Six Qualities That Make Architects Ideally Suited to Lead Collaborative Integrated Teams

In order to effectively lead collaborative teams, architects would do well to downplay possessing specialized knowledge. Knowledge acquired in school and practice should be thought of as the price of admission, not their “Advance to GO” card, as so many on the team in this connected age have access to and share this same knowledge. Along with specialized knowledge, as a professional duty of practice, architects will also need to reevaluate the role of professional judgment, design intent, responsible control, direct supervision, and serving as the hander-down of rulings in the shape-shifting required from working simultaneously on collaborative teams.

Recognizing that nothing incites a non-architect’s derision, ridicule and ire swifter than to start a sentence “The architect is uniquely qualified to.”
Here are six qualities that make architects ideally suited to lead collaborative, integrated teams:

1. Architects can lead collaborative teams by tapping into their ability to maintain two or more opposing thoughts until an amenable solution arises.
Roger Martin’s The Opposable Mind, on the problem-solving power of integrative thinking, describes the human brain’s ability “to hold two conflicting ideas in constructive tension.” Like F. Scott Fitzgerald’s test of a first-rate intelligence as “the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function,” architects need to become even more comfortable working with and maintaining two or more opposing thoughts earlier in their careers. Architects famously can simultaneously maintain two lines of thought – e.g. their own and their client’s; their client’s and that of the public-at-large; the paying client and the non-paying client; the 99% and the 1%; the circumstantial and the ideal; science and art; reason and intuition; evidence and the ineffable; HSW and aesthetics; practical and dreamer. The difference between young designers and older designers as the ability to manage an increasingly larger set of variables.

2. Architects are problem identifiers. Not only problem solvers, architects recognize that identifying the right problem to solve is often 80% of the solution.
Frequently, the problem assigned is not the one that truly requires addressing. Architects work to make sure that everyone is focused on the most pressing, pertinent problem.

3. Architects see the big picture.
Solution-oriented engineers sometimes have a difficult time seeing the forest from the trees. Malcolm Gladwell in Blink called this ability to see information in its wider context coup d’oeil, court sense or “giss,” the power of the glance, the ability to immediately make sense of situations. Architects, by the end of their formal training, have begun to develop this ability, by thinking laterally and simultaneously – not linearly. Neither exclusively right- nor left- – architects are whole-brain thinkers. In the midst of prolonged analysis, architects can help to keep things whole.

4. Architects draw by hand, mouse and wand.
Creatively ambidextrous, flexible and agile, architects are not stuck on any one means of communication or delivery. Architects make the best use of available technology to get the point across. Because architects envision what is not there, they help bring nascent ideas to life. Today, we cannot talk of leadership without the technology. We lead from the technology and the tools we use. In this way, architects lead collaboration from the middle by leading from the model.

5. Architects can lead collaborative teams by thinking like other team members, anticipating their concerns and questions before they arise.
Architects see through other’s eyes, empathize and understand what is important to others. They have both deep skills and wide wingspan breadth. Architects are the only entity who serve not only the paying but non-paying client (society-at-large.) In trying to predict the consequences for any course of action, the architect needs to anticipate the responses of each of the integrated team members. To do this, an architect must know enough about each discipline to negotiate and synthesize competing demands.

6. Architects don’t lead collaborative teams because of their specialized skills, technology know-how, or privileged knowledge, but rather because of their comfort with ambiguity and uncertainty.
Architects are best suited to lead collaborative teams by being able to extrapolate from incomplete information, and won’t let the lack of complete information stop them from moving forward.

Randy Deutsch’s “How We Can Make Collaboration Work: How architects can decentralize rather than be marginalized”
Jan-Feb 2014 Design Intelligence journal

So, why is it that most of us are all still working the same way we did back when I was in College studying to be an Architect some 31 years ago?

Revit and other parametric 3D modeling software has been around for over 12 years; however, it was mostly the building geometry embedded with just enough information to produce our construction documents. Unfortunately, I always felt that it was a shame that nobody else was really getting the full potential benefit of my model.

Don’t get me wrong. I loved Revit from the beginning, and I still love it now. It was a game changer for me! I still remember spending countless late nights on Chris Zoog’s Revit forum while trying to model some roof, topography or stair. I vividly remember my first Autodesk University in Las Vegas where all of us early Revit users met for the first time, many of whom I have stayed close friends with over these past 10 years.

Now, 12 years later, Revit is no longer considered to be ‘cutting edge’ technology. It is now becoming the preferred tool of choice for an ever growing number of Architects and Builders. It will soon become expected, if not required, to design, document and deliver the project. Recently, Revit has been referred to as ‘disruptive’ or ‘invasive’ technology. So, what has changed?

Over these past 2 years, we have been seeing major companies starting to write software to supplement Revit as well as developing content to furnish us with more and more of the ‘Information’ and data for building construction, materials, environmental and performance analysis, operating equipment and furnishings. We are even seeing digital laser scanning technology becoming common place in renovation and restoration work. All of this new information can be leveraged by everyone associated with the project, from the original designer to the repair contractor servicing a piece of equipment years later. This is why I say that BIM has finally come to life.
The model should no longer just be the Architect’s. Once our “Architectural” model is complete and the Bid Documents are finalized, the model should be passed on to the Contractor and be allowed to outgrow us.

Our model, or child, should be allowed to be expanded upon with new data and be given new purpose. We should all just be temporary care givers, or custodians, letting go of it and handing if off to the next professional who will take care of it until it becomes the Owner’s building and her or his responsibility.

Architecture is still considered to be a profession. As a practicing Architect for over 27 years, I would like to ensure that it stays a viable, important, necessary and wonderfully rewarding profession.

Like Doctors, we are in charge of a life. Our projects, or buildings, are like our children. And as such, we are extremely protective and claim ownership when maybe we should not. Perhaps it is time to look at the way the medical profession evolved from the days of the country doctor who took care of you for most of your life to now, when a primary care provider refers you off to a specialist when needed because of technology, specialization, liability, insurance, economic and financial interests.

When I say BIM has come to life, I am referring to the building model itself. We, the Architects and Designers bring this model to life. We are its creator based on too many factors to mention here. We provide a critically important function. We are the equivalent to an Obstetrician, and as such, we are only responsible for bringing this new life into the world. We are not responsible for raising it, nor building it.

Our profession has always enjoyed a very clear separation and understanding of what Architects do vs that which Contractors do. This is similar to when the Obstetrician’s role ends and the Pediatric Care Physician’s starts. The Contractor should not have to begin from scratch when creating the “Constructability” model. We should provide the Contractor our fully developed Architectural Level 300 model so that the Owner and Contractor can benefit from our hard work while ensuring that the ‘design intent’ stays intact throughout the process.

This all ties in with the earlier point I made about ‘disruptive’ and ‘invasive’ technology (“The future is coming…are you up for it?” https://scshell.wordpress.com/2013/07/23/the-future-is-coming-are-you-up-for-it/) . In order to survive in the very near future, we will need to move forward with this new way of working, or ignore it and keep doing what we have been doing while arguing, “We are on the computer, stop pestering me with that BM and Rivitt or Reevet stuff. What more do we need?” Really?

Steven C. Shell, Architect

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