The JDA Staff conference

The unanimous response

When we raised the possibility of organising a staff conference in the first week January, for a North West Architects Practice………the response was pretty much unanimous.

What on earth are you doing that for?

Why oh why would you spend time and money taking the employees away from the projects and away from the day job?? Concentrate on getting that work out perhaps??

But for us, it seemed to make perfect sense as we constantly look to do things differently, to do things better at JDA. As opposed to individual CPD and generic training, this two day break allowed us to just take a breath and come together not only to learn from one another but to challenge, to discuss and to collectively work out what issues will be central to our progress this year.

Of course we had some incredible speakers such as Lily Newman & Paul Miller who really engaged the team on how we can use storytelling to build relationships around us regardless of seniority. 

Sean Stafford, Paul Gerrard & Stephen Connolly spoke with real passion on what is expected of us as a go-to consultant for our valued clients…..and just because we wanted to spin the bow tie a bit…..we had Salford University and MAST Architects tickling the design bones on Dementia and Architectural Design.

As a group we committed to hitting the Gold Standard in IIP whilst exploring the efficiencies that our new Project Management programme Deltek would offer us and how all of this fitted into making us a sustainable, thriving practice.

The themes that ran through the talks and lectures were, on the face of it, completely unrelated but we soon realised that there was a thread to all of this………to make us stop and think how we as a bunch of talented individuals can can come together to continuously improve the organisation because that is who we are. 

There’s a quote somewhere that talks about the sum of parts being greater than the whole and that’s exactly how it felt in that cold, dark first week of January.

When asked people for feelings on where we sat in the world one of the team quickly piped up.....

"that we are a great company to work for, and to work with"

As architects, we hold a fortunate position where we can make a real difference to the neighbourhoods and communities in which we work and if this conference teased out one big question, it was to define who we were as a Practice and create that positive impact we crave.

Only by defining that character, can we then began to plot a course that will allow us to grow without losing our personality……….and that’s something we have an awful lot of at JDA Architects!

Our talks on growth, vision and values looked to include the entire team and ask their opinion of who we were as opposed to landing this ideal from above. We fully believe that this inclusion is the right thing to do and whilst we certainly didn’t agree on everything (thankfully!) the excitement and engagement of being involved in the decision making, in the future of the company was felt throughout the two days.

We’re not sure just how things will move forward but the conference has been the beginning of a conversation that we are determined to continue as it is this conversation that will create change, create opportunity and create the difference we badly want to make.

Oh…………..and have great time whilst we are at it!! Happy New Year folks...