12 Steps to Fellowship: Episode #3

ANALYSIS & EVALUATION

Welcome to the Twelve Step to American Institute of Architects Fellowship podcast, Episode 3. I'm your host Rebecca Edmunds, here with my colleague and friend Michael LeFevre, FAIA Emeritus. We're talking through a diagram that Michael created, Twelve Steps to Fellowship, which is in our book Architect + Action = Results. You can find information on the book and many other Fellowship related ideas at ArchitectActionResult.com.

Good afternoon, Michael. 

MICHAEL: Hello again. Good to be back.

Good to have you back. We're moving through your diagram into two new phases. So, the nominee who has made it through the Deliberation phase we talked about last time is just getting their toe wet on all that is involved in submitting for Fellowship. We have eight steps to go before submission, starting with Anaylsis and Evaluation. I'd like to cover exactly what nominees need to prepare for these phases. By now, most listeners have probably seen or are planning to attend the AIA presentation, “Submitting for Fellowship,” which used to be called ‘Demystifying Fellowship.’ They know what they're getting into. But, Michael, can you take us through an overview of what is needed for the analysis phase? 

MICHAEL: Sure. Over my career, I seem to have gravitated to valuing what could be called “analysis,” which in my mind is taking the process of design of a building, or not even design, of a Fellowship submission and taking what is historically a messy, cyclical trial-and-error kind of process, and applying some semi-scientific rigor to it under the heading of Analysis. 

As I use that term, it applies to any application. Analysis is little more than breaking up something that's very complex into its constituent parts and looking at it in a series of different ways to gain perspective. That kind of analysis is used in psychoanalysis, project analysis or analysis of a Fellowship submission. Iterating through comparing and contrasting, looking for trends, periodically measuring things, making judgments, applying experience or wisdom to potentially see directions or suggest options. And most times, the value of that comes from a fresh or second set of eyes or a third-party perspective, even if it's done in our case, by a Fellowship candidate themselves. 

So, getting specific about what that might mean for Fellowship, it would be Analysis of all the constituent parts that need to go into an application. Everything you might extract from your likely long career by the time you're submitting from Fellowship: your service, projects, publications, awards, speaking. Dragging that all out of your file cabinets, your archives and your brain, and getting it all out where it's visible so Analysis can be done. 

And then—this was one of your early points—it's not enough to have lots of stuff, every one of those aspects that you're analyzing needs to be put through the lens or the filter of a brief to generate a statement about why that item might be relevant to your case for being a Fellowship. Doing that all in a format that makes your role and the impact absolutely clear to a reviewing jury. 

Because, hopefully, we've drilled into people's heads that articulating the noun, verb, object, syntax—or, to use the book title, Architect + Action = Result—is the goal of this work. And again, it's not enough to have a long career, not enough to have been a wonderful person or to have worked especially hard. It must be demonstrable. 

So, in Analysis, it's very helpful to be scientific about it, slice it, dice it, look at it in different ways. Why are we doing this analysis? Well, to inform the next step in the diagram, which is to make an Evaluation, and, once and for all, a decision to pursue Fellowship. 

I feel like nominees are the naivest about this phase of the process. And it becomes the first hurdle many face, just collecting all the stuff and then understanding that it has to have influenced people or influenced practice or benefited someone or changed things. Many architects are so used to either speaking to each other or to their clients, they're not paying attention to that result. I call it “resonance” or the step after the architect leaves the project or their service. What are you leaving behind? And maybe we don't ask architects to think about that enough. 

I start by encouraging them to create basically a reverse timeline of their career that puts their most current work first, which I think is always most salient to the jury. Sometimes creating a complete CV, the threads will appear to help the nominee understand their impact and the meaning of their work. What are your experiences with this aspect of the process? 

MICHAEL: Your suggestion to do a reverse timeline is a great example of analysis, using time as a structure and turning that on its head. So, not building up chronologically from beginning to end, but looking at it in reverse to see what that might tell a candidate or those helping them. 

I’ve had a host of different experiences. Some that use time as a guiding structure, which has been very valuable. Some have done it from bottom up, some, as you suggest, from top down. Others, again using an analytical process, I’d ask an open-ended question: you tell me what's significant about you, what object is most applicable? Why do you deserve to be Fellow? Maybe they're talking about a thematic or abstract concept, such as “I've always been about helping other people.” Or, “I've really loved scientific lab buildings my entire career, and even my first project was about laboratories.” Most of us have worked on lots of building types throughout our career. But what is the thread? Is it the building type? Is it the mission?  

So, I've used a variety of ways to get to find that thread or that theme. And time is great because it's most current. We always coach people that this isn’t necessarily your life story; it's the significant, salient parts of your story. 

And what that has meant to others. 

MICHAEL: Absolutely. 

Hopefully, they're doing this all as early as possible, like right now. 

I also ask people to take time looking at the AIA's latest “Fellowship Sample Application.” The most recent one is up at aia.org. You list it as a Resource under the EVALUATION phase. And it's so interesting to me because before we even met, before I ever saw your diagram, so many of the things that we do align, which is why we're having this conversation and why we worked on the book together. 

But many nominees don't seem to grasp all that the “Sample Application” requires. I often must walk many folks and their support people through that application, even though it's right there for them to read and absorb themselves. Do you have any thoughts on why people struggle so much with the AIA’s Fellowship Sample Application? 

MICHAEL: I'd maybe characterize it in a couple of ways. Number one, I think it's kind of classic designer mentality. Once someone has decided to become a Fellow, they roll up their sleeves and start working, start designing and doing. I liken it to people who haven't read their contract or building program or their client’s objectives because they're so intrigued by the doing and the playing in the sandbox. They just want to start. 

We come into the process as outsiders and ask, “Why are you doing all that? It's not required. Did you look at the rules of the game that you're playing?”

“No, I haven't,” they say.

Maybe it’s human nature for creative folks. But I think the more specific answer has to do with Fellowship itself. It is not an extremely visible process to most architects, by definition. It's intended for a select small percentage of professionals who can demonstrate that level of achievement. 

I wouldn't say in any way that the AIA tries to hide it. But Fellows are an elite category of architects. Thus, this information is not front and center. The AIA has historically tucked the application away in their online materials. So, many people have never seen it, don't know it exists. And even when they're coached to go look at it and use it, the application isn’t set up as a digital form to just fill in your name, rank and serial number. I think that's by design. It's not rote, it's not that restrictive. It leaves candidates room to present themselves in a variety of ways, even to design the layout. But there's a structure and rules and requirements. 

It's a little comical to see that people need help to know exactly what it is they're supposed to turn in. That's where people like you come in to help along the way. 

The “Fellowship Sample Application” is 23 pages long, which can be a bit intimidating to begin with. There are a few folks around the country who have experience helping potential Fellows and a few who are also architects, like myself. But it can be expensive. Can you share thoughts on other costs involved or resources people might consider as they're moving into the Decision phase, which is what we'll cover in our next podcast. 

MICHAEL: In my experience, most of the people who have decided to pursue Fellowship do it because they have offered plenty to others and believe they deserve this recognition. There's a good chance that means these people are senior in their career and may no longer be hands on. They may well not be talented writers or good graphic presenters. They may not be familiar with today’s software. Many of them are so good at what they're doing, they spend their hours and days continuing to do it, to run their firms and help all these other people they've been helping throughout their careers. So, those who work in medium and larger firms who have resources. Most of the candidates I've seen are relying on getting that help. Those who aren’t in firms then must enlist help. That must be a friend, or a paid professional writer. A graphic artist. A photographer to capture compelling photography if you haven't done that along the way. Marketing, computers, writers, editors and strategists. This is a process, and each of those things can have a cost. It's very rare to see someone who has the full skill set to do everything that's required for a Fellowship application on their own and have it be good. 

I remember you did yours on your own. One of the other resources is simply the time—the candidate’s own time—because there's so much fleshing out and distilling down of impact, results and the metrics of a case. People do have to plan for their own time and their own attention all the way through to submission. 

MICHAEL: Even if it's not an internal firm resource or somebody that you've hired, if you're lucky, you've got a good friend, somebody in the profession or a lay person who will read and provide reactions. There's a danger for those who have amassed a group of experts to help or people like me who did all themselves of missing the forest for the trees. You're so enamored of your own story, you're missing that it's not clear to others. Create a village of a good friend or two who ideally would know something about this process or can give honest feedback. The conventional wisdom that your Sponsor is that person, but a good consultant like you can be valuable to people. 

Thank you. On our next podcast, we'll talk about the “go-no-go” process and the first steps in getting organized. I thank you for your time today, Michael, and we'll talk again soon. 

MICHAEL: Talk to you soon. 

For more insight into submitting for AIA Fellowship, visit architectactionresult.com