January Meeting

Firm Management

For the Pillars Class, the topic of Firm Management is one that seems outside our day to day experience, and quite honestly sounds pretty mundane. However, in the midst of this recession, we have no trouble understanding why this facet of our practice is critical. And, following an afternoon of conversation with both large and small firms, we began to see that ‘Firm Management’ should be dubbed ‘Firm Design’ – an idea that many of us could more easily relate to and get excited about.

Many of us walked into this session with preconceptions about the organizational and cultural differences between a ‘Large Firm’ and a ‘Small Firm’. The small firm will be nimble, even sprightly; able to react quickly to unforeseen obstacles and opportunities and change direction at a moments notice. While adaptation for the large firm will be slow, cumbersome, and painful. The story that unfolded was quite different and a little unexpected. While these preconceptions may be true in one sense, there is another facet of the story for each.

The larger firms, represented by Bane Gaiser with HNTB and Steve McDowell with BNIM, are crafting their firms’ ability to diversify – especially in today’s economy. They demonstrated that their size afforded them the ability to experiment and to offer their employees some latitude to craft their own career within the structure of firm. They moved us from thinking about a large firm like a big amorphous blob to thinking about it as a ‘net’ of individuals that have the ability to flex, stretch, and bend within the overall organism – even to the point of splitting and creating a new ‘net’ to better respond to the demands of a specific project.

The smaller firm, represented by Dan Maginn with El Dorado Architects, is anything but sprightly. Rather, they are a team of similar-minded designers that are relentlessly pursuing their vision of what it means to make architecture. If BNIM and HNTB are designing a net, then El Dorado is designing a Bullet. Sleek. Tight. Focused. And rather than lose that focus when times are tough, they are doing everything in their power to become even more streamlined and efficient in an effort to maintain their vision.

The point that resonated through all of the discussion was that designing a firm is not a one-and-done process. It is organic and fluid, like sculpting with clay that never quite sets up. Design in its truest form. Make something. Study it. Critique it. Make it again. Make it better. Make it again. Again. Again…