12 Steps to Fellowship Episode #5

Welcome to the Twelve Steps to American Institute of Architects Fellowship Podcast Episode #5. I'm your host Rebecca Edmunds, here with my colleague and friend Michael LeFevre, FAIA. Emeritus. We are talking through a diagram Michael created, Twelve Steps to Fellowship, which is in our book Architect + Action = Result. You can find information on the book and many other Fellowship related ideas at architectactionresult.com. Episode five is about the stages of COMPOSE and DEVELOP.

First, the AIA’s online submission forum opens June 28th with the submission deadline of October 6, 2022, so we’re at the five-month mark in preparing a submission. Candidates can understand all that’s entailed in a submission before the site opens, and I encourage them to grasp all requirements using the AIA’s Sample Fellowship Application.

MICHAEL: That it's not open to post information doesn't mean you can't be using this time to get prepared and get familiar with it. In architectural parlance, it’s the program of requirements. Use this time to understand what you're in for. Don't underestimate all the AIA requires. You could collect, prepare, and generate this information long before you post to the site.

How wonderful it would be to have it all done, sitting in a nice stack so you cut and paste it into the AIA’s online form? Including everything from the Sponsor information, your education and work history. Your Reference letter writers’ names and emails? Is that ready to go? Then there are permissions and copyright credits from photographers to use their work. The last piece in the submittal is your headshot. Get it done; have it readied to go. There’s so much you can do in advance to make the process easier.

I’ve told people, “Everything you need to know about submitting for Fellowship, aside from support from other Fellows, your Sponsor, your committee and maybe a graphic designer, is available through AIA resources.” I still end up translating the application for them; people are so overwhelmed with their own work. The earlier you start, the better grasp you'll have.

We've talked about all the Nominees must gather and how they need to think about their work, which is where the book title Architect + Action = Result came from. An architect—in this case, the Nominee—has a role in an endeavor and takes action that leads to a result that has a positive impact or influence on others.

Today we're going to talk about two phases, starting with COMPOSE. At this point, candidates should have sections 2.1, 2.2 and 2.3 as well as strong first drafts of all exhibits. What shape should things be in this phase?

MICHAEL: In the Twelve Steps diagram, you've decided to pursue Fellowship and are aware of the process in theory. You've collected all the information, so the focus is on COMPOSING. What does “composing” mean? It's the arrangement of the parts in the artist's mind or composer. Since the submission’s order is already determined by the AIA, it's more about composing the story you plan to tell. You know the parts needed, what order they appear in. Now how are you going to tell the story, and what will you emphasize?

You should no longer be exploring vague ideas, generating wild concepts, or be uncertain about your Object. You should have a plan, an angle of attack. COMPOSE means, if you're going to compose the parts in this submittal, you better have all of them. Because not unlike solving a jigsaw puzzle, if you're missing a piece, it's impossible to solve.

The old analogy of putting the big rocks in the bucket first, then filling in with the medium, and then the small rocks and fine grains of sand is appropriate to composing a Fellowship pursuit. Look at the AIA’s application list. Get all the big parts, decide how you're going to stack them in the bucket, how to arrange them, compose them, and you'll be in better stead. Have a rough draft of everything. Have all the parts. If you're going to make the stew, good cooks have the potatoes, carrots, celery and seasoning ready. They've done their prep and now are just making the stew. They’re COMPOSING it. Enough of my stupid analogies.

I love your analogies. I was in a Fellow's committee meeting last week; one contributor to that forum said it’s a good idea—I agree—to have your graphics set up so you are looking at the information in the format of a submission, in the way the AIA has asked for it in the Sample Application.

Nominees should also have been through a few drafts of their Summary Statement and their Summary, including developing two to three key themes of their work, which we cover in the book. Maybe you could share thoughts about the 35-word summary statement and the one page, about 500-to-600-word, Summary. Why are the themes important to shaping these two parts of a submission?

MICHAEL: No one knows how a Fellowship juror, who is volunteering their time, will read and digest a submission. If they're a visual person, they could look at the exhibits first. But most people are going to open a submission and start at the beginning. They want to know right off the bat the big idea. Like any of us in this information overloaded world, they're giving you their time to look at this thing. This is your chance. That Summary Statement and your Summary are the concept for your entire effort. In architectural parlance, they're the structure, the parti, the main message points.

I'm sure you've seen this so many times, people will start there and say, let's get past the Summary Statement, which forces people to state their case in 35 words or fewer. Many people begin with a Summary. They write their life story. “Jane has worked tirelessly over her 40-year career.” “Joe is just a wonderful person.” All these generalities and vague judgments—if you've read the requirements—the AIA has not asked for a fairy tale. It's a summary of your accomplishments. What have you done? Why do you deserve to be a Fellow? And then in a 35-word headline, why should they care? If you don't know why, you're going to be challenged to fill in the rest of the submittal.

Those themes are a submission’s hierarchy. I'm surprised when architects miss the idea of hierarchy and the value of subheadings and themes on the page so, jurors can navigate through the submission in whatever way works for them.

One more thing, if I could have one thing happen, it’d be to never read the word “tirelessly” in a Fellowship submission.

MICHAEL: [laughs] “They have worked tirelessly for 50 years, yet, sadly, they've accomplished nothing. But boy, have they worked tirelessly.”

It just doesn’t mean anything. Unfortunately.

The Sponsor should also have a draft of their letter, which should align with the Summary without repeating it. One Sponsor opened their draft letter with the Summary Statement, which is not good. The Sponsor’s letter should mention specific metrics and highlights, particularly from the Exhibits. Can you give us tips on the Sponsor’s letter, which can apply to References too.  

MICHAEL: In both cases, you're writing a strong letter of Reference, and the AIA’s advice is to be real, credible, personal, and state what has been impactful. As with any writing, these letters will be compelling if they include emotion and personal testimonials and specific facts that make it credible and believable. Not filled with what a wonderful person Mary is. In writing, it's show, not tell them the information, so they can make the judgment themselves. Don’t hype or sell. It's worthwhile to use some strong adjectives with facts like, “Bob was the first person to ever achieve LEED net zero in our state.” Okay, that's a superlative, but it's a fact and builds credibility.

While these letters are blind and we can't steer them, the Sponsor’s role is to extract different aspects of the case and coach the Reference writers to talk about the aspects that they know and have personally experienced. So, if your Reference, Bill, has worked with you on AIA committees, Bill should talk about that. Another Reference may be a client who would talk about the impact you had on their organization through design. What better thing for them to talk about? You mentioned themes. The different vectors that in a career are places where the Reference letters can shine.

Beyond that, the only difference between the Sponsor and a Reference writer is the latter writes under the direction of the Sponsor, whereas the Sponsor transcends all other letters to offer the coaching, strategy, critiques and the kinds of advice we offer in the book. Hopefully, the letters are differentiated so they paint a candidate’s picture in a well-rounded way.

You don't want every letter to speak about the same effort. The juror would get bored and might get mad and throw your submission out.

A technicality related to References is the confidential nature for the Nominee and the Sponsor regarding reference letters. If the Nominee or Sponsor see those letters, it's grounds for disqualification.

It’s possible to give your Reference support by hiring an editor. I've helped References. But the Sponsor and candidate never see that work. It is confidential for the writer. There's nothing wrong with a Reference requiring support. But it should come from outside your firm or your Sponsor's firm.

There are other requirements for References. Board members can't write letters, nor can AIA staff. Nominees must read those requirements in the Sample Application. Any AIA members writing with that designation must be in good standing. Submission can be disqualified if an AIA Reference writer is not in good standing.

By now the Sponsor and Nominee have gotten their References to agree, and the Sponsor has reached out with whatever supporting material or advice they're going to provide the writers. Do you have anything to add before we move to DEVELOP?

MICHAEL: I'll confess, I was well down the road with my Sponsor and saw that little technicality at the 11th hour. Embarrassingly, I went to him and said, hey, are you in good standing? Which means you've paid your dues consistently and have broken no rules. And he said, I'm good. Had he said anything else? What a disaster. You've chosen that horse to ride and support you as your Sponsor, and they've given you guidance. And if they stopped paying dues, you're in trouble.

I talked about letter writers avoiding generalities and judgments. A good example of using judgment would be, “I've been involved in my state chapters AIA over three decades, and I've worked with more than a dozen AIA presidents, and of all of them, this candidate has had the most impact.” So, their judgment is fact based. They're not taking a leap to so-and-so is deserving of Fellowship. Those kinds of judgments are probably okay. Generalities and big leaps less so.

References need to be very specific and, wherever possible, state metrics. Our chapter is X thousand members, and this person has done X for our members or our board. You can apply the same thinking to projects or practice models. What's that reach? What other metrics justify the claims made by the Nominee? Reference writers who can cite specifics are very valuable.

Moving on to the DEVELOP phase, the Nominee and their team should clarify the primary basis of the case, further prioritizing contents, which means removing anything that doesn't belong, further culling and fine tuning the submission.

Many nominees have a hard time with this. Some Nominees, at the last minute, want to throw in some award they got in college. Do you have any advice for folks on DEVELOP phase tasks?

MICHAEL: Focusing on the word DEVELOP, the parallel analogy is a project’s Design Development. For Fellowship, we're in the Design Development phase. That's not the time to generate a new concept or a new parti. I've been on plenty of teams, and I've done it myself, where lead designers at the 11th hour have a brainstorm that reverses the momentum and changes the design. Changing what Object candidate is pursuing or changing one of their primary themes, that's not what we should do now. A decision’s been made. We've collected all the stuff, built our team. What we're doing, as you said, is DEVELOPING it, refining it, cycling through it for clarity, consistency, coordination; not rethinking it, throwing it out, or starting over again. Every rule has a valid exception. But in a project, we've understood the typical details and ideas and schematic design. Now we're working to flush those out, coordinate the process; it’s the same with a submission.

Each part of the submission has a value and a role and a different job to do. People should use these aspects to their essential and highest level and purpose. What is the message? Go through everything you've written so many times and make it short; reduce it, revise it to get it as close to a meaningful bullet point as possible. Because nobody likes to read. I'm going to write that book: Nobody Likes to Read Anymore. The Exhibits, the value and potential they offer as full-page splashes of imagery, storytelling and impact.

Every skill set that you deploy wears a different hat, so deploy and use those resources to build your support network or Fellowship solar system. As you're developing this thing in the DEVELOP phase, they're up there with the baton, and it's time to cue the oboe or cue the Symphony, and they're all there, ready to play beautiful music for you.

I always tell people they should read Summary Statement, Summary and Exhibits aloud. Whether you read it aloud, someone close to you reads it aloud, or your computer reads it, you can cull a lot of language. When people read, it's the same act as hearing the words.

Anything else we should share about these phases? In our next discussion, we can move on to wrapping up the submission, and maybe you'll be able to give us some insight on waiting, and the Investiture. Is there anything else to wrap up in terms of DEVELOP or COMPOSE?

MICHAEL: A couple of things: number one, people who commit to pursuing Fellowship are going to be excited. It's a high honor. It's very self-focused exercise, but you must put on a project manager's hat and not just do the things that are fun because you'll end up doing things that waste time. Any good project manager has a plan for how they’re going to get from A to B. Understand the submission requirements, work on them in the order and arrange them in the order the AIA specifies. Do nothing you don't have to. There's no requirement to write a long-winded narrative or your life story with all your projects or what you did as a Boy Scout. Just the points that support your case for Fellowship. So that's number one—be structured, be linear, be management and accountability oriented. You'll be glad you did.

Number two is start early. Form shapes content and vice versa. You may collect all this stuff and find it doesn't fit in the space allowed, sending you back to re-prioritize content. Content and format are inextricable. So, you must come up with an idea for what the submission is going to look like. Do you have wide margins that offer wonderful white space? If so, that limits how much text you use, which can be a good or bad thing.

So, my first point is to be structured and have a plan. The second is the more you can push everything to the front, the more you’ll inform this dialectic between form and content and shape a submission that is more than good; it’s a beautiful composition.

Right now, state chapter AIA Fellows committees across the country—for those states lucky enough to have a Fellows committee—are starting reviews. The more advanced your submission is the first time you submit for a committee review, whether it’s in person or through a submission wall where you receive feedback without meeting with them. Whatever the process, the more developed the submission is going in, the more you’ll get out of that process.

MICHAEL: Even that is such a great dichotomy. If you get the whole thing done before you've ever shared it with anybody, that's confidence. They might look at it and say, great job. You've got a complete draft of this thing showing up at the first meeting, but you're headed in the wrong direction. The onus is on you as the owner of this process to manage the input in a timely way, so you're not getting out in front and wasting your time.

For more details for AIA Architects preparing a case for Fellowship, please see Architect + Action = Result.