Managing Up, Part 1 of 3

One of about eight million things no one tells or teaches you in college is how much you're going to have to manage your boss. To be fair, there's not a lot of advice or information regarding managing your boss in any field. Go to the human resources or business/management/career section of your local library or bookstore and skim the titles on the shelves: voluminous tomes on managing, confronting, motivating, or rewarding employees, but precious little if any on how to deal with and manage those above you in the food chain. Sadly, this is information that people really need. How can I confront a crappy boss without calling him/her crappy? How can I get this person to realize how their behavior affects me? Is it even my job to keep this person straight and on track?

Oddly, yes. It is in fact your job, in part, to keep your boss in good shape, because your job depends on his/her job. If s/he looks like a fool time and again in meetings based on information you gave him, guess who's not going to last long at the company? I've actually seen this happen; one of the earliest rounds of layoffs--before the major layoffs, even--at my office involved eliminating people with follow-through and attitude problems. If you continually make mistakes and are unapologetic and don't fix or avoid the problem next time, say hello to the street.

So how do you manage your manager? There's no short answer, but the first thing to do is remember the Boss' Paradox: they may not always know what you do or what you're doing right now, but they know how well you do it. As cheesy as it sounds, remember that your work is your autograph; how you do your job (and the results that follow) is how people think of you. I have done a good-to-excellent job on tasks and projects and still made mistakes, but I haven't been penalized for those mistakes because of how well I did the overall job. You're not going to do everything perfectly, but there is a standard of care. This is the first step to managing a boss: learn what their standard of care is for most tasks. When your boss asks you to do something, let's say a code study, ask him if there's a good example around that you can use as a basis of comparison. If they say, "Yeah, base your code study on the one that So-and-So did for Ventura Pointe," then you have a starting point for your standard of care for code studies. If you usually work on big projects but the office interior designer needs your help doing interior elevations for one of her tenant projects, ask her the same thing; now you have her standard of care for tenant remodel interior elevations. After you have several examples of how your boss wants things done, you should have a good idea of what your boss (or bosses) wants on a regular basis.

Next you have to figure out your boss' work style. This is harder and more varied than standard of care with tasks, no doubt. Your usual boss may be a real micromanager and stickler for details, but then you get loaned for a couple of weeks to a manager whose style is so laid back that you expect him to roll into the office in a Hawaiian shirt with a pina colada. Often when you begin working with a new manager, it's best to start this conversation up front after asking about scope, deadline, and resources for the task at hand: when would you like to review what I've accomplished? If I have questions, how available are you? Who should I ask if you're not around? Are you better via phone, cell phone, or email? For example, one of the bosses in my office is rather introverted but very helpful, and he does better when I email him questions. On the other hand, an intern in our office has learned that the manager she's working for now only reads his email once a day at 4:30pm--not good if she has urgent questions to ask and decisions to be made.

On Wednesday, we'll talk about what's useful to say and why you should never apologize for doing your job. In the meantime, if you have a question or a topic you'd like to see discussed here, feel free to ask in the comments or email me at my address in the sidebar. Thanks!

It's healthy to take a sick day

At a meeting with some clients at a hospital this afternoon, I remarked to one of the hospital staff that I hadn't heard from him lately--usually he's peppering me with emails and questions, but I've gotten little to nothing out of him for the past week. Turns out that he had been at home on the couch...with H1N1. He said that his hospital's regulations required that he stay away from work for at least seven days after the first signs of infection, and he was not allowed back to the office to be cleared to work with the public or other staff again until at least 24 hours after his last respiratory episode (aka "cough"). As a hospital employee, he was required to get a flu shot and an H1N1 shot, but his facility ran out of the shots before he was able to get his. Talk about adding insult to injury.

Our culture, especially our work culture, teaches us that taking a sick day is a sign of weakness, like you can't handle the sniffles or a little ache. You ought to be able to power through it, right? Just take some Sudafed and get back in there, slugger! Added to that is the pressure of proving oneself; those of us who are new (or newer) to the workforce want to make sure we're present and accounted for as often as possible, being productive at all times. We hesitate to be absent when things are really busy because we're afraid to look like slackers, and we hesitate to be absent when things are slow because we're afraid that people will think they can get along without us. Usually, the outcome of this mindset and the resulting no-win situation is that people feeling less than their best come to work and do less than their best. Plus if they're contagious, they spread the illness to their colleagues, and you have an entire office doing less than its best. So much for the notion of being productive.

H1N1 isn't much worse than the regular flu, except to some very particular populations (see this link for details). The reason everyone's taking it so seriously is that it spreads so much faster than the regular flu, so you can give more people the flu faster. If you start feeling flu-like symptoms, whether it's now or next week or in a couple of months when the regular flu season hits, just cash it in and stay home for two or three days. Let's face it: if you feel like crap or even like sorta-crap, you're not going to be all that productive at work. Just stay home, watch bad daytime TV, drink plenty of fluids, and sleep it off. Your immediate job is to heal--your regular job will still be here after a couple of days' rest, and you'll be doing us all a favor.

Stepping up and stepping out

I've talked previously about how the economy may work in today's interns' favor. An important part of making the economy work for you is to step up in your office and become more useful by filling the gaps left by staff or other services that have been cut. Not only will you be able to make yourself useful (and remind your firm why they kept you through the layoffs), but you'll also have good skills to use once the economy improves, which will help you whether or not you stay at your current firm. Fortunately, you already have the skills to do some of these tasks, and you can learn the rest.

It seems as if many interns have a better grasp of graphics programs such as Photoshop and Illustrator. If you're among that group, then you're in a good spot. Let the managers in your office know how good you are with graphics, modeling, and/or animation software, and let them know how you can use it to help them. Recently in the firm at which I work, the interns in our office figured out that it was easier and better to import plans from Revit into Illustrator when creating nice graphics for marketing brochures and presentations. Back in the Bronze Age, I used to doctor the images with Pantone color infills directly in CAD, so this was a bit of a leap for my managers and me to accept from the interns working for us. However, after one of them showed me how to work with the images in Illustrator, I realized how easy it was indeed in the long run and advocated for it.

Technology is passing at least some of your managers by, and they may not realize that there is a faster and/or easier way to accomplish something in the office. Speak up, offer to fix the problem for them, and then fix it--doing so can make you indispensable and can ensure you a place on project teams. Another good idea may be to offer to teach your manager (or a group of managers) how to use whatever software you're using. The interns in our office have given some of the managers some basic training in how to use NavisWorks, a program that allows you to do a walk-through or a fly-through of a model from Revit or other software platforms. Sharing your knowledge and skills with your bosses not only makes them look good in front of a client, but it also helps them feel a little less behind the times and less old. Never underestimate the power of making people feel smart and hip.

But what about the stuff you might not know much about, like writing proposals or checking shop drawings or marking up specs? This is where your boss gets to return the smart-and-hip favor and bend the learning curve in your direction. Let your manager/boss know that you're interested in learning more about how your firm puts a project together--how can you help? Can they show you a little something to get you started? If not, is there someone else in the office who can help you get started reviewing these storefront shops or those specs? It's quite likely that someone will have the time to teach you a little about a new task, and at the very least your manager will be appreciative that you're interested in learning more. Asking for more and more interesting tasks to do in the office can help you be useful and earn you some valuable IDP credits when you approach it from the Jerry MacGuire "help me help you" angle.

Making a living and making a life

A couple of years ago, one of my colleagues discovered that his wife was expecting right after he took his second section of the ARE (back when it was nine parts). Knowing that life was going to get pretty hectic and very different after their baby arrived, my colleague stepped on it and finished the remaining seven parts of the ARE about two weeks before the baby arrived. During that same time, he scheduled his workload with his manager and fellow design team members so that when the baby arrived, he could slide off his projects for a few weeks while he helped his wife and then work limited hours for the next few months after that. A few women in my office have proceeded in a similar fashion when expecting--they let folks know at least three months in advance, figured out how long they wanted to be gone after the baby was born, and then arranged to have their workload lessened just before they left and increased slowly as they returned part time and then full time to work. My office also has a "quiet room" for making private phone calls because we have a mostly open office, and that room served double duty for women needing to use breast pumps.

It's no secret that architecture is a tough major and a tough profession, but increasingly it's becoming more accommodating to families. It demands a lot of its practitioners, and we put a lot of ourselves into it. Just when we think we've gotten caught up on our projects, we're suddenly behind again and there's yet something else to be done. But I've learned over the past almost-ten years that there's always something else to be done. And if I take literally the logic that I need to spend more time at work because there's always something else to do, then I'd never go home. So my colleagues with children and my colleagues without children and I go home at a regular and decent time on a regular basis. There are times when we work nights and weekends, but more often than not, we're making it home in time for dinner and story time and bedtime, and our weekends are free enough that there is time to take trips and play in the yard and do nothing.

Architecture as a college major is much tougher on a family life than architecture as a profession, I've personally observed. It seems as if everyone at my office had someone in their class who had a kid, and that person would hardly show up for studio and would eventually either drop out or change majors. Studio takes an incredible amount of time, and I'm amazed when I see people make it work. Being married without kids is easier at school and at work, but school seems to be harder on kids because dare I say, architecture school demands more timewise from you than work.

The architectural workplace is falling a little more in step with the rest of the modern professions and their workplaces these days, it seems. To be sure, there are some places that watch like hawks when you come in and when you leave, and there are people that give each other sideways glances when someone leaves right at 5pm. However, you can make work work for your family--in any profession--if you and your boss and firm agree on your hours beforehand and you can and do get your work done on time and with excellent quality with that schedule, then ultimately the discussion is closed. People can roll their eyes all they want--you're getting the job done and going home to your life.

I'd like to state that having a life outside of work isn't just for people who have children. Employers are finding that all employees are happier and produce better work when they have a life outside of the office and get ample time to rest and enjoy something other than drawing flashing details. A few of the people at my office work slightly off hours so that they can do other things outside of work. One woman works 6am-3pm so that she has enough daylight when she gets home to work on some home remodeling projects. A young man in his twenties (and an intern) who is one of our de facto drawing software managers works 7am-4pm so that he can be here to answer questions while people are working but also has a little time to get work done before the office fills up with people and their Revit and CAD problems. Another fellow works 8:30-5:30 so that he can take the train to and from work with his wife. None of the people I've described above have children.

I have worked crazy hours for an extended period of time, and regardless of whether I ever have children, I won't do it again. Long, crazy hours make me emotionally and mentally unstable, and they damage my health and work and personal relationships. When I see a work-like-crazy period coming, I let my managers know that I need help in order to make the deadline, and sometimes I just borrow someone and get the help and ask for forgiveness rather than permission. I know that my behavior might not fly at other firms in town, and that's why I don't work for them. Ultimately, finding a firm whose work ethic and flexibility works for you will help with balancing work and family, and doing good work by the deadline consistently shows your firm and your boss that you can indeed make it work.

Making the most of lunch-n-learns

Whether or not you're a member of AIA, you probably have seen at least one continuing education seminar at your office. It was probably presented by a product representative (rep) from some building material company, and they brought in lunch--pizza, sandwiches, or boxed lunches--and talked about their product while you ate lunch. If the presentation was AIA accredited, then it spoke in more general terms about products and served more to edify you on certain construction techniques or problem solving of construction or detailing issues. Regardless, it was 45 to 60 minutes of your life for lunch, so it begs the question--did you get anything out of the presentation, or were you better off sitting at your desk with a Lean Cuisine you heated up in the microwave?

I urge interns to go to a lot of lunch-n-learn presentations because first and foremost, it's a good way to learn about and become familiar with all the different products out there. You may learn about something you've never heard of or gather ideas for the project you're working on or for a future project. You may gain a contact for future reference, say if you have questions about detailing an EPDM roof or a glass block wall. It's also a good way to learn about what current construction problems are going on. When I started in the profession back in 2000, flooring adhesive manufacturers had just changed their formula from an epoxy-based compound to a water-based compound so that it wouldn't have VOCs and would be more air-friendly and better for the environment. However, these newly-formulated compounds required that the concrete slab onto which they were applied have a much lower amount of water in them, so low that it was nearly impossible to attain. In the first half of this decade, our field saw a lot of sheet vinyl bubbling and peeling off because the adhesive would become goo again and wouldn't stick down. Hence, many of the presentations I saw in lunch-n-learns between 2001 and 2005 had to do with mitigating water in concrete slabs and getting flooring to stick on those slabs. I got information on this situation from concrete sealer product reps, concrete admixture product reps, sheet vinyl flooring reps, reps for products that were sheet vinyl alternatives, etc.

As you watch and listen to the presentations, see if there's any way it applies to your present project. Compare the examples you see and hear about to things you've drawn, done, seen, heard about, etc. You may think of questions to ask as you do this comparison--please ask! By and large, the reps I've seen want questions from the audience because they need to know what you want to know, what you need, what are your concerns. They can take that info back to their headquarters as say, "hey, architects are all wanting x, y, and z...." I've personally seen this happen--in the past eight months, I've told two surgical equipment reps that we really need Revit families of their equipment so that we can show them in our drawings and models, and lo and behold, there are now Revit families for these vendors on their site.

Other good questions to ask:

• What is the installed per-square-foot cost of your product/system? How does it compare to typical/traditional methods? (If they don't know this, I get suspicious. It's an honest and very common question.)
• Do you have CAD details/Revit families/ArchiCAD blocks of your equipment/details on your website or on a CD-ROM?
• What are some common mistakes you see in the installation of your product in the field?
• Are you available to help with specs or review drawing details?
• What is the lead time on your product? (That is, how long does it take for your product to get to the job site from the time it's ordered?)
• How can we get samples of your products, if we need them?
• Do installers have to be trained or certified in some way to install your product?

One caveat: I get a little nervous when I see product reps talk about building codes to some degree and accessibility codes to a greater degree. I've had toilet accessory vendor reps give my colleagues and me flat-out wrong advice on ADA compliance, and that kind of irresponsibility in exchange for a sandwich and a brownie makes me profanity-slinging, Jerry-Springer-chair-throwing angry. Take these presentations with a grain of salt (and possibly a margarita as well).

Are you a member?

Product reps and consultants regularly come into our office to do AIA accredited presentations. As they talk and we munch away on whatever lunch they've brought for the seminar, we pass around a clipboard for everyone to sign in and include their AIA member number. I've noticed that more often than not, our interns aren't members of AIA.

I have a strange affinity with AIA, mainly because I worked at the AIA offices near my hometown right after I graduated from college. I spent a lot of time accepting and faxing resumes and photocopying and stuffing envelopes with announcements for upcoming seminars and events. Now, I'm on the receiving end of those postcards and mailings (and emails). Some of the announcements make me roll my eyes, and some interest me. I've gotten some benefit out of some of the mailings and programs from AIA, but it's not like I go to every activity and seminar. Also to my benefit is that m office pays my AIA dues. Back when I wasn't licensed, my dues were around $150 a year, but they've shot up to nearly $700/year since I got that little card from the state of Colorado.

So how about you? Are you an AIA member? Why or why not? Feel free to respond in the comments or via email from the sidebar. I plan to find out more about what's the point of AIA and give you a good pros-and-cons discussion about it here in a later post.

Three rules for studying for the ARE

Someone recently asked me how I went about studying for the ARE. It's a good question with (of course) no simple answer, but I feel qualified to answer it due to my shared ARE experience. As I've mentioned before here, I took the ARE simultaneously with my husband, so I got to experience two types of studying.

First, I should explain the method to our madness: knowing how many interns procrastinate and delay taking the tests, my husband and I decided on what order we were taking the tests and then booked two tests two months in advance for subsequent Mondays. For example, if we were taking tests now, and we were booking the tests today, October 16th, we would book one test for Monday December 14th and the next test for Monday December 21st. After we finished each test, we would book the next one for two months out: right there at the Thomson Prometric testing center, we'd book the next two tests for Mondays February 15th and 22nd. What this helped us do is set a time table for getting off our butts and studying instead of saying "oh yeah, when we get home, we'll look online and make the appointment then...."

Our study methods were very different. I studied each night, five to seven nights a week, every week before the tests. My husband would read occasionally for an afternoon, but he wouldn't get really serious until three or so weeks before the tests, and then he was a crammer. I learn through repetition, by reading things more than once. My husband, God bless him, will literally fall asleep if he reads any kind of study material or heavy learning stuff for more than five minutes. He'd carve out an entire Saturday morning, where after sleeping all night, he would go layo nthe sofa, read the study book for five minutes, fall asleep for two or three hours, and then wake up and read the entire books straight through. What we learned from this process is that we had to study the way we studied in college, which I think is generally good advice (unless you went to a cruddy college). As adults, you likely know by now how you learn best--by cramming and using the recency effect, by learning it over and over, by reading it and discussing it, whatever. What was also helpful about taking it with someone is that not only did we each have someone to keep encouraging the other to keep going, but we also had someone to discuss the study material with. I found this expecially helpful when it came to the Construction Documents test--the study material talked about a bunch of contracts and CA documents that I'd never seen before due to my limited experience, but my husband had dealt with all of the documents and was able to enlighten me further.

As for study material, we read mostly some books that my office would loan its interns for studying. I think they were Kaplan or someone like that. If you get books that talk about any of the graphic sections, look for the name Norman Dorf--he used to do lots of study materials on the old graphic sections, and he would occasionally check out the graphic forums at www.areforum.org and give people advice. We also bought a set of the flash cards and studied those extensively. Sometimes, we would see a question on those flashcards that was straight off the flashcards. Nice.

My primary suggestions for taking the ARE are:

1. Be disciplined. Book your next test as soon as you're finished with the last one, and actually study for it.
2. Study the way you studied in college (and passed).
3. Discuss what you're studying with others, such as fellow ARE takers and other architects in your firm.

Notice I said to discuss what you're studying, not what the test is on. People who have taken the test before you can only talk in generalities about what the tests ask you, but they can't give you specific questions. For example, someone who just took the MEP test might say, "I had a few questions about home security systems," but they cannot say, "I had this one question that asked where should you put sensors if the house is here near a whatever blah blah blah." When my husband and I took the test three-plus years ago when it was six multiple-guess sections and three all-graphics sections, we found that we got the same test on half the multiple guess tests and at least one of the three graphics ones. There is more than one version of each test section floating around out there, so sharing information about exams is not only illegal, but it also might be plain out useless. Some interns in Nevada were recently barred from ever seeking licensure due to posting possible solutions to one of the test sections on a forum.

Do you still have questions about the ARE? Do you have questions about anything regarding the profession? Feel free to ask in the comments or via email in the sidebar. Thanks!