Vision, Purpose, Strategic Planning

Client Needs – A Boston- and New York-based architecture firm faced a once-in-an-era transformation. During a short period of time, the firm doubled its size in annual revenue and employee headcount – at the same time as the firm’s planned transition from the original founders to a new leadership team of three partners.

The three new partners recognized that this transition presented not only major challenges, but also unimaginable opportunities for the future. This was their moment to look forward, consider the strategic direction for the firm, strengthen the culture, and design the next evolution of the firm.

HR Advisors Group’s Solution – Our consultants began with research and assessment to better understand and document the firm’s heritage, cultural assets and opportunities, and the new leadership team’s vision for the future. We studied the following:

  • Cultural assets and challenges at the firm via one-on-one interviews and focus groups
  • Employee engagement and perceptions of the firm and career opportunities via a firm-wide survey; the survey findings also provide a baseline for measuring progress in the future
  • Benchmarking peer and aspirational firms’ leadership development tracks and organizational structures for comparison

Key Activities and Learning Objectives for this Initiative – With the research findings in place, we brought forward our insights and worked with the new partners as well as Principal- and Director-level emerging leaders on key initiatives:

  • Facilitating a series of workshops with the three new partners:
    • Evaluating leadership styles, strengths, and opportunities and coalescing their vision for joint leadership in the future
    • Expressing a set of core beliefs for the firm
    • Prioritizing strategic initiatives
    • Developing communication strategies
  • Guiding an in-house task force of emerging leaders to develop a Pathway to Leadership focused on the roles of Associates to Principals.
  • Facilitating a workshop with senior designers from across the company to reflect deeply on their design values and create a design values charter
  • Leading a strategic planning initiative for the company including:
    • Purpose alignment
    • Long-term, bold vision objective
    • Strategies in culture, practice, branding, and growth
    • Change management: socialization and implementation plan

The client began realizing positive results from these initiatives in a very short time, and they continue to make progress:

  • The Pathway to Leadership created transparency around the roles and responsibilities of Associates, Senior Associates, Associate Principals, and Principals and the competencies leadership hopefuls need to develop in their careers.
  • Through the strategic planning work, the firm created clarity around its focus and objectives for the next ten years. This has been a compelling story for employees and stakeholders.
  • Insights from the employee engagement survey data help the new leadership to further improve the firm’s strong cultural assets to be an employer of choice in Boston and New York.

HR Advisors Group’s consultants continue to work with the client as needs arise and meet with the leadership team on strategic direction – everything from ownership transition to important internal and external communications.

Our Work