15th anniversary as CEO. You joined Perkins&Will in 1993, is that right?
Phil Harrison: I joined Nix, Mann and Associates in '93, which was then acquired by Perkins&Will in '95. I was grandfathered in, back to '93. I mean, there’s always this question of longevity and tenure when firms merge.
KS: And when Perkins&Will acquired that practice, were you part of that conversation?
PH: Indirectly. I’ve got an interesting history there. If you know Hugh Hochberg,1 he tells this story and you may have even heard this story. He claims a lot of credit for my career, which he probably deserves.
In the spring of ‘95, at a Partner’s retreat of Nix, Mann and Associates, they were struggling with leadership succession planning. They had realized at the time that they had wonderful people as Associates, but not the future leaders – the people to replace themselves. Which is a common situation, a classic second-generation problem.
And Hugh convinced them to take a bold step, which was to remove the Associate titles from the Associates – I think at the time about eight people – and to appoint two partners-in-training, myself and one other person. That happened in early ‘95. They went on a ski trip and came back and that was a pretty seismic event. I had just been designated into this weird new role of PIT, or partner-in-training, which people laughed about. It sounded like training pants or diapers or something like that.
Not that long after that tumultuous moment, which ruffled quite a few feathers, Perkins&Will came and proposed to acquire the firm. I was not an owner, but I’d been thought of as a future leader. Because of that situation, the two main partners, Henry and Lewis, came to me and said what do you think about this idea? We don’t want to do this if you and the other partner-in-training don’t think it’s a good idea. If you think it’s a good idea, we think it’s a good idea. We’d like to sell to Perkins&Will. So I was in consultation, but I really had no vote because I wasn’t an owner.
KS: And then a decade later you were invited to become CEO, right?
PH: It was a two-stage acquisition. The first stage was a 51% and the second stage was 49%. And for the first five years, not very much happened. But in 2000, once they finished the second stage, Henry Mann was appointed CEO of all of Perkins&Will. Once he became CEO, I took over the leadership of our Atlanta studio. And then he appointed me President in 2003 and then CEO in 2006. When he became CEO, he said “I’m going to do this for five or six years, but I plan to retire and you need to take over when I’m done. So just watch everything I do.”
KS: So you knew five years before you would take over that role. You had a chance to shadow him, watch him, learn from him.
PH: Yeah. It was quite an intense five- or six-year period because Henry was a wonderful leader and a very charismatic person, but also sort of a seat-of-the-pants kind of a manager. I wouldn’t call him impulsive, but he would make quick decisions, for example calling me late the night before saying, “Phil, just so you know, we’re going to Minneapolis tomorrow morning. I’ll pick you up at 6:15 to catch the early flight.” And it’s a day trip, you know?
It was an exhausting internship, if you will, because of Henry’s work style, and I had young kids at the time. Those were challenging years, but I learned a ton from him. It became more evident to other people that I would succeed Henry as time went on. It took some years for that to happen, but he told me “just follow what I’m doing and you should take over after me.”
KS: Now you’re leading one of the largest practices in the world, you’re 25 offices in seven countries. I am sure the demands for your time outstrip the supply. How do you prioritize? What are the activities and impacts that you focus on in your role as CEO?
PH: That’s a good question. I have found – increasingly as my career has gone on – that I have more available time and partly that’s by design, because I realized I’m simply not as effective if I’m overbooked. It would be easy for me to travel every day and speak at conferences every week and go to all these at meetings, etcetera, etcetera. I could be a workaholic. But I would be miserable and I would probably die of a heart attack or something.
I also took on the job at a relatively young age, I’m 56 now. And I became CEO when I was 41, which surprised a bunch of people on the AIA Large Firm Roundtable. They were like, who’s this kid? And all those firms are now doing leadership succession now or have in the last couple of years, but no one was doing it back then. And I realized I’m going to have to do this for a long time. And I can’t do it the way Henry did it, which was fast and intensely.
I’ve always tried to pace myself and that was just an important life goal. Because I realized I wouldn’t be happy any other way. And as the firm has evolved, my job has changed. It’s been important to be in touch with what the firm needs of me and what it doesn’t need of me. And the firm has evolved quite radically in my time in leadership at the firm. A 400-person firm is very different than a 2,200-person firm, in terms of the structure and the organization and how you can delegate and those kinds of things.
I see it as three different chapters, and each one was quite different in terms of my job and focus. The first was the leadership succession period with Henry, which was the learning phase, super intense, running all over the place, on-the-job training.
When Henry retired, in the early years when I was on my own – this was the second phase – I was more involved in the financial management of the firm than anything else. I’d come into my role through operations and managing a large studio, and that was my comfort zone. And it was more of a straight business kind of a management role, and also what the firm needed at that time. I probably didn’t do enough on people and organizational leadership.
As time has gone on, most of the financial management has been delegated to a great CFO and a great COO and most of anything technology related has been delegated. What’s left – the third phase – is pretty much communications, strategy, and people. So today, I concentrate on vision and mission, and on our clients.
I’ve never been like, let’s say, Brad Perkins,2 the other Perkins in our industry. Brad is a remarkable leader, but he does everything, and he spends a huge amount of time with clients and drives all their largest projects. I’m involved with clients from a high-level standpoint, but I don’t have my own projects that I’m running as a Managing Principal. That just hasn’t been what I’ve done. My role is much more of a servant leader, setting up the other people in the firm to function in that capacity.
I talk to clients on a regular basis, major clients, those kinds of things, but they don’t expect me to show up every week. Most of my role is management and organizational leadership. So the role has changed over time. And I think that’s been one important thing for my longevity. If I were still doing the exact same thing, it would have been tedious in a sense. Changing kept my role interesting, but also I think the firm needed different things from me over the years and I’ve tried to pay attention to what the organization needed.
KS: So early on you were focused more on financial issues, business operations, and you’ve since transitioned into communication, organizational leadership, vision, and mission. And you have a whole different kind of team surrounding you now, enabling you to do what you do.
PH: That’s right. And increasingly the people in key leadership positions around me are more like-minded. It’s been easier for the personal relationships that make the company function. There’s less organizational stress, I would say.
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