Strategy in practice
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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Brad Wetherall runs Good Office, working with directors of small and medium architecture practices on the business side of practice – fees, positioning, operations, culture, and the everyday systems that make a studio healthier and easier to run. Alongside that, Brad is practice manager at Whispering Smith, keeping projects organised, clients steady, and the studio functioning smoothly day to day. He writes monthly articles on Substack, most of them drawn directly from his work. Across all of it, Brad’s focus is simple: helping architects build practices that support better projects, better teams, and better lives.
Photo: Bo Wong