What Is Practice?

So, one of the things we should do at the beginning here is just take a moment and talk about the word practice. So when we a talk about practice management, practice is kind of a funny word because it's interchangeable with a number of other words, but it also has it's sort of own identity, as do those other words. So let's just kind of think about that for a second, and run through what we're talking about here. So first of all, we're talking about a practice, we're talking about a professional work. So, professional work, the idea of practice, it literally comes from the same term as like when I practice something, I practice the violin.

So you do something over and over again, and you get good at it, you get, become professional at it eventually. It's the same source of where that word comes from. And so it's talking about professionalism. It's talking about the idea of a grouping of people doing a professional type of a project. So, similar would be a word, like say, business. You know, we have a business, we have a practice, we have an office, we have a firm.

Those are all fairly interchangeable. They mean essentially the same thing it's a regulated business. It's something where a group of people are actively working together to produce work, usually for pay, although not always for pay. And that that process creates an identity. And that identity, in the sense of a business, is something that is regulated. So it's part of an overall system of how businesses operate with each other.

So, it's different if you are an individual working, doing some work for somebody, versus, if you are a business, or a firm, or a practice, doing work for somebody. That has, that practice has an identity within the larger idea of codes and laws and legal instruments, in terms of how it relates to other practices, how it relates to clients, etcetera.

So these terms have important meaning in the sense that they are talking about the way that we, sort of, are organizing a group exercise of doing work for somebody, for doing work for other organizations. So when we're thinking about those words, the word business, usually is talking about the kind of regulation area of how things are put together. When we talk about the word firm, the firm usually is talking about the kind of solid firm.

It's the fiduciary nature of something. It's the idea that we're talking about how important our firm is 'cause we've been around for 20 years and we have an existence, we're solid. So firm comes from that kind of thinking. And will often be used when talking about the solid fiduciary nature that this firm has been in the black since it started, that kind of thing. So when we use the word firm we're usually talking about that kind of idea of how the business is being operated. When we use the word office, we're usually talking about the process, so we're talking about hiring people, we're talking about the organization in the office.

Is it very hierarchical? Is there one person at the top? So we have a single person leading a studio, and then there's a whole lot of people underneath them at different levels. That would be an organizational idea, that, when we're talking about that, we'd usually be talking about how the office is organized. Not always, you might use some of the other terms, but that and when we use the word office it's usually about the kind of process of how this sort of, organization is doing it's work.

And when we use the word practice, what we're really talking about there is anything that's really about architecture. So you start talking about, you know, we are a practice that focuses on the individual needs of the client, or we are a practice that focuses on a high level of corporate identity, or we are a practice that focuses on sustainability, or ethical concerns, something like that.

It's a way of talking about how this group of people is actually impacting the world of architecture. So it's a way of, sort of, placing this set of activities into the idea of architecture, specifically. So you might use the word practice in place when you could be using business or office. You might use the word firm, when going back and forth. Like, any of those words can be used for any of those situations, and you'll see that I will use them interchangeably, other people use them interchangeably, but usually, they have a little tinge, they tend to be I would use one word more, when we're moving in one direction.

So it's interesting, you may note, that this is Practice Management. We could have called this exam, Business Management. Much of what we're gonna be talking about is the same kind of management set of issues that you would find in any context. You need to have insurance, you need to have employees, you need to know how to work with employees, you need to have a client, you need...

With those things you could be talking about an insurance company, you could be talking about a lawyer, you could be talking about any number of different types of businesses. But at the same time architecture, because it's a profession, and because it's a very specific type of profession, has some very particular sort of, thinking that kind of tinges those business practice ideas. So we don't just have General Liability Insurance, we have Errors and Emissions.

It's a very specific version of insurance. We also have General Liability, but we have this very specific idea of insurance that really speaks to it being architecture. We don't just have clients, we have the public, at large, we have to consider when we're doing our work. So, there's a specific set of issues that are practice oriented, that are architecture oriented that like I say, are essentially the same as just any business. Business practices, but for our purposes because it's so focused on architecture, that's why they've called it Practice Management.

'Cause that practice sort of brings in the idea of architecture, into this topic. So the context is really important of how you're gonna use these words. The words can be interchangeable, so don't get too worried about it. But it is interesting to start to note, how people use these different terms. You'll find people will often be using practice when they are trying to emphasize their 'architectureness'. And their using of word office when they're trying to emphasize their ability at organization.

Their trying to use the word firm when their trying to emphasis that they've been around for a long time, or that they will be around for a long time. So they have different meanings to a degree, but essentially they're all talking about the same thing.

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