What is Your Why: On Drive and Purpose

By Iva Kravitz

We’ve been reading Madame Architect’s excellent essays on some non-technical aspects of architecture, ideas you don’t learn in school but that will help you in your professional lives. My topic seems simple: why do any of us do what we do? It’s a profound, foundational question. I hope it triggers introspective thinking in the most energizing and inspiring ways.

I’m not an architect but I started to help architects with marketing in the late 1980’s. I had just left my job at a large PR firm where I learned how to market their professional services. At the time, I had many friends who were designers and/or architects, most with their own small firms. It was easy, even then, to see they ran their businesses in a reactive way, focusing on project deadlines until there was nothing in the pipeline, then jumping into necessarily desperate marketing, and then, once a new job came in, dropping the marketing to do the project, then when the project was complete, starting marketing again, and on and on. A short-sighted cycle.  

Thus I started my business. I have since learned about designing stores, hospitals, annual reports, restaurants, houses, lamps, textiles, environmental graphics, hotels, workplaces and other spaces and products. At a certain point, it became clear that some client projects, and therefore what I was marketing, mattered more to me than others.  One of the most meaningful moments early in my career was taking the A train on a crisp fall morning to West 166th Street to attend the opening of a new building for formerly homeless people that my client had designed. At the reception, I stood against the back wall of the rec room as one of the residents took the mic, held up his keys, and told the audience he’d never before had a key to anything; the key in his hand was the first time he had ever had his own space, a home.  I couldn’t hold back my tears.  Ever since, I have tried to work with architects who design affordable housing.

In a formal iteration on the power of “Why?,” Simon Sinek gave a brilliant TED talk in 2009 called “How Great Leaders Inspire Action,” in which he described a simpler idea: that the most successful people and companies start by knowing, and being able to articulate, WHY they do what they do. They have a big idea or belief. They successfully communicate the Why first; How and What are secondary. Sinek explains that people don’t care what you do or how you do it but they will vote, buy or follow an idea, a value, a belief, because when they share that belief, it’s meaningful. Knowing your values and goals is not a radically new idea, but the ways Sinek illustrates the power of a deeply-felt mission (think about the founders of MASS Design, a non-profit architectural office) is compelling. With almost 52 million views, Sinek’s talk has become a classic in business education, and virtually every business school in the country requires an intro-level Mission & Vision course. 

In 2002 I started working with Guenther 5 Architects, an 18-person practice that specialized in healthcare. When I first talked to Robin Guenther about her goals, she modestly described wanting to preserve the work of her late partner, who she’d just lost to cancer. It was an appropriate answer but ultimately too short-sighted. In the fall of 2003, the office designed an orientation building and clinic for a school and residence in the Catskills that serves developmentally challenged and medically fragile children and adults. The building is still a model for innovation, care and thoughtful design: it had separate circulation paths for staff, residents and medical personnel; a series of brise-soleil shades that prevented solar gain; a ground-pump geothermal system that controlled HVAC; the walls were lined with sisal wallcovering, which absorbed the impact of wheelchairs without scratch-marks; and the floors, where the kids spent most of their time, were heated with radiant heat. It was stunning, efficient and high-functioning, and it served the community so well that it shifted the thinking of the director, the board, and ultimately the mission of the client organization, toward sustainability.  It was widely published. We watched the power of design - and of a single building – to make meaningful change. . From that point on, Guenther 5’s goals were made clear by the success and pioneering ideas of that project; between Robin’s advocacy work in sustainable healthcare design and the projects that embodied those ideas, it was crystal clear that values and mission of the firm were to integrate strong design with promoting health and high performance.   (The work was noticed; Perkins+Will purchased Guenther 5 in October of 2007.)

In December 2012 I attended a branding workshop because I wanted to change the name of my business. In preparation for the workshop, I received an 8-page questionnaire that was fascinating and deeply personal:  What did I want to be as a child?  What were my greatest dreams? What did I consider my greatest creative achievement? Just completing the form made me think more broadly. That day the talking, ideas, exchanges and exercises brought me to a point of realization: I no longer wanted to promote people I didn’t like or design I didn’t think was excellent. I realized I wanted to work for practices whose work I love and think is important and meaningful, especially in sustainability or social responsibility. I re-branded my business, adopting the tagline “Design Marketing that Matters.”

This moment presents us with any number of bizarre and unprecedented situations, challenges, questions. Professionally, this can be a moment of particular relevance to think about your own values and goals: what, really, do you want? What matters to you? What do you think is important?  Do you worry about climate change? Does your office hold to a standard for environmentally responsible practice? Do you love architecture? What about it is exciting, wonderful, relevant?  Do you like your office? Do you think it does great design? Do the principals behave well? Is there a positive culture? Transparency in communications?  Strong leadership? Is the mission clear? If you are just out of school or between jobs, consider these questions - in addition to the salary, job description and benefits - when you interview. It might feel like a luxury, but you will likely be happier (and stay longer) at a place that does work that matters to you. If you are mid-career and settled, you may not want to jump ship right now but you might gradually start to look at how other firms follow a set of values – or not. If you are a principal or senior in your firm, can you affect change? Can you start to nudge your partners toward being a more equitable, better firm? If your job doesn’t reflect your own values, consider finding a place, eventually, that does. 

As a marketer, if you’re not convinced that a project is important or that the design solution is the best it can be, I urge you to go back to your colleagues and principals – ask them to reconsider why they want you to spend time on it; the question is worth asking. My peers and I have all been assigned to write about or to promote projects that are simply not important: they aren’t novel or interesting or even good design. To me, the hardest work is waking up in the morning and trying to convince myself that a C- client or project is worth my time and energy. Trying to make something mediocre appear to be an A+ project if you squint at it is exhausting; I think it saps your energy and kills your spirit. Alternately if I love my clients and think their work is important and meaningful, my work is thrilling and uplifting.

The world has changed and continues to change, head-snappingly fast: post-pandemic, politically, economically, socially, environmentally. In many ways we are at critical junctures.  Can we reinvent some of our systems for the better, to fix things that are broken? As we rethink our roles and how and where we work, we can also think about WHY and whether we can be more meaningful. I circle back to this: I hope you love what you do, and that you see the Why in it. I hope you believe in your firm and in its work or that you can consider a future when that is the case. I hope you find your passion and joy.