We often come across the term – The Angry Boss. How often do we ask, why the Boss is angry? Well hypothetically he is angry because he is not able to complete a task perfectly and he aspect you to complete it perfectly. Because you are, in fact, imperfect and how is it possible for you to carry out a task perfectly? That is why he is angry and his anger will also make you angry and you throw your anger to your subordinate and everyone in the organization is angry.

To mitigate such do a One Minute Management, daily: -

1 – MINUTE OBJECTIVE. For whatever we do contemplate for 1 minute what is our purpose and objective of doing such thing and write it clearly. For example, my objective is that by 3pm everyone should have a tea break. Can the HR look into these?

1 – MINUTE PRAISE. People say, praise must be cast in stone, insult should be written in sands. Praise your fellow mate for helping you even as small as picking up the phone for you. Trust me, it will make your day.

1 – MINUTE REPRIMAND. Your fellow mate is your mirror to oneself. It is good to reprimand someone who you think had done wrong – but that is only for 1 minute and no longer. For example, hey! Why the HR only brief us on the spot without issuing the guidelines much earlier?

1 – MINUTE APOLOGY. Be brave and if you had identify your shortcomings just ADMIT and apologies. Live moves on. For example, Aiya! My mistake… I should have given you more time to vet the document…

It is PERFECT to be IMPERFECT. Drill oneself of these 4 mantras and everybody’s life will be better. Give it a try!

What is in a Business of Architecture? What makes a FIRM ticking? It is again the model of production – A Stage, A Script and The Crews.

A Stage – Is defined as a Hardware. Its address speaks a thousand words. A Firm in CBD is different from a Firm in the Suburb. The Location, Imagery and its Organization gives meaning to a BRAND. Your office represents what and who you are!

The Crews – Is defined by its ORGANIZATION. Organization is who’s who within the confine of an Office (Stage). There is a “BOSS”, called it by whatever name – CEO, MD, Managing Partner, Principal, he is the “Fountain Head”. He alone makes the ultimatum. If you have 2, the organization is going to doom. Subsequently, it is ROLE PLAYING. The head is supported by his team, all in it is called the ADMINISTRATION. Different components or ROLES are classified as PRODUCTION, MARKETING, IT and so on so forth, each potentially becomes a full-fledged company in itself. Crossing this line, it is an amalgamation of Holding Company with its Subsidiaries. This ORGANIZATION defines its POLITIC.

THE SCRIPT – Each Crew liked an ACTOR has different SCRIPT such as LEADERSHIP, STAFFING, DIRECTING and CONTROLING. 

Leadership is best done by example. There are basically 2 types of leadership – the BOSS and the LEADER. You choose…

Staffing is what you want your staff to be 5 years down the road. There is a different between a Career and a Job. Every employee should have a Career path, not just a Job scope!

Directing is another word for Communication. Right communication is essential. If the instruction is clear, the execution erred – it is the executives’ mistake. If the instruction is unclear, the execution erred – it is the superior’s mistake. Communication is to put a decision into action and worse of all is no decision and not wrong decision. It is judgement call. Everyone should have it. For standardization is good practice to lay them down as SOP (Standard Operating Procedure) and DL (Discretionary Limits). 

Controlling is the flow of authority. If it originates from the top, it is called top down control and there are various sort of controls. What is your preference?  

When you gel all these together, you get yourself a FIRM.

There are 6 aspects to Business Development also known as MARKETING MATRIX.

You must understand your PRODUCT and what you offer. This goes back to the approach of your firm’s orientation such as DESIGN driven, SERVICE driven or PRODUCTION driven. Most start-up will start with PRODUCTION driven. This what known as the “bread and butter” of architecture where recycle of workable plans, fast churning of production drawings and fast authority approval for a mediocre fee are the order of the day. When you are in the market for some time and able to survive the “red-ocean”, you want to carve a name for yourself you start to leech to newbies developer, you start to shift gear to SERVICE driven. Some goes as low as to “SLEEP” with potential clients to get JOB. Some went into POLITICS and be the cronies. Ultimately the performance is measure as to how good your relationships with the Clients. The quality of your product does not count. When you are comfortable enough with the jobs available, you have the opportunity to choose and select and such potentially make you a Starachitect. On this pedestal only then you are DESIGN driven in a “Blue-Ocean” you had created.

You must understand who you are OFFERING to. What will be your market segment? Start-up will approach individual owners because you have no precedent to showcase. Interior works are best to start with for its short gestation period and potentially gloss over magazines. Later they will be promoted to engage with Developers with all kinds underlying tactics. Some will operate as “in-house” others will be engaged as outsourcing that the firm will need to finance itself during the gestation period – also called delayed gratification. Some will be partnering with foreign firms in creating their blue ocean and the lists go on.

You must understand if your offering is UNIQUE. There goes your branding liked ECO-ARCHITECTURE, BIO-CLIMATIC, ICONIC and so forth. This is to create your own market segment – we called “Blue-Ocean” strategy. To garner such you must appear to be EXCLUSIVE. For example, there is a Firm whose individuals happened to be once the President of the Institute of Architecture. He lobbied and headed the newly minted Green Certifying Body under the auspice of the institute. He set his rule and game plan. For out of the Blue, he champions for Green Building and marketed his firm as Guaranteed Green Building Certified Architect in town. Whoever developers wannabe Green must go to him for he only knows how to go about it and no one else.

You must know your PRICE. It is true that the bottom line of any commercial decision is the price. Do you know how much your service worth? It is naïve to think that there is no price war within architectural practices although it is mandatory for all to follow the minimum fee rule. The BIG BOYS are throwing their fee just to keep their organization afloat and the SMALL FRIES are surviving on shoe-string budget waiting to go bust. Price war is the stupidest thing to do and yet is the most practical thing happening in this industry. Both the Board and the Institute cannot do anything about it because it is believed that they are the party to it as well. Learn to be smart with pricing.

You must know how to PROMOTE. Promoting a BRAND is a better choice of word. The practice as a BRAND where Brand Promises, individual don’t. You must be a MEDIA’s darling. You must create events and generate awareness. You must be seen championing a cause. You must engage in Social Media. You must cultivate Brand Awareness within your own organization. You must LIVE as the Brand. You must communicate with the Brand via your writings, speeches, social works and so forth. It must be a 360 days awareness campaign to make your Brand jingles in everybody’s head. If nobody ever knew you existed in the first place, you are a total FAILURE.

In summary, you must have a good PRODUCT. Then you BRAND the product. Next, you PROMOTE the Brand. With the Brand you open up your MARKET SEGMENT. The Market Segment will indicate your PRICE – This is PROGRAMMING.

Knowing a little of how an Architectural Firm doing business is a good thing. As the saying goes, Business Development (BD) is not a sole individual responsibility but the entire organization’s objective. Without it, there will be no Clientele. Without the client, there will be no business and the consequences are too horrifying to even think about. Everyone within the organization will go hungry, so are their families. 

Saying such, what is the Architectural Business Model? What do we do to make a living? That is the fundamental. Sure, we say we makes DREAM. We CREATE. We know the BEST because we are the Architect. Dunno what I am saying? Watch the “Fountainhead”, you will know what I am talking about. In reality, it NEVER HAPPENS the way you intended it to happen.

Let’s look at the Business options available: -

1. DESIGN ORIENTED is very individual driven by high octane of egoism, opinionated, individualistic and principled. In other word, absolute stubbornness. DESIGN ORIENTED is not dealing with architecture but Arts. There is no value to it. The contemporary Starachitects on such platform is Zaha Hadid.
2. SERVICE ORIENTED is a very common Modus Operandi (MO). Philip Johnson term it as – “WHORE”. Actually he is not wrong! The Malaysian context called it TECHNICAL KNOW-WHO. We missed a lot of commissions because we do not know who’s who? Not knowing such, we are not able to provide the necessary services. So the million dollar question is how to be acquainted to TECHNICAL KNOW-WHO?
3. PRODUCTION ORIENTED is where the firm provides the best drafting and Technical services on the basis of TECHNICAL KNOW-HOW. We can technically sell by saying we used the latest cutting edge tool liked CAD or BIM software. Someone informed me that Developers are willing to pay premium fee if the firm employed BIM or Parametric technology. The contemporary Starachitects on such platform is SOM.
   

Among the 3 business orientations where are we? Which direction we want to go? How to go about it?