HOK's stories were my original inspiration for writing this book. Whenever HOK people would gather for a bull session swapping our firm's very own folklore, someone would always say, “We should write down these stories. They're funny and insightful at the same time.” There were humorous stories, like the time one of our early leaders was mistaken for royalty in Saudi Arabia. There were inspiring stories, such as the weekend HOK's St. Louis office went up in flames and devoted employees managed to set up a new office and re-create crucial lost work by Monday morning. And there were harrowing stories, like the double crisis when our investors threatened to pull their funding and our bank threatened to call our loan—both on the same day—either of which would have bankrupted HOK.
Strategies. The founders were children of the Great Depression and deployed multiple strategies to help HOK not only thrive during good times but also survive during bad times. Later leaders layered on their own insightful strategies for success. Of course, sometimes we improvised emergency tactics on the fly, in response to mistakes or even disasters. I share all the lessons we learned along the way, whether from our successes or our failures. Those lessons apply if your firm wants to get bigger—or just better. There is relatable, actionable advice in every chapter, such as:
Expand into multiple cities, diversify into multiple services, and embrace multiple building types to recession- and depression-proof your firm.
Organize your practice around specialized leaders—like design, technical, marketing and management—because it's more efficient than if every leader does everything.
Lead, don't manage, your people. Think of it like leading them into battle rather than cracking the whip from behind.
Reshape your compensation program to reward not just profitability, but other factors important to your company culture, such as collaboration, quality of design, and client service.
“Run toward trouble,” rather than avoiding it, because small problems become big problems and big problems become disasters if you allow them to fester.
Shift your efforts earlier in the design process so you catch mistakes when they are still just drawings, rather than when they are already under construction, and you will save time, money—and your reputation.
Enforce financial metrics—yes, creative professionals need them too—and this book contains clear, simple ones you can adapt.
I spent 50 years at HOK, working my way up from junior designer to CEO—where else can you do that?—so this book also contains a dash of memoir and opinion. I observed the transition from drawing on paper to designing by computer and from one Midwestern office to a global practice of many offices. I was there for the evolution from a pure architecture firm to a highly diversified practice spanning architecture, engineering, interior design, graphics, consulting, and more. I watched as HOK architects went from being generalists—who could and would design anything—to specialists focused on health care, hospitality, aviation, sports, justice, and more. In other words, I witnessed the majority of the firm's history and learned most of its lessons directly.
However, despite being there, rest assured that I did not just rely on my own memory to write this book. I spent two years and interviewed more than 40 HOK colleagues to gather material. I accessed reams of internal documents and scores of external articles about HOK. I put in the time because I appreciate all that HOK did for me and because I believe that what I learned is worth sharing with others. If, after all this effort, there are any errors in the book, they are mine and mine alone.
This book is best read from start to finish, rather than as a reference book. After all, it's a story, and each chapter builds upon the last. That said, as I recount pivotal moments in HOK's history, I make a point of calling out the business lessons we learned that others can benefit from. At times, I may overexplain terminology an architect would already know, but have done so in hopes other creative and service professionals can get something out of the book. To reinforce information that may be helpful to readers, at the end of each chapter you will find a section called “To Design a World-Class Firm” with bullet points recapping the takeaways found in that chapter.
Architecture is a passion, not just a profession, and my own passion for the field extends to the business side. Just as designers delight in finding elegant solutions to design challenges, I came to love finding elegant solutions to business challenges. I hope that what HOK and I learned can help you design your own world-class firm.
Note
1 1 “ENR 2018 Top 500 Design Firms,” Engineering News Record.
Coming to HOK
In the spring of 1967, I was finishing graduate school in architecture at the University of Illinois at Champaign–Urbana. Graduation was approaching in June, and my fellowship was running out. I was excited to get out into the world and see what I could do, and I needed a job right away. I was born and grew up in Alton, Illinois, located on the Mississippi River a few miles upriver from St. Louis. Having grown up near St. Louis, I was eager to go somewhere else to begin my career.
Looking for My Place
Determined to find a firm that felt like a good fit, I drove my Volkswagen Bug—the car of choice for college students of the mid-1960s—to Chicago, for an interview at Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM). Their offices were in the iconic Inland Steel Building at 30 Monroe Street. Designed by Walter Netsch of SOM in the 1950s, the building featured perimeter columns and a side core for stairs and elevators, leaving the interior floors open. The SOM office was completely modular, in the international style, with long rows of drafting tables lined up under banks of fluorescent lights. I received a job offer at SOM, but the cold, rigid look of the place didn't feel right, and I declined. It may sound crazy to turn down a job offer, at what was perhaps the most prestigious architecture firm in the United States, because of the sterile look of its offices, but I was a budding architect looking for the right place to learn and grow. My search continued.
On spring break, I loaded my portfolio into the Bug and drove to Boston because design magazines regularly featured Boston firms. I interviewed with a lower-level staffer at a firm called Cambridge 7, who said my work was good but that they couldn't hire me that day. “Would you like to become an unpaid intern until we have an opening?” he asked. I needed a job now—and turned him down.
Closer to Home
I began to think about interviewing with Hellmuth, Obata & Kassabaum (HOK), a young firm in St. Louis. In architecture school my professors required me to select and critique a modern building, and I chose the James S. McDonnell Planetarium in St. Louis, designed by Gyo Obata of HOK and completed in 1963. I had visited the planetarium several times and was fascinated by the elegance of the design.
The defining form of any planetarium is the dome under which images of the night sky are projected. However, in most planetariums, the dome is almost invisible after adding the lobby, restrooms, exhibition spaces, and offices. Instead, Obata placed the McDonnell Planetarium dome as a freestanding element inside a thin-shelled concrete hyperboloid, a graceful curved shape that tapers in from the base to a narrow waist before increasing toward the top. The hyperboloid is light, elegant, and appears to float above its prominent site in a corner of Forest Park.
Inside, an open lobby and exhibit space surround the planetarium, allowing unobstructed views of the dome. A working observatory is located within the open top of the hyperboloid shielded from city lights, making live observations of the sky possible. As I reflected on the brilliance of the McDonnell Planetarium design, I began to think it would be a great experience to work with Gyo Obata.