Firms are sharing project contracts and budgets more openly across teams as a matter of staff engagement.
By Bradford McKee
Clockwise from top left: Paul Kissinger, FASLA, CEO, Kissinger Design, Dexter, Michigan, photo courtesy EDSA; Susannah Ross, ASLA, director, landscape architect, Agency Landscape + Planning, Cambridge, Massachusetts, photo courtesy Agency Landscape + Planning; Greg Tuzzolo, managing director, STIMSON, Cambridge, Massachusetts, photo by Garrett Stone; Jennifer Zell, ASLA, director of Los Angeles operations and director of Regenerative Design Studio, MIG, Los Angeles, photo by Evan Mather, FASLA.
Landscape architecture offices are competing for creative, productive talent in spheres much broader than their peer groups in other design offices. This means the stakes are higher to show commitment and earn it back among their staff and new recruits. Entrants to the profession these days show a desire, principals and practice consultants say, for genuine enrollment in their firms and to support the firm?s evolution. People want to know more and be able to ask more questions. Marjanne Pearson is the founder of Talentstar, an organizational strategy consultancy to design firms based in Petaluma, California. With 30-plus years of familiarity with the design fields, she notes a generational shift toward distributive models of leadership and project management. Strategic knowledge is ?not closely held by the directors of a firm, because that?s not how it works any...