About

In every collaboration, there is an opportunity for the outcome to be greater than the sum of the individual contributors - and thereby enabling an enlightening and transformative process. Unfortunately, the result is often suboptimal. Lean design and construction techniques, agile development, and the use of leading edge technologies can improve the likelihood of improved outcomes, but it is ultimately the behaviors of individuals and teams that determines their succcess. The deep understanding and deliberate focus on behaviors - this is what enables the real alchemy of collaboration to take place...

....and where we can realize our full collective potential.

Guiding Principles for The Collective Potential

Behaviors deliver results. Although tools and processes can help encourage optimal outcomes, it is the resulting behaviors that determine success or failure.
Learning by doing. We will learn more from one day of testing an idea in practice than from several weeks of debating it in theory.
Universal truths, customized approach. There are a few fundamental basic principles to successful teams and organizations, however the approach and strategy to realizing those principles needs to customized to the culture, current state, and unique characteristics of each environment.

Andreas Floros Phelps, Ph.D., P.E.

Founder and Principal

Andreas Phelps is principal and founder of The Collective Potential, a San Francisco-based practice that serves as a catalyst for change in the construction industry. The Collective Potential drives change by enabling: 1) project-based learning, 2) development of high potentials into master integrators, and 3) strategic transformation of organizations focused on lean delivery and continuous improvement.

Andreas’ background in construction over the last 22 years is wide and varied. He started his career working with building science, design, construction administration, and failures investigation for exterior cladding systems. This gave him a unique and holistic perspective of how complex systems are designed, constructed, and perform. This type of integrated systems thinking also served as a basis for his graduate studies which tied together organizational behavior, management science, and information technology to understand optimized information flow in complex teams. This research served as the foundation for his more recent work with understanding and proactively managing the social, technical, and technological aspects of complex project teams and complex organizations to enable greater productivity and innovation. He has also published the following books: “The Sacred Practice of Integration” (2024), “Tiny House Lean: Insights on Life, Lean, and Organizational Transformation” (2021), and "The Collective Potential: A Holistic Approach to Managing Information Flow in Collaborative Design and Construction Environments” (2012).