The Practice Briefing
A monthly briefing for architecture practice principals
The business of running a practice.
Succession, exit, valuation, acquisition, founder dependency, leadership transition. One issue a month. Written by someone who has sat on both sides of the table for forty years.
What this is
Written for principals, not for the profession.
Most architecture publications cover the profession. The Practice Briefing covers the business of running one — the decisions that don't appear in design reviews or RIBA bulletins but determine whether a practice survives its founder, sells at a fair price, or quietly fades.
"A practice that cannot survive its founder's absence for six months is not a business. It is a job with overheads"
If you run a practice of five to fifty people and are thinking about what comes next, in five years or twenty, this is written for you.
What each issue covers
- Succession planning
The founder dependency problem. What a real succession plan looks like. Why most practices don't have one.
- Exit and acquisition
How practices get bought, at what multiples, and what acquirers look at before they look at revenue.
- Practice valuation
What your practice is worth, and the gap between what founders believe and what the market will pay.
- Growth and operational decisions
The choices that scale a practice and the ones that quietly cap it.
- Leadership transitions
Handing over. Bringing in. The mechanics and the human reality.
the editor
Andrew Hartshorn
Practitioner, advisor, and author of 'Pathway to Exit'. Forty years of architectural practice and advisory work across the UK and internationally. Founder of Legacis Intelligence, a global architecture firm intelligence platform. Author of the forthcoming 'The Intelligent Practice'.
recent issues
Edition 3 — The money arriving from outside the profession
Edition 2 — What a bifurcating market looks like from the transaction table
Edition 1 — The founder dependency index