The Digital Practice Framework: Building Strategic Architecture Firms

The difference between a digital practice and a digitally strategic practice comes down to four pillars. While financials, pricing, and operations all matter for firm health, these four pillars form the core of what makes a digital practice truly strategic.

These pillars are:

• Theory of Design

• Positioning

• Future-looking Principles (North Star, BHAG, Aspirations)

• Culture by Design

There are other levers that will influence the success, like financials, that will influence the success - for now, the pillars will form the core.

The Four Pillars of Practice Systems

Pillar 1: Theory of Design

The Theory of Design is your fundamental beliefs about how design happens.

It can be manifested in different ways; it’s your beliefs. One such example is form follows function, when you have such a belief, you will rationalise a space by what it would contain, the movement of people and objects. This will inform the space - the form.

By association, the digital practice will look for technologies that will enhance this process to improve the deliverables.

If we had to look at an architect who works in Hospital Architecture, their theory might align more with functions rather than form-driven design.

The technologies would reflect that.

For hospital architects focused on function over form, this means prioritising software like Revit for space planning and circulation analysis over form-exploration tools like Rhino. It means investing in efficiency calculation tools rather than rendering engines. The theory drives the tech stack.

But your internal beliefs need external context, and that’s where positioning comes in.

Pillar 2: Positioning

Positioning is, I believe, the most underrated area of any practice. The specialising of a practice for a specific market - the ‘we serve x-type client’ - the niching.

Positioning is the market you serve (Medical for a hospital example), whereas Theory of Design is an internal belief. They have different outcomes but can be closely aligned, and misalignment creates problems.

The typical disconnect between these would be that a firm that is form-driven won't typically design hospitals because a form-first approach could create an artistic building but the tradeoff would be inefficient spaces. This is why alignment between your theory and positioning matters; misalignment creates client dissatisfaction, inefficiencies, and frustration. Your theory must serve your market.

The Digital Practices takes this external-facing positioning statement or the market you serve and sees what technologies, processes, or deliverables align best with them. This makes the selection a lot more intentional, a lot more purposeful.

With your theory and positioning clear, you need direction for where you are going.

Pillar 3: North Star, BHAG & Aspirations

As I was investigating the different concepts of transformation and how successful companies do it, the results always came back to these principles:

North Star: The directional compass of the firm, where do we want to go (more or less). It could sound something like “Excellence in functional hospital design.”

Big Hairy Audacious Goal (BHAG): What do we want to achieve (big goal) to validate our North Star - it’s generally a 5-10 year goal (or longer) - and could read something like “we want to design 3 award-winning hospitals by 2030.” This has to be somewhat unrealistic but close to achievable, so that it’s believable.

Aspirations: Taken from the Emergent Strategy and making it more tactical. The idea is that we need something to focus our attention on that’s more tangible than the BHAG. The aspiration is the measuring stick that we believe will validate our BHAG.

There is a lot to read about the North Star and BHAG. I want to put a bit more focus on the Emergent Strategy in this context.

Applying Emergent Strategy to Digital Practice

As we’ve written down the North Star & BHAG, we need something we can bite into, something that will give us results that we believe will answer the 2. The aspiration is that - something truly aspirational, something we can do ourselves. In our example, it could be something like “Design the largest hospital in our region” or “Win our first international hospital project”. Whatever this aspiration is, is your definition of what success would look like.

To achieve the above, you will go through a series of constraints, challenges, roadblocks, etc. These constraints would grow in complexity, but breaking them will take you closer to the ultimate goal. If your aspiration was to “be rated in the top 100”, the first constraint might be: what criteria do these rankings use? Is it aesthetics, client satisfaction, innovation, or sustainability? Once you know the criteria, you build strategies to solve those.

Every time you move through a constraint, the next one will become visible, and each constraint requires a new strategy to move through it.

The Digital Practice will take these 3 theories (North Star, BHAG & Emergent Strategies) and make them actionable, from the direction (what type of tech would we need) to the goal and the tactical execution of it.

Pillar 4: Culture by Design

Culture is often regarded as important, yet in my consulting experience, I’ve seen far more firms let it form naturally than design it intentionally. Letting culture form naturally is a mistake. The best thing leaders can do is to design the culture they want, one that aligns with their values, their way of being. You’ve seen this with some of the most influential companies out there - they don’t leave it to chance, they improve their probabilities of success.

Once you’ve designed your cultural values - I recommend reading Culture by Design by David Friedman - you need to execute on them, reinforce them, and ingrain the ‘our way’ with everyone.

This designed culture will make a lot of other aspects of the firm easier, for HR to find the right fit team members, for the Digital Practice - after fit - to evaluate the technical skills or knowledge of people to help with overcoming current and future constraints or filling a gap with specialised skills.

I think we believe that culture should be this natural thing, this ‘everyone has an input’ idea; but ultimately, it’s a top-down decision and lead-by-example. You might lose people along the way, but you will find a much better replacement.

On Theory vs Execution

While writing and thinking about this article, the one quote that kept sitting with me was:

”Practice without theory is blind. Thought without practice is empty” ~ Kwame Nkrumah

"Practice without theory is blind. Thought without practice is empty" ~ Kwame Nkrumah

And what we’ve done here, in this article, is to look at the theories, the thoughts, that give us the right ideologies to start practising, to start executing. These 4 pillars, under the digital practice framework, are what I believe will give the digital practice the best chance of success. To be realistic, these don’t have to be perfect, as the Emergent Strategy highlights, as you will move North-iss to reach your goal, not in a straight line but in the right direction with the right people.

For hospital architects, this means building a digital practice that serves efficiency, function, and patient outcomes; because your theory, your positioning, and your technology should all point in the same direction.