What the wall
is telling us.
Assembled during the first break from six board photographs, four room shots and the session transcript. This is the break prompt output from the playbook, written up so it can be read standing up.
Feeds Module 4 at 2:35 and the playback at 4:30. Modules 1, 2 and 3 are done. Nothing here is final, and none of it should be shown to CKD in this form.
Read this before anything else
The sticky colors in the room are not the ones in the playbook. Playbook v4 says blue is Amy, purple is Keith, green is the team. That is not what happened. In the room, green is Amy and blue is Keith. No purple was used at all, and the team wrote on the yellow, orange and pink pads.
Everything below reads the boards against the real key. Anyone writing this up later needs to know, or the entire analysis inverts and we hand Amy's views to Keith. Confirmed live by Chris, so this supersedes the playbook.
Amy. Principal, and the decision maker.
Keith. Studio director.
The team. Individuals cannot be separated from the photographs, so team attribution below is aggregate.
Locked by the room. Three gold dots were placed today.
Where we got to. Modules 1, 2 and 3 are complete. Module 3 ran as conversation rather than with the competitor cards, which was the right call in the room. Section C, what clients say, is blank on both Module 3 sheets. That is the one input we still owe ourselves.
The wall
Straight-on shots of all six sheets. Tap any board to open the full-size image.
The room
The CKD studio, set up and running. Boards taped along the left wall, screen at the far end, U-shape at the tables. Useful later for the case study and for the recap page, and useful right now as proof to the team that the whole studio was in the room.
Andy, before these get used anywhere client-facing. Camera consent was covered at the top of the day, but check whether it extended to publishing. Faces are identifiable in all four.
What the room actually voted for
Module 1 values, counted by checkmark off the sheet.
What that count means
A landscape architecture firm just voted social impact above craft and above service. Beauty of details took zero. Meet client needs took zero. Those are the two things you would expect a design studio to lead with, and the room walked past both.
It says the brand platform should be built on what the work does for people, and that a portfolio-and-craft brand, which is what most of their competitors run, would feel false to their own staff. It also explains why the mission language in the room had heat behind it and the craft language did not.
Confidence: high on the count, it is a direct read off the sheet. Medium on the interpretation, because a show of hands in a warm-up is not a considered vote. Worth testing in the playback by reading it back and watching whether anyone objects.
CKD on a Page, in their words
Who we serve
Amy Communities of all types. Healthcare. Higher ed and schools. Hospitality, hotels, wineries. Multi-family housing.
Keith Developers, today and future. Cities, today and future. Architects, today and future.
Team Community. Bay Area communities. Underserved communities. Commercial properties. People who want change in their environment. The project lead, meaning whoever is funding the project.
Filled fastWhat we make
Amy Expertise in the design of the spaces outside of buildings. Community gathering spaces.
Keith Urban planning, future. Multi-family, today and future. Park and recreation, today and future.
Team Design concepts. Construction documents. Public spaces that are functional, resilient, and meet people's needs. Client peace of mind. Things that benefit people.
Filled fastWhat gets in the way
Amy People not understanding what landscape architecture is. Not enough funding. Politics.
Keith Lack of client contact. Firm visibility. Keith and Amy. Lack of resources.
Team Technology glitches. Budget. Clients and their vision. Schedules. Not having something to do. Not knowing when to ask for help. Brain fog.
Thickest boardHow work comes in
Never made it onto a board. From the transcript: relationships and reputation. The line to keep is that a client looking for a provider goes straight to the firms they already know, so it is about who you know and who you have heard of. Otherwise work arrives through developers and architects, second hand.
Thin, facilitated verballyHow we make money
Barely covered. What surfaced: public work is the majority, developers pay even where the city decides, and the late-stage planting jobs make money but are uncommon and are not the work anyone wants. Landscape is the budget line that gets cut, and then gets blamed for how it looks.
Thin, still owedWho does what
Almost nothing. Signals only: people stepping in across roles, three of them on one timesheet, and a resource gap in hardware, software and people. Newer staff are still climbing the technical curve.
Thin, still owedWhat the thickness says
Three zones filled up in minutes and three stayed nearly empty, and the split is not random. The full ones are about the work. The empty ones are about the business. Who we serve, what we make and what gets in the way needed no prompting. How work comes in, how money is made and who does what all needed us to pull, and we still did not get much.
That is the finding under all the other findings. This is a studio that thinks in projects rather than in a business. It also explains why marketing has never had a clear owner here: the machine that brings work in has never been drawn.
The positioning line
The words that repeat, and who said them
| Word or idea | Where it came up | Read |
|---|---|---|
| Community | Amy on two boards, the team on four stickies, gold dotted in Module 1, and written into Module 3 as public work and designing urban communities | The most repeated idea of the day by a distance. Whatever we build sits on this. |
| Everything outside the building | Amy's green sticky, then both Module 3 sheets, once as "everything not inside" and once with "we don't build buildings" | Their own plain-language definition. Stop looking for a better one. |
| Value to society, benefit people | Top of the Module 1 vote at three, plus a team sticky reading "things that benefit people" | The motivation. Not the same thing as community, and it outranked it. |
| Underserved | Team sticky, gold dotted | The room locked it. Sits awkwardly beside Keith's growth plan. See below. |
| Visibility | Keith's blue sticky, and the competition section, where the read on rivals is a similar mission with higher visibility | They have diagnosed their own problem correctly. Nobody owns fixing it. |
| Nobody knows what we do | Amy's green sticky, the Module 3 margin note asking what landscape architecture is, and repeatedly in conversation | Universal across the room. It is the emotional wound of the whole profession. |
| Green | Amy, gold dotted, and then left undefined in a blue "GREEN =" list with four empty slots | Their word, unclaimed and unfinished. Closing it is a real deliverable. |
Attribution is by sticky color against the corrected key, and is reliable for Amy and Keith. Individual team members cannot be separated from the photographs, so the team column is aggregate. Andy's notes and the multi-speaker recording can resolve names later if we need them.
Where they are not aligned
1. Amy and Keith locate the problem in opposite places
On what gets in the way, every one of Amy's stickies points outward: people do not understand the profession, there is not enough funding, politics. Every one of Keith's points inward: no client contact, firm visibility, lack of resources, and one sticky that just says Keith and Amy.
Amy thinks the world is the obstacle. Keith thinks CKD is the obstacle, and he named himself as part of it. Neither has necessarily heard the other say it, because they wrote in silence. This is the most valuable thing on the wall and it is completely invisible until you apply the color key.
Confidence: high. Two separate silent writing exercises, clean color separation, and Keith said the same thing out loud earlier in conversation.
2. The staff describe a different business than the principals
A team member's pink sticky says what CKD makes today is mostly construction documents and construction administration, and what they hope to make is more concepts, 3D renders and hand graphics. The principals wrote urban planning, park and recreation, and expertise in designing the spaces outside buildings.
The verbal story all afternoon was that CKD gets in early and decides where the building goes. The staff who actually produce the drawings say the day job is CDs. Both can be true at once, but they cannot both be the brand.
3. Underserved communities against the growth plan
The room gold dotted underserved communities. Keith's blue stickies are developers, cities, multi-family and urban planning, and in conversation he wants to move from two or three developers to ten or twelve. A team member said plainly that private developer work means less public engagement.
This is the Public Place and Private Space tension from The Brief, now visible in two colors on two boards. Not a problem to solve today. It is a question the brand has to answer, or the team will feel the drift before the market does.
4. Educate the category, or just be seen
The instinct in the room is to teach the world what landscape architecture is. That is slow and expensive to fund. The alternative is to skip the education entirely and be highly visible to the twenty or so people who actually award the work. Nobody has chosen, and the two roads need very different budgets.
The question to ask in the next hour
"You both wrote what gets in the way, quietly, without seeing each other's. Everything Amy wrote is outside the firm. Funding, politics, people not understanding the profession. Everything Keith wrote is inside it. Client contact, visibility, resources, and one that says Keith and Amy. So which of you is right?"
Why this one
It puts their own handwriting on the table, so it is evidence rather than opinion and much harder to deflect. And it is the difference in belief that everything else hangs off. If Keith is right, the growth problem is an internal fix and marketing is downstream of it. If Amy is right, it is a market and awareness problem and marketing is the whole job. We cannot size our own scope honestly until they answer.
Handle Keith's sticky carefully. He wrote it himself and volunteered the same thought out loud earlier. Credit him for the candor rather than probing it cold, then let him explain it in his own words. Do not put it on the wall and do not repeat it in front of the team when they come back.
The follow-on, once that lands
"Your own team wrote that what CKD makes today is mostly construction documents. Is that a fair description of the business you are running right now, and is it the business you want at the 40th?"
This is the bridge from Module 4 into Module 5, because the answer names the gap the growth engine has to close.
Open loops to close before we leave
Section C is blank on both Module 3 sheets. It is the single input we most need for the brand story and we have none of it. If Module 6 runs long, take it as homework with a name attached rather than dropping it.
Someone started defining what green means and left four empty slots. If everybody deserves a little bit of green becomes the platform, green has to mean something specific. Fill it with them, in their words.
Somebody wrote "past Obama quotes about landscape architects?" on the board. Worth chasing properly. A credible outside voice on the value of the profession is exactly the ammunition the visibility problem needs. Verify before anyone repeats it.
A starting provocation for green, only if they stall. Shade and canopy. A place to gather. A safe way through. Ecology that lasts. Offer it as four wrong answers to argue with, not as the answer.
For Module 6, our presentation
- Open by reading Amy's line back to them, then answer the question written underneath it in her own handwriting: how do we make this a priority for others.
- Frame every example around impact and the people served, not commercial wins. The Module 1 count tells us precisely what this room responds to.
- When showing what good looks like, show the standard they described themselves: clear and impactful imagery, a firm you can actually find, and people visible at industry events. Showing their own words back reads as agreement rather than as a pitch.
- Include a community engagement example. The pollinator garden event that came up in conversation shows they already think this way, and it makes the idea feel like theirs.
The market, as confirmed today
Their own vocabulary from Module 3, sheet 2. Note how little of it is craft language and how much of it is civic language. That is consistent with the vote.