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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! I'm Michael.

Welcome to this week's useletter.

The newsletter that's useful. Focussed on your future not my past.

Hey legend!

Let's get into this fortnight's thinkings...

As long time readers would know, I consider empathy to be a key leadership skill. And with it comes the recognition that everyone has differing perspectives and varied bias’s.

For example,

As a leadership coach, generally I’ll bias towards seeing many challenges faced by architectural practices as an issue of leadership. (Not all. But many.)

Experimenting to further insights and ideas around practice future readiness, I plugged my recent post, 6 myths of adaptable architecture practice, into ChatGPT, prompting it to rewrite it in the style of a few expert fav's: Seth Godin, Adam Grant, Simon Sinek and Brené Brown. It was fascinating to see how the ideas could be represented quite differently and with substantially different perspectives. It was entirely unexpected and very educational. FYI: ChatGPT astonished with passably convincing versions.

Indeed, they were so good it was tempting to publish them all. Each had a generous helping of brilliance from the different perspectives of Seth, Adam, Simon and Brené. But I'll leave that for you to try out.

I loved the insights I gained from each. The bigger lesson for me, however, was to never forget how our own perspectives shape the way we see the world. Don't forget it!

Then I had another fun thought…

How would Douglas Adams write about this?

And ChatGPT also did OK capturing his voice too.

One of the things I love most about Douglas's writing is his perspective. How he delivers a brutal insight wrapped in humour. So for fun I'm sharing *Douglas's* alternate version of 6 myths of an adaptable architectural practice.

(Don't panic, it's a little more digestible than a Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster!)

I got you

PS: If you're interested in playing around with the AI tools I built as an experiment, here's a little reminder of what you can try...

ArchFuture: Future-proof your architectural practice. Assess your firm's readiness across technology, business models, sustainability, and collaboration with our comprehensive evaluation tool.

ArchCoach: is an AI-powered coaching assistant I developed. Designed specifically for architects to help you think through challenges and improve your practice.

Don’t Panic

(But You Might Want to Redesign Your Practice)

A slightly alarming but mostly harmless useletter for architects with a future

Let’s begin with a small but vital clarification:

This is not an emergency.

You don’t need to abandon your studio, retreat into the mountains, or live in a geodesic dome eating lentils until the disruption passes.

This is just a polite note from the universe (via a useletter) suggesting: you may want to rethink how you work.

Because while your architecture may be world-class, your practice might still be running on the equivalent of dial-up internet, caffeine, and inherited assumptions from 1986.

Now, don’t feel bad. Most architecture firms were designed the same way the Vogons designed interstellar highways: badly, and with far too many forms. Nobody meant for it to be this convoluted. It just... happened. Like barnacles, or open-plan offices.

The problem isn’t your work. It’s the system doing the work.

Here’s what’s quietly true: most architecture practices weren’t designed at all. They emerged. One job led to another, one hire became a team, and suddenly, you’re managing a semi-feral business model held together by duct tape, goodwill, and 72 unread Slack threads.

Meanwhile, the world is changing.

Clients expect more. Procurement makes less sense than a bowl of custard at a sandstorm. AI is redesigning bathrooms. Your newest team member is somehow also your IT support. And everyone is asking whether four-day weeks are possible, when five-day billing barely works.

This isn’t a crisis. It’s an opportunity.

If you’ve ever wished your practice ran smoother, felt lighter, or didn’t rely on one heroic individual with seven job titles and no sleep, then congratulations. You’ve identified a design brief.

Your practice is your next design challenge.

So what does adaptability look like (and is it terribly expensive)?

No. You don’t need a rebrand, a kombucha tap, or an AI strategy with a PowerPoint deck full of frightened buzzwords.

Adaptability starts small:

Running a quick pilot project with different delivery roles.
Testing a new fee model instead of the ancient “pray it’s enough” method.
Asking your team what actually works—and what makes them weep quietly in the toilet cubicle.

You wouldn’t submit a design without feedback and iteration. So why run a business without it?

Adaptability isn’t betrayal. It’s creative self-defence.

And in a profession that insists on heroic problem-solving for clients, it’s not unreasonable to suggest: maybe, just maybe, apply some of that brilliance to yourselves.

Common excuses and convenient fictions (filed under “things to quietly retire”)

“We’re too busy to change.”

You’re also too busy to burn out, go broke, or spend your life duct-taping broken systems. Yet here we are.
“We’re doing fine.”

Success now doesn’t guarantee success later. See: Blockbuster. Or the dinosaurs.
“Change will ruin our culture.”

If a minor shift in systems threatens your culture, it wasn’t a culture, it was a fragile truce.
“We’ll adapt when we have to.”

That’s like saying you’ll build the lifeboat after the iceberg says hello.

Final thought: Bring a towel.

In The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, the most valuable item you can carry is a towel. Not because of what it is, but because of what it enables. It signals preparedness. Adaptability. A certain scruffy sort of wisdom.

An adaptable architecture practice is a towel. It helps you stay dry when procurement rains weirdly. It gives you something to hang onto when the future spins too fast. And, most importantly, it lets you say to your team, clients, and uncertain industry:

“Don’t panic. We’ve got this. We’ve redesigned ourselves to thrive here.”

Which, when you think about it, is the most architectural move you can make.

You got this.

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