Shattering the Meme

For the third annual novena at the Patron Saint of Architecture, I want to help you to see all of the unlimited potential you have and start putting it to work for you.  Novenas are an annual chance to look in-depth at issues that affect how we operate in the world.  In past novenas we looked at how we can truly make a difference in the world, and how to overcome the things that drain our creativity.  This year, we will center around all of the things that we may not even know are holding us back, so that you can shatter those memes and become all that you were meant to be.

Memes, those ideas or beliefs that pervade our culture, are hard to avoid.  Like frogs in the pot, we don’t even know that they’re affecting us, they just seem to be the way it is.  As creative people we are especially susceptible to memes because there’s a certain voodoo around the act of creation.  When your work involves acts for which there is no right answer, you can only respond by evoking memes. The memes of a culture and its expectations, the memes of professional conduct, the memes of what a relationship with a client is supposed to look like.  But what if the meme is wrong? 

We can see the short-term effects of memes in viral internet content.  People get caught up in the topic, idiomatic speech may even be affected.  Then it passes.  Observing these micormemes allows us to see how something can be incredibly relevant due to factors taking place at the moment then pass away like a fad. I want to try to look at metamemes in much the same way.  That’s a lot harder to do.  Even if you can see that there may be something beyond, you might not see why it’s even in your interests to pursue it. 

Live outside the fishbowl
It’s important to realize that memes can operate on two different levels.  The horizontal level is what we absorb from our peers and other surroundings. Those memes can be, but aren’t always, easier to identify.  The more insidious memes are the ones that operate on a vertical level through cultural inheritance.  It’s what you learned about the culture of your profession from your professors and mentors, what your employers and co-workers have enforced, even what your parents thought.  If memes are all around us and have helped to form our beliefs about who we are and what’s possible in our lives and careers, that means we are not necessarily aware of them.  In this nine week series, we are going to bust through some common memes and shatter all of the limitations they hold.  I warn you, this will be both challenging and scary.  Your first reaction will be to disagree, but I ask you to sit with it and really think about why you might be unwilling to question a given issue.  We may not arrive at the same idea for shattering it, but just the realization that there could be a different approach is powerful.

Change the Equation
Believe it or not, most of us live our lives as if everything we encounter were a basic algebra problem.  We use the formulas we know to solve for x (ex. 6 + x = 10).  Unfortunately, solving for x means you have used a meme to eliminate the other variables, in our example that would be the number six or even the outcome, the number 10.  This very straightforward approach to problem solving often causes us to have tunnel vision about achieving outcomes.  If you have ever become frustrated about why you could be doing “all the right things” and still not get the desired outcome, you know what I am talking about.  I want to challenge you to think of things in a different way:  what do you really want the outcome to be?  Not the outcome you think you should achieve, but the one you really want.  Then, work backwards to see how you could achieve it.  Allow there to be more variables and less givens about the situation.  Use a little calculus, or even some differential equations.

Enter the World of Innovative Transformation
Innovative transformation is about challenging yourself to have a game-changing response to the opportunities in your life, instead of your automatic one.  How often do you start a new project the same way you start every other project?  I’m willing to bet you have all kinds of reasons why this is the best or only way to approach things.  You might be open to tweaking your process, but probably feel resistant to throwing it out wholesale.  But what if you did?  Silence all those limiting beliefs and just think about that.  What could happen?  Now think about all of the little things, the small and large decisions you make every single day.  Instead of making them on auto-pilot, start being conscious of them, and start asking yourself what assumptions are tied up in your typical actions.  Change your thinking and change your life.

For the next eight posts, I’m going to present common metamemes that we all deal with and give you strategies for looking at them in a whole different way.  I hope you’ll share your thoughts and experiences as you work to shatter each one.  The Patron community supports you and I know that you are unlimited.

The Limiting Beliefs of Architects

As a profession dedicated to making our clients’ vision a reality, we do a lousy job of realizing our

vision for our own careers. Maybe that’s because so few architects have taken the time to have a career vision. They think they do, because they have embraced the thinking of their teachers, mentors, co-workers and friends. It’s a surprisingly pessimistic and monolithic point of view for a profession that prides itself on its creativity. As I was working on my book, and thinking about my career coaching sessions over the last few years, I realized time and again how much of the problem we have in getting fulfillment from our careers comes from limiting beliefs. These beliefs are so deeply a part of our “architect culture” that we don’t even recognize them. I teach people how to realize their passion, and the biggest challenge I encounter when working with them are these experiential lessons which are reinforced throughout our careers unless we break the pattern:

Competition is the path to success
We are primed from our days in the studio during college to compete with one another. To believe that there is a winner, and by default, losers. The RFP and interview process underscore this idea, leading firms to undercut one another in a race to the bottom. This commoditizes our work, which causes the design process and resulting building to have less value to both the client and society as a whole. It is a mindset of lack, believing that there is only so much pie to go around, and we better do whatever it takes to get our piece. It leads us to settle for less than we deserve in terms of compensation and design effort, to focus on bringing service instead of true innovation.
Danger of this belief: you feel your time has no value.
Overcome it by thinking differently about what you do and why. Don’t accept the premise of winners and losers, instead focus on the unexpressed needs you see in the situation and how you are uniquely qualified to meet them.

It’s fame or shame
I recently read an article by Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic, where he makes the incredibly profound statement, “If you know it will work it isn’t creative.” How many firms actually embrace a culture of experimentation? Even the ones that do have a pretty low threshold for failure. No one thinks that a scientist working in the lab on experiment after experiment, each result building on the knowledge to improve the next experiment is a loser because it may take years, even decades to discover something. But in our “creative” profession, we grovel with our tail between our legs whenever the client or contractor finds fault with us. Paradoxically, we are always looking for the project and opportunity that will be our “big break,” while secretly stewing over the successes of our competition.
Danger of this belief: you are afraid to take risks.
Overcome it by taking a step back from the everyday steps in the process and start to look at the big picture. Ask why not more often and don’t be afraid to have, then fully vet, big ideas.

Being provocative means you are smart
No, it likely means you’re an out of touch pompous ass, who’s had a few brilliant ideas. Our “upbringing” as architects tends to reward those who are unconventional just for the sake of being unconventional. Maybe because we buy into that fame or shame mentality so much. The provocateur is usually trying to overcome the conditioned risk adversity by putting so much out there that people will start to feel that they are unenlightened clods trapped in conventional thinking if they shut down the ideas. Unfortunately, this approach only reinforces a negative stereotype and is rooted less in a willingness to help people think differently about their needs than it is about the provocateur’s desire to get attention.
Danger of this belief: solving the problem is not as important to you as making a statement.
Overcome it by investing more insight into your effort. I believe that big ideas are not only important but necessary. However, the idea needs to have relevance to the situation at hand and be tied to solving a problem. Even more important the big idea needs to feel inclusive and allow others on the design or user group team to build upon it.

You can’t get rich and be an architect
Oh, look how hard you’re working, you poor burned out thing. Procrastinating out of exhaustion until the rush of adrenaline at the eleventh hour gives you that flash of brilliance you need to triumphantly complete the task. This reinforces a competitive culture, where burning the candle at both ends is a badge of honor. There is a kind of nobility in being the misunderstood artiste engaged in a valiant fight against the system. The truth: All nighters were a bad idea back in school and they are an even worse idea once you enter the working world. Vision and clarity don’t visit the exhausted. What’s more, if you are working long, crazy hours, you likely are going off on your own instead of collaborating.
Danger of this belief: you believe that individual effort matters more than collaboration
Overcome it by working smarter. Engage your team both in and out of house. If someone else can do a task even 80% as well as you can, it’s worth delegating it to them. Be a mentor and seek out mentors of your own. You don’t have to do this alone, and the end result will be better than if you burn yourself out trying.

Our profession desperately needs to become a lot more introspective. We need to reposition ourselves for the future like we mean it if we want the relevance we so desperately claim to seek. So as you look over these limiting beliefs (and we are all guilty of all of them to some degree), ask yourself, “what’s holding you back?”
For a more in depth look at how you are limiting yourself and strategies to fearlessly pursue the career you really want, check out Career Crisis.  Let me know what you think and how it helps you unbind your creativity.

What’s your Mountain?

How is being an architect like scaling Mount Everest?  I always read accounts of climbers with a sort of sick fascination, part of me wondering what would ever possess anyone to take on this task.  You can’t even see very far from that high up, and your body is so ravaged by the lack of oxygen and extreme cold that you can’t hang out up there and enjoy it.  As someone who is not athletic and is proud of myself that I attend yoga class three times a week, I don’t have a refined appreciation for the physical.  Especially an extreme sport like mountain climbing. I didn’t see the appeal of putting your life on hold for nearly a year to train, then scale this mountain.  Why, why, I thought would anyone risk their life like this?  Why would they make themselves so uncomfortable, put their bodies through such a grueling experience?  I recently read Mark Inglis’s story of how he scaled Mt. Everest as a double amputee. Mark’s account helped me to see that it was about more than just the ego. 

It’s easy to take the concept of scaling Everest as a totally literal pursuit.  The man vs. nature plot at its finest.  But that would be getting it wrong.  You don’t climb the mountain to conquer the mountain.  You climb to conquer yourself. It’s about setting a challenge and devoting yourself single-mindedly to meeting that challenge with every resource of your physical, mental and spiritual being.  If you are going to climb Everest, you cannot let anything stand in your way, especially not yourself.  You clear out your life to train and then make the climb.  And then you let go, you work with, not against the mountain.  You respect its seasons, weather patterns and above all the advice of your guides.  Depending on the year, you may not make it up and the fact that by waiting, you live to make the attempt another time has to be enough.

So back to life as an architect.  What’s your Everest?  What big goal do you have that you would devote yourself to achieve?  What matters so much to who you are that you will make the time and the space to realize it?  If you don’t know, or came up with some wimpy goal like “get a promotion,” you are not alone.  Maybe just thinking along these lines made you feel slightly depressed because your career is so NOT going the way you hoped it would.  You may even be rolling your eyes right now and thinking that having a goal as big as yourself is as ridiculous as it is unattainable.

I’m here to tell you that it’s not.  You can have a career that is life-affirming because it reinforces your sense of purpose in this world.  But first, you have to be deeply in touch with what that purpose is.  You have to have a personal mission statement and a plan that includes steps you can do today that align you with that purpose.  You have to clear away all the fears and all of the rationalizations that are holding you back.  Like the mountain climber, you have to eliminate all the waster activities in your professional life that are not directly moving you towards your goals. 
As a reader of this blog, you aren’t content to have just an average career.  You want to make a difference.  You want to operate as an inspiration to the world.  And I want to help you get there.  In addition to my blog posts, I offer career coaching services that allow you to work with me one on one on your individual career quest.  I’m also so excited to announce that I will very shortly be publishing my first book, Career Crisis.  This book contains many of the strategies I use with my coaching clients, but it let’s you use my techniques and act as your own coach.  It’s not very long on purpose because it’s not meant to dictate, but to guide you.  You have to do the work, but if you do, I promise you’ll be amazed at the transformation you see in your career and in your life.

Find your career mountain and know that you can get to the top.  Get ready to challenge yourself to your greatest potential, to concentrate your efforts to a single purpose, to push through hardships, and finally, to stand up on that summit and say, “Yes, yes, I did it!”

Are you an Architectural Luddite?

Do you cling to the comfort of the way things are “supposed to be” as you compulsively align the objects on your desk?  Are you made uncomfortable when new practice paradigms are introduced, choosing first to disregard, then criticize them, only grudgingly adopting them when your clients say you have to?  On the innovation curve spectrum  you would rank as a laggard.  But you probably don’t see yourself that way.  You think that you are being smart by not jumping ahead as an early adopter of the latest trends.  You grouse about how the market is changing and everything is so much more competitive.  You really have no clue how to survive in this changing market, so you double down on the old way of doing things, you stay in your comfort zone and maybe feel really clever that you are making the same old presentations and decisions, but using digital technology.  Like the Luddites  resisting mechanization during the Industrial Revolution, you are futilely fighting change.  Is the new the predator of the old, or simply its evolution?  

The emperor has no clothes

Skills are transferable, habits and routines are not.  A creative mind set free knows no limits.  So ask yourself, are new paradigms that challenge your comfort zone really bad, or are they threatening to expose your own fears that you aren’t creative enough to handle the change?

A small reward is better than none

Sure in a red-ocean, highly competitive environment, there are still winners and losers.  In fact that’s the point- to eliminate competition at all costs.  But that also diminishes you because it undercuts the overall value not just of an old paradigm, but of who you are and why a client should work with you at all.  The next time you feel the urge to smugly declare “winning,” just think of Charlie Sheen.

It’s the new normal

This mindset, now pervading our culture, is just pathetic.  To think that you have to settle for living up to less than your full potential (and by transference your work and the effect it has on others) shortchanges society as a whole.  It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy of a future that doesn’t have to happen.  If you find yourself just settling, it’s time to start asking why you are holding on to processes and paradigms that are clearly not serving you.  No one can be innovative if they aren’t passionate and accepting a bleak fade into the abyss is hardly inspirational.

A great piece by Thomas Fridstein for Design Intelligence, “Adapting for Success in the New Practice Environment” exhorts us to embrace the opportunity that comes with change.  His tips for blowing up the old way we practice involve evaluating everything we do with fresh eyes:

1.      Look at the context of practice much as we would analyze the context of a project site

2.      Adapt for success by being, creative, client-focused, competent (and yes even with new technologies or design methods, Fridstein specifically mentions sustainability and BIM), cost-effective, collaborative and global.

3.      Design the design firm by looking at ways you can serve clients better while inspiring and nurturing your employees more.  Last century’s model with its pretext that you are lucky just to be working doesn’t cut it anymore (yes, he does bandy about the term “the new normal” to express the fact that change is here to stay.  I am choosing to forgive him for that because otherwise it’s an insightful piece).

As my friend, life coach Jane Scott Ashley once told me, “Life isn’t what’s happening while you cling for dear life to the trapeze you’re on.  It’s what happens when you let go so you can reach the next one.”

Buddy, can you spare a design?

Are you an idea-hoarder?  Do you hold back waiting for the most opportune project or presentation to share your best thoughts?  Worse, do you withhold your creativity for when you’ve locked into a contract? Perhaps the urge to compete is hardwired into us as a survival mechanism.  We see the world of design as a finite pie and feel that somehow maneuvering to prevent others from getting a piece means there will be more (or any) left for us.  I even had a boss who once said, “it’s not so much that we win the job, as that others lose.” 

I don’t even know where to begin on the shortsightedness of this kind of red ocean thinking.  What it really shows is a lack of belief in the compelling power of your ideas. Fear that they might be pirated away and someone else will profit from your inspiration. Instead of talking about ideas, we do what I like to call defensive marketing and attempt to show a prospective client how much we outrank the competition via any number of self-serving metrics.  This is your wake up call: they don’t care. Since your competition is probably making the same unfavorable comparisons with you, all praise or criticism become neutralized.  Clients will really select an architect based on their ideas, including those that can positively affect their processes and bottom line.

Ideas are valuable, but only when they are shared.  What you are sharing is your ability to listen, gather and synthesize information and creatively interpret it to make an environment:
Your ideas are what differentiate you
1.  They are the personal connection that shows a client that you get it
2.  They are what showcase your individual personality and likability (a very underestimated criteria for architect selection).
3.  They speak to your culture and work process more than any marketing lingo ever could.

Your ideas inspire your clients to dream bigger
1.  They ask clients to question their own assumptions
2.  They make someone think differently about a problem
3.  They help to define a problem in a clear, concise way (and maybe even shed light on the fact that the client is trying to solve the wrong problem).
4.  They show what is possible.

Your ideas grow, stretch and multiply when you share them
1.  They are a renewable resource. No matter how many ideas you share, your mind will make more
2.  They create a flow of energy and creativity that grows in value
3.  They are the key to access old markets run by old ideas
4.  They enrich us by expanding our inspiration, reach and vision

Don’t hold back. Creativity and innovation is not a zero sum game.  There is always room for change and improvement. When you hoard your ideas, no one can benefit from them, not even you.

Obstacle or Opportunity?

You did it!  This is week nine, the final installment in the Breaking Points and Turning Points Novena.  Thank you for taking this journey and exploring the issues that affect your very identity as an architect and creative person.  This week, we focus on recognizing what are often considered necessary evils as the true roadblocks they are and eliminating them from our path.

Way up there on my list of thoroughly annoying turns of phrase is the application of the word “challenging” as a euphemism for everything from the truly problematic to the downright irritating.  It is my belief that people who use this term are tying to force themselves to be relentlessly positive in the face of a negative situation.  In other words, they don’t know the difference between an obstacle and an opportunity. 

Yes, there are times (daily) when we have to suck it up and deal with life’s messy surprises, but we shouldn’t have to deal with permanent or recurring frustrations as any kind of rite of passage.  In your quest to find and enriching and fulfilling career as an architect, there are only a few true rites of passage.  I have separated them into three groups:
The Quantitative Rites - the attainments - are the prescriptive things you have to do to be considered an architect from a literal perspective. All architects complete these rites.
1.  Graduate from an architecture program with a professional degree
2.  Qualify, through proper work experience, to take your licensing exams
3.  Successfully complete exams
4.  Maintain license in good standing, including continuing education

The Qualitative Rites - the judgements- are the milestone achievements that gain you recognition in the eyes of your peers, clients and consultants.  Most successful architects complete these rites.
1.  Specialize in an area of design
2.  Publish or have articles published featuring you or your work
3.  Receive an award for design or professional merit
4.  Be sought out for your expertise and asked to participate on a board, committee or panel

The Influential Rites - the impacts -are the transformative moments you have where you bring your knowledge and experience to bear to positively influence the world around you.  Only truly great architects complete these rites-but all of us could-if we stopped viewing obstacles as challenges and wasting our creative energy.
1.  Inspire someone to see the world differently
2.  Contribute, through design, to the welfare of others
3.  Mentor others to help them achieve their fullest potential
4.  Be a voice, through supportive environments, to those who cannot or do not know how to request what they need
5.  Advocate, through the person that you are and the way you live your life, all the ways that design does matter

Notice how none of the rites of passage involve any of the following “challenges” I like to call the Seven Deadly Sins of Architecture:
1.  Endure abuse by clients, co-workers or superiors
2.  Manipulate clients, co-workers or superiors
3.  Overstrategize every action in an attempt to stay one step ahead
4.  Seek credit and recognition for accomplishments
5.  Blame others (even when deserved) for unfavorable situations or outcomes
6.  Overpromise or overcommit to projects, organizations or events
7.  Undercut perceived competition both in and out of the office

That’s because none of these things make us stronger or better in any way.  They frustrate and aggravate us and suck up all our creative energy. Far from being challenges, they are obstacles (many of them self-created) and the sooner you recognize them as such, the sooner you can overcome them and focus on your true architectural Rites of Passage.

I recently saw a photo of the destroyed Berlin Wall spray painted with the statement “We are the wall.”  Nothing could be more true.

Halos and Horns: How being bad makes us good designers

So far during this novena, we’ve looked at external things that affect our creativity; manipulative coworkers/bosses, life events that affect our health or well being, the personal and professional demands of daily life.  In week four, we will begin looking at ways we limit ourselves.

For architects, every day is Judgement Day.  We constantly measure our work and ourselves against everyone else, endlessly critiquing, even sometimes feeling threatened by others’ success. We style ourselves after our heroes and forget to be introspective enough to build our own true, original identity. How many personal armageddons have arisen from pure ego and a desire to “make it” getting in the way of true happiness and success?  My wise little teabag gave me a reminder today of just how much opportunity we miss by doing that. The paper on the end of the string contained this statement, “When ego is lost, limit is lost.  You become infinite, kind and beautiful.” So if we are stuck in a world of ego imposed “shoulds” which hold us down while paradoxically making us feel that we are doing the right thing, how do we know when/which obligations and expectations to let go of?  How bad can (not should) we really let ourselves become?

The devil made me do it
This was one of my favorite claims when, as a child, I was caught doing something like, say,  writing with a Sharpie on my parent’s designer wallpaper.  The “devil” prompted me to some very instructional, creative and fun projects, which unfortunately often also caused some level of damage or destruction.  Oops.  But who is this devil?  We’re not talking Lord of all Evil here in any sense.  No, this imp was simply my creative mind asking “what if?”  The child’s mind is not so strapped down by a feeling of what should be that it judges itself.  Free from expectations, and often unaware of all of society’s rules, it explores cause and effect, linking seemingly disparate elements together to make something that never was.   Our ego is the source of should. Challenge yourself today to do one thing that you normally would consider deviant and see what fun, and revelations, result.
Know what you want and claim it
Our biggest faults as creatives are guilt and self doubt.  When was the last time you really explored your motives for living life?  Chances are that if you did, you would find a whole lot of activity spurred by a sense of obligation or the beliefs and expectations of others.  The deceptively simple question: “what do I want to do?” is one that most architects find almost impossible to answer. Knowing what you want frees you from the destructive competitive cycle that was introduced to us in school and is reinforced in so many professional practices. Take time to actually know what you want helps you to overcome the self doubt and give yourself permission to take the steps that will help you live your dreams, not someone else’s.
Let go of ego
Our own judgements and beliefs, our ego holds us back more than anything.  It is what makes us stubborn, rigid, unaccepting, insistent, all of the things that cut that rut and keep us firmly entrenched within it.  Therefore, we comply with the world’s rules, the things we know we should do, while secretly resenting the fact that we have to do so.  Our ego is the source of should, one way to be our most inspired and best creative selves is to let go of all those expectations and give ourselves permission to be bad.

How have you explored the virtue of living outside of expectations?  In what creative freedoms have you allowed yourself to indulge? It's self-restorative, not selfish - and that allows you to give even more back to the world because you can and not because you should.

What’s Disprupting You?

We’re at week three of novena one: Turning Points and Breaking Points.  We’ve focussed on week one in negative influences that arise in the workplace, and in week two on how personal setbacks can affect us.  This week, the spotlight turns within as we explore the ways we limit ourselves.

What’s your excuse?  We all have one, “I could do more if...” We blame our busy schedule; stress, the fact that we needed to do a load of laundry, on why we aren’t making time to be our creative best.  The trouble with seeing your job, energy level, or other commitments as roadblocks is that these things are just never going to go away.  If you stay stuck in this thought process, you will never achieve your goals, never advance your career.  So, if we have to accept a certain amount of life to get in our way as a constant, how do we contain all those time and energy demands so that they don’t drain us?

See things that never were
I love the concept of the “disruptive hypothesis,” as discussed by Luke Williams for Fast Company.  A disruptive hypothesis essentially involves framing a question not around a reasonable cause and effect prediction as with traditional research, but questioning why the relationship between A and B needs to exist at all.  There are several steps to creating that innovative spark and they all involve challenging the status quo:
1.   Is your industry really your industry? We’ve discussed how blue ocean strategy thinking can be used to lead us away from competition and towards creative solutions that get traction because they serve previously undefined markets and needs.  http://thepatronsaintofarchitecture.blogspot.com/2010/09/is-your-ocean-red-or-blue.html The assumption isn’t that everyone needs to compete with the same resources in the same way for the same market.  Instead, you can create new markets and new relationships.

2.   Remember what they say about making assumptions... Disruptive hypotheses provoke us to question standards and norms, the assumptions that put us in a box and disrupt innovation.  As Williams puts it- question the chiches.  Sometimes these “norms” we work within are so second nature that questioning them can be difficult.  You really have to diagram every step of the process, of say designing a project, and ask yourself what would happen if you shortened, lengthened, or eliminated one or more of the steps.  This works well as a tool for diagramming how you typically spend your day as well.  How many needless steps are you taking that eliminate time for things that would feed your soul and spark your creativity?

Time, managed
Our biggest downfall as creatives is our ingrained failure to place a value on our time.  Perhaps this comes from our days in the studio where professors encouraged the all-nighter and we were introduced to the idea of constantly second guessing our ideas.  As we move forward into practice, we repeatedly provide clients with multiple options and encourage the design and redesign cycle.  This is enough of a downward spiral, but is becomes completely toxic when we cross over into devaluing our time in every aspect of our lives.  Mike Myatt, a leadership coach, has some great insights into this phenomenon and how to better value the resource that is our time that I have adapted to relate to our life as architects:
1.   Make space for creativity by allowing yourself to focus.  It can be difficult enough to hit your “zone” without being constantly being dragged down by distractions.  I know it’s bad when I read and reread the same sentences over and over without comprehending them because I am reading with my eyes while my mind is literally thinking of a hundred other things (how is that even possible?). I start to seek out activities that are distractions as a cover for the fact that I am distracted.  Multitasking is overated.  Make the time to do just one thing and allow yourself to be in that moment. That includes unplugging yourself from the world of electronica and its siren call to check the latest updates.

2.   Be organized and plan.  It seems counterintuitive to plan creativity, but this seeming oxymoron is actually the formula for jumpstarting your brain.  Make a plan and stick to it. We trawl around in our heads constantly monitoring our every movement, word and gesture.  The running loop of “shoulds” inside our heads so restricts our behavior that we exhaust ourselves doing it all yet getting nowhere - or at least not to any truly fulfilled somewhere.  It also leads us right to the derailment of procrastination.

3.   Meaningfully connect- and disconnect.  Engaging others fuels your thought process.  Collaboration is essential for architects.  But there is a difference between collaborating and sitting through the time suck of a boring unproductive meeting.  If an activity isn’t going to further an effort, don’t go there.  Learn how and when to say yes and no to avoid being sidetracked into activity that doesn’t accomplish your project goals, organizational goals or life goals.

Everyday Miracles: Small Steps and Big Moves

Feast Day May 26

It’s the first anniversary of ThePatronSaintofArchitecture!  A virtual festival to celebrate a year of growth and discovery with all of you, loyal readers from literally every part of the world!  I started this blog to explore the severe disconnect between the work we all want to do and what it feels like is available for us to do. 

As someone who believes that you can design a bus stop and not only have a blast doing it but also innovate the way we understand that type of space, I couldn’t help but believe that my personal crisis of inspiration had less to do with the kind of projects I was working on than the way those projects were managed both internally and externally.  My minor in business and concentration in psychology of habitation and sociology kicked in and I started to really observe how firms market themselves and execute projects. 

What I noticed was that our inspiration isn’t being squashed by all of the things we typically identify: demanding clients, changing delivery methods, new practice requirements, a crappy boss.  It’s being squashed by our own limiting thoughts about what we really want to accomplish.  With all of this floating around in my head as well as the conviction that as architects we can embrace a better way, ThePatronSaintofArchitecture was launched on May 26, 2010 to celebrate the power of design and joy of creation.  (you may now eat your virtual funnel cake).

I’d like to invite you to join the procession through some of our biggest themes of the past year (and visit the hyperlinks to explore previous posts on these themes in more detail):

Set your intention
You can’t give voice to other’s needs until you find your own.  Avoid becoming an architecture bliss-ninny by getting in touch with your values as a designer and the reason you became an architect.  What do you believe about good design?  When was the last time you felt inspired? Explore the enzymes that catalyze your natural creativity into inspiration for innovation to reclaim your creative voice and draw clients and staff into your passion for what you do.

Share the spirit of design
We often fear our clients, believing that we must appease them and started to really pay attention to that dynamic as well. However, when your work and the way you approach projects is in alignment with what you believe about design, clients are drawn to that.  Do it consistently enough and you will actually be sought out by clients who specifically embrace your vision and want you to shake a little of your fairy dust on their project. It’s confidence that inspires and we must never let our clients lose sight of the end goal- a great project

Understand the culture and the community
That pre-design phase is the single biggest differentiator of a mediocre and great project. learning how to tame the many-headed monster of a large client with lots of silos and specialty departments.  So is learning to translate between what a client really wants and what they are actually saying.

Have mercy on the end user
The best projects are the ones that resonate with the people who have to live, work, play or heal in them every day.  Understanding their point of view transforms what would otherwise just be sculpture into architecture.  Do what no other art form can do- design for the fourth and fifth dimensions (time and light).

Many are called
The practice of architecture has changed, becoming both more broad-based and more specialized and certainly more integrated- sustainability, evidence based design, biophilic design, and new construction delivery methods can actually be used to enrich design when we embrace them as part of our process instead of viewing them as distractions.  Don’t fall for the trick that design is an isolated individual experience.  You are an architect not a painter.  Your art has to work.  It s not born from late nights before a deadline and a great unveiling ceremony.  You cannot, no matter how great the talent, conjure up the perfect design based solely on your instincts.  Seeing the value of evidence based design, sustainability, integrated project delivery and many other trends affecting the design and construction industry to improve and inform the design process as well as as a means to convince your client of the value of your design decisions is the path to salvation. and dismiss the distraction of messy user requests, budget annoyances, team relationship issues.

Use your gifts
When you fail to know yourself and what you uniquely can offer, your desperation causes you to focus on winning instead of creating.  How many times has our profession been undermined from within by a relentless need to compete, to get any job at any cost? Swim to more placid waters where you can focus on creating great work that those swimming in the bloody water of the shark tank don’t have the energy to do.  Let them devour themselves consuming ever scarcer resources while you focus on the abundance of limitless possibility.

Look for some exciting new features and resources in the next few weeks, including ways to work with me to sharpen your own career vision or the vision for your next project.  I hope you will continue to share your insights and stories with everyone (use the intentions page to help our community manifest your answers) as we look for guidance in navigating a profession that for many of us is actually a vocation. 

Are You an Architecture Bliss-ninny?

Do you eagerly await the next installment of your favorite design mag, have books chronicling the work of your favorite architect and actively follow you favorite firms and design blogs?  While there is nothing wrong with having heroes, appreciating good design or learning about trends or amazing ideas, there is a fine line between celebrating and sharing creativity and defining success as an architect by stylistic trends. Are we accepting the wrong premise?

If you can believe that success is not about calibrating yourself within the spectrum of your competition, but instead about you and what you contribute right now, would it matter if some other firm was bigger or had done more projects?  We need to stop defining ourselves by the terms set by others who have been successful- that is who they are, what they did, and however great an accomplishment, it does not represent the only or best answer that will ever be possible to achieve.  

Don't get lulled into conventional thinking about what design is all about.  My 16 years as a practicing architect have lead me to both moments of glory and despair about my career.  I believe that you can  keep the faith as an architect, and it is in the moments when I have done so that I have realized my greatest successes. Below are my design canons. Click the links for more in-depth information on each:

1. Stop being rick-adverse. You lose your design magic when you lose sight of your design values and stop promoting them.  You can never take a risk if you are afraid to fail and no great innovation comes without risk.
2. Know what you stand for as an architect.When you are engaged in what you do and really believe in it and yourself, that passion allows you to make the connections that truly move a client to believe in you as well. 
3. It's about innovating, not about competing. Calculating and worrying as a management style leads us to view our profession as a hostile environment where we are trying to beat out competition to a few scare resources and opportunities.  This kind of mindset holds us back from our true potential and the limitless abundance that it can bring.

Know yourself and promote your unique vision, follow the heroes whose work informs that vision.  Don't just smile and nod your head in the face of the design media and profession's definition of success.

Are You a Brand or a Commodity?

It’s easy in this economy to adopt a “whatever it takes” approach to getting work. Believe it or not, this actually can cost you projects because clients are looking for a team who can meet their needs, not just undercut the competition. If you have been going after any RFP that moves and buying jobs, stop. Right now. You might think, “What if I don’t do these things, and my competition does, and I lose the work?” You should worry about what would happen if you do these things and you win it.

You will have just reduced your practice: expertise, resources, and professional judgment to a commodity. No one values a commodity. No one has “commodity loyalty.” Commodity work is demoralizing. It is all about spending the least amount of time to get the most marginally acceptable and cheapest design. It is antithetical to our whole purpose as architects and frankly, makes us obsolete. Do enough of this work and you have a portfolio that only lets you continue to downward spiral. If you aren’t contributing inspired, designed solutions, what purpose do you really serve?

The same goes for the firms that give away their services, producing good designs and being attentive to clients, but at a huge loss just for the privilege of doing the work. Their desperation makes them a doormat. If you really look at these projects, they are filled with unnecessary compromises and lack true integrity because the architect did not command the client’s respect. Post mortems on these projects often show a great deal of time (and un-billable hours) spent like a dog chasing its tail pursuing every little whim and without any real control of the process of design.

I am not advocating arrogance. Nor am I recommending an approach so high minded that you essentially offer your clients a take it or leave it ultimatum. I would suggest that you do some very honest soul-searching. What do you really want to achieve in your practice? Has this deep seated reason for being been communicated to your staff, consultants and clients? Do they believe in it too? This core belief is your brand. It is unwavering in good economic times and bad, project type to project type, project delivery method to project delivery method. Your brand should be the rationale behind every decision you make, large or small, internally and externally.  It is what makes a client excited to work with you and motivated to collaborate as a team to produce an inspired design solution.


Know your brand.
Don't take actions that compromise your brand out of desperation.
Believe in your brand. 
Be amazing.

The Liability of Expertise

I recently read Presentation Zen, a great book by Garr Reynolds, and was struck by his discussion of the zen concept of the Beginner’s Mind. The beginner’s mind is not judgmental therefore it dares to question norms, to ask why not? The argument goes that as we acquire expertise, our thinking becomes more rigid and we are more apt to categorize, marginalize and apply overly rigid ideology or process to our work. Especially in the creative world of architecture, this is a liability as it precludes innovation and fresh thinking. It also can cause us to disregard ideas brought up by our client if they come across as “too amateur” So we live in our ivory towers, our silos of specialization. And it’s boring. For us and for our clients. However, we have mutually pushed the design process to this point.


Seen that recent request for proposals? If you haven’t done at least 50 projects EXACTLY like the one that is planned, you can forget being considered (oh, and with the exact same team if possible please). And then there are our attempts at business development that involve seeking out niche markets and super-specialization. A creative, innovative design is a happy accident in this climate, when it should be the number one goal for the whole team. It's time to abandon the red-ocean thinking that pervades our industry and think a bit more about alternative strategies. I am not saying that experience is irrelevant, or that there are not some very highly sensitive building types that require expertise in order to ensure that they are compliant and functional. But, when we let mastery of the rules drive the bus, it’s like failing to see the forest for the trees. Instead, let your experience be what leads you to ask the broader questions, instead of accepting the status quo.

During the planning stage of your project, ask:
1.Who is using the space? What specific needs do they have?
 2. What are you really trying to achieve with this project?


3. Why this project? Do you really need more space, or space that is organized differently? Are there other overall issues with the campus or facility that should be solved first?

4. Where are supplies and materials coming from? Distributed to? What is the flow of patients in the space?

5. How do things need to operate? Does this need to be a separate function (departmental silos), or could a better solution involve combining uses and bringing a larger spectrum of services to a single location on-demand?

6. When will you know you have solved the problem?

Is Your Ocean Red or Blue?

Have you ever thought about how architecture is practiced?  Why so many architects are just not very collegial with one another and our professional organizations serve more as a source for legal documents, status, and continuing education instead of as a true collaborative resource?  Maybe you just naturally assume that you have to compete, after all work pays the bills.  Our profession has accepted the premise of a business strategy called Red Ocean (think blood in the water),  that assumes at its core that we can only win if everyone else loses.  Our work becomes a product or commodity and offering more of it for less is the only way to stay ahead of the game (sound familiar to how we undercut our fees and lose money on jobs to keep or get a client?) 

A more recent strategy to emerge turns that premise on its head.  Called the Blue Ocean strategy, it asks us to rethink the idea of beating the competition and instead examine that for which we are actually competing.  In other words, is the prize really worth it?  Are we decimating ourselves just to win?

By looking at who we really are and what we really want to do; we can, according to Blue Ocean thinking, define a new market that we can serve with the full force of our individual talent and passion.  It seems almost too good to be true.  I am transported back to my days as an idealistic student full of dreams and ambition, not the soul-crushing professional environment that awaits said student ideologues.  

Of course, there is a catch: you have to actually be innovative (and not too risk-adverse either). In a Blue Ocean paradigm, the focus is on the value of what we have to offer and finding a market that is actually seeking that value.  No building industry, creating niche markets requiring hyper-specialization is not the point, it's about innovation.  Innovation that also takes into account utility, price and cost in an attempt to make competition irrelevant.  That's something that we have a hard time with, because we want to keep designing buildings, and so do all the other architects. Also,blue ocean is an ideal that may not prove lasting. Mohammad Jamil of the Change Management Community is his article "Red and Blue Ocean Strategy" argues that the two strategies are in fact interdependent and cyclical, with blue oceans driving innovation, which in turn drives the red ocean competition that will eventually spawn more innovation.  I think that what matters most is that we realize that we are not constrained by the "way things are" and instead start asking a lot more critical questions:

1. What are you really trying to achieve and why?
2. To whom will it matter?
3. Can you abandon old habits and dependencies?

Stop swimming with the sharks and chart a course to peaceful waters.  When survival isn't the primary issue, it's amazing what you can achieve.