Teambuilders, Inc.


What Do Designers Want, Anyway? *Design firms need strategies for managing creative staff - or a lot more than quality and productivity will suffer* Everyone defines job satisfaction differently. However, creative people - architects and interior designers includedundoubtedly can agree on its basic ingredients. If asked what makes them happy in their jobs, most designers would name at least a few of the following: freedom to create, a fair amount of autonomy, and the opportunity to design spaces that express their own creativity while meeting clients' needs. Support and appreciation within the firm-from peers and supervisors alike-might also rank high on most designers' lists. Unfortunately, the command- and-control system that's in place at many design firms seems guaranteed to deny many creative employees any of these elements of job satisfaction. In a sense, the way many firms structure relationships among their staff parallels what happens in schools of architecture, where creativity is often stifled by destructive criticism, fierce competition for recognition and a "superstar" system that inevitably elevates a few people while discounting the talents of others. Over the past decade, "partnering" has become a buzzword in the design profession. In fact, architects and interior designers have made a great deal of progress toward instituting practices that enhance collaboration, nurture the frank exchange of information and resolve disputes amicably. Partnering, however, has mostly been an external affair-involving the relations between a firm and all other participants in a design and construction project, including, of course, the client. What about internal partnering among members of a firm? *Design by superstar or neglect: A difficult pattern to break* Granted, a few design firms have brought principles of partnering "home," restructuring relationships within the firm in ways that encourage collaboration, consensus-building and a "mutual gains" approach to resolving conflict. In the process they provide an environment that fosters more meaningful participation by designers at comparatively early stages of their careers. The trouble is, "business as usual" continues to reign in the profession generally. Too often design is either controlled by a few superstars or is given short shrift, compromised and undervalued by the firm's "business first" culture. This kind of working environment often ignores the talents and productive capacities of those who are most essential to a firm's long-term vitality - the up-and-coming designers who learn nothing about working with clients or colleagues in a collaborative manner. The results? Low morale, substandard work and high rates of turnover among young, highly skilled creative staff, who move on to the next job as soon as they've accumulated whatever resume-fodder they can. This pattern is difficult to break. Even when a firm's principals recognize that there's a serious problem in the offing-as when, for example, a top-level designer is retiring and the firm is unprepared for the transition-they're often reluctant to make a commitment to change. One thing is certain: Without a goodfaith commitment on the part of principals, the change won't happen, and the future will be out of sync with the profession's new directions, assuming the firm survives the transition. *New directions: Being creative with structure can revive a firm* What can be done to break this pattern's hold? I'd like to suggest several strategies for enhancing job satisfaction at all levels within a firm-and, not incidentally, for improving productivity and the quality of the work performed. Granted, every firm faces a unique set of challenges. But the broad strategies outlined here are flexible enough to be easily tailored to individual cases, and to firms of different sizes. The first strategy goes by the name of the "studio approach to organizing a firm's internal operations. Applicable to mediumsize and larger firms, this approach has many varieties. Nevertheless, it often embodies the following characteristics. First, when a firm reorganizes into studios, each studio is accorded a degree of design autonomy. Authority is flattened out, and each studio is to a large extent self-managing. While roles and responsibilities are clearly defined, they're developed by that studio itself on the basis of its own distinct working style. The studio retains control of a project from inception through completion, and develops its own working relationship with a client. Second, the studio approach is collaborative. When authority is more evenly distributed throughout a firm, occasions for collaboration multiply. In fact, there are ways of ensuring that collaboration occurs frequently across studio "boundaries." Possibilities include instituting an executive committee of studio heads who meet regularly to evaluate all the work the firm is producing, enforce standards or, very simply, share ideas and thus influence and shape one another's work. Third, studios can be multidisciplinary Each studio's "team" might, for example, pair a manager with a design director. In a large A/E/ID firm, each studio might include representatives from each of the design disciplines-architecture, interior design, structural engineering, the MEP engineering fields and so on. Departmental subdivisions for each discipline are eliminated or realigned to provide shared R&D technology centers to support all studios. From personal experience I can attest that restructuring a design organization along studio lines can be an unbelievably powerful morale-booster. When I headed the Architecture and Engineering Department of New York City's School Construction Authority (SCA) - a 200-plus employee group that had been arranged along strict disciplinary lines and encumbered by intransigent bureaucratic ways of working-the decision was made to reform the entire A&E operation into three multidisciplinary studios. At the time, the SCNs workload was changing, moving from the major new building projects that had dominated the agency's work in earlier years and toward numerous smaller renovation and repair jobs. The new projects demanded a different way of working because they had to be accomplished expeditiously and because each required the participation of designers from several disciplines. Admittedly, there was resistance. Some were reluctant to give up familiar roles, and others were resigned to the low morale endemic within the department and its relatively low productivity. The changeover proved the pessimists wrong. Within six months after the studio approach was instituted, quality and productivity showed measurable improvement. Most importantly, staff at all levels, including those whose skills had previously been obscured and neglected, were participating creatively and enthusiastically. In general, objections to a studio-based organization can be addressed and overcome. For instance, a firn's leaders may feel that their most talented people aren't temperamentally suited for intensely collaborative work, or that some highly skilled designers will demur if asked to take on responsibilities-say project management or client interaction-that take them too far afield of what they most enjoy. Such insights into certain designers' personalities may be valid. The point, however, is that these kinds of issues aren't uncommon, and any workable studio approach should be flexible enough to accommodate the individual needs of its key staff. And then there's the fear-which could be especially strong in firms where a single person's architectural vision has driven the firm's design identity-that dispersing authority will have the effect of diluting that identity, or of sending it in several unrelated directions. The reality, however, is that the superstar designer is going to retire sooner or later, and the nurturing of other creative talent-people with equally strong visions-is absolutely necessary for the firm's long-term health. *New directions: Leadership that inspires rather than controls* An equally promising strategy, applicable in firms of all sizes, is to cultivate a leadership style that's founded on the assumption that creative professional staff are more responsive to inspiration than to supervision. Henry Mintzberg, in a recent article in the Harvard Business Review entitled "Covert Leadership," uses the symphony orchestra conductor as a management role model. Focusing on how a smoothly running organization of creative professionals really works, Mintzberg points out that an orchestra conductor's control over the highly skilled people he or she leads is more apparent than real. In actuality, the conductor serves mainly to inspire and set the tempo and does little to control the individual musicians' playing. Likewise, architects and interior designers have, in Mintzberg's words, been "trained to work as soloists only to find themselves subordinated to the demands of an orchestra," and must find inspiration to work together harmoniously. Where each professional's performance is critical to the success of the whole, the role of the manager becomes that of a facilitator, and-just as with an orchestra conductor-active listening becomes the manager's greatest asset. If we assume that architecture and interior design staff are skilled, talented professionals, then they should require minimal direction and supervision. Breaking down the bureaucracy and hierarchy of a top-down organization calls for managers who intimately understand what creative work is all about. With the old barriers gone, such managers can work with teams, giving staff positive, constructive feedback and, most importantly, support and protection. A manager's critical role becomes that of managing the boundaries. For boundaries within the firm, the manager will provide enough capable staff to accomplish the task, sufficient time to do the work, appropriate space and adequate technological support. For boundaries outside, the manager will establish linkages with clients and regulatory agencies and, in some cases, proactively manage relations with politicians and the media. Both strategies, the studio approach and the "covert leadership" model, can help break management patterns that not only fail to inspire creative staff, but actually impede the growth and success of many design firms. Creative staff want and need to exercise the right to be creative, and when they meet the client's needs at the same time, everybody wins.

What Do Designers Want, Anyway?

Design firms need strategies for managing creative staff - or a lot more than quality and productivity will suffer

Everyone defines job satisfaction differently. However, creative people - architects and interior designers includedundoubtedly can agree on its basic ingredients. If asked what makes them happy in their jobs, most designers would name at least a few of the following: freedom to create, a fair amount of autonomy, and the opportunity to design spaces that express their own creativity while meeting clients' needs. Support and appreciation within the firm-from peers and supervisors alike-might also rank high on most designers' lists.

Unfortunately, the command- and-control system that's in place at many design firms seems guaranteed to deny many creative employees any of these elements of job satisfaction. In a sense, the way many firms structure relationships among their staff parallels what happens in schools of architecture, where creativity is often stifled by destructive criticism, fierce competition for recognition and a "superstar" system that inevitably elevates a few people while discounting the talents of others.

Over the past decade, "partnering" has become a buzzword in the design profession. In fact, architects and interior designers have made a great deal of progress toward instituting practices that enhance collaboration, nurture the frank exchange of information and resolve disputes amicably. Partnering, however, has mostly been an external affair-involving the relations between a firm and all other participants in a design and construction project, including, of course, the client. What about internal partnering among members of a firm?

Design by superstar or neglect: A difficult pattern to break

Granted, a few design firms have brought principles of partnering "home," restructuring relationships within the firm in ways that encourage collaboration, consensus-building and a "mutual gains" approach to resolving conflict. In the process they provide an environment that fosters more meaningful participation by designers at comparatively early stages of their careers. The trouble is, "business as usual" continues to reign in the profession generally. Too often design is either controlled by a few superstars or is given short shrift, compromised and undervalued by the firm's "business first" culture.

This kind of working environment often ignores the talents and productive capacities of those who are most essential to a firm's long-term vitality - the up-and-coming designers who learn nothing about working with clients or colleagues in a collaborative manner. The results? Low morale, substandard work and high rates of turnover among young, highly skilled creative staff, who move on to the next job as soon as they've accumulated whatever resume-fodder they can.

This pattern is difficult to break. Even when a firm's principals recognize that there's a serious problem in the offing-as when, for example, a top-level designer is retiring and the firm is unprepared for the transition-they're often reluctant to make a commitment to change. One thing is certain: Without a goodfaith commitment on the part of principals, the change won't happen, and the future will be out of sync with the profession's new directions, assuming the firm survives the transition.

New directions: Being creative with structure can revive a firm

What can be done to break this pattern's hold? I'd like to suggest several strategies for enhancing job satisfaction at all levels within a firm-and, not incidentally, for improving productivity and the quality of the work performed. Granted, every firm faces a unique set of challenges. But the broad strategies outlined here are flexible enough to be easily tailored to individual cases, and to firms of different sizes.

The first strategy goes by the name of the "studio approach to organizing a firm's internal operations. Applicable to mediumsize and larger firms, this approach has many varieties. Nevertheless, it often embodies the following characteristics.

First, when a firm reorganizes into studios, each studio is accorded a degree of design autonomy. Authority is flattened out, and each studio is to a large extent self-managing. While roles and responsibilities are clearly defined, they're developed by that studio itself on the basis of its own distinct working style. The studio retains control of a project from inception through completion, and develops its own working relationship with a client.

Second, the studio approach is collaborative. When authority is more evenly distributed throughout a firm, occasions for collaboration multiply. In fact, there are ways of ensuring that collaboration occurs frequently across studio "boundaries." Possibilities include instituting an executive committee of studio heads who meet regularly to evaluate all the work the firm is producing, enforce standards or, very simply, share ideas and thus influence and shape one another's work.

Third, studios can be multidisciplinary Each studio's "team" might, for example, pair a manager with a design director. In a large A/E/ID firm, each studio might include representatives from each of the design disciplines-architecture, interior design, structural engineering, the MEP engineering fields and so on. Departmental subdivisions for each discipline are eliminated or realigned to provide shared R&D technology centers to support all studios.

From personal experience I can attest that restructuring a design organization along studio lines can be an unbelievably powerful morale-booster. When I headed the Architecture and Engineering Department of New York City's School Construction Authority (SCA) - a 200-plus employee group that had been arranged along strict disciplinary lines and encumbered by intransigent bureaucratic ways of working-the decision was made to reform the entire A&E operation into three multidisciplinary studios. At the time, the SCNs workload was changing, moving from the major new building projects that had dominated the agency's work in earlier years and toward numerous smaller renovation and repair jobs. The new projects demanded a different way of working because they had to be accomplished expeditiously and because each required the participation of designers from several disciplines.

Admittedly, there was resistance. Some were reluctant to give up familiar roles, and others were resigned to the low morale endemic within the department and its relatively low productivity. The changeover proved the pessimists wrong. Within six months after the studio approach was instituted, quality and productivity showed measurable improvement. Most importantly, staff at all levels, including those whose skills had previously been obscured and neglected, were participating creatively and enthusiastically.

In general, objections to a studio-based organization can be addressed and overcome. For instance, a firn's leaders may feel that their most talented people aren't temperamentally suited for intensely collaborative work, or that some highly skilled designers will demur if asked to take on responsibilities-say project management or client interaction-that take them too far afield of what they most enjoy. Such insights into certain designers' personalities may be valid. The point, however, is that these kinds of issues aren't uncommon, and any workable studio approach should be flexible enough to accommodate the individual needs of its key staff.

And then there's the fear-which could be especially strong in firms where a single person's architectural vision has driven the firm's design identity-that dispersing authority will have the effect of diluting that identity, or of sending it in several unrelated directions. The reality, however, is that the superstar designer is going to retire sooner or later, and the nurturing of other creative talent-people with equally strong visions-is absolutely necessary for the firm's long-term health.

New directions: Leadership that inspires rather than controls

An equally promising strategy, applicable in firms of all sizes, is to cultivate a leadership style that's founded on the assumption that creative professional staff are more responsive to inspiration than to supervision. Henry Mintzberg, in a recent article in the Harvard Business Review entitled "Covert Leadership," uses the symphony orchestra conductor as a management role model. Focusing on how a smoothly running organization of creative professionals really works, Mintzberg points out that an orchestra conductor's control over the highly skilled people he or she leads is more apparent than real.

In actuality, the conductor serves mainly to inspire and set the tempo and does little to control the individual musicians' playing. Likewise, architects and interior designers have, in Mintzberg's words, been "trained to work as soloists only to find themselves subordinated to the demands of an orchestra," and must find inspiration to work together harmoniously. Where each professional's performance is critical to the success of the whole, the role of the manager becomes that of a facilitator, and-just as with an orchestra conductor-active listening becomes the manager's greatest asset. If we assume that architecture and interior design staff are skilled, talented professionals, then they should require minimal direction and supervision. Breaking down the bureaucracy and hierarchy of a top-down organization calls for managers who intimately understand what creative work is all about. With the old barriers gone, such managers can work with teams, giving staff positive, constructive feedback and, most importantly, support and protection.

A manager's critical role becomes that of managing the boundaries. For boundaries within the firm, the manager will provide enough capable staff to accomplish the task, sufficient time to do the work, appropriate space and adequate technological support. For boundaries outside, the manager will establish linkages with clients and regulatory agencies and, in some cases, proactively manage relations with politicians and the media.

Both strategies, the studio approach and the "covert leadership" model, can help break management patterns that not only fail to inspire creative staff, but actually impede the growth and success of many design firms. Creative staff want and need to exercise the right to be creative, and when they meet the client's needs at the same time, everybody wins.