In this interview, Christopher Parsons talks with a senior Lionakis representative (Speaker A) about why the firm’s traditional one‑on‑one apprenticeship model no longer suffices as Lionakis grows to over 200 staff across multiple regions. Speaker A explains that disparate “camps” of teaching have eroded consistency, threatening the firm’s reputation for quality in markets such as healthcare, civic, and education. To address this, Lionakis is developing a firm‑wide, standardized approach called “the Lionakis Way,” which provides a common toolkit for mentors, ensures that any employee can step onto any project anywhere without relearning processes, and protects the firm’s brand. The conversation also covers how the firm uses committees to resolve methodological disagreements, the need to give teachers clear guidance, and the shift from ad‑hoc, informal learning to a more structured, scalable system. While the apprenticeship model remains valuable for mentorship, it is now complemented by systematic training, documentation, and governance to maintain quality and efficiency as the firm expands.
Chapters
Yeah, Christina talks about it specifically in the learning area. I have to look at it from firm growth, from the diversity of our firm, the regional diversity of our firm, and quite frankly, delivering a consistent expectation, a consistent model into the marketplace. And so as we've grown, we've seen so many of our traditional models, that apprenticeship model, start to, if not devolve, have way too many different and disparate voices being those teachers or mentors. And so you start to see the consistency of the firm erode so that we're now doing it in camps. This is so-and-so's camp for how they teach in their team, or this is somebody else's camp or somebody else's region. And I think this emphasis we've been making as a firm is saying, no, we're one firm. We have a consistent approach, the Lionakis way, to how we deliver projects. And this is giving us that opportunity to give everyone the same message. Doesn't discount that apprenticeship model, which is essential in building good architects, I think, but it certainly gives them the toolkit to be good teachers as well.
Why is having people practice consistently beyond the same message Why is the Lionakis Way important?
That's a really good question. I think there's an efficiency piece of it, right? That we're not teaching everybody a different way and then you work with a different project leader and why is that all different? But there's also a lot of the markets that we serve in the healthcare space, in the civic space, education, those people move around, right? They may go from one school one school district to another, from one healthcare facility to another as leaders, and our reputation follows us, whether it's there in our San Diego office or our San Francisco office. They're assuming they're getting a level of quality, a level of project delivery from Lionakis regardless of where we are in the state. And so that messaging becomes really important. We love to hear we have the best drawings or the depth of staff or all of those positives. And we wanted to apply to the whole firm. Yeah, we have a saying for our standards that we want any person in any place on any project to be able to fit right in. So it kind of goes back to that efficiency of from the team member standpoint, if you go and work on a different project for a different PM, that you're not having to relearn their way of doing things.
So that, I think what you said about the apprenticeship model, yeah, devolving, is that the right word? Maybe it's that it's becoming less central to the way that you're thinking about accelerating learning and developing people than it used to be. But I'm sure it still plays a role. But it sounds like from what I'm hearing, the role of it being the primary instruction model in the Lionakis way isn't going to work. But once people understand the way to do things, people still need mentorship and support on their projects.
Absolutely. And I think it is giving the teachers the toolkit, right? Those people in that position, what method am I supposed to be teaching them? How are they supposed to be delivering things? And if they haven't been taught with consistency or haven't developed over time, or they came from another firm that did it differently, how are we giving them the toolkit to make sure they're enforcing the way we want to deliver projects and the caliber and quality? Of project delivery that we expect.
Got it. So it's not so much you have rogue people wanting to teach people a way that they disagree with. It's just— no, they have to tell them something. And in the lieu of not having a resource, they just do their best, right?
Yeah. And they've been delivering projects a very long time and they've done it successfully. And, you know, when we have disagreement, we have a way to bubble those things up and a committee, if you will, that will help us Let's decide what is the way we're going to do this, and then let's all march together and agree on it.
So that's kind of like the why, like the deep why it sounds like of why you're thinking you need to modernize your approach to learning. What has kind of been your approach to learning? What do you think was broken? How are we— this is a big question, by the way, and we'll get to it like in multiple parts, but like, like, so like, where were you? What was broken? Where are you going? What's your approach going to look like? What's your dream, hopes and dreams for how learning could work at Lionakis?
I'm gonna go way back since I've been here the longest, and Christina can do the modern history. Since I've been here 36 years, I'm not gonna complain how Lionakis taught architects, right? Because they taught me, and I'm proud of, of what they've taught me. But it was one-on-one. It was one person sitting next to one person and following them around as a mentor and learning. And that is still very much what we do, whether it's taking people out on job sites, whether it's that incidental learning that happens by overhearing a conversation, that's really important. But I do think that we were a little ad hoc how we taught across the firm. So we might say, "Oh, I'm so frustrated. Everybody keeps doing this 'wrong.'" And we'd pull them in a room and someone would teach them how to do it right. Well, that worked really well. For those 15 people who were in the room and got the new message. And theoretically, they went out and perpetuated that message. But now that we're 225 people, it's very hard to say, "Hey, tomorrow we should learn this thing," and gee, I hope you're here that day. And so I think for me, that's really been the impetus for all the things that Christina is putting in place for us so effectively. And she saw some of that in her early part of her career, but when you go way back, we never knew to teach people in a different way because it was so strictly apprenticeship.
So there's kind of a challenge of scaling your old traditional approach to learning development, and then there's also, is it fast enough to keep up with the speed of change that Christina alluded to earlier?
