by Jack Train, FAIA

As with any professional business, the talent, teamwork, intelligence, and intensity of the personnel are fundamental to the success of an architecture practice. Just as planning is required to create and develop a building, so is planning required to develop staff. We start with a vision, hire the right people, manage their activities, and reward them for their performance.

Too often, however, firms hire graduates and applicants only when they need more people, without planning for the development and future contributions of those people. As a contrast, look at sports teams, where performance is easily and constantly measured. They do not sit around waiting for talent to come knocking on the door. They look to the colleges and interview aggressively. They invest heavily in developing potential talent. The best architecture firms likewise are forever on the lookout for individuals they feel have demonstrated abilities and potential for further development.

Roles within the team
Talent, incidentally, is not limited to design abilities. It is almost invariably true that design is the primary focus in the schools. Nonetheless, probably fewer than 5 percent of graduates will function as “designer” in the top firms. “Design” requires only about 15 percent of the person-hours in an architecture practice. That is why, in my practice, we classified senior personnel with prefixes:

• Conceptual Architect, who conceives of design solutions that may be outside his or her previous experience
• Development Architect, a job captain who can take a concept and make it buildable
• Structural Architect and HVAC Architect, people with the technical know-how to guide concept and development
• Administrative Architect, the project manager who has experience in one of the other roles yet whose higher ability is to communicate among the various architect roles and with the client.
  

These designations are for senior employees. Recent graduates—pre-architects, as we called them—get as much opportunity as possible to work under the guidance of these senior people. Executing this policy is not easy and requires an unselfish director with authority and understanding to make the policy work.

Almost every fresh graduate wants to work in design, even though it is a small percentage who have the ability. And yet it is good for every graduate employee to work with the senior designers to give them an understanding of that process within the firm and to evaluate their abilities. Equally important is to give each fresh employee a chance to work with a development architect—and project engineers—because the learning flows both ways. This training/evaluation loop typically takes about three years.

Of course, there are other roles that must be addressed, whether that talent is in the firm or contracted as a consultant/partner. Those key roles include drafters, specifications writers, cost estimators, engineers, accountants, and office managers.

Find talent to whom you can delegate
Properly evaluating the developing staff is one of the most difficult and important functions of a firm, because the staff will ultimately determine the character and success of the firm. Firms will grow and develop only if employees hired and developed are expected to become more valuable than current staff.

Senior staff working with and observing young employees should make their evaluations. However, the final decision should be made by one or two people with overall firm responsibility. It is not uncommon for a senior person to try to keep a bright young employee for his or her personal team. Because successful firms need a variety of talents, no one evaluation formula that fits all, but intelligence and dedication are important in every evaluation.

These principles, incidentally, apply to all sizes of firms. It has been said that the size of a firm is ultimately determined by the amount of responsibility the principles are willing to delegate. The one exception is when the building market dries up. There is no task that is more difficult and painful than dismissing loyal and able employees. What is much more rewarding is to guide promising architects toward fulfilling careers.

Some parting thoughts
To be a manager requires some understanding of what management is all about. Although some members of architecture firms have specific management roles, remember that all members have management responsibilities. Management is the organ of leadership, decision, and direction.

Management is responsible for communications within the organization, making decisions under condition of uncertainty, and strategic planning. It is a practice, not a science. It recognizes that performance is based on both knowledge and responsibility. Directing resources from less productive to more productive activities, management creates wealth and makes an organization perform while addressing its social responsibilities. Managers must lead people rather than contain them, direct rather than control. People are resources and opportunities, not problems, costs, and threats. Above all else, remember that there is no one way to do knowledge work.

Copyright 2006 The American Institute of Architects. All rights reserved. Home Page