Another adjustment the Minneapolis folks chose to make had to do with meetings. "We discovered that we had a lot more meetings than they did," says Cuningham. "They used to say to us, 'What are all these meetings for? Just tell them what to do, and have them do it.' That's one of the ways they've been good for us. Now before we schedule a meeting we say, 'What's it for?"
Other differences -- like communication styles -- have been more central to the company's daily functions. "Doug Lowe and I have always been very frank with each other," says Solberg. "They were surprised at first because Doug and I act like brothers, and not always in the good sense. Sometimes we're like an umpire and a manager nose-to-nose screaming at each other. That really shocked them." Conversely, Cuningham and company were the living embodiment of "Minnesota nice." "That's when you go out of your way to say nothing but nice things to people, but behind the scene you're passive-aggressive," Solberg says with a laugh. He says that he and Lowe have learned to be more tactful in front of their midwestern colleagues.
Each firm also discovered that it could offer the other a little assertiveness training. Solberg + Lowe had been much more laid-back than the Cuningham Group when it came to accounts receivable. "They'd be like, 'Hey, Harry's a good guy. He's always paid us before," says Cuningham. "But if you don't pay your gas bill, they shut your gas off. It isn't mean or kind, it's just policy. And it has to be the same for everyone." Solberg admits that he and Lowe had been a lot more easygoing when it came to collections and such. "In a bigger organization, there are a lot more rules to follow," he says. "I'm still fighting that three years later."
For its part, Solberg + Lowe taught the Cuningham Group a thing or two when it came to getting new work. "They needed to learn how to be more aggressive in marketing," says Solberg. "New business doesn't necessarily just come along. You need to find projects well in advance of when you need them."
Intense as the partners' efforts were to keep everybody in the loop, that was easier planned than accomplished. "That 'one office with long corridors' stuff is pretty much crap," says Wade Morgan, a project manager who has worked at all three offices. At first when the two companies came together, there was an underlying sense of apprehension among the offices. Organization charts changed, lines of management shifted, and petty jealousies developed over which office had what resources. "There was a keeping-up-with-the-Joneses mentality," says Morgan. Two things the smaller offices focused on were the Minneapolis office's larger library and larger support staff. "People would ask, 'Why don't we have this or that?' And the only thing I could say was, 'This office has been larger longer, and we have to have the support."
The outlying offices also bore the brunt of the communication gap. Amado Guevara was hired as a designer in the Phoenix office shortly after the merger, and he says that the company's Arizona outpost often felt like the ugly stepchild. "At the time we didn't have a partner there," says Guevara. "We were the smallest office, and we didn't have a lot of local work. So we saw the other two offices doing a power play, getting us to work on their projects." Feeling disconnected and subordinate to Los Angeles and Minneapolis proved demoralizing for the Phoenix crew. "That got better over time," says Guevara, mostly because Rick Solberg has since moved to Phoenix and the office has picked up a lot of its own local work.
Some of the communication challenge that the newly composite Cuningham Group experienced was specific to architecture. By definition, architects typically think more spatially than verbally. "Sometimes it's hard enough just to communicate what we're thinking in person," says Morgan. "Often when we're describing a project, we have to talk with our hands or draw it out. Trying to explain something visual on the phone, or even through videoconferencing, just isn't the same."
But most of the misunderstandings that the Cuningham Group experienced could happen in any company. For instance, the staff from the remote offices bristled when anything came down by fiat from the mother ship. At first the company tried to handle all its marketing from the Minneapolis office, but that quickly proved problematic, partly owing to response speed but mostly to miscommunication. The Phoenix and Los Angeles offices were used to putting together their own marketing materials and felt their talents and responsibilities usurped. Marketing and communications director Kathy Tait took a hard line initially. "We said, 'No, you can't,' for a while," she says. "But we've since found that that doesn't work very often." Part of the problem was unfamiliarity. "Before we got to visit them, it was, 'Jesus, what are they doing?" says Tait. "But when we got to visit them, suddenly it was, 'Holy cow, they have the same problems we do." Tait quickly developed enough confidence in the skills of the Phoenix and Los Angeles staffers to let them put together their own proposals. "The challenge was figuring out how to make it work and keep the message consistent," she says.
"We're all pretty much a knit-shirt crowd. Up there in Minneapolis you have some pretty tightly knotted ties," says Rick Solberg.
In general, communication seemed to work fine at the management level, but it didn't always make it down to the rank and file. The partners' eminently good intentions were often misinter-preted. According to Morgan, "The biggest thing that caused problems, and still does, is the fear that comes from not knowing what's going on." The grand corporate vision that the partners evoked in their retreats wasn't always apparent to the ones who had to stay home. Cuningham and his partners took advantage of every opportunity they could to shuttle people from office to office, but not everyone got the chance to move around. "We had to strike a balance between nurturing the culture, which does take investment, and being strategic about our discretionary spending," says Solberg.
