Читать книгу Designing a World-Class Architecture Firm - Patrick MacLeamy - Страница 8
ОглавлениеIntroduction
When I became CEO of HOK, people would often ask me, “Now that you're an executive, do you miss designing buildings?” I would always reply, “No, because now I'm designing a firm.” That answer, so often repeated, became the inspiration for the title of this book: Designing a World-Class Architecture Firm. Of course, I was not HOK's original designer.
HOK's founders—George Hellmuth, Gyo Obata, and George Kassabaum—were visionaries who set out to establish a new kind of architecture firm that would outlast them all. They succeeded—and then some. Today, 65 years later, HOK is one of the largest architecture and engineering firms in the world.1 This book tells the inside story of how they did it. However, it's not just a history of HOK, even if that history is fascinating—and often funny. Instead, I have used HOK's story as a vehicle for sharing lessons we learned along the way that will be beneficial to other architects, designers—and really anyone in a creative or service business.
Most architecture books are about a firm's design work, but not this one. I have included some significant projects to illustrate milestones in HOK's growth and development, but that is not the main thrust of the book. Instead, as the subtitle says, I have written about the people, stories, and strategies behind HOK because they are stories worth sharing with lessons worth learning.
People. Let's start with the people. Founder George Hellmuth watched his father's architecture practice repeatedly go boom and bust throughout his childhood. How did that inform his efforts to build a “depression-proof” firm? George Kassabaum drafted the atomic bomb rack for the Enola Gay aircraft. Did that have anything to do with his unofficial motto? He often told us: “Do the right thing, always.” Gyo Obata served in the U.S. Army, even though his Japanese-American family was interned during World War II. Perhaps, that character-building experience helped him set aside his own ego, listen carefully to each client, and come up with the best design solution just for them—a hallmark of HOK's work.
Stories. HOK's stories were my original inspiration for writing this book. Whenever HOK people would gather for a bull session swapping our firm's very own folklore, someone would always say, “We should write down these stories. They're funny and insightful at the same time.” There were humorous stories, like the time one of our early leaders was mistaken for royalty in Saudi Arabia. There were inspiring stories, such as the weekend HOK's St. Louis office went up in flames and devoted employees managed to set up a new office and re-create crucial lost work by Monday morning. And there were harrowing stories, like the double crisis when our investors threatened to pull their funding and our bank threatened to call our loan—both on the same day—either of which would have bankrupted HOK.
Strategies. The founders were children of the Great Depression and deployed multiple strategies to help HOK not only thrive during good times but also survive during bad times. Later leaders layered on their own insightful strategies for success. Of course, sometimes we improvised emergency tactics on the fly, in response to mistakes or even disasters. I share all the lessons we learned along the way, whether from our successes or our failures. Those lessons apply if your firm wants to get bigger—or just better. There is relatable, actionable advice in every chapter, such as:
Expand into multiple cities, diversify into multiple services, and embrace multiple building types to recession- and depression-proof your firm.
Organize your practice around specialized leaders—like design, technical, marketing and management—because it's more efficient than if every leader does everything.
Lead, don't manage, your people. Think of it like leading them into battle rather than cracking the whip from behind.
Reshape your compensation program to reward not just profitability, but other factors important to your company culture, such as collaboration, quality of design, and client service.
“Run toward trouble,” rather than avoiding it, because small problems become big problems and big problems become disasters if you allow them to fester.
Shift your efforts earlier in the design process so you catch mistakes when they are still just drawings, rather than when they are already under construction, and you will save time, money—and your reputation.
Enforce financial metrics—yes, creative professionals need them too—and this book contains clear, simple ones you can adapt.
I spent 50 years at HOK, working my way up from junior designer to CEO—where else can you do that?—so this book also contains a dash of memoir and opinion. I observed the transition from drawing on paper to designing by computer and from one Midwestern office to a global practice of many offices. I was there for the evolution from a pure architecture firm to a highly diversified practice spanning architecture, engineering, interior design, graphics, consulting, and more. I watched as HOK architects went from being generalists—who could and would design anything—to specialists focused on health care, hospitality, aviation, sports, justice, and more. In other words, I witnessed the majority of the firm's history and learned most of its lessons directly.
However, despite being there, rest assured that I did not just rely on my own memory to write this book. I spent two years and interviewed more than 40 HOK colleagues to gather material. I accessed reams of internal documents and scores of external articles about HOK. I put in the time because I appreciate all that HOK did for me and because I believe that what I learned is worth sharing with others. If, after all this effort, there are any errors in the book, they are mine and mine alone.
This book is best read from start to finish, rather than as a reference book. After all, it's a story, and each chapter builds upon the last. That said, as I recount pivotal moments in HOK's history, I make a point of calling out the business lessons we learned that others can benefit from. At times, I may overexplain terminology an architect would already know, but have done so in hopes other creative and service professionals can get something out of the book. To reinforce information that may be helpful to readers, at the end of each chapter you will find a section called “To Design a World-Class Firm” with bullet points recapping the takeaways found in that chapter.
Architecture is a passion, not just a profession, and my own passion for the field extends to the business side. Just as designers delight in finding elegant solutions to design challenges, I came to love finding elegant solutions to business challenges. I hope that what HOK and I learned can help you design your own world-class firm.
