Nathan Speck began his first day as part of our studio...today. And on the walk home from work I was pondering what to tell him about our studio; what to tell him, specifically, to enable him in maximizing his success as a contributer to moving "us" forward.
Last Thursday, I was spending some time with Jack Brittain, the Dean of the School of Business at the University of Utah. He's a student of organizational behavior, among other things. During the conversation we touched on how organizational change seldom finds its power [or its origin?] in the descriptions of organizational purpose derived from folks at the "middle" of the organization. Many people "in" the organization simply can't see out of it, or see the direction of it. Yet, for the folks who can see out, what they tell us about themselves is a complicated mix of who they are, and more importantly, who they aspire to be.
And as we talk with clients, we have to do the same thing. We talk to many of the people in the organization from helmsman to engine room. Each carries with them a different lens through which to see the organization and through which to describe it. And their statements about themselves are varyingly optimistic and pessimistic, far reaching and minutia focused, accurate and flawed, reality and dream. Some folks are simply more communicative than others, just to make it interesting. Its a tough social science we are asked to employ in designing for a crowd that has difficulty in simply asking for what they want. [Just see Stumbling on Happiness by Daniel Gilbert]
So it remains up to Nathan, to decipher what I say, and what all the other members of the studio tell him, to determine which is description, which is conjecture and reality, and which is aspiration. Good luck with that, Nathan, it will be good practice for...well, the practice of architecture.
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