Category: Blog

In the past three weeks, I’ve had the honor of being interviewed on several podcastsabout my book Designing a World-Class Architecture Firm . All of the hosts have askedthe same fundamental question: What is your advice for architects and other designprofessionals in the face of the Coronavirus pandemic? My answer is always the same:You can […]

These are unprecedented times for business.  For many companies, the only way to survive will be through shared sacrifice with your employees.  When you are asking people to embrace painful measures like pay cuts and temporary furloughs, it helps immeasurably to have a strong, unified company culture in place.  But if your company culture has […]

During these challenging times battling the coronavirus, we need strong leaders in government and the private sector.  However, I find people in leadership positions often confuse leading with managing.  There is a dramatic difference between the two.  As a young architect, I worked on a project team led by a Project Manager.  I thought, “That’s […]

I am not an epidemiologist —or even a doctor.  I’m an architect.  But it occurs to me that I have learned some things about leading during crisis that can help other executives during this unprecedented battle with the novel coronavirus.  When I became CEO of HOK, one of the largest architecture and engineering firms in […]

HOK is one of the largest architecture and engineering firms in the world, but the vision for it came from humble beginnings.  The “H” in HOK stands for “Hellmuth,” as in George Hellmuth, HOK’s legendary founding marketer.  Hellmuth’s father was also named George Hellmuth and was also an architect. He and his brother, Harry Hellmuth, […]