It stands reiterating…
An architecture practice’s culture is the most critical factor in establishing and sustaining adaptability. In other words, you can’t focus on the future with a poor culture.
As I’ve previously written, technology, systems and strategies are all vital in practice adaptability, but they’re not the most important thing. They’ll all fail in the face of a poor culture.
So let’s look at what makes a practice culture for change.
Future focus is not only about embracing change, but also about supporting it and actively seeking it out. That requires a truly adaptive practice culture. One where experimenting and identifying opportunities to cultivate a future focussed more agile practice, is an intrinsic practice value.
This isn’t just about culture, this is an issue of leadership. The practice culture is established, shaped and sustained by the leaders within the practice. And when I say leaders, that’s everyone in the practice making the choice to lead, no matter title or position. That’s those team members who support others – individuals, teams or organisations – in doing their best work and being their best selves. That’s leadership, and it’s a choice.
Nurturing practice adaptation requires team members to actively come up with ideas, run experiments and recognise failure is learning – with failure one step closer to success. A practice with this posture of experimentation for adaptation, failure and iteration, requires psychological safety. In a psychologically safe practice, everyone feels safe to speak up with ideas and insights, without fear of humiliation or punishment. Team members are supported in taking risks. Psychological safety means everyone feels respected and accepted.
Curiosity here is a key skill, value and philosophy.
It begins by asking questions:
- Why is this not working?
- What can we do better?
- What else might we try?
and so on.
It requires embracing new ideas, experimenting knowing they might not work. Being curious to learn and understand more as a result of trying. It’s a culture prioritising curiosity over certainty, motivated by an experimental mindset.
When all’s said and done here, a good culture works as a team. Nurturing and developing a more future focussed practice through co-design and collaboration. That might include working to identify problems and coming up with possible answers. Or by being curious and designing experiments together in order to come up with solutions for a better (adapted) practice.
And so to return to a regular little challenge I put to my clients and in my writing…
What’s one small experiment you can try this week?
One with a future focus for your practice.
Go go go!
Previous articles on future readiness:
8 Systems to future proof your architecture practice
6 myths of adaptable architecture practice
AI image generated in Canva
