Hello and welcome to the Business of Architecture. So, here joined with the co founder of Business of Architecture, Mr. Enoch Sears Enoch, how I am
doing excellent Ryan, how are you?
I'm very well thank you. So today, we're gonna jump straight into it. And we're gonna be talking about the culture of complaint that pervades so many architectural businesses. Today. This podcast is produced by Business of Architecture, a leading business consultancy for architects and design professionals. 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. Hello, listeners, we hope you're enjoying our show. We love bringing you these insightful conversations, but we couldn't do it without the support of our amazing sponsors. If you're a business owner, or know someone who would be an excellent fit for our audience, we'd love to hear from you. Partnering with us means your brand will reach over 40,000 engaged listeners each month interested in becoming a sponsor, please send us an email at support at business of architecture.com. This is quite an interesting topic, we hear about it a lot from our own clients, we hear about it a lot from business owners. And normally it's a complaint about complaining. And I find it quite curious if you like but a very important conversation to have. Because I don't think people realize how in how insidious it is complaining how damaging it is to the business, and how disempowering it is to the individuals working in the business, your performance, your money, your bottom line, their levels of stress, we talk about mental health in the architecture industry. And, you know, this is going to be kind of fueled by a culture of complaint. And it's rife, it's it exists a lot in, in architecture practice, I think it's filled a lot as well by the kind of injustice that exists in the architecture profession as well, in the sense that there's a lot of dis ease and unhappiness about pay working conditions, all these other issues from equality, and diversity and etc, etc. And it's added to the list of of stuff. But there is this culture of complaining in the profession. That is, it's it's like a it's like a lead weight.
And yet it's right. Talk to us a little bit about what do we mean by the culture of complaint? What do you mean when you say that what we'll be talking about today?
So complaining about just a loss of power. Okay, so a culture of complaint might look like team members going off whinging about all sorts of things that they've got going on in their in that's happening in the business, but not not feeling empowered to be able to do anything about it. I think that's the distinction. It's fine to like vent, and to have a kind of healthy space where people can talk, you know, and will often encourage our clients, for example, to create safe spaces for people to be able to vent and complain and, you know, probe into what's working, what's not working in their organizations. But when it's unsaid communication, when it's lingering resentments when it's complaining or resignation, when there's a complaint about, you know, continued complaining about planning authorities, about other people about how it's too hard, it's too difficult. How this and this XYZ doesn't work, how it's impossible. This is where it's, you know, and where and where there is no conversation, for being empowered around it. Or there's no conversation to be able to help an individual look at their subjective experience and recognize how much of it is objectively true versus how much of how much suffering am I bringing to the circumstance or the environment. Okay, and that's, that's quite, that's a little bit more subtle and more nuanced, and more difficult to, to kind of observe, but good businesses can introduced that kind of self awareness or training and coaching, to have people become very self aware of how, you know, just empowering them how to deal with a difficult circumstance, and how for them to uncollapse their interpretation of the circumstances, versus the actual what has happened, the what so about the situation. And that's really what we're kind of talking about, is that there are challenging circumstances that are happening in every business. And architecture is just, it's a challenging profession, and you're going to be dealing with difficult things. And particularly when things go on sites, stuff doesn't work, and things break and things get put in the wrong place. And you now are dealing with lots of other people, and they've got their own adrenaline and complaints and demands of you, it's easy to become reactive. And without a disciplined mental way of viewing this, these scenarios, it's easy to get carried away with disempowering interpretations of, of, of events. That's the kind of the key point here, it's disempowering interpretations, which leave you without any ability to take action. That's
it. That's it. It's, it's just it, because power comes from taking actions. So if that, I'll give you an example. So back when I was at the last firm that I worked for, which was eons ago, you know, it was a great firm, it was great, I got good pay, there was a lot of great things to say about it. However, at the time, when I was working there, there were a lot of things that I was like, you know, I was kind of like, that's not working the way it should, I don't like how the firm owner does this, or he shouldn't talk to people like that there was a lot of this happening in my head, this shouldn't happen this way. Oh, we shouldn't charge this client more. We're operating inefficiently here, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So me seeing either real issues or perceived issues in the way the practice was operating? Okay, that's, that's the noticing. So there was the awareness of missing some things. And then there was a judgement interpretation about those drivers thinking, Oh, I could do it better, or there's a better way to do it, etc. But the issue was, is that I never brought those issues up powerfully and express them to the firm owner in a constructive way. So then what ended up happening is I had a three very small slice of resentment, just walking around with this idea in my head that I knew things were better, but like this unsettled sense of things aren't exactly as it should be. But here's the problem. I never expressed those. Well, number one, back then I didn't have the I didn't have the capability from a leadership perspective, to be able to express those things to a powerful way to the firm leader. So we could come to some sort of consensus. Now contrast that with an email that I got just last week, from an employee of an architectural practice, he reached out to us because he listened to the podcast, he can see in his practice, it's a lot of things that could be improved. And instead of just complaining about it, he sent us an email, say, hey, Enoch, I'd love to get on the phone with you and talk about our practices that are you a firm owner? He says, No, I'm employee. I said, Well, how about we do this? Why don't you, you know, see if your see if the owners share your concerns. And if they do share your concerns, then invite them onto a call with me, and we can talk about it. Right? So he went back had a powerful conversation, he came back and said, Yep, firm owners say they agree with the concerns as well. And they're definitely interested in looking at ways to solve these problems and issues. So you know, contrast those to my the way that I was before complaining whinging, Ryan, as you would say, and, you know, lacking power to this young architect who's listening to our podcast, who actually took action. So he wasn't just he that turn that complaint or that unsettled feeling into an action, that's then going to produce results, assuming they decide to get help for these issues. So that's, that's what we're talking about here, when we're talking about lacking power, is that when we're in a space of complaint, we lack the ability to make any changes because we kind of throw our hands up and say, c'est la vie. It just what it is, it is what it is, I have no control here. I don't have any power here. I can't do anything. It's the firm owners, the only ones that decide that thing. That's not powerful leadership. That's not, you know, what would the world be like if Martin Luther King had said that, oh, I don't have any power. There's nothing I can do here. What's a guy like me, a black preacher from the south, no one's going to listen to me, I have no impact. Or what if Jesus would have said that? Oh, you know, who am I just this crazy fisherman carpenter guy from Galilee, you know, I should probably just stay at home and become a carpenter. You know, we look at someone like Gandhi, what of Gandhi would have said, Man, those Brits they sure are powerful and strong. And who am I to try to say anything? You know, I'm just, I'm just a lowly Hindu practitioner monk, I might as well just mind my own business. Right? We would be the It goes without saying that the world would be worse off without these amazing people to do these things. So as a listener of the podcast, consider that if you if you have complaints, and you see things that need to be changed, this is good. They're there for a reason. They're catalysts to cause you to change. That's what discomfort is for that's why suffering what are the causes of suffering is like when we're suffering, it moves us to action, it moves us to action. But if we're scared about conflict dealing with people, if we're scared about confrontation, if we want to always, you know, make everyone feel good about us, and we're not worried about a little bit of upset, then we'll never be able to rise in our power, like we need to be to be able to make the impact that we're being called to have. And so the culture complaint is giving up our power, it's giving up our agency and saying, Oh, well, I have nothing to do in the matter, I might as well just might as well just go eat worms. Nothing can be done here.
And it's literally as powerful as that it's as powerful as your as your word. And if you say you haven't got any power in the matter, then you don't have any power in the matter that I've been there. That is that is the power of our word, you say that you can't be done, and it can't be done. And this is the inquiry that people need to need to do to go through. We had a client recently, and we do a whole kind of training on complaint. And we call it a personal power leakage. And, you know, we we refer to complaining as being one of the biggest, and most disempowering things that we do as business owners and leaders that we don't realize that we're doing, and we project our complaints on to the rest of the team. And if everyone's looking towards the top, and the the top is complaining, then you can guarantee that they're going to have permission to complain. And that complaint will be one of the prevalent types of conversations that happen in the office. And before anything ever gets done, or is considered doing, it will always be done with a background of complaint or a filter of complaint, very, very disempowering, toxic environment. So we had a client recently who went through our complaining training, I've had a real awakening, if you like, and a kind of, you know, a very powerful awakening. And I think this takes a lot of courage to do to just be honest with where you are complaining, it takes a lot of self insight and diligence to own up to your complaint and to let go of it. And they went through our complaining training, and they said at the end of it, they were like, wow, just our whole office is in complaint. And I never thought it was I never thought it was complaint. I thought that we were were being valid, but it's everywhere. It's everywhere we look, it's the way that we deal with the planners, it's the way that we deal with each other, it's the way that we deal with our clients. There is always some kind of complaint happening in the office, and it's everywhere. And this person decided to show the training video to the rest of the team. And for them to actually start an active conversation about it, which is slowly slowly part and parcel of the first steps of just becoming aware of I'm complaining. And complaining here, we had another when another client in the same in the same training, husband and wife team. And the wife said that for two weeks after watching the complaining video, her husband did not complain in the business. And she said her own personal experience of working in the company was completely transformed. Because and husband and wife teams do this a lot as well. So husband and wives, you know, your intimate, closest partner is often the person who you dump on the most. They're the ones who you come home from work and you're just like, here's all the here's all the shit that happened to me today. Here's all the things that went wrong in the office. And if you're working together, I can only imagine that that is intensified. And that, you know, one person in the partnership can end up seeing the other as their sort of dumping ground. You know, this is part and parcel of intimate relationships is that you get to see both the best and the worst of the person at the same time. But she was expressing how two weeks of non complaint was literally life changing. And that her whole attitude to wanting to go to work was changed. She felt up to optimistic, joyful, it was it was happy. And then some something happened and then the complaining started again. And we delivered a coaching together and and they had a scenario where they were you know able to recount what happened why the Why did the complaining come back? How were they able to powerfully deal with the complaints or the or re frame what the situation was in a more powerful way. That's really what it all is. It's reframing the paradigm reframing the situation or the circumstances and bringing new meaning Adding to the situation, which is much more empowering for everybody involved. So that the background of complaint is not they're just taking everyone's energy away.
And when it's not something beautiful starts to happen, possibility to start to enter into the, into the space, just like Martin Luther King was able to change the narrative of the entire United States and the entire world. These kinds of small changes can happen in your architectural practice, but only if we dive in with both the only if we actually are open to the idea of taking responsibility. So complaining, number one is two things number one single problem. But number two, feeling like a victim in the matter. That's ultimately what it comes down to. And okay, so another example here, we were talking to just earlier today, one of the clients on the call, and he was talking about his his, his big goals, and he was talking about how he'd love to have a Lamborghini be able to drive from job sites to in his Lamborghini. Now, I'm, I don't know how it's gonna go getting on some unpaved roads on Lamborghini, but we didn't get that far. But the point is, is that he wants a Lamborghini, I salute that I think that's amazing. I love fast cars, myself. And then, but then he shared something really vulnerable. He said, But, you know, I'm worried about what my what my team members will think, you know, they'll think that I'm just lining my pockets with, you know, they're just working to make me money. And that was such an honest, and powerful statement, because I know that that thought has crossed every leaders mind. The leader in a business who's doing well is always thinking, what am I employees going to think that I'm, you know, they're just working in slaving away to make me money. And on the architectural side, oftentimes, this actually happens. So this is the narrative and a lot of employees minds is we think, man, I'm working so hard, and the firm owner is making all this money, then we start to feel entitled, and again, we enter into complaint, the claim complaint being that that firm owner should pay us more, or they shouldn't be making that much money or whatever the narrative is. But again, this results in a loss of power. So Ryan, what do you suggest for firm owners that that have this concern? Because I know, I know, there's if you're a firm owner, listen to this right now, you're probably nodding your heads and saying, Yep, I've. I've heard about that myself. So there's a couple of ways. First of all, let's talk about how firm owners generally deal with this cognitive dissonance in their mind. One of the very common ways in architecture is to try to set up a flat fee egalitarian structure in the office, whereby everyone is compensated fairly, or everyone is given transparency into what other people I mean, just all sorts of interesting, innovative strategies that ultimately go back to making the firm owner feel better about the fact that they're running a capitalistic business, meaning they're the steward of the money. Right. And unfortunately, what we see a lot of times is a lot of these, not all of them, but some of these practices are misguided, and actually counterproductive, in terms of helping people to perform their best helping people to feel a sense of purpose. If I had $1, for every time, a firm owner told me that I gave that employee a raise, and they're there, their behavior didn't change, or like they gave them a raise, because they're hoping to, they're hoping to inspire them into higher levels of performance. It didn't happen. Now they're frustrated, they have an employee who's making more money. And not only did it did they not change their performance, it actually got worse. So this, this is this is why psychology is one of the pillars of smart practice, you cannot overlook the fact that we're human beings, and that we're are we operate on our mindset, and so much about a smooth running practice so much about your path as a free architect relates to your psychology, and the psychology of your team members.
I think that's so interesting, the how the guilt about running a profit machine or a business provides into the mind of the owner. They don't want to take money out, they don't want to pay themselves, they want to try and increase the fees of salaries of team members. But that's not that's a bad thing. We're fully advocates for making sure that you pay people as highly as possible. But we're also advocates that businesses make a lot of money, and that you celebrate money and the making of money in your business, and that there's a mature culture in the organization around that. And what often happens is that people will complain, team members will complain, they'll be disempowered about their salaries, there'll be disempowered and fueled by what they're reading and watching in on tick tock. The career advice that exists generally in in the profession at the moment is to do the kind of sidestep or the diagonal move. So after two years of being trained in all learning in one practice, jump onto another practice and you'll have an instant surge in, in salary, and perhaps responsibility, your title will probably change. And the problem of this advice is that it actually works.
Right? I've done it I mean, every time I change firms, I got a substantial race. And once I did 10 1000 to $20,000 from
from the employee perspective, it works, but they never really free from their own complaint. Okay, and actually, it, it requires complaints to kind of keep doing that jumping. And so a good firm owner needs to be needs to be aware that that's what they're competing with. And complaining is one of these catalysts that just makes that diagonal movement happen. So as a firm owner, we've got to be able to deal with that, and create that kind of diagonal movement inside of your own firm, and give the ability for team members to have surges or sudden increases in pay, which aren't just entitled or expected, you know, raises at the end of the year, or that don't just accrue just purely from the fact that you've been there for five years, okay, that there should be a much more structured system for getting entry to the next title, this should be something you should do, you've got to work for, there's ultimately the real reason why, you know, how to increase your wage as a as an employee is to provide more value to the company. And that often might mean learning new, a new skill set, learning leadership, learning to deal with people, learning how to delegate, learning how to deal with conflict, learning more technical skills, okay, we see this huge void in architecture of people who just do not know how buildings are put together, amazing, fantastic designers, creative, artistic, or that kind of stuff. But actually, knowing details, construction details, construction science, there is a huge, huge void. So, you know, for practice owner to start structuring career growth and progression, and clearly outline it and say, Okay, so once you become an architect, the next step would be for you to become a project manager. And in order to become a project manager, you need to do X, Y, and Z, you need to have this amount of years experience on the job. And then there'll be a little, maybe even some sort of initiation or qualification process, like you have to run a few projects at a certain level of profitability before you can wear the title of project manager. But rarely do I do we do we see that in business? When when when we're working with our clients, and we're talking about making people partners, it becomes a much more sort of structured conversation. First of all, what are the what are the domains of competency that a partner needs to have, they got to better win the work, they've got to better do the work, they've got to better understand the kind of support systems that are involved in in the work. Okay, great, well, how do we train them, and also test their competency before we suddenly give away a whole chunk of my business to them, because we see that happening all the time, people will give away, you know, 10 20% of their business out of fear of somebody leaving, and they've given their business away to somebody who has no interest in being a partner. They've got no interest in winning work, they've got no interest in support, what they just want to be a designer, they've got no interest in in the in eating, leading or managing people. When that happens, now we've got now we've got a serious problem.
Well, I mean, who does want to lead manage people? Let's face it, Ryan? I mean, most Vermonters don't, right. But that's that's neither here nor there. So the possibility here is that, you know, leading leading your teams and people is, it may not come naturally. And as a matter of fact, it doesn't to most people. Right, this is why this is why senior executives, this is why leaders are constantly investing in their own leadership. They're investing in training, they're investing in project management training, they're investing in their people, which goes back to running a profitable business. So top takeaways from today, here's the thing, we talked about a culture of complaint in architecture, this happens at the micro scale, it happens at the macro scale, it happens industry wide, where we have complaints about developers, contractors, planning authorities, like the economy, we have all sorts of complaints about that. And then we have complaints about our teams. We have complaints about our team members, we have complaints about our clients we have and the list goes on and on and on. So the question we want to invite you into today is where do you have a complaint? We want to we want to validate that complaint. And so you're probably not you're probably complaining about that for a very, very good reason. Now, the question we'd like to have you considers what's an action that you can take, how can you take ownership of this complaint? And what's something that you can actually do to move yourself towards a solution in this area? That's the way that a free architect thinks.
Fantastic. And the last thing that I'll point towards is what you just said there INEC about leadership doesn't come naturally. but it is natural. And that everybody has this natural leadership expression inside of them and us as business owners. That's part of our role is to make sure everyone expresses that. 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 that 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. Hello, listeners. We hope you're enjoying our show. We love bringing you these insightful conversations, but we couldn't do it without the support of our amazing sponsors. If you're a business owner, or know someone who would be an excellent fit for our audience, we'd love to hear from you. Partnering with us means your brand will reach over 40,000 engaged listeners each month interested in becoming a sponsor. Please send us an email at support at business of architecture.com 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
