When I became CEO of HOK, people would often ask me, “Now that you're an executive, do you miss designing buildings?” I would always reply, “No, because now I'm designing a firm.” That answer, so often repeated, became the inspiration for the title of this book: Designing a World-Class Architecture Firm. Of course, I was not HOK's original designer.

HOK's founders—George Hellmuth, Gyo Obata, and George Kassabaum—were visionaries who set out to establish a new kind of architecture firm that would outlast them all. They succeeded—and then some. Today, 65 years later, HOK is one of the largest architecture and engineering firms in the world.¹ This book tells the inside story of how they did it. However, it's not just a history of HOK, even if that history is fascinating—and often funny. Instead, I have used HOK's story as a vehicle for sharing lessons we learned along the way that will be beneficial to other architects, designers—and really anyone in a creative or service business.

Most architecture books are about a firm's design work, but not this one. I have included some significant projects to illustrate milestones in HOK's growth and development, but that is not the main thrust of the book. Instead, as the subtitle says, I have written about the people, stories, and strategies behind HOK because they are stories worth sharing with lessons worth learning.

People. Let's start with the people. Founder George Hellmuth watched his father's architecture practice repeatedly go boom and bust throughout his childhood. How did that inform his efforts to build a “depression-proof” firm? George Kassabaum drafted the atomic bomb rack for the Enola Gay aircraft. Did that have anything to do with his unofficial motto? He often told us: “Do the right thing, always.” Gyo Obata served in the U.S. Army, even though his Japanese-American family was interned during World War II. Perhaps, that character-building experience helped him set aside his own ego, listen carefully to each client, and come up with the best design solution just for them—a hallmark of HOK's work.

Stories. HOK's stories were my original inspiration for writing this book. Whenever HOK people would gather for a bull session swapping our firm's very own folklore, someone would always say, “We should write down these stories. They're funny and insightful at the same time.” There were humorous stories, like the time one of our early leaders was mistaken for royalty in Saudi Arabia. There were inspiring stories, such as the weekend HOK's St. Louis office went up in flames and devoted employees managed to set up a new office and re-create crucial lost work by Monday morning. And there were harrowing stories, like the double crisis when our investors threatened to pull their funding and our bank threatened to call our loan—both on the same day—either of which would have bankrupted HOK.

Strategies. The founders were children of the Great Depression and deployed multiple strategies to help HOK not only thrive during good times but also survive during bad times. Later leaders layered on their own insightful strategies for success. Of course, sometimes we improvised emergency tactics on the fly, in response to mistakes or even disasters. I share all the lessons we learned along the way, whether from our successes or our failures. Those lessons apply if your firm wants to get bigger—or just better. There is relatable, actionable advice in every chapter, such as:

• Expand into multiple cities, diversify into multiple services, and embrace multiple building types to recession- and depression-proof your firm.
• Organize your practice around specialized leaders—like design, technical, marketing and management—because it's more efficient than if every leader does everything.
• Lead, don't manage, your people. Think of it like leading them into battle rather than cracking the whip from behind.
• Reshape your compensation program to reward not just profitability, but other factors important to your company culture, such as collaboration, quality of design, and client service.
• “Run toward trouble,” rather than avoiding it, because small problems become big problems and big problems become disasters if you allow them to fester.
• Shift your efforts earlier in the design process so you catch mistakes when they are still just drawings, rather than when they are already under construction, and you will save time, money—and your reputation.
• Enforce financial metrics—yes, creative professionals need them too—and this book contains clear, simple ones you can adapt.

I spent 50 years at HOK, working my way up from junior designer to CEO—where else can you do that?—so this book also contains a dash of memoir and opinion. I observed the transition from drawing on paper to designing by computer and from one Midwestern office to a global practice of many offices. I was there for the evolution from a pure architecture firm to a highly diversified practice spanning architecture, engineering, interior design, graphics, consulting, and more. I watched as HOK architects went from being generalists—who could and would design anything—to specialists focused on health care, hospitality, aviation, sports, justice, and more. In other words, I witnessed the majority of the firm's history and learned most of its lessons directly.

However, despite being there, rest assured that I did not just rely on my own memory to write this book. I spent two years and interviewed more than 40 HOK colleagues to gather material. I accessed reams of internal documents and scores of external articles about HOK. I put in the time because I appreciate all that HOK did for me and because I believe that what I learned is worth sharing with others. If, after all this effort, there are any errors in the book, they are mine and mine alone.

This book is best read from start to finish, rather than as a reference book. After all, it's a story, and each chapter builds upon the last. That said, as I recount pivotal moments in HOK's history, I make a point of calling out the business lessons we learned that others can benefit from. At times, I may overexplain terminology an architect would already know, but have done so in hopes other creative and service professionals can get something out of the book. To reinforce information that may be helpful to readers, at the end of each chapter you will find a section called “To Design a World-Class Firm” with bullet points recapping the takeaways found in that chapter.

Architecture is a passion, not just a profession, and my own passion for the field extends to the business side. Just as designers delight in finding elegant solutions to design challenges, I came to love finding elegant solutions to business challenges. I hope that what HOK and I learned can help you design your own world-class firm.

In the spring of 1967, I was finishing graduate school in architecture at the University of Illinois at Champaign–Urbana. Graduation was approaching in June, and my fellowship was running out. I was excited to get out into the world and see what I could do, and I needed a job right away. I was born and grew up in Alton, Illinois, located on the Mississippi River a few miles upriver from St. Louis. Having grown up near St. Louis, I was eager to go somewhere else to begin my career.

Looking for My Place

Determined to find a firm that felt like a good fit, I drove my Volkswagen Bug—the car of choice for college students of the mid-1960s—to Chicago, for an interview at Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM). Their offices were in the iconic Inland Steel Building at 30 Monroe Street. Designed by Walter Netsch of SOM in the 1950s, the building featured perimeter columns and a side core for stairs and elevators, leaving the interior floors open. The SOM office was completely modular, in the international style, with long rows of drafting tables lined up under banks of fluorescent lights. I received a job offer at SOM, but the cold, rigid look of the place didn't feel right, and I declined. It may sound crazy to turn down a job offer, at what was perhaps the most prestigious architecture firm in the United States, because of the sterile look of its offices, but I was a budding architect looking for the right place to learn and grow. My search continued.

On spring break, I loaded my portfolio into the Bug and drove to Boston because design magazines regularly featured Boston firms. I interviewed with a lower-level staffer at a firm called Cambridge 7, who said my work was good but that they couldn't hire me that day. “Would you like to become an unpaid intern until we have an opening?” he asked. I needed a job now—and turned him down.

Closer to Home

I began to think about interviewing with Hellmuth, Obata & Kassabaum (HOK), a young firm in St. Louis. In architecture school my professors required me to select and critique a modern building, and I chose the James S. McDonnell Planetarium in St. Louis, designed by Gyo Obata of HOK and completed in 1963. I had visited the planetarium several times and was fascinated by the elegance of the design.

The defining form of any planetarium is the dome under which images of the night sky are projected. However, in most planetariums, the dome is almost invisible after adding the lobby, restrooms, exhibition spaces, and offices. Instead, Obata placed the McDonnell Planetarium dome as a freestanding element inside a thin-shelled concrete hyperboloid, a graceful curved shape that tapers in from the base to a narrow waist before increasing toward the top. The hyperboloid is light, elegant, and appears to float above its prominent site in a corner of Forest Park.

Inside, an open lobby and exhibit space surround the planetarium, allowing unobstructed views of the dome. A working observatory is located within the open top of the hyperboloid shielded from city lights, making live observations of the sky possible. As I reflected on the brilliance of the McDonnell Planetarium design, I began to think it would be a great experience to work with Gyo Obata.

Bill Voelker, one of my friends from my undergraduate days at Illinois, was working at HOK as a designer under Obata, and I called him for advice. “How did you get to HOK?” I asked Bill. “What's it like?” “HOK is a great place, like a big family, and we're doing dynamic work,” said Bill. “I can get you an interview with Obata.” By now it was May, and I was on the verge of graduating. I got back in the VW and this time drove the short distance to the HOK office in St. Louis.

The Interview

The receptionist took me to meet Gyo Obata for my interview. He was in his mid-40s, slight of build, with a graying crewcut and dressed in a white shirt with a narrow black tie. Obata was filled with energy. His first question was “What are your ambitions?”

“I love architecture and feel I may have some gifts. I want to do great work,” I said.

Although he looked through my portfolio, Obata seemed more interested in who I was as a person. After some conversation, he looked me in the eye and said, “This firm is going places. We just won the largest high school project in the country to design five new high schools in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania to replace all the high schools in the city. It's a big, challenging project and you can get in at the beginning. I will oversee that project and want you to work directly with me. How about $650 per month?”

My father had schooled me in how to handle this question. “Always say you were hoping to get more,” he had told me. “I was hoping for more,” I said. “Okay, we'll make it $700,” said Obata. I was immensely impressed with my dad's advice: I'd been hired one minute and the next had successfully negotiated my first raise—$700 a month would be … $8,400 a year! “If I can get up to $10,000 a year, I'll be rolling in clover,” I thought.

“When can you start?” asked Obata. I explained that my last class was in 10 days, then I would attend graduation and come to St. Louis. “Forget that,” he said. “No one remembers their graduation. You start the Monday after your last class.” And it was settled.

Big Dreams

St. Louis still was not my first choice as the city to begin my career, but I had a plan. I would work at HOK for a few years, then leverage that experience to land a position in a more exotic locale, maybe San Francisco. In just a few years I could be opening my own firm on the West Coast. But first, I needed to work under a licensed architect for three years, then sit for two days of grueling licensing exams at the state capital in Jefferson City. After those three years, I'd have a good portfolio to show. Then I could go west and really do something, I thought.

Why did I dream about the West Coast? Maybe because it seemed like the greatest possible contrast to industrial Alton, where I'd grown up. The surrounding area is open prairie and farmland, but Alton is situated where farmland gives way to the Mississippi floodplain, a flat area where steel mills, oil refineries, glassworks, and other heavy industries sprang up to utilize the river for shipping.

I found a place to rent at the Plaza Square Apartments directly across the street from the HOK office. The day of my last class came. I loaded up my Volkswagen in Champaign-Urbana, tied my mattress on the roof with binder twine, and drove three hours down to St. Louis. When I got there, the front of the mattress was covered with bugs. It was an inauspicious beginning to what would turn out to be a 50-year journey.

Impressions of HOK

It was June 1967. The HOK office occupied the second floor of a six-story building at the intersection of Olive and 14th Streets, 14 blocks from the Mississippi River. It was a bustling, exciting place. Two receptionists were busy answering the phones and receiving a steady stream of visitors. In those days, no one had telephones at their desks. Instead, there was a central switchboard with six or eight lines and a few phones scattered at stations around the office. Staff members were constantly being paged for calls: “Jerry Sincoff, you have a call on line two.” It looked vibrant and impressive to someone just getting out of college.

Obata's corner office had glass walls, which allowed him to see his design team— but also allowed them to see him. It struck me as very democratic. HOK's offices were flooded with natural light from south-facing windows. Every project had a design leader and these leaders occupied semi-enclosed spaces in the center of the room, up against the elevator core. Their design teams worked at drafting tables on the perimeter of the room, closer to the windows. Yes, the grunts got the best light! So many companies place their executives' offices around the perimeter of the building, and as a result, lower-level employees never see the sun. HOK was different.

The department contained multiple design teams working on different projects. A small team was drawing up Obata's first concepts for a new graduate library for Stanford University. Another team was at work designing a new academic building for the University of Wisconsin. Not long after I started, Obata reassigned my old friend Bill Voelker to a team designing a new airport located midway between Dallas and Fort Worth, Texas. This just reinforced my impression that HOK was a young firm on the move.

Obata's department hummed with energy and purpose. Designers discussed their projects constantly, so the department was filled with conversation. Teams held more formal meetings with clients or engineering consultants in one of the busy conference rooms. The youngest, least experienced team members—like me—made lots of models and did drawing revisions as requested by the design leader or by Obata.

The design department was made up of almost all men, and everyone wore a white or blue dress shirt with a tie. Many of the designers took their cue from Obata and wore slacks and sport coats.

George Hellmuth was HOK's marketing principal. When I joined HOK in 1967, it was growing rapidly, all because Hellmuth had figured out you could use an airplane to expand your marketing, even if you only had one office in St. Louis. At the time, the average architecture firm was made up of eight people. That is still the case today. There's been no movement. Not every firm wants to grow, but HOK wanted to—and was—thanks to Hellmuth.

The first time I met Hellmuth, he was wearing a conservative dark suit with a white shirt and red tie. He tilted his head up and down to view me through the different lenses in his bifocals. He seemed to have a good sense of humor, and his assessment of me was, “Well, you look like you belong in Obata's department.” He was referring to the tiny length of hair that covered the tops of my ears at a time when older men wore a short hairstyle. This was a sign to Hellmuth that I might best belong among the designers.

Hellmuth's office—like his haircut—was more traditional, with wood paneling, elegant drapes, and a heavy desk with a blotter. His secretary and his marketing team sat nearby. Just the fact that he had a full-time marketing team was revolutionary. Clients often came to Hellmuth's area for meetings in a well-appointed conference room. The trappings were intentional. Hellmuth was sort of the “grown up in the room,” the respectable, second-generation St. Louis architect, who put prospective clients at ease, then reeled them in.

George Kassabaum led production, the largest department in the firm, with more people than marketing and design combined. Bustling teams of production architects made sure HOK's designs would work in the real world, keeping the rain out and the heat in. The versatile Kassabaum really held two jobs, because he was also responsible for firm-wide administration, with a team of accountants on hand to help.

My first meeting with Kassabaum did not take place immediately, as he was soon to become the national American Institute of Architects (AIA) president and was often away fulfilling this role. I learned that Hellmuth and Obata supported his AIA work since it helped the profession and enhanced HOK's reputation. Kassabaum was president of the American Institute of Architects from 1968 to 1969. This was another positive HOK characteristic I came to admire as time passed. The founders and the firm encouraged and supported people who had the desire to be involved with outside academic, professional, civic, or charitable activities.

I wondered how Kassabaum could afford to be away so much, especially since his responsibilities were large and demanding. After a few months, I finally had the opportunity to meet him between his frequent trips to AIA headquarters. He was distinguished-looking, fit, and impeccably dressed in a well-tailored suit, white shirt, and conservative tie. Handsome, with a full head of hair graying around the temples, he struck me as a true professional, someone to instill confidence in others.

Kassabaum brought me into his orderly office, offered me a chair, and said, “Tell me about yourself.” He really listened as I began to talk, making me feel like the most important person in the world at that moment. He asked a few questions, then said, “This firm is built on people—talented, dedicated people. If you want to build a career here, it's up to you. If you decide to leave to find opportunity somewhere else, it's up to you. If you leave and discover you made a mistake, you are welcome to return to HOK—one time.” I never forgot his words, and never left HOK. Over the years, other HOK people left to find opportunity elsewhere, but many returned after they were disappointed by what they found.

My First Assignment

Obata assigned me a space in the section of the design department occupied by the newly formed Pittsburgh Great High Schools team. Why that name? HOK certainly hoped the design would be great, but it was called the Great High Schools project because the city planned to consolidate all of Pittsburgh's existing high schools into five larger campuses.

My team was the largest in the office, with five or six designers. Our team leader, Bill Valentine, was on vacation my first two weeks at HOK, and I asked my teammates what he was like. They said he was enthusiastic, energetic, and smart—and one of Obata's favorite designers. When Bill returned from vacation to take responsibility for our team, it was as if a whirlwind had arrived. He seemed to be everywhere at once, visiting each team member, reviewing design progress, and leading us in new directions.

Bill was slim, with a head of curly hair and eyes that crinkled when he smiled. Instead of a suit and tie, Bill wore jeans and a white or blue dress shirt open at the neck—no tie. Sometimes he was so absorbed in his work that he did not seem to notice that his shirttail was hanging out. When Bill sat in his chair talking to someone, he had a way of drawing his feet up on the front of the seat so that he was talking over his knees. In later years, Bill gave up on dress shirts and began to wear black collarless shirts—long before Steve Jobs.

Bill liked to study the Great High Schools in cross-section to see how they fit with the hilly topography of Pittsburgh. I helped him draw the sections, then began to make study models of critical parts of each school. Bill often sent me across the street to the HOK model shop to make even larger study models of foam. He made frequent visits to the model shop to review my progress, and would often say, “Let's try something different.” When Bill was satisfied, we brought the model across the street for Obata's review.

One day, when I was still basically brand new, as I sat at my drafting table working on another big cross-section, Obata's secretary came by and handed me an envelope. “You're going to Pittsburgh next week with Bill Valentine to meet the local architects,” she told me. “Here's your plane ticket and hotel reservation.” Although it seems quaint now, the idea that someone would pay me to get on an airplane and fly somewhere, then put me up at a hotel so I could go to a meeting, seemed like a dream.

My overwhelming impression as a young architect was that great things were happening at HOK. It was an exciting time to be there. In 1967, HOK had 150 people, and even though it was only 12 years old, had grown to become the largest firm in the state and one of the largest in the nation. The energy and ambition of the founders and the culture of teamwork and mutual accountability struck me as something very special. I began to wonder how these three brilliant men had come together to create this extraordinary firm.

My overwhelming impression as a young architect was that great things were happening at HOK.

George Hellmuth, Gyo Obata, and George Kassabaum wanted to design a world-class architecture firm. But before they could establish HOK, they needed to come together in the same city. George Kassabaum's family moved around a bit during his childhood, and he ended up going to college in St. Louis, because it was not far from their latest hometown. Gyo Obata was from far away, in Berkeley, California, and also came to St. Louis for college. Both Kassabaum and Obata would leave and come back, before finally meeting Hellmuth in St. Louis. Hellmuth was the only one of the founders to grow up in the River City, where he had the formative experience of watching his father and uncle struggle to keep their own small architecture firm afloat. St. Louis may seem like an improbable place for one of the world's largest design firms to form, yet it has a significant history.

Why St. Louis?

St. Louis was a bustling French trading settlement that became part of the United States with the Louisiana Purchase, negotiated between President Thomas Jefferson and Napoleon Bonaparte in 1803. During the winter of 1803–1804, the Lewis and Clark expedition assembled men and supplies at Camp Dubois a few miles upstream from St. Louis. That spring, Lewis and Clark crossed the Mississippi and began their epic journey up the Missouri to explore the West. As a boy, I played at Camp Dubois Historic Site just a few miles from my home.

As the nation grew west, the need to move goods and people across the Mississippi, and St. Louis's central geographic position, combined to bring the city to prominence. In late 1874, a team of visionaries, including bridge designer James B. Eads, and a young entrepreneur named Andrew Carnegie, opened a combined roadway and railway bridge across the Mississippi. Named the Eads Bridge for its creator, it was the world's first all-steel arch bridge, the first bridge to exclusively use cantilever support, and one of the first to make use of pneumatic caissons. John A. Roebling, designer of the more-famous Brooklyn Bridge, visited the construction site in St. Louis to learn how Eads managed to sink the caissons so deep. St. Louis had long been a city dependent on the Mississippi river for transport north and south. Now railroads connected St. Louis to the east and west, making it a hub of American commerce.

By 1903, St. Louis had grown to become the fourth largest city in the country and hosted a World's Fair to celebrate the centennial of the Lewis and Clark Expedition and the city's role in the settlement of the West. Inventors introduced the ice cream cone at that fair, and a firm called Hellmuth & Hellmuth was practicing architecture in St. Louis at that time.

Hellmuth & Hellmuth

George Hellmuth—father of HOK's George Hellmuth—and his brother, Harry Hellmuth, were partners in the firm. Naturally, they called their company Hellmuth & Hellmuth, and it had its heyday in the early 1900s, when St. Louis was at its peak. The practice was typical of that time, with the two partners and some draftsmen. Hellmuth & Hellmuth specialized in designing commercial buildings, projects for the Catholic Church, and grand mansions for wealthy St. Louis business leaders.

Hellmuth & Hellmuth's best-known work was the International Fur Exchange Building, completed in 1919, with office spaces for buyers and a large room for fur auctions. At that time, trade in beaver hides and other pelts was still significant and would continue into the 1950s. However, by 1997 the building was vacant and set to be torn down. Hotel developer Charles Drury stepped in to halt demolition and save the building, which he renovated, along with two adjoining properties, to become a hotel and restaurants. The International Fur Exchange Building is now listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

When Hellmuth & Hellmuth secured a commission for a project, George and Harry hired draftsmen to help with the work. During the course of the project, the partners trained them to do the work properly, and gradually a more effective operation would emerge. When the project ended, often there was no new work to take its place, so Hellmuth & Hellmuth would lay those people off, with the firm effectively losing the positive effects of the training.

The partners would begin again to find new work, then hire another fresh team, often bringing in brand new people who they once again needed to train. The end of every project meant the firm was starting over again, and it lost good, seasoned people when the work ran out. Without knowing where the next project was coming from or who might be needed for the work, the firm was never able to plan its own future. Hellmuth & Hellmuth lurched from crisis to crisis.

The second—and fatal—flaw in a traditional practice like Hellmuth & Hellmuth became apparent when the partners wished to retire, and no provision had been made to buy them out. The firm had to close its doors and the partners were left with little to show for their work. Succession planning was overlooked and underappreciated in the world of architecture.

George Francis Hellmuth

But years before that, in 1907, George and his wife had a son. They named him after his father, but with a different middle name. Young George Francis Hellmuth also grew up wanting to become an architect. I have noticed that architecture often runs in families, and the Hellmuths are just one example. However, young George didn't want to emulate his father in all ways. He was distressed by the ups and downs he observed at the traditional firm run by his father and uncle. Architectural practice seemed like a roller coaster, and he wondered if the disheartening boom and bust cycles were inevitable.

The younger George Hellmuth graduated from Washington University with a Master of Architecture degree in 1931, then traveled to France for a year of touring and study at the École des Beaux-Arts in Fontainebleau. He returned to St. Louis in 1932, eager to begin work at Hellmuth & Hellmuth. However, the country, St. Louis, and the firm were in the grip of the Great Depression and his dad and uncle could not afford to hire him.

Instead, Hellmuth landed a job with the City of St. Louis as a junior architect designing bus stops and comfort stations. He worked for the city for seven years, then approached his father again about joining Hellmuth & Hellmuth. “No one in St. Louis knows how to practice architecture successfully,” his father told him, “and that includes me. If you want to learn how, go to a big city, find a big office, and get them to take you on.”¹ That's not bad advice for anyone following in a family member's footsteps.

Hellmuth took his father's suggestion and, in 1939, moved to Detroit, which was then flourishing as an auto manufacturing city and a rival to Chicago for dominance in the Midwest. He found work with Smith, Hinchman & Grylls (SHG), a regional firm with a reputation for good design and steady work serving the growing auto industry.

Hellmuth began as a junior designer at SHG, but his marketing skills soon became evident to the firm's leadership. They transferred him to the solicitation department to help SHG look for new projects. As Hellmuth served in this role, he began to understand how critical marketing for new work was for the long-term success of SHG—or any firm. On the strength of his marketing skills, he quickly rose to be an SHG vice president.

However, Hellmuth knew that no architecture firm could succeed on marketing alone. He was convinced that SHG could build an even stronger practice through better design. He persuaded the firm to hire Minoru Yamasaki, a talented young designer from the East Coast, for $10,000 a year—a good salary for that time.

The Depression-Proof Firm

Hellmuth continued to think about how to create the ideal architecture practice, one that didn't fall into crisis and lose most of its staff and knowledge every time a project ended. He developed a series of insights about how to design a world-class architecture firm and was determined to bring them to the attention of SHG leadership.

Hellmuth was a visionary and, over time, these revelations would have a major impact on his own fortunes—and on the design industry. Here they are:

• Talented People. Hellmuth's first insight was that talented people are the key to a successful architecture practice. Without talented people, no firm can plan for the future. Architecture firms should attract talented people, then keep them long-term to leverage their growing skills and abilities. Of course, keeping talented people long-term meant having steady work, and that led to the next key insight.

  

• Full-time Marketing. Hellmuth's second insight was that full-time marketing was essential to replace the current work before it was finished. Marketing to obtain a worthwhile new project took time—as much as five years. Hellmuth often described marketing as farming. “First you till the ground, then plant the seeds, then tend the fields. Only after that effort can you harvest the results,” he liked to say. In addition, full-time marketing could be even more successful if supported by an effective, professional public relations program to cultivate awareness of the firm's abilities and build relationships with potential clients.

  Hellmuth's first insight was that talented people are the key to a successful architecture practice. Without talented people, no firm can plan for the future.

• Diverse Work/Cities/Services. Hellmuth's third insight was to diversify the work of the firm to the maximum extent possible. He believed a diversified workload was superior to a focus on one type of building. For example, most architects kept busy during the post—World War II baby boom by designing schools. Hellmuth understood that abundant school projects would dry up one day soon, and that other work was necessary before the baby boom went bust. His diversity insight also extended to geographic diversity. If work in one city was slow, work in another city could well keep a talented staff busy. Finally, he understood that diversified professional services were important to bring more work from each project in-house, rather than farming out much of that work to other firms. Some clients need landscape architecture, or engineering services, or interior design. A diversified firm would develop the capacity to serve those needs, in addition to building design.
• Specialized Leaders: Hellmuth's fourth insight concerned specialized leaders. He proposed that each partner focus on a separate responsibility—marketing, design, and production—for maximum efficiency. Partners in traditional firms did everything—sell, design, and produce the work. Hellmuth believed that, by specializing, each partner could become an expert in his area of responsibility. This would also help avoid power struggles, since the partners would oversee separate domains.

In summary, George Hellmuth reinvented the modern practice of architecture with four savvy ideas:

1. Attract and keep talented people.
2. Build a steady workload through full-time marketing and active public relations.
3. Strive for diversity of work, geography, and services for long-term workload stability.
4. Have specialized leaders run the firm, with separate focuses on marketing, design, and production.

In 1944, Hellmuth wrote “The Depression-Proof Firm,”² a 23-page paper detailing these ideas. He was determined to put it into action. He approached SHG leadership with his paper, but they only seemed interested in winning the next job—not his long-term firm-building strategy.