Nov 1
2010
A recent episode of RadioLab on the subject of cities discusses the importance of difference as a catalyst that allows life to flourish in an urban context. Similarly, the complexity of global systems bring new challenges, demanding that disciplines that have traditionally worked quite separately now work together to find appropriately complex solutions. The result is that the boundaries between disciplines seem to grow blurrier every day: architecture merges with graphic design merges with strategic consulting... Do we gain more by protecting the integrity of our practices from possible deterioration caused by outside forces, or are the possibilities generated in the friction caused by difference too great to ignore?
In your opinion, is there still a benefit to boundaries between disciplines? Why or why not?
Jim gave the final word
Architecture is no longer valuable as just a building to serve internally-defined functional purposes, but achieves value as a key component of the organization’s strategy for meeting the needs and desires of its clients or constituencies. It cannot, then, be separated from the other “media” (and the specialists who design and develop them) by which the organization carries on its conversation with the world, nor from the long arc of organizational development.
Thursday, November 4 at 5:04pm
Jim Meredith
Strategy Design | Design Strategy
1
Jim gave the Final Word
In a related conversation with a colleague, recently, we discussed the structure of large architecture and engineering practices and some of the issues associated with their discipline-based organizational model. While there have been very clear benefits to project efficiency and innovation with collocated interdisciplinary teams, there has always also been the anxiety that separation from the members of one’s own core discipline could erode professional competency and currency. It seems that most frequently, then, the commitment to a discipline-based (departmental) practice is affirmed, with an almost inevitable organization-wide decline because of discipline stagnation (uninformed by a wider world) and the resulting slow or inaccurate response to the critical sensitivity of the marketplace – innovative and valuable solutions to what clients are trying to achieve.
Ironically, single-discipline practices at all scales seem to thrive. This may be because their professionals have exposure to a wider variety of project types, a larger network of other discipline master, a spectrum of process approaches, and a greater diversity of problem types, and may then bring a richer experience and more responsive discipline to the task. It may also be because the compensation model is more clearly the project when single-discipline organizations come together to solve problems, whereas internal discipline/department performance metrics occlude the client in multi-discipline organizations (the subject of my referenced conversation with my colleague).
We do seem to be entering a time, in any case, in which those older and larger multi-discipline models (your “master builder”) no longer work. We are increasingly discussing, and using, concepts like work swarms, crowd-sourcing, and others where the organizational model is an ad hoc assembly of clever and creative people dedicated to new, efficient and effective approaches to innovative solutions.
These models seem to place higher value on the specialist. You choose me to be a member of your team because for that project in that context, my skills and approach will bring you and the client the highest value. You will also choose me, I would assume, not merely for the expertise but also for my mastery of understanding how to offer to others and to elicit from others the best we can do by an understanding of how our skills mesh to produce new and differential value – mastery of my discipline but also an understanding of how value from yours is derived.
That blend of discipline masters, then, seems not so much a blurring of the domains or value of each. It seems, instead, to be the perfect model for the challenges that our times present. “Projects,” which have traditionally and conventionally been separately-defined contexts in the lives of clients and their consultants, now seem in best practice to be part of a continuum, or flow, and firmly embedded in the longer-term “job” the client is wanting to do.
As you begin to suggest, architecture is no longer valuable as just a building to serve internally-defined functional purposes, but achieves value as a key component of the organization’s strategy for meeting the needs and desires of its clients or constituencies. It cannot, then, be separated from the other “media” (and the specialists who design and develop them) by which the organization carries on its conversation with the world, nor from the long arc of organizational development.
The architects (and other discipline masters) who succeed in this context will be students open to learning from others and also masters developing very sophisticated responses as their discipline’s contribution to an integrated idea supporting and advancing the sustainability and leadership of the larger client/community enterprise. Leadership will be temporal and contextual in this model, moving from one discipline master to another as the participating members understand and contribute to the purpose of any single project in the larger and longer continuum of organization purpose.
So, yes, to discipline mastery (not boundary) applied in new organizational designs (agile and ad hoc) developed to deliver results both in and beyond the project.
Thanks for asking!
Thursday, November 4 at 5:04pm