Haters gonna hate: Why company culture should matter to clients
Just to translate for those of you who don't know the reference, "Haters gonna hate" is a phrase from a hip hop song back in 2000, and it means that haters are going to hate, no matter what you do. People say it to mean you shouldn't worry about mean people raining on your parade, because you can't change a hater's mind.
I actually believe that individual behavior is much easier to change than group behavior, because individuals shift their behavior to fit into their surroundings much quicker than a group's culture can change. What has this to do with architecture or construction you ask? If you hire a company for your building project which is internally dysfunctional, there is approximately 100% chance that its employees will be dysfunctional as part of your project team.
That's because a building project is essentially a temporary company--a group of professionals thrown together and required to cooperate to get things done. So the way a person is used to behaving inside their mothership company is the way that person will instinctively behave in the project setting.
As an example of the direct correlation between internal company culture and project behavior, a close friend of mine once worked at a company where any attempt at improvement was taken as a personal insult to upper management individuals and met with nasty retorts, including "I could find 100 people out there who would jump at the chance to take your job tomorrow, and who wouldn't be asking for changes." Other gems included,
"What do you mean you don't know how to do your job? I'm not going to explain it to you; this isn't a university."
"You want to know if you're doing a good job? The fact that we haven't fired you should be praise enough."
"I don't know why you young people are so entitled. I never asked for a seat at the table until I'd worked here for 10 years."
Internally, there was a culture of shutting down communication, shifting blame downhill instead of taking responsibility for management and training, and speaking disrespectfully in general.
Shockingly, these translated to projects. When staff lacked the training to correctly work out a detail, the architect heard, "We'll pick it up in C.A." several times, instead of taking the time to fix it. When a problem with the design documents was revealed through a Request for Interpretation (RFI), they were trained to first assume it is the Contractor's mistake. The first response was always to justify the drawings, no matter how convoluted the explanation.
Even when the full research proved that the mistake was entirely theirs, the standard response from her boss was:
We aren't required to be perfect, and this kind of mistake is well within the Standard of Care -and-
It's really the client's fault for giving us too little time and too little money to do the drawings well. This was the kind of confrontational, pretentious attitude that was modeled to and expected from them.
And like a well-trained soldier, she perfected this approach. She knew the contract documents inside and out, and used her knowledge and well-phrased arguments as arsenal to confront, shame, and silence contractors and vendors when they threatened to undermine the design. Sometimes they believed they did this to protect the client's interests (to keep the contractors from providing sub-quality substitutions, or to ward off expensive change orders), and other times it was just to protect themselves from allegations of negligence or from having to do more work on a project that had a slim profit margin.
The approach, predictably, led to the contractors taking a similar stance. Before long, their project was a battle ground, where everyone was so worked up that they had a hair trigger.
By the end of the project and the end of her time with that company, she was exhausted with this approach. She knew things should and could be different. Luckily, that architect found a different place to work that had an entirely different company culture. Now she's known as the problem-solver who is great at working with contractors and clients of all shades.
When I started designing Boiled Architecture, I thought about how I wanted myself and my team to perform on projects. Then I asked what kind of internal company structure or culture would encourage that behavior.
I want my team to be humble on projects, so we have a weekly educational assignment (which communicates that there is always something more to learn). When I do semi-yearly staff reviews, half of the interview asks the employee to rate my own performance in mentoring, aligning my actions with my stated goals, and representing Boiled Architecture well, among other things--not just me assessing the employee's performance. When we finish projects, we ask for suggestions from each client on improving our performance.
I want my team to be highly communicative on projects, so internally we have a weekly staff meeting in which we each give the update on our projects so everyone knows about each project. We have an online bulletin board on which we post frequent updates, shared links, and a team blog. At the end of each weekly meeting, each of us talk about how we felt about our workload and other work and culture issues over the previous week. Any problems are brought up here before they become big.
I want my team to be transparent on projects, so internally we are 100% transparent with financial information, strategic goals, and even salaries.
I want my team to be good at the consensus process on projects, so we make most of our decisions by consensus internally. We set our yearly goals, our salaries, our branding decisions, and other similar decisions on consensus.
I want my team to do the highest quality work on projects, so I deliver and expect them to deliver internal deliverables on time and correctly. We have quarterly internal reviews to measure our progress toward the goals we set as a team, and we encourage an atmosphere where anyone can challenge the group to improve performance, regardless of position or rank.
Finally, I want my team to do what makes sense, not what is always done. Internally, we do lots of things that are non-traditional. We do every project in Revit, even the small T.I.'s. We use a co-working space instead of an office. We have flexible work schedules and work from home several days a week. Our architects do their own project management and client invoicing. We do lots of things you won't normally see.
These internal behaviors translate to projects in a number of ways. So the next time you hire a service provider of any type, maybe you should ask different questions in the interview. Ask the person trying to pitch to you how she feels about her boss, or what happened the last time she came up with an innovative solution for a problem at work. Ask her where she gets her mentoring, and where she turns to when she needs help with a detail. That architect may be great in one setting and rotten in another, because she acts as a reflection of the setting in which she spends her days. People naturally mirror their peers' and elders' behavior.
If you run a company, nurture that culture above all else. If you hire a company, hire the baller, not the hater. (Google that last reference if you need to.)
