Strategy in practice

Brad Wetherall ,

How do we shape a strategy that feels natural to our practice? Brad Wetherall offers tips on developing your practice playbook – from defining your ideal practice to making small improvements through experiments, to turning your beliefs into action.

Every director I know is trying to improve their practice in some way – attracting better clients, running a smoother office, ending the month above payroll more consistently. But dedicated time for strategy often falls to the bottom of the list, partly because most approaches don’t feel suited to the realities of architectural practice.

Instead of formal strategy sessions, you might have moments of insight in the shower, on dog walks, chatting with colleagues or, as one director recently told me, while folding the washing. You’re smart and capable so these insights are useful, but they tend to deal with whatever’s right in front of you that day. You’re bush bashing, not following a trail. Each insight helps in the moment – and maybe for that week – but they don’t build into real direction.

To turn those moments into something genuinely useful – something that gives you and your team clarity over time – you need a strategy. And it can be developed in a way that works seamlessly for you and your practice, without becoming onerous.

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WHY STRATEGY TROPES DON’T FEEL RIGHT

It’s a word that doesn’t sit well with many of us – and for good reason.

It might be because it’s hard to define or know how to do it. Or it might be because it feels like it belongs to the world of boardrooms, investors and Vice Presidents. I think it’s because strategy is almost always framed competitively. Most strategy books* talk about ‘winning’ or ‘crushing your competition’ and that just doesn’t ring true for many of us.

First, we tend to be a ‘rising tides lifts all boats’ kind of field. We generally want the profession to be in a good place. Second, your ‘competition’ is probably someone you studied with and someone who you’ll share a drink with at this year’s awards night.

So, this leaves us in a weird spot. We want to improve our practice and keep our team abreast of our big picture thinking. We want to turn those moments of insight into something more meaningful. But there really isn’t a method of working on strategy that feels natural to us. We want something useful, but not in a way that ‘crushes our competition’.

So, maybe it’s not that strategy sucks. It’s just that we don’t have a good working method for doing it.

* I’ve listed some books at the end of this article that are a little more useful.

A DIFFERENT APPROACH TO STRATEGY

Instead of thinking of strategy as ‘crushing competition’, think of it simply as moving closer from the practice you’re running to the practice you want to run. For most directors that’s some kind of version of doing good work, in a practice environment they enjoy, in a way that is emotionally and financially sustainable.

It might be helpful to consider the following questions when thinking about strategy:

• Is the work you’re doing the kind that brings out the best in you and your team?
• How do you attract clients that help you do your best work?
• How do you organise your team so work gets done in a way that feels sustainable and enjoyable?
• How do you build in a financial buffer so you can sleep better, take more holidays or create emotional distance from the office?

IMPROVEMENTS THROUGH EXPERIMENTS

In her 2025 book Tiny Experiments, neuroscientist Anne-Laure Le Cunff proposes a simple approach to change – identify something you want to improve, try a new approach for a set period, then assess whether it’s working and worth keeping.

That’s a useful way to think about strategy. Identify what would bring your practice closer to your ideal, start doing it, and see if it helps. Start with some quick wins. Pick two or three things from the list above and run shorter experiments – maybe over a quarter. Check in regularly – either with your team or while folding the washing – to see how it’s going.

I’m not going to pretend this solves everything. Practice is complex – everything’s tied together in ways that make it hard to know which threads to pull. But if you have a quiet week before the year really ramps up, here’s how to start:

Step 1: Define your ideal practice

Most directors seek a good balance between doing good work, in a practice environment they enjoy, in a way that is emotionally and financially sustainable. So, start with those three domains: good work, enjoyable environment, financially sustainable.

Unpack what each means to you:

• How do you define good work for your office? Is it creatively fulfilling, ethically aligned, an exploration of your craft?
• How do you define an enjoyable environment for you and your team? Fun, calm, creative, interesting, something new each day?
• What is emotionally and financially sustainable? Clients you relate to, connect with, pay their bills on time etc?

This can be hard to do sitting in your office with a blank piece of paper. Try workshopping it with your team or co-director(s). Or, better yet, go out for lunch with some other directors you know and talk shop, being mindful of the slight differences in your definitions.

Turn loose notions into ‘we believe’ statements:

• We believe we do our best work for clients we can relate to
• We believe that our staff deserve clear and consistent feedback on their work.

The result? A list of beliefs about your ideal practice.

Step 2: Turn your beliefs into action

Turn those statements into ‘so we do’ statements.

For example:

• We believe we do our best work for clients we can relate to, so we meet with them a few times to get to know them as clients before we decide if we want to work with them
• We believe that our staff deserve clear and consistent feedback on their work, so we have a weekly all-hands design review session and a monthly low-stakes coffee chat with each team member.

Create the longest list you can think of. Include both things you are doing now, and things you feel will be helpful.

The result? A long list of potential changes.

Step 3: Pick your experiments and run them

From that long list, choose three that you think will help. They don’t have to be the biggest or most important changes, just things worth your time and effort. Set realistic timeframes. Start with quick wins rather than 12-month projects.

Write these up as your practice playbook. This doesn’t need to be fancy – a Google Doc works fine. Include:

• Your ‘we believe, so we do’ statements
• The three experiments you’re running first (mark the ones you’re not doing yet)
• When you’ll check in to see how they’re going.

Reference this when you’re stuck on direction. Revisit it quarterly to assess what’s working, what’s not, and what to try next.

The result? A living document that guides your practice decisions.

IN SUMMARY

You’re already thinking about how to improve your practice – those insights on dog walks and in the shower prove it! The problem is they don’t add up to anything lasting. Strategy doesn’t have to mean boardrooms or beating competitors. It can simply mean deliberately closing the gap between where you are and where you want to be. Define what good practice looks like for you, turn those beliefs into concrete actions, and run small experiments to test what works. If you have a quiet week, work through the three steps above. Your practice and your team will be better for it.

USEFUL BOOKS ON STRATEGY

I might have been a little harsh on strategy books – here are some ones that I actually quite like:

If you’re lacking direction and don’t know how to communicate that direction with your team, try Patrick Lencioni’s The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable.

If you’re trying to create a calm, balanced environment at work, try It Doesn’t Have to Be Crazy at Work by David Heinemeier Hansson and Jason Fried (founders of Basecamp).

If you want to clarify your positioning, try David C Baker’s The Business of Expertise or Obviously Awesome by April Dunford.

If it’s sales and pre-engagement, Blair Ens’ The Four Conversations is useful.

If it’s structuring your practice and making sense of how work is done, try Understanding Organizations…Finally, by Henry Mintzberg.

If you’re after identifying your single biggest problem and what to do about it, try The Crux by Richard Rumlet.