My Firm Is Chaos!

Business of Architecture Podcast

The topic of today's ArchitectCEO Daily Update is: my firm is in chaos.

This morning when I came home from the gym I was greeted by an amazing sight.

More on that later, first let me tell you about a call I had with an architecture firm owner who lamented, "my firm is in chaos!"

Remember that clip from Jurassic Park where Ian Malcolm explains Chaos Theory?

He tells Dr. Ellie Sattler (played by Laura Dern), "it deals with predicatability in a complex system. The shorthand is the Butterfly effect - a butterfly flaps its wings in Peking and in Central Park you get rain instead of sunshine."

There are a lot of butterflys flapping in an architecture firm.

You have: client meetings, designing with a thousand variables, creating and coordinating construction drawings, verifying or denying change orders, managing finances, and on and on.

Now back to what I saw this morning - my daughter making breakfast for the family with the table already set as she does every day.

I have six kids - there's serious potential for chaos. So how do we get my twelve year old daughter make breakfast?

It's because we have systems that manage the chaos - the only way my wife and I maintain sanity.

If you don't have systems working FOR you, you have systems running AGAINST you (remember the butterfly effect).

To discover how to go from a 'firm in chaos' to a 'smooth-running firm' register to attend my next FREE Architect Executive Briefing on the 4 pillars to building your DREAM Architecture Practice: http://architectresources.org/chaos