Category: Work

On an AIA forum a principal in a firm expressed concerns about cell phones in his office and was considering instituting rules about its usage. It caught my attention because distraction addiction is a chronic problem for everyone, including me. This was my response.

I have never been a principal but I will tell you that heavy handed rules will not go over well.  When I left my previous firm (which was already pretty flexible) I was surprised by how empowering it was to have complete trust by my current boss who just says “you’re a professional, get your work done on time, be fair to the division, and keep me posted if you need help.” 

I get it, cell phone addiction is a real problem (I battle it myself) but you need to treat people like adults.

If you enact a formal regulation, your team will nitpick every action you make.  Every time you pull out your phone for a personal call.  Every time you look down at your phone take a text or email.  Every time you ask them to stay overtime, especially if they are on salary.  Every time you call or text them on their cell. Every time you walk into the office five minutes late.  Every time they see a personal web page pulled up on your laptop. The resentment will get ugly.

Or from another angle, how would you like it if someone confiscated your phone for eight hours a day? And do you want employees who just go along with this rule? At the very least, if you create a command and control culture in your office, then don’t complain that your staff isn’t proactive and they don’t take any ownership in their work.

I agree with the other responses on this thread, you need tackle the tangible problem directly.  If errors are your concern, work with your team on that.  One of the solutions is coaching them on properly managing digital distractions, but you need to take the time to install a robust QAQC system.  You also need to protect your team and have those difficult conversations with clients who try to impose unrealistic deadlines.  Set your team up for success.  Develop rapport with your staff, so each of them know the firm standards and they are motivated to excel with each issuance. 

Now maybe I’m wrong and I can envision a scenario where a cell free office will be totally liberating for everybody involved. But I’d bet harsh cell phone rules are just taking the easy way out.

Not surprisingly for government, there is a good amount of paperwork that goes back and forth. It may seem like red tape (indeed it may be red tape), but it seems reasonable that public funds are double and triple checked before they are expended.

In the past, that mean there were a lot of sheets of dead trees physically passed back and forth between various individuals to get anything done.

Digital made it easier to move these sheets of paper back and forth.

And now, with digital signatures via a program like Docusign or Adobe Sign, you don’t even have to print anything out to put your stamp of approval on an expenditure.

Plenty of ink has been spilled on automation and blue collar work, and a decent amount of hand wringing as well about AI swallowing professional work. But digital is definitely a threat for these white collar “factory tasks”.

If you’re moving paper around already, your job is possibly secure, but the next position might never appear, quietly streamlined out of existence.

I just read a post by Bob Borson, FAIA, in his Life of an Architect Blog. He just left the firm where he was a principal – and had his name on the door for six years – to join a much larger firm.

To walk away from your former mentor, the team you’ve groomed, your clients.

That’s intense!

It made me realize how lucky I was in joining the SPWD. It was a total no-brainer decision when the opportunity arrived. A major pay raise with a pension, a reasonable expectation that I would not be doing crazy overtime (my previous firm was good at managing hours I could see a tsunami of work coming), and a status upgrade within my career.

The only downside was that I wouldn’t be wielding the big sketch designer pen, but I never had that role. I have been a DD thru CA architect, so going client side was a pretty natural jump.

In deliberations with my friends and family, it was a question of “dang this looks amazing, what I am missing?”

And it turns out what I missed was the hidden blessing of being handed a no-brainer career opportunity. Usually life consists of tradeoffs, giving up one thing to get another.

In this case, it was just a question of “how long is it gonna take to get a formal offer!?”

Things were a touch slow for a few days so I was tasked with drawing up some potential revisions to our offices as we try to accommodate additional staff.

After a year away from drafting, it was surprisingly hard to get back into the flow. Admittedly AutoCAD looks a bit different from what I remembered, and four years or ArchiCAD certainly didn’t help.

But the hardest part was just a lack of practice. Fundamentals may stick around forever, but the skills and instincts that differentiate between competent and good deteriorate quickly!

Of course I jumped into the easy part first, doodling on floor plans. But the office is small and there aren’t that many options. So once I hit that wall, I realized I had to regroup and start talking with everyone to get a feel for what was actually needed.

Fire-Aim-Ready. Rookie move.

Oh and yeah, like all projects, scope creep definitely happened. Converting a storage room into a couple offices somehow resulted in walking around the Building & Grounds and Inspection groups to measure up their spaces.

Even so, it was a fun couple days, and now we’ll see what the guys upstairs think.

It’s easy for me to slip into busy work to avoid the difficult task of thinking strategically.

Possibly even typing up on this blog right now.

It’s always a nagging concern.

But sometimes, when things are so fuzzy and confused, executing the simplest task is the first step into clarity.

I guess wisdom is know the difference.

I just had a meeting with a consultant who had a high fee on a project.

There are still some details to resolve, but we walked out of the meeting pretty confident we will stick with them.

Why? Because they were able to discuss in detail what work they were going to do in exchange for this money.

They’ve given us top notch design and service in the past, so they’ve earned the benefit of the doubt, and in that light, the high fee is a promise that they will continue to do so.

I woke up this morning upset at a consultant who did not do something that we had discussed a few months ago.

But then I realized that expecting something to be done is not my job title. I should have taken a more proactive approach to this situation. It was my fault that I did not nag them on this task.

They are there to handle the details, and my job is to make sure nothing slips through the cracks. After all, I’m the one who is called the project “manager”.

Invariably, it wraps back onto me.

I had always assumed that having an unfair advantage would be a matter of gross nepotism. Something quite obvious. And no doubt that happens.

But I’m starting to think it’s more a matter of margins. One day’s advance notice. A little extra of familiarity.

Sometimes decisions are binary. You either get the job. Or you don’t.

And that’s where the edge comes in. A hair’s width results in a massive difference.

Over time, these binary decisions stack up. The edge compounds and the advantage does become quite obvious.

I’m not sure how to create such marginal differences, but I do think you can to sense when such a minor advantage has been presented to. And in those moments, you gotta jump.

Over my career I’ve written one specification book. It was by “accident” – my firm had taken a TI project for the city, and and even though we had not planned on putting together a spec book, when a client like that asks for one, you do it.

Furthermore our usual 3rd party spec writer was overloaded so it fell back on us. So I compiled the sections, had an epic editing session with my boss to edit all the selections and then handed off the chicken scratch to an intern to do the edits.

Fast forward a year and a half later and I have now reviewed about ten spec books, four of which are massive tomes for major new structures.

Day to day, you just don’t know what experience will be absolutely crucial to your future self. But you can tackle unfamiliar tasks with gusto. Most of the time I’m certain it will fade into memory, but occasionally you’ll be very grateful you did.

One of my biggest weakness is that I’m awful at stopping and thinking.

I adore discrete tasks, knocking each of them out of the park, one at a time. Even better, just string them all along and I’ll never have to think.

How does I force oneself to pause, and make sure the bigger picture is in alignment?

I used to do a regular visit to the coffee shop on fridays for contemplation. But between two kids at home, and knowing too many folks as a regular, I’ve kind of lost that routine.

In theory this blog maybe could fill that role, but it is also a discrete task in the morning as well.

Is there a way to chop of thinking about big picture items into discrete tasks that can then get put on a TTD list?

I think I should try…