"'What can you do, it's just business,' I replied, 'that's nonsense, all business is personal.'"
The phrase “It’s not personal, it’s business” has been exploited by American businesses since the 1980s when the movie Wall Street captured the changing mindset of corporate cultural where shareholder primacy became the prevailing mandate; and this mantra was deployed to relegate concern for employees or community. It became the central corporate ethos.
Jack Welch, the CEO of General Electric, who became famous, or infamous depending on your view, initiated the age of the celebrity CEO, He was known, among other “achievements,” for the concept of “downsizing” as a strategy for profit enhancement to increase the share value even when the company was already profitable. “It’s not personal, it’s only business” became the catch phrase to explain to its employees being laid off. Ever since it has been used, at all business levels, from small entrepreneurs to Fortune 500 and hi-tech companies as the great disclaimer to justify those decisions.
In 2015 I was beginning the construction contracting of a multi-family project that I was developing. In a meeting with the MEP (Mechanical, Electrical, and Plumbing) contractors, the HVAC (Heating, Ventilation, Air Conditioning) owner of the company I was considering, volunteered that he had recently filed for a bankruptcy and therefore would join forces with another HVAC company to do the work. I selected this contractor because his pricing was fair, his expertise was top notch, and he had helped me value engineer the best solution at the best cost.
After declaring his situation, he added, “What can you do, it’s just business,” I replied, “that’s nonsense, all business is personal.” The effect on his family, his marriage, his son’s college tuitions, his ego, and the stress he had been living through for two years, was not just business. His twenty year old company, which he had worked so hard to build, was nearly destroyed and he and his family were nearly devastated by it. The good news is that he did a great job for us; and eventually managed to overcome the bankruptcy and redeem his company
Architects are generally motivated by creativity, the romantic desire to make a better, more beautiful, hospitable world. It’s personal for them. The personal investment, which could be called a belief, in the architectural mission that great practitioners and indigenous people had set the standards for over millennia is hard to get over even after years of struggling for increased salaries, higher commission fees, and more power and influence in determining the final product of their work.
How many architects sit on boards of or run development companies, a REIT (Real Estate Investment Trust), consult federal or state housing authorities, are City Council or Real Estate Development Commission members? How many are in the business of developing buildings? Too few, to say the least. Architects represent a tiny, almost negligible fraction of the decision-makers on the business, regulatory, and financial sides of real estate at the private and government sectors. Look at these startling statistics:
One could argue, I would, having been on both sides of this equation, that there are a few principal factors that cause the disparity in financial power and influence of architects. For some reason, architects, who once acted as client representatives for projects of all kinds, regularly inspecting sites, approving payment applications, interfacing between client and contractors, have withdrawn from that role leaving a vacuum which has been filled by project management teams and companies, who stepped in to take their place.
I was a client rep for projects in New York City at the beginning of my architectural career. In between drawing, specification and coordination work in the office, I visited the site weekly, did a monthly report, which included negotiating and approving the contractor’s monthly and final payment application during construction. This exposed me to the building business, which set me on my future path. Why did architects withdraw from this role to the point at it barely exists anymore?
One reason might be their discomfort with business or the liabilities associated with taking administrative and financial responsibility for a project—which AIA (American Institute of Architects) lawyers have clearly shown in their standard contract templates. The lawyers that represent architects and their offices may have convinced them that they could not afford the liability exposure.
I would suggest another reason. Unlike doctors, who have very strong associations and significant power in the commercial and governmental worlds—running hospitals and pharmaceutical companies, doing research and development in all medically relevant fields, sitting on boards and serving on executive staffs in insurance companies—architects have no equivalent institutional presence. Doctors make themselves indispensable at the medical table where capital and policy decisions are made. Architects do not press for the same place at the real estate development table—whether it serves private, governmental or not-for-profit organizations.
Lawyers, whether in transaction or litigation, are privy to all kinds of businesses. More than any other professions they know how to protect themselves against liability; not to mention, they often run large practices generating millions of dollars per year, making them very comfortable and confident to diversify their professional and entrepreneurial lives into finance, investment funds, and other types of businesses. Architects, as the statistics above show, tend to stay in a narrow range of professional and entrepreneurial options.
A third reason that clients and partners in architectural firms may limit their options is their personal commitment to the vision that many architects start their career with: making a difference in the world and being creative in doing so. This might stop architects from pushing back against the assumption that there are few choices other than mainstream practice to pursue. Too often, justifying these circumstances as, ‘just the way it is’—as a fact they can’t do much about. While I would propose, like any problem in life, change a mindset often requires thinking out of the box.
Yet another reason may be the lack of role models and mentors that would show and help to guide architects to look at career path alternative. For example, design-build, construction, modular manufacturing, and real estate development companies.
To return to the false premise presented as a fait accompli at the beginning of this essay, the source of the phrase, ‘It’s not personal, it’s business’ was coined by, a mathematical wizard and accountant, who worked for the mob boss Dutch Schultz’s notorious crime syndicate in the 1930s. Using that phrase was a way of justifying the ruthless extortion and violence that were the main weapons in building their “businesses.”
This phrase really gained mileage when Mario Puzo appropriated it for The Godfather. In the story, Michael Corleone uses the line to justify executing a corrupt police captain, a rival mobster, who tried to assassinate his father. When volunteering to meet the assailant, a Captain McCluskey and his cohort Virgil “The Turk” Sollozzo, he calms his brother Sonny’s nerves about taking the dangerous mission by saying, “It’s not personal, Sonny. It’s strictly business.”
Michael ends up contradicting himself later on when he answers Tom Hagen, the Godfather’s consigliere, who tells him, as he’s leaving for the kill to be executed in a small Italian restaurant, that he’s taking the hit too personally. “Tom,” he says, “don’t let anybody kid you. It’s all personal, every bit of business…They call it business. OK. But it’s personal as hell.” That’s the real bottom line after all—how the business affects you.
It’s clear all things start and end with a personal point of view and feeling. Pursuing the conventional path despite low margins and high friction is often a pre-conditioned reaction driven by the expectations of the profession’s culture and business credo. Accepting a raw financial deal because “that’s just how the industry is” is an automated surrender to someone else’s business model.
“It’s not personal, it’s just business” is itself an automated, ready-made condition. It is a phrase designed to shut down critical thought and force compliance. Considering alternatives, pausing, entering the ‘gap’ as I call it between what I’m doing and what I want to do, to analyze and assess the professional path you want to be on at any stage of your career, to look at the income trajectory data objectively, strip away the unhelpful romanticism, and critically choose an alternative (like design-build, project management or development) that aligns your creative drive, job satisfaction, and appropriate material reward in return for your commitment to making the best designed and constructed buildings possible is the most basic personal matter and mandate one can assert in the very personal and professional architecture world.