I was fired

Welcome to the inaugural edition of Elevations!

I’m Robert Yuen, CEO at Monograph. I write this monthly newsletter to share insights that will help A&E leaders elevate their businesses into high-performing firms.

Today, I want to share the story about when I got fired (many years ago) and why it matters to you today.

It was the lowest point in my career as an architect.

And I think about it often.

I was a young architect working in SF for a small but well-known high end residential firm. I did some of my most incredible work at this firm. And I worked extremely hard (as many children of immigrant parents do!). Nights and weekends, just like many other hard-working architects.

But there were problems that kept happening. Week after week…

I kept getting feedback that we were way over budget on our fees.

But I didn’t know what to do. I was never made aware of:

• Fees…
• Risks…
• Metrics…

…that I should be monitoring.

The principals would spend a month closing the books and another month to get the report they needed.

As a team, we failed to budget effectively. We didn’t understand the risks. And we didn’t make changes fast enough.

In the end, I was fired. It caught me by surprise given my work ethic. But, over time, I’ve come to understand that work ethic can’t protect poor business practices.

• We didn’t understand why we were going over budget.
• The clients didn’t understand why we were going over budget.
• No one was equipped to talk about project-level metrics or risks.

Here are 3 things you can do this week to protect your business from experiences like mine:

1. Analyze your team’s time. It’s our most valuable resource - so how is your team using it? Are utilization rates below their targets? Is too much time being spent in meetings? Are billable hours being lost to admin tasks? Identify opportunities for improvement and take steps to optimize time each month.
2. Track your project budgets regularly. Don’t wait until after a project or phase is complete to review your budget spend. If you do that, it’s too late. Instead, make sure you review your budgets a minimum of once per week so that you catch problems before they multiply.
3. Train your leaders with metrics. Project managers are great at organizing resources and tasks. But they also need to be aligned with business goals. Share your benchmarks for utilization rate, billable rate, profit margins, and others with them so they can make decisions that benefit the project and the business.

Will you set some time aside this week to put these in action?

Let me know!

Cheers,

Robert