary path to the real goal: understanding.
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