And actually, when we look at a business, all there really is is a series of conversations that are happening in the organization. Hello, and welcome to the Business of Architecture. I'm your host, Brian, when are done today, I have a very interesting conversation for you, we're going to be looking at one of my favorite leadership books called the three laws of performance by Steve saffron, and Dave Logan. This episode is sponsored by Smart practice, business of architectures, flagship program to help you structure your firm for freedom, fulfillment, and financial profit. If you want access for our free training on how to do this, please visit smart practice method.com. Or if you want to speak directly to one of our advisors about how we might be able to help you please follow the link in the information. I think this book is one of the most phenomenal business books out there. I've read it many times, I used to do a lot of personal development work with an organization called landmark that was also a lot of the stuff that you read in here has its kind of coaching, ontology, or its coaching ideology, or its coaching modality if you like, which is very similar to the work of that personal development group landmark. And it's just an extraordinary book, that's, you know, we have all of our clients a Business of Architecture, read it, we use it, we discuss it, we talk about it, the anecdotes and the stories in there are absolutely fantastic. So get yourself a copy of this book. And I'm going to talk about the actual three laws of performance in this podcast. And you can start to actually how we look at them through the lens of an architecture practice and how we can use them. So let's start by Well, why on earth would you need a book like this in the first place? What are some of the issues and the problems that we see in architecture businesses facing in the first place? Well, number one, is the architects tend to be very good in terms of performance, when it comes to design are very poor in performance when it comes to the actual business mechanics running and looking after managing the business, knowing where their profitability is on individual projects, project management itself can get quite ropey at times. We often see businesses I mean, from my perspective, you know, Eric and I, we've spoken about this numerous times. But I do think the architecture profession, as an industry is underperforming, in its business needs. And the reason why we can look at that is when we look at the finances of practices, when we look at the salaries of architects, and for the amount of liability and for the amount of work that it takes to become an architect and for the responsibility and the hours that get put in. It just feels like it's a real long slog. So in that sense, the the business performance I would assert is under performing. Not unusual that when I speak to architecture practices, they're dealing with things like enormous amount of overwhelm of fatigue, will speak to practice owners sometimes and they're in their mid 60s. And they've got nothing for retirement. They've been running an organization which has been on the breadline, which has been on the knife's edge for an incredible amount of time. And now they're looking at making retirement plans. And, you know, it's pretty difficult as a very difficult situation to be in.
I used to hear, and we'd still have it sometimes, you know, I'll ask and ask an architect about what their retirement plan is. And they'll say something like, You know what, I'm going to die at the drafting table. That might be a bit of a joke sometimes, but in many cases, it's not. And I think this is actually quite a serious situation in the architecture industry, where we've got businesses that don't come to any kind of powerful conclusion. They either just wither away, or it's unlikely that, you know, start lots of businesses that never get sold, or there's not a powerful succession plan that gets put into place. And that can be very heartbreaking for the owners involved. When we look at underperformance in terms of fulfillment, as well. I know that there's lots of practices that are not doing the kind of design work that they want to be doing. And they're not in the sectors that they would like to be in. Perhaps they've got the chops, perhaps they've got to know how, but by the way that the business has been organized and structured internally. This has been just the lack of profit in them. This has been a preventative issue for them actually getting and into the position that they want to be into and win the work, they want to be want to be winning? I think as well one of these, the kind of performance issues that we see in architecture is lots of practices end up becoming very satisfied or complacent, if you like with mediocre results. And we can Eric and I, we've spoken about this a lot, as well on previous podcasts, where we see people actually fight for the status quo of mediocrity. And I think this is ridiculous. This is enough, you know, architects, we are amazing people at being able to see the wider ranging impact of our profession. And we know how important it is, we're very quick as well to wave the banner for lots of activism be in the climate crisis, to diversity, to all sorts of a array of different issues that society is dealing with. However, as individual organizations with agency, and I'm going to say that money is an index of agency, we struggle. In that sense, we look at diversity in the profession, one of the most unappealing kinds of equations is the return on your investment of training for the best part of seven years investing 10s, or even hundreds of 1000s of dollars pounds into becoming an architect only for a very mediocre, if not poor salary at the end of it as a huge investment for a for something which isn't delivering. And of course, that met that equation makes it more difficult for people to get involved into the profession, and to stay inside the profession. So the business aspect of it feeds its way into all these other areas, having the ability to to have more impact in sustainability. For example, being able to sell Passive House services or sustainable services will be a driver of that kind of work, again, business knowledge and know how to help us market these things that will help us identify how to position those kinds of sustainable services in the context of, say, a client's business agenda and their pain points and their needs. And this is quite a complex thing. That, again, business knowledge marketing, and sales know how will help us be able to become more powerful in our agency and delivering the kinds of high caliber design work that we want to be doing a successful profitable business has choice, okay, has a choice where it directs its resources, it has a choice of where it directs its funds, it has a choice in the kinds of projects that it takes on, it has confidence, it has a natural ability to negotiate, it's not needy, it's not in scarcity, it's in abundance. And all of this creates a much more powerful and persuasive organization that is able to perform at a higher level, be that just financially and in terms of profit, or, as well as in terms of design and being able to get and do the kinds of projects and have the kind of architectural impact that so many architects desire. So that's the kind of synopsis of a lot of problems that we see or why a book like this is incredibly powerful. And what I want to kind of create as a possibility here for an organization is that we are operating in architectural practices that number one are profitable, that there is a powerful exit strategy for the owners that has been thought about and has in place B that a powerful transition or succession plan where a new group of leaders is identified, and they take over the business. Again, that's a kind of plan that might take between five and 10 years to do it really, really well. And being able to think about high performance as an organization is critical. In doing that business owner might want to sell the practice either to an outside third party, someone who's never had anything to do with the business before. Create no lovely retirement and lifestyle plans, the businesses fulfilling on that we might look at the possibility of an organization which is making money and doing impactful fantastic design work as well as having agency in all these other areas that architects are waving the banner of activism for repeatedly. So money, again, is the sort of index of agency here. And it's, it's we use it because it's we're able to measure it and we're able to look at it and we want to take a kind of snapshot of where our businesses and What it's doing at any given moment in time, so it becomes a very useful metric. It's not everything. And high performance as an organization isn't purely driven on profit based goals and incentives. In fact, when we look at this book, we start talking about this book, the wider, grander vision that you have for an organization and your ability to communicate it to others, and have other people enrolled in that vision for the future, is really what makes the highperformance Columbia. So I want to talk about three principles here. Spoiler alert, I'm going straight to the back, taking them out of the appendix. And there are the three laws of performance and their accompanying leadership corollaries. The first law of performance is how people perform correlates to how situations occur to them. Now, this is interesting how people perform correlates to how situations occur to them. So we might think of this in terms of how an event how circumstances are being perceived by us, how we're interpreting them, how we're building up an internal mental image of the reality that we're existing in right now how that mechanism is happening. And we might use the word the word language here is very important. The word occurring, okay, so that kind of projection of, of reality, or how our brains and our minds are putting together all of our sync sensory input, if you like, and piecing it together, and playing it back to us in terms of edited, curated film, the way that that playback and experience is happening, of all of our sensory input, that is, what governs our performances governs our ability to take action, and our ability to be to complete things. Okay, I like to think of performance being personal power, your ability to be able to take action and accomplish a result that you've put your mind to, or that you have set. Okay, so that's kind of like what we might look at in terms of what is high performance. And this relationship between how an individual performs is related to the way that the world is actually occurring. For somebody. There's an interesting book called The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, I think it's called by Stephen Covey. It's one of these classic personal development business books. And I believe it's this book. At the very beginning of it, Stephen Covey, the author, writes a story of being on the New York Metro, the subway system, and he talks about how a man and his three children come on to a carriage. And the three children are behaving crazy. They're like screaming, shouting, they're like running around the carriage. And Steven Covey, the author, he's looking at this and he's thinking in his, in his mind, why the hell are you not doing anything?
Why the hell are you? You know, not looking after your children. This is kind of crazy. You could look around the carriage and lots of other people, lots of other passengers were also equally kind of perturbed by these unruly children. So Stephen, being the sort of leader himself says, Hey, what, you know, what's, what's going on here with your kids. And the father of the children says, I'm so sorry, I'm, we're absolutely beside, I'm actually beside myself, the mother just died. We were just coming back from the hospital. And, of course, at that moment, the whole situation changes. And it's not the father's performance that changes. It's Steven Covey's the author's ability to perform and to act and to respond, completely transforms. Okay, so now he's open his eyes up to being compassionate, and understanding and he immediately begins to, to help the kids and to kind of, you know, comfort the Father and to listen to be there. So what what we see the way that the situation suddenly changed, and the way that the perception of the situation changed the way that it's occurring, changes, change the author's ability to perform and the actions that they were choosing to take suddenly went into someone being consoling and compassionate. The leadership principle that accompanies this is that leaders have a say you give others a say in how situations occur. So that's quite incredible actually, when we start to think about this in a business, that you, as a leader, have a say, in how situations occur and how situations occur to others. And you give other people, the means for them to change the way that they're looking at something, you give them the means to change paradigms, and will often talk Business of Architecture or how can you, how can you do this? And I think, really, if you start listening to your team members, as leaders, number one, that changes a lot of things, okay, you're starting to listen for their ability, as a leader, rather than listening to them as someone who can't do something, okay, or someone who is struggling or someone who is smaller, okay, we're listening for their leadership, we're listening for their greatness, okay. And developing a business that actually, as part of your culture has a an element of coaching and environment of coaching. And support and performance, I think can be very, very powerful. We often talk about a number of different leadership languages from first of all being very directive, or the delegation type of language, which is, you speak to somebody, you give them a result that you want, you don't care how they do it, but you expect them to go off and do it. We do that a lot as business owners, and often it's quite ineffective, because we're expecting either too much from somebody, or we haven't gone through the process of the other leadership languages, in order for them to be the right person to be able to do that kind of job. Other teams, you might have had this experience with your own team, which is quite the opposite, where you lift an eyebrow, and they know what that lifting of the eyebrow means. And they've already gone and prepared the report or they've already brought that piece of information up for you. And you look at them. And then they go, here you go, this is what you needed. And you're like, wow, okay, great. That's the kind of level of complicity or flow, if you like that we can have in a high performance team. That's what that's the kind of where we want to be going. But this idea of the leadership languages, we're talking about delegation being very directive with somebody, you know, just giving them the answer. But there's a next one, which is actually much more hand holding, and kind of showing somebody how something is done step by step. Okay, so you give them here's number one, here's step number two, here's step number three, here's step number four, and you actually do it with them. For them, you show them bang, bang, bang, then we'll move on to the second language of leadership, which might be coaching, which is now you're allowing them to do things by themselves, and you're there to motivate and inspire. And also, you're allowing them to make their own mistakes. Okay, third, is more supportive and listening. And then fourth, we're in the language of delegation. Okay, so you, as a leader, have a say, and give others a say, in how situations occur. Okay, so you're empowering people to be able to change the way that events are occurring for them. Okay, so you're able to shift paradigms, you're able to use language, and communicate in a way where you're able to expand somebody's viewpoint, you always change the context with which they're operating. It takes a lot of skill, but it's very, very pertinent and powerful. Number two, the second law of performance is how a situation occurs arises in language. And the leadership principle that accompanies that is leaders must master the conversational environment. So how a situation occurs, arises in language. Now, we could have a longer philosophical debate about what is a language and there might be musical language, mathematical language. But let's just focus it on the domain of verbal language because that's very easy for us to understand. And it's also very useful, because immediately, we know now the power of our words, and that actually, everybody has a some kind of mastery of language because you won't be able to be able to interact with them and certainly in your own organization, and that by changing the language, the words that they are using to describe a situation gives us an access point into changing how an event or circumstances are occurring. This is massively. It's so simple All. But it's also incredibly profound when we start to, to recognize that just by the language that we're using, we can change our whole concept of reality. There's another great book that will often get people to read, called, what to say when you speak to yourself by a guy called Dr. Shad Helmstetter. And this is a fabulous book that gives lots of very practical ways of being able to reprogram your mind. And actually to become aware of the habitual thinking patterns that are existing, that describe and color your everyday experience that have a result that have an impact on the way that you're behaving interacting and performing.
And a lot of us might not even think that the way that we're thinking, or the language that we're using internally is having an impact. But for other people, other people will often recognize it in you, even though we might find it quite difficult for ourselves. So actually getting into a discipline, where you start to become cognizant of the internal narrative that you have, that's describing everything can be incredibly, incredibly powerful. And recognizing that it's language, that is the, the access point to it, okay, so we could start to look at that everything actually exists inside of the realm of something linguistic, okay, that's how human beings, that's how we conceptualize primarily, is something linguistic, something something language based, and we have the ability to manipulate and change language, very deep level, which means that we can literally change the way that reality is occurring for us, we can when it gets really powerful was when we start changing the language that we're using, even to describe ourselves. Now, it's not as straightforward as this, I'm suddenly going to think, you know, I'm just going to describe something in a new way, because it kind of works on a series of levels where there's a kind of conscious surface level of language that's being used to describe something. And then there's often deeper levels, which are obscured from us. Okay, so there's actually hidden language or hidden beliefs that we're not consciously aware of. Okay, that, in many cases don't even make any logical sense. Okay. But we're, that's what that's the kind of underpinning programming. That's, that's working. So, again, a Business of Architecture, we go into a lot of psychology, if you like about uncovering these kind of hidden beliefs, and hidden mindsets, I think a good example is around money. For for sure. And, you know, we often find many architects and clients, we've been brainwashed, if you like, either through family, or through University, where we've become kind of very apathetic to money, or we think of profit as being evil, we think of money as being a nasty, nasty thing, or we have a belief that all rich people are scumbags. And the only way to, to develop wealth is through doing something unscrupulous when those kinds of hidden beliefs are at play. Okay, they will make it very difficult to be successful in business or in that particular domain. Okay, there's the kind of tension point there's a, there is a stress, if you like, there's a kind of trying to operate with the with the handbrake on. And that can be very difficult. But to actually kind of do a little bit of inner work and to recognize that that's the subjective model that we're using to understand it, first of all, in language are what are the sorts of things that I'm saying to myself to start to identify them, and then to start to unpick them? Actually question them, and actually, kind of undermine them, if you like, start to strip them back and replace them with something new. So we're interested in language, we're interested in the words that we use, and leaders have a business master the conversational environment. So they become good at being able to propagate certain types of conversations in their business, which are very productive and our high performance conversations. I'll often go back to the values that you have in a business. And actually, when we look at a business, all there really is is a series of conversations that are happening in the organization. If, at any time, so I might go into a business and as a business, there's a business that's filled with conversations that are complaint based. Okay. And when there's business filled of complaint based conversations, there's not much possibility, there's not much hope. Even if the, the leaders of the business suddenly come up with this fantastic new vision and direction for the company, it's undermined by a culture of complaint, mediocrity. And there hasn't been anything to do to restore the integrity or to get complete with the past, and the past conversations that used to exist, okay, this is where values of business become very, very useful, because your values are essentially the kind of guiding principles if you like, for the business to be following. And the values inside of a business are really, they're only really going to exist in conversations and conversations which lead to actions being taken. So we want to have businesses where the values that we say that we're living, are actually being spoken into existence, and the actions are being born out of those conversations that people have. In the organization. I remember working, I've worked at businesses where there's been a complaint culture, and I've worked at businesses where there has been very clear principles and values. That meant that the people who work there have this feeling of respect, and the conversational environment in that organization was worlds apart from the business that had an environment of complaint. Okay, just think about it as well, the conversational environment also, it underpins all of your marketing, your messaging, it attracts a certain kind of person who has already got that kind of conversation and belief system, operating in their own mind. Okay, so the conversational environment. Very, very profound. Okay, it might sound very simplistic of how I'm describing it, but I can't, I can't stress how deeply pertinent and poignant, this these ideas are, okay. The third law of performance is that future based language transforms how situations occur to people. And the leadership corollary, or principle, because I'm struggling to say that word is that leaders listen for the future of their organization. Okay, so this is very interesting is that the future that you're living into the future that you're living into? is what gives you right now, okay, the future that you're living into is what gives you as, as a human being, it's what's giving the current conversation, it is dictating your level of performance. Okay, so having a clear vision for the organization, and the future that the business is going into is moving towards is something that drives performance. Okay, so, as a leader, you must become somebody who's listening for the future of the organization. Okay, and listening for the future of the organization is different from say, going off of 100 consultants and coming up with a vision and saying, here's where we're going, okay, there's part of it that that might exist like that. But actually listening to well, what's the future of the people here? What are they? What are they having a say in? What do they believe? What
do they want? What's important to them? Okay, and I think this is really where good leaders separate themselves from poor leaders or bosses, is that good leaders have a very intimate understanding of what their team members want, what's important to their team members, where do they want to go, and that team members, it's not that they buy into the vision of the company, but at a very deep level, they recognize that the goals and the things that are super important for them, can be realized by them realizing the goal of the organization and the goal and their of the organization is deeply influenced, or in alignment with their own personal values. Okay, so future based language is starts to is the thing that starts to give us direction. Now, we can't just generate future based language without dealing with the past. And in many cases, it looks like the past is actually giving us our future. And this is where we kind of get into what we call a default future, which is a future which just looks like the past. It's very predictable. It's filled with the same mediocre results we've always had. And often what happens is that our past isn't in the past at all. It's actually filed out into the future. We've made a decision about something or somebody and We're just playing that past decision out into the future again, and again. And again, I'll give you an example. Imagine that you're, you know, some of you might have been secondary school, and you're all lined up to play football, and the two captains and they're picking teams, and lo and behold, you get picked last. And at that moment, you make a decision in your mind, I suck at football, I hate sports, I'm not going to do I'm not going to do this anymore. Okay. And at that moment, you start to withdraw from playing team games. Now, some of you might have a very, might have had much more positive response to it. And the same thing is true, okay. But here we're more interested in, in past results or past decisions that are giving rise to poor performance. Okay, so you get picked last, make a decision about your relationship to sports, you now file that decision out into the future, and you keep playing it again, and again. And again. I'll give you another example of how the past or how the future is giving you who you are right now. Let's imagine I'm an architect. I'm in my office. It's Friday evening, in the cold, gloomy, London, I've got 100. And, you know, I've got 150 emails. In my in my inbox, there's clients who want things, there's contractors who need stuff, there's drawings that need to be done, but I'm super excited. Because tomorrow, Saturday, I'm on vacation, and I'm flying to one of my favorite cities, and flying out to Florence with my with my wife, and we're going to enjoy coffee and the groceries for the whole weekend whilst indulging in lots of fine art and highbrow cultural activities. Okay, so the future that I'm living into, has given me who I am in the present as fast forward to the end of that weekend. Okay, we're sitting in this beautiful hidden Florentine Piazza sipping on Negroni and coffee, and I see a plane flying over my head. And it's, you know, it's a cheap Ryanair flight. And suddenly, I had that pang of dread. Because I know that tomorrow, I've got to get on that crappy flight, fly back to London and fly back to the desk with all the drawings and all the unread emails. Okay. So the future now starts to give me who I am, right now. Okay, so this is how human beings operate, the future that we're creating, the future that we're living into, is what's giving us who we are, and our levels of performance. Now. All right, so future based language becomes something that we are that we're super interested in, in mastering, in speaking, and listening for, and this can radically transform the current performance of any organization. I'll leave it there. Go and get yourself a copy of this book, Business of Architecture. We discussed this book and many others on our smart practice program. As we walk businesses through business transformation to create new futures for unprecedented results. Think Great speaking to you. I'll talk again shortly. And that's a wrap. And one more thing. If you haven't already, please do head on over to iTunes or Spotify. And leave us a review. We'd love to read your name out here on the show. And we'd love to get your feedback. And we'd love to hear what it is you'd like to see more of and what you love about the show already. This episode is sponsored by Smart practice, business of architectures flagship program to help you structure your firm for freedom, fulfillment, and financial profit. If you want access for our free training on how to do this, please visit smart practice method.com Or if you want to speak directly to one of our advisors about how we might be able to help you please follow the link in the information. The views expressed on this show by my guests do not represent those of the host and I make no representation, promise guarantee, pledge warranty, contract, bond or commitment except to help you the unstoppable
