Our Women in Design group recently hosted Mia Scharphie, who spoke about “Setting Ambitious Goals.” Mia is a community-based creative who runs a social impact design consultancy and an empowerment bootcamp for women in creative fields. Here are nine takeaways we learned from Mia on achieving ambitious goals.
Achieving success doesn’t always mean shooting up the “ladder.” Find the path that works for you.
Work with a mentor or friend to figure out how to amplify your goal. Then go for it.
People will only know what you want if you communicate. Speak up about your interests in projects, opportunities and aspirations.
Identify if your goal is an action or outcome. An action goal can be checked off as a complete, such as becoming a licensed architect. With outcome goals, you need to set what determines success. For example, you want to create a successful women’s network group, and you know its successful when they create an event without your help.
Make your goal measureable. Is there an indicator that you achieved your goal?
Brainstorm if there is one goal or change in behavior that would influence your other goals. Prioritize that one first and see the dominos fall in to place.
Pick one thing and focus on your chief initiative. Then, take on or seek out opportunities to support your goals.
Take at least one step every day toward to achieving your goal. This might be as simple as sketching once a day to improve your drawing skills.
You don’t have to do it alone. Find an advocate.
Sandrine Héroux, Sophie McKenzie, and Emily Chowdhury are each members of our in-house Fabrication team. Their day-to-day work centers on a simple question: what changes when design becomes something people can physically test?
These women challenge the notion of fabrication as a support service, framing it instead as an essential component of architectural authorship, a way to test ideas, share agency, and widen the boundaries of what architectural practice can include.
In our most recent blog, they discuss their individual paths in architecture and reflect on their experience using fabrication as a tool for fostering shared agency, community engagement and broadening the role of the architect. Link in bio!
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