Working to Create A More Just and Equitable World

JANUARY 29, 2021

I started writing the following article several months ago as I reflected on the continued need to contribute to a more just, equitable, and unified society, and what a business owner’s role is in this effort. Outcomes of the COVID-19 pandemic, the national events spotlighting this past summer, and the continued inequities and fatal injustices in our society lit a deeper fire in my heart to develop more actionable and more sustainable contributions to the plight of our Black community members, our community members of color, and all our community members who face inequity and injustice for any number of unjust reasons. I believe that all business owners should be reflecting on these things, and I hope my thoughts help you to develop your own plans to help.

Several years ago, my company set out to make the firm more diverse. Naively, we thought it would be as simple as considering more candidates from more diverse backgrounds. We quickly realized that there was a lack of diverse candidates to select from, particularly regarding people of color.

Research by The National Council of Architectural Registration Boards (NCARB) indicates that around 10% of architecture certificate holders are people of color, and 20% of certificate holders are women. The NCARB noted growth in the earlier stages toward gaining certificates in both demographics but attributed the lack of growth in certificate holders of color to attrition.

In May of 2018, Architecture Magazine released a series of articles around diversity in the field of architecture, centered around the 50-year anniversary of Whitney M Young Jr.’s speech at the 1968 American Institute of Architects (AIA) convention (the same year as the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy).

Young famously said of the profession of architecture, “As a profession, you are not a profession that has distinguished itself by your social and civic contributions to the cause of civil rights, and I am sure this has not come to you as any shock. You are most distinguished by your thunderous silence and your complete irrelevance.”

The articles noted trends in increased diversity for women in general (while still lacking at leadership levels), but no apparent movement in diversity for people of color in the profession over the last 50 years, particularly for African Americans. Important to note, women of color are the least represented demographic in the profession.

Several national efforts have started to address diversity issues in architecture and the allied professions. Two notable efforts are Project Pipeline from the National Organization of Minority Architects and Hip Hop Architecture Camp, the brainchild of architect Michael Ford.

Locally in Columbus, the Center for Architecture and Design is working on efforts to make its own Camp Architecture into a tool for helping build diversity in the profession. Over the last several years, CFAD has started sponsoring scholarship students to Camp Architecture and High School Design Studio. As board chair of CFAD, I’ve been involved with efforts to rebrand the camp, including making it free of charge and eliminating all barriers to attendance to expand the reach of the camp.

Collectively, the hope is that all of these efforts will plant seeds so that 50 years from now, we will have made a significant impact in creating true diversity within architecture and the allied professions. Imagine a world where communities are developed, planned, designed, and built by folks who represent the demographics of their neighborhoods.

I recommend partnering with local organizations and other like-minded firms to make this dream a reality. What starts as a desire to make your own firm more diverse can grow into a dream of an ecosystem where the profession is appropriately representative of the community.

For my firm, the recent events unfolding around us and an appropriate and welcome challenge from our employees of color have caused us to consider additional action items to undertake. Here are some suggestions based on what we’re doing internally:

1. Make a commitment to new internal efforts to highlight your implicit biases, unravel systemic racism and ensure your culture is one where all feel truly welcome and have a track to advance in their career.

2. Partner with and support community organizations such as Creative Control Fest, TedX King-Lincoln Bronzeville, Transit Arts, and Harmony Project.

3. Contribute to additional community efforts, particularly efforts that are being undertaken by those who face the inequities and injustices.

4. Develop youth-oriented programs that are free and accessible to all children to create a pipeline to the profession.

5. Provide paid internships to students of color and students who face other barriers to the profession.

6. Partner with other architects and design professionals of color and from other underrepresented backgrounds by teaming with them to pursue work.

ABOVE, TRIAD ASSOCIATES MEAGHAN, KYLE, AND MORGAN PARTICIPATED IN AN EVENT FOR TEDX KING-LINCOLN BRONZEVILLE.

The fight to stop inequity, injustice, systemic racism, bigotry, and stereotyping continues. As business leaders, we should all be committed to helping. In architecture, we should be working to create a profession in which designing communities are more representative of the communities they serve. We encourage every business to consider where and how they can contribute to creating a more just and equitable world.

Brent T Foley, Partner

How to Make Business Thrive in Any Environment

DECEMBER 31, 2020

Growing your business during difficult economic times can be tough. When times are good, opportunities seem to pop up organically all the time. Facing a potential economic downturn and dealing with the inability to create serendipitous moments of opportunity through physical, non-socially distanced interactions, my company has found it helpful to regroup and double down on staying true to our culture and community. The company is taking cues from the lessons learned through success and failure in the last downturn and focusing on its purpose — the reason for being a company, the why. I hope these lessons will help you, too.

Entrepreneurs everywhere espouse the ideas Simon Sinek wrote about in his book Start With Why and the corresponding TED Talk that has over 50 million views. Sinek details, through multiple real-world examples, how the most successful leaders, business owners, and innovators always start with why — their purpose. How and what must always follow why to find enduring, sustainable success.

Over the last 10 years as a partner at TRIAD, I have spent countless moments remembering and forgetting Sinek’s sage advice. Every time I have gotten too focused on what we do or how we do it, I have lost focus on the things my team, clients, and communities care deeply about. If you are going to make it through a downturn, you have to make sure to always focus on and sell why you do what you do.

Each company’s why is different, and each company should seek to build processes, services, and products that reflect its specific purpose. My company’s specific purpose is to utilize its skills and talents to make its clients’ visions become reality and to connect those visions with its clients’ communities. This drives how the company does everything it does. It has resulted in methods that are unique to my company and driven by its why. Because of the why, the company builds authentic processes to engage stakeholders in overcoming challenges to making their vision a reality. Because of the why, my company goes beyond the client’s vision and becomes an engrained partner in the client’s community. The result of focusing on how the company does what it does and why it does it is an ecosystem of mutual respect and focus on achieving the clients’ goals. What is your why, and how does it drive what you do? The answer to this will drive your success no matter how bad the economy gets.

When I came on as a partner in 2009, the economy was quickly diving into the tank. However, my company was lucky. It had public projects with funds that had already been allocated. My partner and I were not previously business owners, so we were naive enough to not see what was coming. We figured our company was somehow just more resilient and that this downturn was not going to hurt it. Fast forward to 2012, and the company had the slowest year in the more-than-20-year history of the firm. My partner and I got desperate. We saw our competition winning projects, and we frantically tried to imitate what they were offering. We lost all sight of who we were and why we did what we did. It is important that you never get caught in this trap. If you want to be successful in building long-term partnerships, you must stay authentic. When you start with why this occurs naturally.

At some point, my partner and I had a moment of clarity and began refocusing our efforts toward growing our business around community. Slowly and surely, we rebuilt the company. Keep in mind that what you do is not limited by why you do it. If you want to grow, you have to be open to opportunities and willing to take a chance.

For my company, being open to new opportunities resulted in two additional lines of business. When one of the company’s public clients lost its maintenance staff due to the downturn, it asked if my company could take on some of that work. This caused my partner and me to form a new construction arm to plan, manage, and execute those service and maintenance contracts. What we didn’t realize at the time was that we were starting with why. You should continuously ask yourself, “What are my clients’ needs?” and “Do their needs align with my purpose — my why?” If they do, you can expand what you do for that client.

Similarly, when my company was running out of clients, my partner and I thought, “Why can’t we be our own client?” So, the company purchased a historic building in downtown Columbus and undertook a historic restoration and adaptive reuse project. You always need to challenge your assumptions, even more so when times are tough. If you start with why you will open yourself up to an endless number of answers to what you do.

In both of these instances, my partner and I realized that our approach to helping execute a client’s vision for a building project did not have to be limited to architectural services. We could, and did, bring that same approach to construction and development.

As we close in on the last quarter of 2020, I encourage you to look at the lessons you have learned over the last few months of disruption due to the pandemic and throw the rule book out the window. Refocus on executing your passion. This may involve changing or expanding your definition of what you do and how you do it. Ultimately, you want your clients to truly believe what you believe, and to understand the ways in which working with you can impact their company and their community.

Written by Brent Foley, Partner

Growing our Business Around Community

Growing our Business Around Community

NOVEMBER 23, 2020

Community is important to us at TRIAD Architects. It's how we've been able to grow our business. Brent Foley reflects on this below.

Brent shown above at a stakeholder engagement meeting.

Can you grow a business around community? When I was a young partner in 2009, I asked myself this question. Three years earlier, I had traveled to India. The trip was my first to the developing world. It was an exchange through Rotary, and I stayed in the homes of folks in rural and poor areas. The experience was immersive and eye-opening. The dichotomy of wealth and poverty in India is intense. Local Rotarians talked in-depth about an emerging middle class due to the liberalization of their economy. Since Rotary is a service organization, I saw local business owners debate and implement ideas on their role in the community. How should they contribute? Where were the lines between “work” and “community?” How did interpersonal relationships influence it? It was fascinating.

Seeing leaders grapple with their roles in the community and the exposure to the disparity in the developing world inspired me to get involved when I came home. I bought my first house in Canal Winchester, helped to charter a new Rotary club, and then got involved in anything and everything. Around that time, I became a partner at my firm. My partners thought I was crazy — they wanted to know what effect any of this had on the bottom line. To their credit, my initial approach did not focus at all on value or impact. I knew I was on to something, but I needed focus.

To build a business around community, your first task is to convince your partners that it is a good idea. To do so, focus on how your community focus can help to foster long-term and repeat client relationships by establishing trusted partners. To gain lasting allies, you need to engage with people in service. When you authentically gain their trust, they are much more likely to hire you for their projects.

For example, one of my partners, Bob Gibson, saw something in this idea and decided to start engaging in his community of Westerville by joining Rotary, the local chamber of commerce, and the education foundation, ultimately taking on leadership roles in all three organizations. If you want to engage your community, there is no better way than volunteering your time and fundraising for a cause. No task is too small or too insignificant. Bob was able to focus all of his professional work on his immediate community and go beyond clients’ vision to tackle tough challenges. As a result, our company and the work we do has become a vital part of that community’s ecosystem.

In order for your commitment to community to pay off, you need to be willing to take the work seriously and do the hard work, just like you would in business.

In addition to hard work, if you want to stay valuable, you need to align your efforts with your skillset so that your community understands the benefit of working with you. Another of my partners, Zach, modified Bob’s method of strategically leveraging his unique talents and went to work. He brought his blend of architectural, construction, development, and financial skills to leadership roles in his own community in Delaware. However, the process of building a community doesn’t deliver immediate results. Remember, your goal is to build trust over time. When your skills become necessary, your commitment will pay off.

When considering how to get involved, you should consider your personal stake, like Bob, and your skill sets, like Zach, and then affiliate yourself with causes you believe in. If you’re passionate about the cause, it won’t feel like you’re doing extra work. For my part, the spark of a creative community and the challenge of tackling how to be inclusive of an existing community during a period of redevelopment intrigued me and aligned with my values.

Over time, I’ve learned that it’s not enough to help your community overcome a challenge on the quest to becoming a trusted vendor. You need to go beyond the professional relationship and actually entrench yourself in the community. This is easier to do when you stand behind its vision. I believed in the Idea Foundry in Franklinton, so I joined their ranks as an active member. That led to more organizations and other leaders in the community, all of whom aligned with the same values. If you share values with your community partners, they will see you as a part of their vision.

When you begin to build your business around your community, be sure to align values, engage authentically, commit to going beyond vision, and take an honest and strategic approach to tackle challenges. This results in trust and genuine enjoyment as you work together.

Although I do not live in Canal Winchester anymore, the time I took to build community there remains valuable as we take on new projects in the area. As it turns out, you can grow a business around community.

Written by Brent Foley, Partner

TRIAD Volunteers!

OCTOBER 27, 2020

This quarter the TRIAD team volunteered with Habitat for Humanity - Mid Ohio on September 26th and October 18th. Thanks to Lauren Voiers for organizing both volunteer days and to Brent, Maggie, Meaghan, Morgan E., and Trevor for spending their Saturdays in the community.

Construction days involve a variety of projects to ultimately help build or repair a home for a local family in need. At the beginning of the day, Project Leads guided us through goals and what needed to be accomplished. They also addressed information about the family who would be moving into the house upon completion. In one of the houses that we worked on, we learned that the family of five who would be moving in has three children who all currently sharing a bedroom. The oldest daughter had let Habitat Leaders know that she’s so excited to have her own bedroom. It’s nice knowing that what we’re doing can help change the lives of families in the community.

Projects we worked on included building and putting up a wall, adding soffit to gables and putting up the finished gable as a team, and other miscellaneous tasks. COVID-19 guidelines were followed with temperature checks, masks, and social distancing. Gloves, hard hats, protective eye wear, and tools were provided. After months of virtual meetings and working from home, it was exciting to work together safely as a team.

Thank you to Habitat for Humanity, we will be back next year!

Want to get involved? Visit Habitat for Humanity - Mid Ohio.

Brent Foley on Digital by Day 1 Podcast

SEPTEMBER 30, 2020

Today is International Podcast Day!

Celebrate by listening to TRIAD’s Brent Foley on the Digital Day 1 Podcast.

Brent was featured on the Digital from Day 1 podcast hosted by Brenden Dickerson and Joel Nelson. Digital From Day 1 is “a podcast to encourage innovation in education, so students begin developing digital skills from their first day in a classroom.” Brent discusses his journey from high school intern to becoming a Partner at TRIAD. They also discuss the triumphs and tribulations that have transpired from the COVID-19 pandemic, useful technologies, and much more.

Listen to the episode HERE and let us know what you think!