Michael Waters is the chief executive officer of the Minto Group.
In recent years, the real estate sector has faced some of the most significant challenges in the industry’s history – from the global drive to reduce carbon emissions to the acute housing shortage crisis in Canada. These challenges have tested our resilience, but they’ve also provided opportunities for innovation, growth and leadership.
At Minto Group, these challenges have prompted us to look closely at what we’ve done and how we’ve worked as a business over the past 70 years, and how we want to advance into the future. Since the Greenberg family founded Minto in 1955, the company has grown from a small home-building business in Ottawa to a major real estate developer and property manager in Canada and in parts of the United States. Last year, we hit a milestone with the delivery of our 100,000th home.
About 10 years ago, Minto began the transition from a family-led business to one with an outsider CEO and largely independent board of directors. While this move was critical to the longevity of the company, we knew we needed to do more to future-proof our business.
Future-proofing is no longer an option for any organization looking to achieve and maintain high-performance in the face of continuous business and market disruptions. A 2019 report by the management consulting firm Deloitte describes these disruptions as “no longer an interruption to the pattern, but the pattern itself – a consistent, ongoing reality.”
Given this new reality, the ability of organizations to future-proof isn’t reliant on their ability to plan and manage change. Instead, according to the Deloitte report, “it is rooted in the ability to achieve performance goals in a state of constant change.”
One way we’re boosting this ability at Minto is by building a culture of innovation. I’m well aware of how often business leaders and people managers mouth these buzzwords, to the point where they’re almost meaningless. That’s why we backed our commitment to innovation with a clear framework and an actionable plan.
Our framework for innovation is based on the simple premise that people are more likely to generate and share ideas when they feel empowered. We know that the best ideas often come from the people who are closest to the work, so we invest heavily in our teams, giving them the resources and autonomy they need to experiment and innovate.
In recent years we established an Innovation Team with membership from all our divisions that collaborates with external partners, including engineers and sustainability experts, to test new building materials and sustainable technologies. This allows our teams to explore and refine ideas that can have a real impact on the way we build and manage our properties. For instance, we are testing exterior cladding with embedded photovoltaic cells that passively generate electricity to power the home and feed back into the grid and exploring the use of mass timber construction in certain structures.
We also introduced sustainability hackathons that bring together building owners, engineers, suppliers and municipal officials to study specific buildings and identify the best opportunities for improving energy efficiency and reducing greenhouse gas emissions. These collaborative sessions are vital for developing the deep retrofits needed for older buildings – a significant part of Canada’s existing housing stock that must be adapted to meet today’s environmental standards.
These projects demonstrate our commitment to developing innovative, sustainable solutions that address both the environmental and affordability challenges in our sector. The push for decarbonization and the need for affordable housing are only going to intensify, and the real estate industry must be prepared.
Our future-proofing efforts must also address the changing demographic makeup of this country and what that means to housing. According to Statistics Canada, more than 7.8 million Canadians – or close to 20 per cent of the total population – are aged 65 or older. A growing number of Canadians live alone: 4.4 million in 2021, compared to just 1.7 million in 1981. At the same time, the number of multigenerational households has also grown dramatically, reaching almost 442,000 in 2021 – a 50-per-cent increase from 2001 levels.
Minto has been keeping a close eye on these trends and responding with innovative housing solutions. Some of our recent community projects, for example, feature flexible floor plan options to allow for “in-law suites.”
To solve the problems of today, we need solutions that address immediate issues while also anticipating the challenges of tomorrow. By empowering our teams, collaborating with industry partners and investing in sustainable solutions, we are building a resilient, future-proofed organization that can adapt to new realities today and into the future.
This column is part of Globe Careers’ Leadership Lab series, where executives and experts share their views and advice about the world of work. Find all Leadership Lab stories at tgam.ca/leadershiplab and guidelines for how to contribute to the column here.