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I pay my respects and acknowledge all Traditional Custodians of Country and on whose land I live and work. I recognise their continuing connection to land, waters and culture. I pay my respects to their Elders past and present.
Always was, always will be.

Hi, it's Michael and welcome to this week's useletter.

It's the newsletter that's useful. Focussing on your future not my past.

Most of my readers would have received an email from me requesting 2 minutes of your time to answer three questions around practice challenges and leadership.

Despite the survey going to architects in a variety of positions in different sizes of practice, I assumed that there would be a relatively common range of themes to emerge.

I was wrong.

After all, that’s the purpose of asking these questions - to challenge assumptions.

I was blown away by the breadth and variety of responses.

It wasn’t a very scientific survey, but the results are still insightful.

For the next couple of useletters, I thought it might be useful to do something a little different and discuss the responses from the survey.

There’s 6 in total. The first 3 come loosely under the the banner of the business of practice. The second three are the challenges of being an architect. And so to the business at hand…

I got you

Michael

PS: Interestingly there's a connection back to the last useletter: 8 Minutes,

and it's all about asking for help.

PPS: if you did fill out my survey (thank you), you might have already received my summary - if not it's on it's way. Note I have have taken a slightly different approach to responding to the results here. You might want to skip to my My thoughts at the end.

The challenges of practice

My guess (not assumption) is architect who runs a practice has experienced all of these challenges at one time or another.

Finding Work and Managing Workflow

Winning enough projects or clients to keep team and practice financially viable.
The lumpiness of practice: managing fluctuating workflow and stop-start nature of projects.
Establishing and maintaining smooth project delivery and resourcing teams appropriately.

Getting Paid Fairly

Getting properly compensated for value and creativity provided.
Withstanding constant downward pressure on fees.
Educating clients on architect's role and getting suitably paid for design services.

Running the Business

Managing the business side where architects could acquire better skills and training.
Cashflow and financial management
Maintaining compliance with regulations and staying across changes and updates.

My thoughts

Every one of these challenges require skills architects aren’t taught (with the exception of the ninth on compliance). For the most part they’re business skills that could be addressed by a business manager or coach. There’s some marketing and human skills (especially communication) required in there too.

Which raises the question, why don’t architects get help with their business, battling on despite the challenges they know they face? I include myself in this too - it took us years to directly seek help with the challenges our practice faced, despite our awareness of the shortcomings.

I don’t have a definitive answer, but I have some guesses and they're about the stories architects tell themselves:

“This is just the way it is in architectural practice.” - wrong.
“I can work it out and solve these challenges without help.” - wrong so far.
“There’s a lot of architects who address these challenges without help.” - really?
“I can’t afford it.” - can you afford not to get help?
“I don’t want to admit that I’ve failed here.” - there’s no shame in this. It’s not a personal failure it’s a failure of the profession to admit this too.

The thing about all these stories is that they prevent architects from taking action. And until that happens nothing will change. (I know you know this - but have you acted?)

So if you’re facing one or more of these challenges, what's the first, smallest action you can take to address your challenge?

You got this.

PS: Whenever you’re ready,
there's 3 ways I can help.

How to Save Time

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When speaking to countless architects about the challenges of practice, the singular and universal obstacle they all face is not having enough time.

Save me time

Saying No

5 key concepts and strategies on saying no

How many things have you said yes to in the last week or two and immediately regretted? Saying no is a skill. It requires emotional intelligence. And it can be learnt.

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