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Hi! I'm Michael.
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Welcome to this week's useletter.
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The newsletter that's useful. Focussed on your future not my past.
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It’s currently school holidays and a couple of days ago I took my daughter to our local bouldering gym. She was keen to master a couple of climbs before they were reset.
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She’s been having lessons for the past few years. I was super impressed with how far she'd come. It had been a while since I’d observed her closely. She’d really picked up some good technique and confidence.
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Despite my limited climbing experience (and skills), I was able to do harder climbs.
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Not because I’m a better climber. I’m definitely not.
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But because the climbs are set for adults and there were just some moves that were far more challenging for her than for me.
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So I've been reflecting...
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Sometimes our limitations are not internal, but external.
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My daughter persisted. She placed no internal limitations on herself and increased the possibility of beating the external ones.
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And there's an analogy in it...
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We can’t possibly know how the landscape of architectural practice may be changed by technology, climate change, legislators, etc. What we can do is our best to be future ready, agile and adaptable, in the face of challenging 'climbs'.
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As I’ve been pondering this of late, I’ve been playing with AI forms as a first step in assessing a practice’s future readiness. There’s limitations in it - I’m using the a form tool (which is in beta) in a way that it’s not entirely intended. It’s an experiment. I’d love you to try it out and let me know your thoughts.
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At the very least it might be entertaining and a little useful.
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It should only take around 5 minutes or so. It’s here:
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In the meantime, I’m also writing a long form article based on my thinking. I’ve got another small extract for you this fortnight.
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PS: I’m going to collate all the information I gather from the form responses and prepare a report about the profession’s future readiness. It’s all confidential, no names, no quotes, all secure. Every person that fills out the form will receive a copy - assuming I get a reasonable number of responses. So there’s some motivation for you! Feel free to share around.
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Strategic planning systems
Strategic planning within and for your architectural practice, should not be limited to being a cursory exercise you do annually or in reaction to a floundering practice. It should be a regular exercise of review, testing and rethinking strategies for you practice as new information comes to hand. I’d suggest strategies reviews be undertaken at a minimum every three months. Here's what you might consider in your reviews:
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- Looking to the future: What’s coming up that you might reasonably anticipate impacting your practice?
- Scenario development: What might happen and what’s the impact? and, How would you like it to play out?
- Rapid decision making: adopt Jeff Bezos’s decision-making process, make the reversible decision quickly. What are the decisions you need to make?
- Proactive market positioning: identify where work is diminishing, and then where there might be good opportunities for a practice with your skill base. Consider work that’s outside traditional architectural offerings, you might establish something no-one else is offering.
Practices that are able to make quick (in less than a month) significant strategic decisions will always have a competitive advantage.
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The culture of practice workshops
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Workshops ending with better practice
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Master practice skills, leadership and elevate your team’s culture.
Build a more efficient and adaptable practice, with a plan for the future.
Level up team skills to amplify practice capabilities, wellbeing and passion.ion.
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Free 45 minute Practice Clarity Consultation
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recent useful blog posts...
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The tension between preparing for the future and knowing the future is a space in which interesting insights can emerge.
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An edited version of my talk to the APEN Symposium for the session - Professional ways of being: Embracing a future (architectural) self
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It might be the time to become the leader you need.
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“If I wanted to implement something new into my game, I’d see it and try incorporating it immediately. I wasn’t scared of missing, looking bad, or being embarrassed. That’s because I always kept the end result, the long game, in my mind.”
- Kobe Bryant
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