Outgoing President Gordon H. Chong, FAIA, gave this address to the AIA Board of Directors December 6, his last day in office. We found his words of wisdom well worth sharing with the entire AIA membership. We also would like to thank him for his leadership during the past year and wish him the very best for all his future endeavors.

“When all men think alike, no one thinks very much.”
—Walter Lippmann

“You can’t trust your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.”
—Mark Twain

My life has been a laboratory for continual learning, exploration, invention, and, yes, correction and reinvention. This past year that lab has been in overdrive. In fact, what I’ve learned in the course of these 12 months as AIA president has prepared me well for the day after my tenure has ended, when I return fulltime to my firm, my family, and my community.

When you’re about to open a new chapter in your life, friends and colleagues naturally want to know what you’ve learned. What lessons do you want to pass on? What advice can you share with future leaders? My response is to cite the lines from Lippmann and Twain quoted above. Both succinctly capture what I call the leadership attitude that provides the greatest opportunity to advance the profession and the AIA.

But most of those who ask aren’t satisfied with the succinctness of Twain and Lippmann and ask me to elaborate. So I take the bait and offer some thoughts on two specific attitudes of leadership that I believe will affect the course of our profession: They are about: 1) leading change and 2) social responsibility and ethics.

Leading change
In the course of my year as AIA president, I have not run into a single architect who does not appreciate how the world is changing, and how that change is accelerating. Yet, can we honestly say that change within our profession has been equally transformational? Yes, we all use computers. But has technology or anything else really enhanced the breadth or depth of our knowledge, increased our professional influence in the eyes of our communities, increased the value of our services in the eyes of our clients, enhanced our real or perceived contribution to society, increased our financial remuneration, or enhanced the public’s understanding of the importance of architecture?

Look, by way of contrast, at the general field of design as a product and process. There we see significant strides being made in defining the quality of life for this generation of Americans. Would we not be a more dynamic and influential profession if we, too, were as engaged in applied research, rapid prototyping, rapid ideation, pilot projects, assuming risk and responsible roles in project delivery, and thinking more expansively upstream and downstream from traditional basic design services?

In the face of all the change happening around us, some of my colleagues argue that architects should return to the basics, stick to our core competency, and not oversell ourselves by stepping beyond our comfort zone. Don’t change our standards of practice, and, for gosh sake, don’t rock the boat! I wish I could take credit for being the first person to observe that what has got us here is not what will move us forward into the future. The thought is well-worn, but it’s no less true for the wearing.

Others, recognizing that some response is called for, suggest we should adapt cautiously. They believe incremental change will ultimately be more effective. I wonder. Yes, there can surely be multiple paths to and rates of change. Yet those who have been challenged to be leaders had better be sure that a call for gradualism is not in fact an avoidance mechanism, a shield from criticism, or an aversion to risk.

The times call for leaders who are passionate and fearless; leaders who are eloquent communicators, motivators, and risk takers. This is where the AIA can and must be a role model, for if we are to achieve the status of “trusted advisor,” a reputation thoughtful commentators tell us is the best hope for our profession, the AIA needs to be perceived first and foremost as being committed to bettering society and the profession, rather than the business of our members.

The paradox of what some might perceive to be a naively idealistic approach is that doing right is good business. Serve society and the work will follow. I’m not advocating the arrogance of discounting member needs but rather the wisdom of Tao Te Ching who noted, “Care about people’s approval and you will be their prisoner.”

Social responsibility and ethics
Because the times urge architects to assume the role of trusted advisors; provide expanded services in strategic planning; assume increased roles in civic activities; and provide expertise on issues of sustainability, land use, and alternative project delivery, we will need to move beyond the obligations of licensure (health, safety, and welfare), beyond our client business contracts, and reaffirm a social responsibility for the greater good of society that we serve.

Although we have gained an increasing amount of intelligence about the public’s changing expectation of architecture and architects, I am not persuaded that our response to date has been up to either the challenges or the opportunities inherent in the data we’ve gathered. More often than not we set out to change the public’s opinion of architects rather than question and change ourselves. We’re tempted to ask the AIA to defend our preferred activities rather than to give us the resources to expand our value.

But there is a hopeful counter-current. Given public cynicism toward corporate America, the federal oversight placed on the accounting profession, and the scrutiny of our political leaders, it is timely that the AIA’s national Board of Directors discussed ethics and practice at our December meeting. There will be no easy answers, no quick solutions. But with any luck (and a lot of leadership!), we are seeing the opening of a thoughtful dialogue that will color and inform discussion and decisions in the coming year that deal with knowledge, education, communications, and our role in influencing the livability of communities through design excellence. Stay tuned.

A final thank you
In recent months, many from a younger generation have encouraged me to carry on a tradition by Bill Caudill, a giant in our profession, who penned a series of articles he entitled “TIB” or “This I Believe.” I wouldn’t have the audacity to do so. But if I did, I’d entitle it “TIL . . . ” or “This I’ve Learned,” with the emphasis on the “dot, dot, dot,” which is suggestive of the temporal nature of “truths” and the open-ended nature of the learning process.

I’ve learned a lot, I’ll continue to learn, and I thank every AIA member for your trust. And speaking of trust, let me end with another quote, this time the words of Sigmund Freud: “In small matters, trust the mind. In the large ones, trust the heart.”

Copyright 2002 The American Institute of Architects. All rights reserved.