AVEC Field Guide: How Midsized Firms Grow

Growth creates opportunity. It also creates complexity.

As architecture firms grow, the systems, structures, and leadership habits that got them this far don’t always get them where they want to go next. Decisions still run through the same few people. Senior leaders stay deeply involved in project work. Emerging leaders get new titles without truly new responsibilities. Career paths become less clear just as the firm needs more people ready to lead.

The result can be a firm that has grown in size without growing its capacity.

That was the premise behind From Better to Best: How Midsized Firms Grow, a recent AVEC webinar led by Senior Partner Rena Klein, FAIA. Rena explored the stages firms move through as they grow—and why moving successfully from one to the next requires more than hiring people or winning more work. It requires intentionally redesigning the firm.

Growth changes the job of leadership

One of the hardest shifts happens when the people who have been instrumental to a firm’s success need to start doing less of what made them indispensable.

Great project managers have to develop other project managers. Principals have to share client relationships and decision-making. Founders have to create room for other leaders to lead.

That shift only works when the organization changes with them. Leadership roles need real authority. Career paths need to create opportunities for people to advance. Systems need to support consistency without routing every decision through a principal. And as firms become more complex, specialization can allow people to contribute in new ways.

In other words, you can’t develop the next generation of leaders without also designing an organization they can lead.

Turn the lens on your firm

We created Designing What’s Next: A Field Guide for Growing Firms as a companion to Rena’s webinar—and as a practical resource for any firm thinking about its next stage.

The guide takes the ideas from the presentation and turns them into questions you can use with your own leadership team. Where is your firm still dependent on a few key people? Where are leaders creating capacity—and where might they still be creating bottlenecks? Can people see a future for themselves in the organization? Does your structure support the firm you’re becoming, or the firm you used to be?

Because growth isn’t just about getting bigger. It’s an opportunity to decide, intentionally, what you’re building next.

Download Designing What’s Next: A Field Guide for Growing Firms and start the conversation with your team.