News & Best Practices from the PM Knowledge Community

Letter from the editor
This issue of the Practice Management Digest focuses on the past and future in presenting practice management ideas and tools. Read the full letter.

About Knowledge Management
by Dr. Laurence Prusak

For the past two decades or so, professional service firms of all kinds have been trying to get their hands around the subject of knowledge and especially how to work with knowledge effectively. Inspired by consultants, journalists, management writers, etc., there has been a substantial movement to do something about knowledge, which has had a particular appeal to those firms whose knowledge was obviously the source of their wealth-management consulting firms. Law firms led the movement within professional service firms, followed by a host of other knowledge-based firms. We can characterize this movement historically from what these and many other organizations focused on when they initially tried to manage this elusive thing we call knowledge. More

The Eight Wastes that Are Stealing Your Time, Energy, Effort and Money
by Anthony Manos

Over the last several decades, we have learned a lot about building cars efficiently, and profitably, from Toyota. The Toyota Production System (TPS) has come to be known by the term “Lean” around the world. Toyota and other successful manufacturing companies have learned that Lean does not just apply to the value-adding employees on the shop floor. Since 80 percent of waste does not occur on the manufacturing floor, there is a lot of improvement needed in office and support function areas. What Toyota learned to apply to manufacturing in the 1990s has since blossomed to all types of organizations. Many companies in the service industry are adopting Lean techniques with great success. The same principles that are practiced on the shop floor are relevant for service companies, hotels, hospitals, banks, insurance, and construction companies. One of the key elements of Toyota’s success is properly identifying problems and solving them. That’s where the “8 Wastes” fit in. More

Measuring and Managing Quality and Performance at the Firm Level: The Quest for Business Intelligence
by Jack Reigle

We all want better answers, and we want them faster. We want to manage with more intelligence; we want to make the best decisions possible. Unfortunately, most firms do not possess the tools that will help them find the type and the quality of answers they need to important questions regarding operational performance, strategy, predictive analysis and team effectiveness. However, a new breed of business intelligence systems is emerging within the corporate world. The aim is to provide fully-integrated, relevant and actionable information that blends a historical view with a directional outlook. Design firms need the same kinds of tools, and while such a solution remains elusive in the present, I predict its arrival will be swift and certain. More

Multi-generational Leadership Roles for Architects: Design, Sustainability and Leadership in Local and Regional Communities
by Tim Hemsath, AIA, LEED AP

For a panel presentation at the AIA 2008 National Convention, we wanted to unite a diverse group of leaders who are changing our built environment locally and regionally with design and the environment in Nebraska. The session discussed how these diverse leaders including young architects, established professionals and retired architects, are working to educate and advocate for a range of issues involved in the context of the Heartland. The panel presented a series of case studies examining multi-generational leadership roles held by architects working in design and sustainability in order to bring about positive civic and community change for all people across this region. More

The Value Proposition: Moving the Profession from Best Value to Added Value
by Yolanda Cole, AIA, IIDA, LEED AP

AIA National is taking a new look at its brand, starting with the theme of the 2008 convention: We the People. The AIA proposes to move beyond health, safety and welfare and toward a path that “demonstrates our inseparable position within the most pressing issues of our time.” In order to meet this lofty goal, we have to move beyond best value, the balancing act between the art, craft and business of architecture, and toward added value, design that is so smart, thoughtful and inspiring that it significantly influences communities and key players in society. Let me give you a small example from my own experience. More

Tethered Millennials: Training the Net Generation
by Meg Brown, AIA and Cliff Moser, AIA, LEED AP

In Generations (1991), Strauss and Howe proposed the theory of generational cohorts, where every generation of twenty or so years reacts to and is part of the previous generation’s systems and framework. In 2000 they published Millennials Rising. This work investigated the emergence of the Millennials, born 1982 to 2001, and their relationship and involvement with their previous generations, the Boomers and Generation X (GenX, or Xers). In contrast to the downbeat and alienated youngsters familiar to their own childhood, Strauss and Howe suggested that this new generation would be engaged and upbeat. They accounted this to their “Generational Awakening” theory, casting Millennials as the next great generation, even comparing their potential to the last great generation, that of the GI WWII vets. More

Not Your Grandfather’s Drafting Class: Transforming High School Architectural Education
by Jennifer Masengarb, Krisann Rehbein, Travis Soberg, AIA, LEED AP, and Yamani Hernandez

Tens of thousands of high school students across US take an architectural drafting course each year. While students who emerge from these courses often become highly proficient in CAD and rendering software, many students lack both an understanding of architectural concepts and the skills to look critically at the built environment around them. Many high schoolers are also not typically exposed to the design process, sustainable principles, or influential contemporary and historic buildings.
To address this challenge, the Chicago Architecture Foundation (CAF) has recently published The Architecture Handbook: A Student Guide to Understanding Buildings. As a college-prep architecture textbook for high school students, the book is the first of its kind and has broad applications for classrooms across the country. More

Preface to The Power of Design
by Dr. Richard Farson
Dr. Richard Farson spoke at our PMKC lunch, where he presented to a sold-out room from his book, The Power of Design, to be released this October. Please click on the link above to read its preface.
An author of numerous best-selling management books (Management of the Absurd, and He Who Makes the Most Mistakes, Wins), Farson operates the Western Behavioral Sciences Institute, which was founded in 1958 as an independent, nonprofit organization devoted to research, education and advanced study in human affairs. He was the founding dean of the School of Design at the California Institute of the Arts, and a 30-year member of the Board of Directors of the International Design Conference in Aspen, of which he was president for seven years. In 1999 he was elected as the one non-architect Public Director to the national Board of Directors of the American Institute of Architects.