Hello Reader,
The early results from the Adaptability Read have good news in three places. Most of you say anyone at your firm can question why something is done the way it is. Most of you say anyone can try a new tool before the firm formally adopts it. And most of you see your firm's leaders regularly spending time on the firm itself, on pricing, hiring, and how work gets won, and not only on projects.
Those are hard things to get right, and most of the firms in the Read already have them.
Where nearly everyone lands in the same place is what happens when something the firm tried doesn't work out. About four in five results name that as the area to work on first. Ask where you'd look to find out what the firm learned from something it tried a couple of years ago, and the common answers are "you'd ask around and hope somebody remembers" and "you'd have to find the person who ran it, if they're still here."
I heard the same thing from a different direction this week. My guest on Practice Disrupted, Daron Pardine, is chief operating officer at Primera Works, a twelve-person company that scans existing buildings and turns what's there into models and drawings. A lot of that work is for building owners. He told me how many of them hold billions of dollars in buildings and can't answer how many square feet they have.
I really like how Daron put that, because it's so easy to see in somebody else. An owner who can't count their own square footage pays to rediscover a building they already own. A firm that can't say what it learned from the software it bought, or the new way of running projects it tried last year, pays for the same lesson twice.
So firms are willing to try things. What most haven't built yet is a way to keep what they learn when one of those things doesn't work out. That is a much easier problem to fix than a firm that won't try.
It's early, and I'd like to know whether your firm lands in the same place or somewhere different. The Read is sixteen questions and takes five to seven minutes. Your result comes up on screen and tells you which of four areas to work on first.
If someone joined your firm tomorrow and asked what you learned from the last thing that didn't work, where would you send them?
I read every reply and I answer them, so feel free to write any time.
Keep learning and growing,
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Evelyn Lee, FAIA | NOMA
Founder, Practice of Architecture
Host, Practice Disrupted & Fractional COO
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This issue is brought to you by Gelt.
Rachel Richards, CPA, and Spencer Carroll, CPA, walked me through a payroll processor mess and hardware I'd been expensing wrong instead of depreciating, on a call that took less time than I expected it to. The moves that cut this year's tax bill have to be in place before December 31, and most of them take months to set up. Book a free consultation.
/// practice disrupted ///
🎧 EP250: Architecture, And: From the Design Studio to the Operations Seat, with Daron Pardine
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Daron Pardine, co-founder and chief operating officer at Primera Works, on leaving the studio for development, nine years at Turner, and why he thinks the profession needs more architects running businesses.
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/// the signal ///
Three threads I've been following this week.
Only 29 percent of law firms have changed how they price work that AI helps produce, according to BigHand's 2026 pricing survey, reported in Artificial Lawyer. Thirty percent are holding their prices and keeping the time they save. Twenty-five percent give a discount when the client permits AI. I'd watch that last group. Once a client learns that saying yes to AI comes with a discount, they'll ask every professional they hire for one, architects included.
Architecture and engineering firms employed 1,778,800 people in September, about 45,000 more than a year earlier, by the Bureau of Labor Statistics count. The Architecture Billings Index was below 50 in both July and August. The federal number puts engineers, surveyors, and testing labs in with architects, so I can't tell you architecture firms are the ones hiring. I can tell you that if you're recruiting right now, you're recruiting against firms that are.
Three senators introduced a bill on September 16 that would require medical practices to be majority-owned and controlled by licensed physicians, and would bar management companies from owning or financing them. Foley's summary is the clearest one I've read. It has no Republican co-sponsors, so I don't expect it to move. Medicine has had private equity in it longer than we have, and this is the argument that follows. Many states already require licensed architects to hold a set share of a firm. Check what yours says before a buyer asks.
Want more where this came from? I track all of it week to week, and Lab members get the full list every Friday, with sources and one line on what each item means for a practice.
more about the Lab
/// the handoff /// - something you can do on Monday
The sixty-day check
Fifteen minutes with one other person, before the next new thing gets going.
1. Pick one thing your firm is about to try, or started in the last month: a tool, a new meeting, a different way of staffing a project. Sit down with the person who will run it.
2. Agree on the one thing you'd both expect to see in sixty days if it's working.
3. Agree on who makes the call to keep it, change it, or stop it.
4. Before you leave the room, put that date on both calendars with those two answers in the invite.
/// up and coming ///
On October 21 I'm joining BQE for a live webinar on workforce strategy in architecture and engineering firms, drawing on BQE's benchmarking data from more than 3,000 firms. 11am Pacific, 2pm Eastern, and it earns one CEU. register here
The next three on the calendar:
AIA Arkansas Convention, keynote, Rogers, Arkansas, October 9. register here
Drury University, lecture, Hammons School of Architecture, Springfield, Missouri, October 14.
AIA/NOMA Leadership Panel, moderator, NOMA Annual Conference, Miami, October 16.
If you'll be at any of these, come find me and say hello.
The full list is at evelynlee.com/speaking.
Booking for 2027? Reply to this email and let's find a date.
