My Time for Transition is Now

I’ve spent more time soul searching recently than normal. Perhaps it’s because I’ve been really busy/not so busy/really busy so many times this year that it’s finally catching up that I should take a step back and evaluate where I’m at. I have a bad habit of getting so busy I can’t keep up with everything; just not enough hours in the day. But at the same time, I have the tendency to feel if I don’t step up, contribute, and lend-a-hand that many things which to me seem important will not get accomplished. I’ve became better at just telling myself, “it would be nice if this or that could happen, but if it doesn’t then I may be the only one to know what it could have been.” How do you cope? How do you take ownership, care, and strive for the best, but not over commit and under deliver because too many priorities are pulling at once? I don’t know the answer. I’ve been searching for years, always asking at roundtable events with professionals older and more successful than me how they balance it all. The overwhelming answer is they don’t.

So how do I do it? I’ve become more selective with my leadership duties. I care too much to commit to something I don’t care about. I have regrets for a couple places where I just had to apologize and walk away this past year, because I just knew my heart wasn’t in it and I wouldn’t be able to give it any priority. I don’t regret the walking away, I regret the earlier engagement, the plugging into their Tribe just to drift away and stop contributing.

My biggest issue now is where I’m plugged in. I love the organizations I’m most active in: my church, CSI, AIA, and DBIA. But, as I continue to try and expand my business opportunities, I’ve found that my desire to learn the profession and learn what it is to be an “architect” is where my energy is, but it needs to become where my energy was. I am an architect. I now need to be an architect and contribute back to society and hopefully find engaging opportunities to practice what I have learned. To implement my training and professional abilities; I need to stop talking and start doing. But here comes my dilemma: I don’t really know how…

I chatted with a business development friend for a construction firm last night and he asked how my own business development growth was going. I told him I’ve had a lot of swings and misses. Which is true, I’ve prepared and sent around twelve proposals and statements of qualifications for various projects in the past two years and came out with being selected for just one project. It would have been a nice project, but before I was ever able to get the signed contract the owner had a change of heart and never proceeded with the project. And I’ve continued to grow into business development while keeping a heavy load of construction document preparation for other projects in the office to keep my billable rate at an all time high.

Where I hope to go now, is to transition. To move from the young architect who has learned how to put a building and set of contract documents together from CSI; a little business best practice from the AIA along with the on-going AIA resources at my fingertips; and what an integrated team should be from DBIA, to become the best architect for my potential clients. Here’s to the future and my next chapter. Wish me luck, say a little prayer from me, and if I can help you with something in the built environment, please call. If you have any advice or words of wisdom as I move into this new direction, please post a comment here to my blog. Thanks for reading!