Voices of Design Leadership. Ken Sanders

Ken Sanders and Duyi Han, Gensler San Francisco, December 2014. Photo Credit: Ken Sanders.

I was fortunate to have played a small role in Duyi’s early work experience and I value our friendship to this day. Both emerged from my curiosity to answer a simple question: “who built that?” It is a simple reminder that exceptional talent – and new friends – can be found in any place at any time.

      Some design leaders prefer to recruit from selected universities or seek specific types of work experience or firms on candidate resumes. That is perfectly reasonable. At the same time, keep your eyes and ears wide open. Avoid shrinking your recruiting pools too tightly, which can lead to inbreeding of experience and perspective. Open closed doors. Look behind curtains. Be curious! Those are the ways in which you will find talented young professionals like Duyi Han.

      The second story was told to me by the late Ed Friedrichs. Ed joined Gensler in 1969 and served as Gensler’s President and CEO for eight years until his retirement in 2003. Where did Art Gensler accidentally meet Ed for the first time? In a bar.

      A key recurring theme: diverse ecosystems of talent are the healthiest and most resilient. Always look far and wide to grow and nourish them.

      Design + Business Synergy

      You can only be a great design firm if you’re a great business. You can focus only on design for a short period of time, but if you want long-term excellence, you have to also accomplish business excellence as well.

      – Phil Harrison

      During my tenure at ZGF during the 1990s, my Partner Bob Packard and I visited the University of Oregon School of Architecture annually to participate as guest speakers in a course on practice management. Together, we represented a “large” firm, while a different architect each year represented a “small” firm. And each year, the small-firm architect would say to the students something like: “Well, you already know you didn’t choose architecture to make money. You have a higher calling.”

Bob and I were always disheartened to hear this. We would politely offer the students an alternative perspective: it is definitely possible – although not guaranteed – to earn a good living and make the world a better place through design at the same time. The two aspirations are not mutually exclusive; on the contrary, each strongly reinforces the other. But it begins with belief. If one believes it is not possible to make a good living as an architect, then it is not possible. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

      To this day, many architecture and design students appear to be influenced by this false belief. Even among some experienced design leaders, a stubborn attitude exists that it is simply not possible, or too difficult, to be an exceptional design firm and a strong business at the same time. This attitude shows up in an old joke where one architect asks another: “What would you do if you won a million dollars in the lottery?” To which the other architect responds, “Well, I guess I would keep being an architect until it was all gone.”

      Fortunately, every firm I worked for during my career have leaders who understand that good business reinforces good design, and vice versa. Together they create synergy: a whole greater than the sum of its parts. As a design leader, it is critically important that everyone in your firm understands this.

      Is there day-to-day tension between the two? Within project teams? With clients? With consultants? Of course. And leadership decisions that resolve that tension require thoughtful judgment. But tension notwithstanding, design leaders must start with an attitude that achieving excellence in both is essential to long-term success.

      Striking a Balance

      Having said that, what is the right balance between business and design? One of the earliest frameworks to answer that question was proposed in the 1987 book Success Strategies for Design Professionals, authored by Weld Coxe, Nina Hartung, Hugh Hochberg, Brian Lewis, David Maister, Robert Mattox, and Peter Piven. Published by Krieger Publishing Company, the book introduced the concept of “SuperPositioning” to architecture and engineering firms.

      The authors’ SuperPositioning matrix offered a tool for firms to evaluate their Project Organizational Values (Idea, Service, or Delivery) on one axis, their Firm Organizational Values (Practice-Centered Businesses and Business-Centered Practices) on the other axis, and assess their positioning on the matrix relative to competitors.

      Today, the competitive bar is much higher. Idea, Service, and Delivery are table stakes now. What still varies between successful firms is the balance between Practice and Business. In general, Practice-Centered Businesses are led by professionals who have a qualitative bottom line, based on the quality, impact, and recognition of their work. Business-Centered Practices, on the other hand, are led by professionals who have a quantitative bottom line and are more focused on financial rewards for the firm and themselves.

These are not binary choices but instead endpoints on a spectrum. As a conceptual framework, the spectrum between the two can inform a healthy dialogue about where your firm resides today, where it seeks to reside in the future, and the strategies required to move along the spectrum in one direction or the other.

      There is no judgment here, by the way. Successful firms exist in a variety of locations along the practice-business spectrum. Firms such as AECOM or Jacobs, both publicly held corporations that have grown primarily through acquisition, are closer to Business-Centered Practices. A firm such as MASS Design Group, a non-profit dedicated to offering design services to the underserved, is closer to a Practice-Centered Business.

      Do AECOM and Jacobs care about design quality? Of course. Does MASS Design Group care about business success? Absolutely. If a firm focuses too much attention on one at the expense of the other, it will not survive very long. The question is one of proportion. In your firm, how does the balance between business and practice influence your pursuit of clients and projects, your recruitment and retention of talent, and your day-to-day decision-making?

      If your answer is that both are equally important, you are marketing to yourself. Design leaders and their teams make decisions every day that sacrifice revenue or margins for the benefit of design quality. Other decisions sacrifice design quality in exchange for improved financial performance. The issue is organizational awareness and judgment. What are the trade-offs? And how are such decisions made at your firm?

      Simple Questions

      To determine where your firm resides on the practice-business spectrum, some simple questions can assist. For example, is your firm willing to provide services as Architect-of-Record (AOR) or Associate Architect in the absence of a significant design role? Among firms with leaders profiled in this book, Gensler and HKS do, while ZGF and Skidmore, Owings & Merrill do not.

      Again, there is no judgment here. Firms who undertake AOR-only services believe that in some circumstances – beyond the revenue and margins generated – such work provides one or more tangible benefits. These might include developing a relationship with an important new client, or establishing a foothold in a geography, market, or project type where the firm’s reputation is underdeveloped. Firms who avoid AOR-only services, on the other hand, generally seek to avoid diluting their design reputation and prefer to keep their technical talent focused on their own design work. Both perspectives are valid. But firms willing to undertake AOR-only services tend to sit closer to the Business-Centered Practice edge of the scale, compared to peers that do not.

      Another question: to what degree is your firm strongly invested in the craft of design? Craft demands attention to detail and thoughtful study. That takes time and time is money. Business-Centered Practices generally hold a more pragmatic view about what level of craft and detail is required to achieve strong design. They are more willing to delegate more detail decision-making to third parties such as fabricators and subcontractors.

      Externally, the media reinforces a Business-Centered Practice definition of success by publishing regional, national, and international lists ranking top firms by revenue.