Voices of Design Leadership. Ken Sanders

Gensler, reaching across studio borders to find the most relevant expertise is wired into the firm’s collaborative culture. What I did was a natural act; I was swimming with the cultural current, not against it. Not surprisingly, the distributed team delivered terrific results. My contribution as a leader was not to design, but to find and bring together the best people in the firm to solve a problem that had never been solved before.

      It is important to point out that the collective expertise of the team far exceeded my own. Through my prior collaborations with Google and CitizenM, I had worked with prefabricated systems and off-site manufacturing. And as part of my technology oversight role at Gensler, I was knowledgeable about 3D printing technology and computational geometry tools. But I lacked the deep expertise of the specialized talent that was brought together.

      Importantly, each team member cared less about personal credit and cared more about being part of a collaborative team producing innovative design work. My role as a T-shaped leader was straightforward: understand the clients’ goals, connect the dots, assemble the right talent, establish guardrails, set a strong direction, and otherwise get out of the way.

      The Four R’s

      Out of clutter, find simplicity.

      – Albert Einstein

The Four R’s is an extended version of a framework developed by my friend and mentor Ted Hall, a former Principal and Director of the global management consulting firm McKinsey & Company. At one of the world’s most demanding professional service partnerships, Ted was the youngest Principal, youngest Director, and one of the youngest Office Managers ever elected at McKinsey. He co-founded McKinsey Global Institute (MGI) and later served as its Chairman.

      As a consultant to Gensler in the 1990s, Ted also helped define the firm’s studio structure and one-firm-firm philosophy, both of which remain key components of its cultural foundation to this day. He later served for many years as an outside advisor to Gensler’s Board of Directors.

      During that time, Ted shared with us a leadership model he described as The Three R’s. He explained that early in their career, service professionals are primarily focused on Results: meeting deadlines, keeping promises, and earning the trust of their colleagues and clients as a reliable individual. Over time, they begin to build a network of Relationships with colleagues, partners, and clients – a “relationship tree,” as Gensler co-CEO Andy Cohen describes it – that brings work in the door and helps grow the firm. Over time, as relationships are developed and a strong track record is established, Reputations are earned by the individual and the firm.

      Although reputation is often used interchangeably with brand, from my perspective they are different. Brand is essential for selling products that are inherently difficult to differentiate in the minds of buyers. Think of beverages, toothpaste, or laundry detergent. These types of commodity products depend much more heavily on brand to influence purchasing decisions.

      In the world of professional services, however, the word reputation seems more appropriate. Can a design firm enhance their brand through social media, marketing, and public relations? Yes. But professional reputation is more important. It is directly influenced by the day-to-day behavior of design leaders and the memorable experiences they provide to their colleagues, partners, and clients.

      What damages a reputation? Unreliable delivery is one way. Poor design is another. But individual reputations are also damaged by personal behavior contrary to the values held by the firm they represent, including unethical or illegal behavior that becomes known to the public.⁴ Reputations take a long time to develop and are also very fragile.

      Adding Resilience

      The leadership framework of Results, Relationships, and Reputations has since been advocated by other management consultants,⁵ but in my mind, Ted Hall deserves the credit. My contribution is to add a Fourth R: Resilience. It is an important word with multiple meanings.

      First, resilience conveys a design firm’s commitment to sustainability: addressing climate change, minimizing negative environmental impacts of the built environment, and strengthening local communities. Today these are no longer capabilities, they are fundamental design values.

Second, the word addresses the resilience of an organization: maintaining a healthy balance sheet that can withstand economic cycles, planning ahead for leadership succession, avoiding concentration of revenue among too few clients, and avoiding concentration of power among too few leaders. In this context, resilience is about building a self-governing, self-perpetuating firm for the long run.

      Third, it speaks to the emotional resilience of leaders: adapting to stressful situations, overcoming setbacks, and maintaining personal health and well-being. It is about work/life balance and the importance of taking time off to exhale and reenergize. The traits of emotional resilience include self-awareness, self-empathy, optimism, a willingness to acknowledge and learn from mistakes, and a healthy sense of humor.

      Virtually every activity that takes place within a design firm can be connected to Results, Relationships, Reputation, and Resilience. As an organizing framework, The Four R’s can be used to evaluate and prioritize proposed initiatives and investments. The first question to ask when considering a new idea: which of the Four R’s does it support and how will it create value for the firm or its clients? If the answer is unclear, proceed with caution.

      Lifelong Learning

      A wise teacher learns in the midst of teaching; a wise student teaches in the midst of learning.

      –Mollie Marti⁶

      Most leading design firms invest in formal learning programs for their talent. Professional organizations such as AIA and IIDA also require annual continuing education in order to maintain membership. Such internal and external programs can supplement the organic learning that takes place within project teams, and each can be calibrated to the clients, markets, geographies, and project types with which a firm is engaged.

      Lifelong learning is more than curricula, however. It is the joy of curiosity and a desire to constantly learn from your clients, colleagues, friends, even the kid who lives across the street. As Austin Kleon wrote in Steal Like an Artist: 10 Things Nobody Told You About Being Creative, “if you ever find that you’re the most talented person in the room, you need to find another room.”

      Personally, I enjoy the moments when someone changes my opinion and I always let them know it. I want people around me to feel comfortable and rewarded in challenging and influencing my perspectives. It is an important way that I learn, and I openly encourage it.

      As a leader, how you react to opinions different than your own directly affects how frequently they will be shared with you. And design leaders need diverse opinions and perspectives. It does not mean you need to agree with them, but your decisions will be better informed and you will gain greater confidence in the intended outcomes.

      Generational Technology

      As Alan Kay famously said, “technology is anything invented after you were born.” To each new generation, the tools and methods considered by the prior generation to be technology are just a normal, day-to-day part of life. For my grandparents, the telephone was technology. For my parents, television was technology. For my generation, personal computers and the Internet are technologies. For my children, none of them are. Compared to the prior, each new generation is unafraid of technology because to them, it is not. It is just how the world works.

A personal reminder took place during a trip to Brazil six years ago. My wife Regina and I were enjoying lunch in São Paulo with our extended family, including our niece Giulia, who was six years old at the time. Although the Apple Watch had not yet been introduced in Brazil, I had purchased my first one in the US a few months earlier and happened to be wearing it that day.

      Giulia noticed my new watch and