Managing Knowledge & Data for Continuous Improvement

A I'm Evelyn Lee.

B And I'm Janine Chastain. We're collaborating on curated conversations to explore how the industry is changing.

A Together, we'll find ways to create new solutions to current challenges while elevating the value of architects.

B Welcome to Practice disrupted.

A Hello, listeners. Hi, Janine. Hey, Evelyn. Hey, listeners. Today, we're exploring the role that knowledge plays in running an architecture firm or studio how And, actually, how that contributes to better business. We are meeting an entrepreneur who has built a brand new technology in this space from the ground up, that primarily looks at helping the AE industry as a whole manage their knowledge on at a firm level basis.

B Yes. And knowledge, as all of us know and we're gonna hear more about in this episode, is an inherent part of running a business. It plays a critical role in keeping our architecture studios operational from project development to project planning, marketing, staffing, and so much more. And frankly, our use of technology is accelerating the need and use of of knowledge across what we're working on every day. So we're looking at new ways of how knowledge is being created and shared.

A And I think what else is interesting is The architecture industry is full of knowledge workers, but most architecture firms actually struggle with a way to systematize that knowledge how So that it is easily and accessible to everyone in the firm. If you think about every conversation or email or communication that you have how that is just sent to you, and how much that information does or doesn't even get out to your the rest of your team at the project level unless you communicate that back out to them.

B And that's exactly why I wanted to bring our guests on today. So Chris Parsons Has spent his career kind of shifting towards this role and launching a company focused on knowledge, and he is gonna be able to share so much insight on how knowledge and data is used to tackle larger conversations within firms. One we talk about is diversity, equity, inclusion, and I know he's, having similar conversations with all of these different firms that he's working with as his clients on a regular basis. So I've asked him to join us so that he can especially speak to his role as an entrepreneur, but his work in, serving mid to large size firms on this knowledge management company that he's created.

A So here is his bio. Chris Parson is the founder and CEO of Knowledge Architecture. He He's responsible for research and development, sales and marketing, and organizational development. So he's obviously wearing a lot of different hats. He is the executive producer of KA Connect, an annual management conference for the AEC industry. And Chris has been a technology leader in the AEC industry since 2002, including serving as chief information officer for Steinberg Architects how and the information technology director for SMWM,

B which is now Perkins and Will, but I have a long love for the people that have worked at how MWM. Christopher also has a degree in history from Wake Forest University. He is an avid reader, hiker, bird watcher, and cook. So his company is called Knowledge Architecture, and they build software community and best practices to help architecture how an engineering firm's fine, share, and manage knowledge. Their software platform is Synthesis, a social intranet which integrates with Deltek, Nuforma, and Open Asset. They also run an annual knowledge management conference for the AEC industry called KA Connect, as well as a client community of practice for Synthesis Internet teams called KA Advanced. Founded in 2009 and serving over a 100 AEC clients, knowledge architecture is privately held, employee owned, and passionate passionate about cocreating and sharing best practices to advance the state of knowledge management in the AEC industry.

A Let's cut to the interview.

C Thanks for having me here. So my background, I was a history major in college how and graduated in 1999, which meant that if you had a pulse and how You knew anything about technology, you had a job in the technology industry because it was just so nascent at the time. And so my plan had been to go to law school. But how But I got some really good advice from somebody in my senior year of college, which said, law school will be there. Go take a year, 2, 3 years and go work for a little while. And how And if you wanna come back, you can. And I didn't go back. So I got lucky.

C I got into this technology consulting how company, and I flew all over the world and worked with all over the country and worked with all kinds of different interesting industries and and got into kind of move from kind of basic technology like network how infrastructure into software development. And right as I was starting to peak in software development, you know, right at the age of 23, how I got laid off because the .comboomhit us and 911 hit. And it was just in San Francisco, how There were no jobs. Like, it was bad. And the job I found I I had this criteria that I really wanted to work in the city because didn't have a car, and I wanted to walk to work. And when I put those parameters on my job hunt, I basically got law firms and architecture firms how That's who was hiring and who fit those criteria. And so I took a job in an architecture firm to ride out that procession to get back into the software industry. And what happened was I fell in love with architecture.

C I didn't know anything really about it coming into it, and it was this amazing blend of law and how Science and community and and engineering and aesthetics and politics. It was just all these things I was interested in We're involved, especially the kind of work we were doing. I worked at a firm called SMWM. We were doing projects like the Ferry Building and the new main library and the metro. And we're doing all this interesting work in the city of San Francisco, which touched the community. And so I ended up staying there for 5 years as their IT director, then went to Steinberg Architects how For 3 years as their chief information officer and then started our company in 2009. So never went back to law school and never got back into Into tech. I just fell fell in this industry and fell in love.

A Wow. Hearing that story, I actually realized I don't think I've ever known how you've known your background and how you kind of got into all of this, so that was really interesting to hear. So can you tell us just, A little bit more about what knowledge architecture is and, you know, how it serves the architecture how profession and and why what you do is kind of so critical and important to the profession.

C Sure. Well, I think first and foremost, we are a software how company, and we're based in San Francisco. That is where the vast majority of our revenue comes from. It's from software licensing. We're privately held. We're employee owned. And the thing that we're really passionate about is, you know, cocreating and sharing best practices to advance the how State of how knowledge gets managed in our AEC industry. So we work with about 5050 architecture and engineering firms.

C How I came from architecture as I'd said before. This has been a great learning opportunity for me to to understand the engineering side of our industry too. How So the software platform is called Synthesis. It's an intranet for architects architecture and engineering firms. You might have some listeners who don't know what an intranet is. How so you should think of it as an internal website for your firm. So people within the firm would go there to find, you know, information they need to how their jobs. So things like policies, procedures, standards, best practices, a list of projects and who worked on them and people and what their how Skills are and who worked on what.

C You go there to find news about what's happening at the firm, so leadership updates on strategy or different practice areas or initiatives or how New hires and promotions, all the things. And you go there to learn. Right? So there's new learning and development opportunities. You can ask questions and get answers across the firm, how Share lessons learned, emerging best practices. It's kinda like Wikipedia, LinkedIn, and Google how to vape. Right? And it's how It's kinda wrapped into one thing inside the firm. It's kinda that one stop shop for folks. So that's that's the software, and that's what kind of people know us the most for.

C But how We kind of realized really early on in the company's journey that it takes a lot more than software to manage knowledge, you know, within a company. You know, I'd say that technology is probably 20% of it. And so we spend a lot of time building a community around, around our company, and that's a community of our clients, and then there's a broader community that touches anyone in the AAC industry that's interested in learning about knowledge management. And so we've got a conference. We do webinars. You know, we do all kinds of different things to help advance the industry. And that's that's been really, really enjoyable, how But it's also helped our clients be successful with our product and be successful with their business and not and managing knowledge. So It's a holistic approach, and that's something that we, I think, drew a lot of inspiration from time and practice.

C Many of us worked in architecture or engineering firms before coming here, and how I think we're inspired by the holistic ways that architects and engineers approach their buildings or their bridges or whatever it is and really understanding all the broader things, that are connected to it.

B Can you give us an example of how you've seen this platform provide value to a firm that, you know, perhaps another firm would not have access to that kind of, information.

C Yeah. How I think one of the things that would be a good example you know, people have written a lot about how kinda architecture firms go through these different how kind of phases at different sizes of their organizations. So, you know, it's 1 kind of practice when it's 1 to 10 people. It's a different deal when it's 10 to 30, how Then at 80 and then a 150. They're like these inflection points as the or as your organization grows. And we usually come in at knowledge architecture how Kinda when firms are hitting that 50, 60 person, like, that's probably our smallest clients. And it's when it's gone from, you know, how 2 to 4 founding partners who have all the answers in their head. They can all see each other within a floor, and they just their intranet is the people.

C How Right? And so what's our policy? Where's our standard? They're always asking each other. Right? And at some point when you kind of maybe you're chasing multiple how markets. Maybe you add another office. Maybe you've got different levels or, you know, multiple different project managers or or experts in a given sector or building type. How It starts to really pay dividends to write things down. And to be able to share that knowledge, to be able to how Prove it over time to make you more resilient. If a key person leaves, sometimes the founders turn out they wanna retire, and they wanna transition out of the business. So There's this point where, like, becoming more intentional about managing knowledge and transferring it becomes really important to a company's journey, and that's typically where we come in and help.

B How That's a great example, Kris. But I think the value conversation is so critical to what you're offering because knowledge and information has become a important part of practice, and it's almost transactional. And architects are constantly looking for information and how to research things and use that in their work. So I can see many ways that this becomes a valuable resource to firms.

C I think COVID was a huge example too, especially when people were forced home very quickly. How So our clients who had really good practices and procedures already documented were in really good shape. It gave them a really good way to communicate and get messages how across consistency. Like, we had clients that were doing daily, you know, video recordings from the leadership. How Right. Or long kind of post explaining, here's what we're seeing, here's what's going on. So for companies who had that really good habit how communicating broadly and doing really good internal communications has really helped them navigate the pandemic. And we worked with other clients who were trying to get there in a hurry because they were a single office.

C Right? And so they didn't have to write as much stuff down, and now all of a sudden there's 70 offices or a 100 offices because everyone's got a solo office working from home. And so this drove a lot of that maturity on the knowledge process for them of this COVID, pandemic did.

B So, Chris, building on that idea, why don't we explain to our listeners why knowledge management is important? If you can give us a framework for that, that'd be helpful.

C How Yeah. So I think I'd start by saying that, all architecture firms are knowledge based firms. A lot of times when I'll give a talk and I'll and I'll start talking about knowledge management, it's like a fish that's in water that doesn't realize it's in water, and then it looks around and it's like, oh, yeah. We're swimming how knowledge. Right? That is that is what we are doing here. And so because of that, I think all architecture firms are actually doing knowledge management already. They just don't call it that. How Firms are constantly building new things and learning new things.

C They're learning new software. They're using new materials. They're designing new building types. They're using new assemblies. There's how All this kind of, learning and innovation happening. So then, I mentioned kind of before about growth. How Right. You want to then capture and share that knowledge, but a lot of times that's not systematic.

C Right? It's kind of ad hoc and it's not intentional, and so Kilometers is all about sorry, how. Knowledge management, is all about making the best available use of your knowledge and so you can achieve your firm's goals. So I talked about growth before, but there's a lot of other goals. How Right. Ownership or leadership transition, increasing profitability, improving design quality, improving employee engagement, how Diversity, equity, and inclusion. There's just you can go on and on about like what really matters the most to a firm. And so, you know, one of the key tricks to getting knowledge management right, and I've how Seen over the years I've been in this field, folks can get pursuing knowledge management goals for their own how purposes and get attracted to shiny objects around managing knowledge and forget to connect that back into what's most important for the company. And so there's a ton of things you can do with knowledge management, how Intranets and communities of practice and corporate universities and mentorship and all these things, but like you wanna pick the things that you do that really how and help your company go where it's trying to go.

C And so I gave a talk a few years ago called Smarter by Design, and the subtitle was a knowledge management manifesto for the AEC industry. And that's how That's kind of my version of Kilometers one zero one. And so I I sent you guys a link so you can put it in the show notes. But in that, it introduces this how Periodic table of common knowledge management elements so that folks kinda see the breadth and depth of how much knowledge management knowledge there is to manage and how What the teams who support this work look like.

B And what I found interesting in our prior conversations is that you are able to how firms start looking at data points within that information. It I I don't know if that was ever intentional, but, You know, when we worked on the Leadership Institute work, the actually, AI forefront, I should say, that you were mentioning, you can see how people are staffed, how many times they're on a certain project, and it gives you if you set up the data in that way Mhmm. Then have an opportunity to see data, that you may not have otherwise had, an ability to quantify.

C Yeah. It's, power it's how Funny. We just ran a, a webinar, 2 weeks ago, from LS three p. They were talking about managing project data. And One of the things that Katie Robinson there, she's the, chief of marketing and knowledge, manager. Right? So she runs the marketing and the knowledge management group. How And she was very, very good at connecting. If you get x, you know, data points on projects, here are all the value points it can create across the firm, how Anywhere from professional liability insurance renewals to pursuing awards to proposals and showing qualifications how to providing precedence for younger folks to help them understand, you know, typical square footages or beds or whatever it might be.

C And so how The term that we like to think about is you wanna improve the return on information. So it's a different ROI. But, right, as you think about how do you maximize when you capture information, how how much value you can derive out of it. And, it's an art. Right? And it's something that we continue to get better at, our clients continue to get better at. How But I've definitely seen a mature since we started, and I'm not taking credit we're not taking credit for this, but I think the kind of the focus and the intentionality around managing data has certainly taken off. How

A At the top of the conversation, you mentioned that, you know, there's a lot of firms playing playing catch up how Because of COVID and because, you know, they went from 1 office 1 physical office to now, a 100 offices, how These firms look at coming back after COVID and having a more flexible workplace, You know, where you're not necessarily going to see all of your coworkers when you come into the office unless there's some intentionality behind bringing everyone together. How How does knowledge management increase in value? And you you mentioned also that technology is 20% of the solution. So, how You know, what are what are other things that they need to do to ensure they are properly collecting knowledge and and putting it actually in the right place how adopting new policies and processes. And how do you respond to people who say I don't have the time to do this?

C So how I think kinda going back to first principles, there is more knowledge in your practice than you can manage. How Like, that's just a fact that people will once they start looking at this work, they have to there's a they're coming to terms with that fact that it's hard to do. Right? It's like all of a sudden, it's like, oh my gosh. How There's all these things we aren't managing. There's all the stuff we could capture. It's overwhelming. And so I think quickly getting from that position to, like, what knowledge matters most how is really important. And I mentioned this connection about making the knowledge management strategy subordinate to the business strategy before, And so, again, it's getting very clear on where the company's priorities are and then figuring out what knowledge you need to support, Whatever that is.

C So if you're trying to grow, if you're trying to add a new office, if you're trying to improve your design quality, then that means looking at the specific systems, process how standards, learning approaches, whatever it is that helps you get there, instead of trying to kind of improve everything how Because it can be completely overwhelming. So I think that prioritization process is really important because it can be very demoralizing how To try and do it all, and it's better to pick your spots. And I think, you know, in general, the creativity of architects and engineers is their friend. How Sometimes it can also be challenging because there's so many good ideas. Right? And so I think it's a matter of being able to figure out which ones, how matter most. Because what you want to do is you want to be able to point to not why this is a good idea for the knowledge management team or why this is a how You wanna show, like, this is gonna help us move the needle on something that helps us become the company we wanna become and where we need to go next. And so I think if you don't have that, how Then it's really hard to make a case because people are change averse. And I'm one of the people that thinks and that's a good thing in many ways.

C How Right? And I I think, you know, there's a lot of change for change sake that we see, and I think being able to really prove that it's worth the energy and effort to move and to how Take something up and deprioritize something else really matters.

B So, Chris, I think, you know, in 2020, we've obviously learned a lot having to navigate transition through COVID nineteen and our practices. What can you share about how this relates how to some of the lessons learned, from 2020.

C So we I mentioned our kind of commitment to community at the beginning. How What what is true is that, like, we we were really good at in person events. That's kinda what we know how to do. We know how to we run a conference that's been very successful. How We do lots of workshops with our clients and other things, and what we were okay on was virtual. Like, we did monthly, how We called them office hours webinars, and they were pretty helpful. And we were showing, you know, something somebody was doing with knowledge management that they were really good at. But, like, the whole thing, it was really we were in person first, how And the kind of the virtual was designed to be kind of this bridge kind of between in person events because that was the heart of our community.

C Obviously, this year changed that. How And so one of the things that we did right away is we started up what we call business roundtables. So we started a monthly CEO roundtable for our clients how to help them navigate COVID, and as the year played on, navigate, you know, kind of George Floyd and navigate, you know, some of the election turmoil within side how There just were things that happened in 2020, and having that group of peers that they could learn from and with was really helpful for them. And COVID, specifically, it's been interesting to kind of watch the wind blow everybody out to their homes, how Watch people be there and figure out how to cope, and now watch folks really wrestle with how do we return and what everyone's saying, right, to a person in our CEO round table, but we're also doing one how COOs and communications IT is that coming back is gonna be a lot harder than going out. You know, we didn't have a choice. Like, how It was you were out by this time, and now coming back, it's not so simple. And what they're what what everyone's saying is it's really hard to run a hybrid model. How And it's really hard, especially for a design team, where 3 or 4 people just start sketching, you know, at a whiteboard or something like that, how then they have to remember, wait, I've got 3 teammates who are at home.

C They're not part of this this design, you know, problem we're trying to solve. And so now we need to how Choose between slowing down and letting the inspiration in the moment pass so we can become more inclusive, right, or just to keep going and lead people out of this. How And it's a really tricky thing to navigate, and so some firms are really trying to wrestle with, do we stay more like this, how Like more work from home and purpose so that it's really easy. If everyone's on digital screens, it's easy to collaborate. If everyone's in person, it's easy to collaborate. How If it's hybrid, it makes it really hard. And so what I'm starting to sense is that some firms are saying we are gonna be a a work from home first how Culture. And we're gonna use the office for special occasions, for big meetings, to use a 3 d printer, whatever that might be, how Or we want to be all the way back in the office, and you'll be an exception.

C You can work from home if you have to, if there's a family thing, but we feel in order to do good design work, you all have to be here. How And what I suspect is there might be brands built around that. Right? There might be people that wanna go work every day in the office in that kind how culture, and there might be people that wanna work in a remote, and that might be kinda how firms differentiate from each other in

A the future. You know, we just released how our hybrid practice playbook, and it's really all about like, the hybrid model is the most difficult one to how To to create a culture, to create, processes, to ensure equity across the board. How So we completely understand where you're headed there. So we've we've talked about kind of knowledge management or Kilometers, at the at the during the first half of our conversation. But I think there's an interesting story too, and you began to speak about it how a little bit about kind of the development of the software and technology itself. And, you know, how The increase in dollars that VC VCs are putting into, Contacts or, AEC tech or Shoot. There's there's another,

C Built tech. I've seen that one. Built tech.

A You know? But, anyways, this how This is really actually a a growing field, and I know there's some firms out there that have written incredible rhinos scripts that, you know, if they could how even figure out a way to package digital assets and resell them. That's a that's another revenue line for them. So can you tell us a little bit about about knowledge architecture and your company as a as a product and how you've begun to build that out.

C Yeah. There's a few things I think that are interesting to unpack. I've been lucky to kind of spend time a lot of people were very generous with their time with me when I was getting started. And, You know, saying, like, people that were further down the entrepreneurship journey, I had no idea I wanted to be an entrepreneur growing up. I'm not one of those people that knew this since they were 8 years old. You know, this is like this was kind of a surprise to me. And, you know, the reason I got into business, was about quality of life. How And, you know, that was initially about quality of life for me.

C And then as I built a team, it was about the team and even extended it to our clients. And I think that my kind of the advice that when I get asked that question now is to deeply understand why you wanna start a business. How and then design and build a business which meets the goals. Those goals. Not the business you are kind of quote unquote supposed to build how or you see other people building. And, you know, for me, I came across a book recently, like, 2 or 3 years ago, called The Advantage by Patrick Lencioni. How And it's I can't recommend it highly enough. It talks about organizational health.

C And one of the most important exercises in the book that he suggests, and we worked through this as how as an organization was why do we exist, really? Not the kind of the sanitized website version or the kind of inspirational marketing slogan, but seriously, how Are you here to make money? Are you here to be famous? Are you here to change the world? Are you here to be a service to other people? Is there a problem you really wanna chase? Is it lifestyle or quality of life? Because you can be motivated by more than 1 thing, but I think deep down, like, there's something. There's some kind of like how primal force that's getting you out of bed and made you leave a safe job and start something. Right? And I think the more how honest you can be with yourself and your team about what that thing is really, like, the more successful you're gonna be. This does impact kind of the the product the company we built because, how You know, I read a book called Small Giants by Bo Berlingham really early on too, and I figured out that, like, what I wanted to do was a small giant. Right. The small giant doesn't have to be a huge company that raises money. It can be, you know, a niche business how that focuses on an industry I fell to love, which was AE. Right? It can be sustainable.

C It can be employee owned, and you can optimize for quality of life over financial returns. How And that's what you have to do when you have investors. You have you are responsible. You have their money. The reason they're investing in you mostly I mean, I'm not saying that investors don't care about other things, how The environment and, you know, improving society. But really, they need to see a return on their money. I wanted to find a way where we could optimize how on quality of life and to to figure out, like, how we can have a good balance around, like, how much we work how And when and where and who we work with and what we work on and who we work for, what our values are, and to be able to be in control and determine those things is really important. How So all that to be said, like, I figured out that software was a really good way to get those things.

C You know, there's a really nice how thing about a recurring revenue stream that comes along with a software business. Because I watched for 8 years in the 2 architecture firms I watched in, I watched the agony the partners went through about watching the cliff of when the backlog would run out and where's the next project coming from. And, you know, I was lucky enough to work with Kathy Simon, who was the s in in SMWM, and she was good friends with Richard Rogers. And how I remember I'll never forget her telling me Richard Rogers talking about the cliff. And she's like, but you're Richard Rogers. Like, you're worried about this? And it's like, doesn't matter how Famous you get and how well known your practice are and how good you are, like, that is a that is a reality of being in the design business that, like, was very stressful on those how Folks, and I just part of designing k a was, like, I wanna be able to sleep every night, you know, and not really worry about the payroll piece. So how That got us you know, the software thing made sense. And, you know, then the pieces start falling in place.

C Like, I already knew kind of software. I knew architecture. I was in love with this problem around knowledge. And we experimented, and then we found ourselves doing what we're doing. And so I guess what triggered me was the RhinoScript thing. That's kind of the difference between how An an invention and an innovation, right, is that's the gem of something. But, like, you have to build a whole business and a how and a vision around it that allows you to deliver that rhino script to somebody sustainably and figure out how you're gonna make payroll and how Impact the world and those kind of things. So I have found, honestly, designing knowledge architecture to be equally as gratifying as designing our software product how- Because it's designing a business is a super interesting thing to do.

B That's a really good point because you can have a great idea, But if you don't figure out the business model behind that idea, you don't have a business, which is kind of the critical qualifier of being an entrepreneur. So I guess, you know, to follow-up on that, Fred, Are you can you share a little bit more about this r and d process and then, you know, the kind of, discovery process that goes into navigating that growth, either from the technology standpoint or the business venture standpoint.

C Yeah. Our starting point how for r and d is and it's gonna sound really it's gonna sound really obvious, but it it's like this is one of those things in business. Like, the things that you hear all the time, the cliches, they're cliches for a reason. But it it takes a certain amount of experience to understand how wise those cliches are when you get started. How And ours is very client centric. And by that, I mean, like, we our clients tell us where to take the product. How And and part of our goal is to stay incredibly close to them. So I mentioned things like our conference and these business roundtables.

C In addition to those things, we've got an online community. We do daily client success interactions and sales interactions. How We get such a wide funnel of feedback that comes to us, and we have deliberately designed and built that funnel to be wide how And to be good at moving the energy of our community into our team so that when we go to design, it's crystal clear. Like, our road map, how It's never a problem. Like, we always have plenty to work on, and we are generally pretty good about knowing what the priorities how of those things are and in what order. So we don't spend any time around the office saying, like, you know, what would be a really cool idea for us? It's like, no. No. No.

C We heard. Like, we know what we need to do. How And so then it's like, well, how do you design, you know, once you've got all this feedback? And, you know, this is where me spending how That time and other folks in my organization spending time inside design firms was really, really valuable because I watched precedent research happen how Over and over and over again. So we look at the best stuff. We look at the best consumer tech, the best enterprise products. How We look sometimes even outside of software. Like, there's some cool stuff happening on Instacart that we learn from to build our product, you know, whatever it is. And so we try and have a really wide funnel of what we look at from a precedent research.

C And then it's this iterative design process where we get lots of feedback along the way. Again, like, I watched architects how lead a very iterative, inclusive design process for a long time, and it got itself into my bloodstream. And so, like, that's the way that we design and we ship products, how now, and it's my wife and I actually lead the design team together, which is a whole another story, but it's really, but it's really fun. And she has a, she how interesting background of being an executive recruiter, stopped doing that, went to art school, got her MFA at the Art Institute in San Francisco, and is a novelist and an artist and how poet, but then she also works on product design with me. So she's got this great, like, business art, you know, sensibility, how And we make a good dynamic pair there. And so I just feel very very blessed to be able to work the way that we do.

B You know, I I wanna pause and just acknowledge that, Kathy Simon, you mentioned it a little bit earlier. We both have that in common. We worked for Kathy, and I Mhmm.

C I just

B I feel like she, taught me so much about pursuing marketing and and Mhmm. Trying to win work in the San Francisco Bay Area. So, I think it's pretty cool you got to work on the ferry building with her too. Is that correct?

C Yeah. Well, I mean, the comp I was at the company while I did the Ferry Building. I was, you know, plugging in routers and fixing people's InDesign, you know, application or whatever. I I was how Still running IT, but you know what's so what's so cool about, you know, the culture of that company really impacted us how Because it was a company that was obsessed with ideas and curiosity and learning and doing great design and being invested in the community, and I tried to how Install that in ethos in our company, and I watched this, like, multidisciplinary, multi person collaborative design process how Go, we had these I don't know if this was the case when you were working for Kathy, but there was this lunchtime forum series, and we'd watch projects from the initial meeting with the client how All the way through schematic and conceptual design and detailed work, site tours. Like, it was just like for someone who wasn't an architect to be immersed in that was just a gift. How I watch them balance the needs and priorities of clients and engineers and contract you know, just like that's a it's a dance that goes on, And it's true in software too. It is a dance between, you know, your clients and between the engineering and design and the team that has to deliver the software. Cathy is interesting because she retired, right, and I still live in San Francisco, and pre pandemic, I would see her at the Ferry Building, You know, at the farmer's market that we run here every Saturday, and what's so cool about architecture is that she gets to keep going there.

C How Right? That building reopened in 2002, 2003. It's an amazing part of the city, one of my favorite parts of the city, and that's cool about architecture how Because the buildings live in the real world, whereas in tech, they tend to last more than software does. Right? There's this this kind of like this visceral impact for architecture. How On the other hand, we can fix our stuff after we ship it. Right. And, you know, as a designer, that's great because we get new ideas the day after we how Push it. We can just push a fix and update it or, you know, continually iterate once it's live. So it's this that's kind of a nice thing about being on the software side.

C Obviously, on the architecture side, it's just this, like, a legacy and this impact you make on the city.

B I also wanted to give you and Evelyn a chance to talk about this idea. Because last season, we talked a lot about the differences between architecture and tech. Mhmm. But I thought I'd give you guys a chance to talk about perhaps the similarities and how your training in architecture, enhances. I mean, you're already hinting at that, how it enhances what you're doing now.

A No. Well, it was interesting, how Chris, as you are talking about the various different things you are designing, and you're designing your business. You're designing the products. It was really great to end kind of with that story of the ferry building and and the lasting impact. But at but at the same time as you were saying all those things about how What you were designing, I was like, in a way, this is the ultimate design problem for an architect, and how You're not up against any of the constraints of of a of a timeline

C or

A a finality. Right? How Because you can it can it continues to evolve as the user's preferences, and new technologies how are available. It is it is much easier for you to evolve the design of the product than it is for us, Honestly, to make a building more energy efficient year after year after year. Right. So for me, I've always been interested in the design how of processes and and and businesses. And it would be it would be really great, I think, to hear your perspective again, even though you've begun to how to to go into that, about how design impacts and how you bring every all your learnings from architecture and are inspired by that how your business, but also, you know, what can our younger listeners kind of take away from what they're doing now, how Especially the ones that are like I'm not sure if architecture is the right thing for me. I think there's still a lot of lessons to be learned in in what they're doing within a how firm and how that translates out, to to other entrepreneurial possibilities.

C Yeah. I I do think the design of how Business is super interesting, and I and I think well, one of the things that and and this was partly the time that I was in those companies because I think there was this, like, great awakening around design how It started in the mid 2000s, and I just happened to be in a design firm when it was happening. And they're like, yeah. No kidding. That's what we've done for a living. How But I think, you know, and all the design thinking stuff got big at the Stanford d school and IDEO and whatever. But it was this kind of Being in a firm just makes you realize on a regular basis that everything is designed, and everything that how that we encounter in the world was designed, you know, from the smallest thing to the biggest thing, to from a physical object to an intangible object to an organization. How And, you know, I love when I come across a well designed company.

C And you can feel and it's anything. It's from Delfina Pizzeria. How You know, like, I I just take inspiration from, like, you can tell this business knows who it is, it knows what its values are, and its priorities are, and it's figured out the things that it wants to be how Excellent ad. Like, when I look at a at a at a at a well designed firm, that's the way that I look at it. And and I see firms in our industry that are how So smart and so well designed. Like, we decided we're gonna go all in on whatever it is, education or health care. We're gonna know everything that there is to know about education. We'll we'll be such we'll know so much that we'll be a really great rest resource for our clients because They know that we're touching 50 or a 100 or 200 other institutions like them, and we're gonna be able to make more out of that knowledge and help advance whatever that market is.

C And so when you see the coherence of, you know, a good focus on a business and then how it makes marketing easier and how it makes design easier and how it makes how Attracting people who want to work on that easier, that makes me really excited. And so watching firms that were really well designed, like Keiran Timberlake was a huge inspiration for us how To build knowledge architecture. I got to see them speak. Refabricating architecture had come out right as I was kinda starting down this journey. And I'm like, wow. That's a firm that really knows who it is and really knows what it wants to be. And it wants to compete on knowledge. Right? It was one of the first firms I think was it how I was very visible about their investments in r and d, and I, I was very motivated by it.

C But they still they weren't huge. You know? Like, they're of a manageable size, how And they just were very they gotta be selective on what projects they worked on and who they gotta work with. And so I think part of your question was around, like, how What I learned from watching firms, and I think the good design firms design themselves, and they figure out how they're gonna be around in 50 or a 100 years and to kind of be a long term organization.

A In the technology space, you know, VC, and I even alluded to it, at the top of the how The hour was Mhmm. It is one way of getting funding, and it's I think it's the most one that is often talked about in the press. But there is a way to go about bootstrapping the company and and growing it. So tell us kind of how you've grown, how KA and why you chose to take the path that you did.

C Yeah. So, why we chose to take the how Half of what we did. I and and this is I I should be very clear. I'm not an anti VC person. It's just that I'm a strong pro bootstrapping person. And so I think there are lots of how cases. If you wanna build something huge or it's gonna be very capital intensive or, you know, it just depends on what your goals are, venture capital might be the exact right route for you. How That's not why we got into business.

C We got into business for quality of life reasons, and we wanted to be a small giant. And so for us to be able to do that, You know, it was designing the business that would help us. What's great about bootstra and and I should say that you're right, VC gets most of the press. How There's a small company in Chicago called Basecamp, which has done amazing writing on the alternative model around boot how They had a really cool series on their blog for a long time called Bootstrapped Profitable and Proud. And what they did is they highlighted businesses that were over $1,000,000 in revenue, how Profitable and I didn't raise outside money. And what that did is it showed kind of a model, and it showed, like, oh, there is another path. How You know, and another path is, and it's gonna sound more smartass than I mean it to, is you can have a product, how You can charge customers for it, they can pay you, and then you can make money, and then you can keep growing from there, right, organically without, you know, how Losing money for, you know, a long, long time to get to a certain scale where then the thing flips and you can make money or you can sell ads or whatever it is that you do. How So we're just like, we're gonna make something people wanna pay for and figure out how to go from there.

C So it was hard. I mean, I don't want to, like, make it sound that easy. How I think bootstrapping may be the harder path to go, at least in the short run, but it's for us, it helped us achieve our goals, the control of the business. How We gotta, and and again, I don't mean this to sound like it's an indictment on the other on the on the VC side, but how We just have 1 less person in the room. We don't have an investor in the room. Like, so we get to make decisions based on our clients' and our employees' needs and not have to think about somebody outside how who we're who we're also optimizing for. And so when we think about our values or how fast to grow or where to go or can we just stay in architecture? Because I know that if we had venture how. Right? It'd be like, how can you guys expand into law, advertising, all the other accounting, all the other professional services verticals? Why aren't you also in manufacturing? And it would just be like, how Let's get this thing big as fast as we can.

C And we like really going deep, you know, in one area. So I think it's good to just for people to know that there are options how and, you know, that there's an option where you can you can do it. You know, you might have to do some of the things like we did, like maxing out credit cards and tapping into four zero one k and all those kind of entrepreneurship things. But at the end of the day, we're now 11 years in, and we are an employee owned company. We have control over our destiny, how And that that's a pretty powerful thing.

B Chris, you've mentioned a lot of great things between, talking about knowledge management and the importance of that and the value it brings to firm, and then also lessons learned from being an entrepreneur and and starting a business. You know, to leave our listeners with a few ideas for 2021, what advice can you share either from either standpoint on, you know, how this relates to how the industry is changing and what opportunities people can grab on to to implement change in their how work that they're doing.

C I think, one, it's interesting. I don't know that it's totally related to how the industry how changes, but it's something that like, doing the work to get to know yourself. And if somebody becomes an entrepreneur, you don't have a choice. How You're gonna be you know, the organization you build will be a mirror of your strengths and your weaknesses, and you'll become very intimate with both. How And there's this amazing opportunity, if you choose to embrace it, to really grow as a human being through being an entrepreneur, through leading other people, through that growth. How And so I've invested a lot of time in that. You know? Like, I've been writing in a journal for 20 years. I've meditated.

C I do yoga. I do a lot of reflection kind of stuff. And, You know, some of that has been coming to terms with some things about the way I whatever it was, the way I grew up, the way I was born that like just made me how Sometimes a little defensive or sometimes, you know, a little bit aggressive or whatever it is. It's like I've had to, like, at certain points in the journey, how Be really clear about what was going on and get to know, like, myself as a person's strengths and weaknesses, but also what's really important to me, how And then what's important to all the people I work with. And I do think that, like, I'm seeing more of that in this next generation of leadership in our industry. How I think it's becoming kinder and more compassionate and less command and control and more inclusive how kind of co op type way of running a business. And I think that's amazing, because I actually really think that that's much more aligned with knowledge management. Right.

C I mean, I think what we see in knowledge management is tacit and explicit knowledge. And explicit knowledge is things that you can write down. How Their procedures, their rhino scripts, or whatever it is, you can externalize that. Most and people estimate that's around 20% of knowledge. Most of it's tacit. It's in our heads. How It's silent. That's it's tacit is from the same root as taciturn.

C Right? And so it's this deep knowledge that smarts how that people carry around with them, and they can't necessarily externalize it. It's just things that they've learned. And so I think, you know, everybody that how Serves in a firm, has life experience as well as technical experience and design experience that they can add value. And I think the more that companies are able to run really inclusive how Design processes or software processes or whatever it is, they can tap into more knowledge. And and if we get back to knowledge management being about how Making the best use of your firm's knowledge to support your goals. Like, what could be better than being able to really, like, get the best out of the people that you work with? How They're gonna stick around, and they're gonna be enthusiastic, and they're gonna wanna work there. And so, I think all of those things come together. How

B That's great. I love that. So, Chris, tell us more about how people can get more involved with the work that you're doing or learn more about that.

C How yeah. So for for anybody that's in the industry that's interested, our K Connect, which was an annual conference, it's now a series of monthly how Kind of deep dives we do. It's wide open to the whole industry and free. So on our talk archive page, there's over over a 150 talks about knowledge management, the industry people can see. How I I suggest signing up for our mailing list. We're announcing new things that are coming up, new programs, and so we've got how Deep dives on equity, diversity, and inclusion, change management, knowledge management. We're gearing up for a really solid 2021, so we'd love to have how New folks be part of that journey and and and be part of

B that with us. Awesome. Thank you so much for coming on, Chris. And we will link all of this in the show notes so that our listeners can how to find that information.

A So I wanted to thank you, Janine, for bringing on Chris to talk about knowledge management. I really think that this topic does not how get enough attention within architecture firms, yet we have so much of it that actually needs to be managed.

B Yeah. And listening to Chris really reminded me of that experience of being in the studio and having, at different types of firms' different experiences with how partners were managing knowledge. So, to Chris' point, like, large firms tend to have this type of infrastructure to support knowledge management. And an example is when I worked at Perkins and Will, we had it it was kinda like a database system where You could look up any employee in the company, and you could see their headshot. You would know what their title was. You knew what office they were working in, and it was, like, a really great way to understand who you were working with, especially when our offices would partner on projects or pursuits. And and that's only just one small way that, large firms are doing that kind of knowledge management. And then I think about small and medium sized firms who are trying to progressively manage this data that they are realizing they're having more and more of.

B And I think a lot of different firms are, you know, transitioning away from things like Excel spreadsheets and starting to adopt more digital resources that are able to provide this kinda intranet that, like, Chris is talking about.

A I wanna piggyback off a little bit of that because there's actually You know, there we have firms that have a long legacy, and there's a lot of people right now trying to figure out what the future of work is and what does that mean for square footage development. And I've always wanted those firms that have been around for I don't I mean, there's firms that have been around for over 50 years that have done commercial real estate for that long. Like, what if they took every single plan that they ever did and essentially took the program out of every plan they did how and then how this research article or this article about how office demands and shifts have changed over time, how the firm has accommodated for that, and then take all of that body of research and say, here's where we how anticipate it going in the future. I mean, I think there's really interesting ways to use the wealth of data that we have in our drawings, even our old projects.

B Yeah. That's a really good point. It's it's like pulling the data back out to use it later. I know one that comes up a lot from a marketing standpoint is, you know, how much square footage have you done of x, y, z program, how many number of projects did you do that was in this project type over the last 10 years, how many projects were lead platinum. All of these things become really useful full data points that your staff needs to have access to and be able to look up pretty easily without having to how play telephone across the office trying to find the answer, and I've I've done that so many times chasing principals around the studio, trying to get them to agree on exactly what the number was for square footage. But it's a good reminder that when you're starting to think about how to manage this, you really have how to and it's we're gonna come back to our word of the season, an intentional step away from managing information in your head and organizing it in a clear way, taking it off a disorganized server, putting it somewhere where it's accessible and organized for staff to find it.

A Yeah. And I think, you know, there's so many different like like Chris said, there's so much knowledge out there. When I think about all of the variety of different types of data that firms could be tracking when I in the different type of information that I was hacking. When I was running operations for a strategy group in a design firm or even the types of information that Slack how And other technology firms are tracking. It covers so much. So project management is just one key component. I think, Janine, you've kind of addressed some of the numbers that have come out of there. You can also use those numbers and hours that employees are putting to various different phases to understand If you're overbilling or if you're underbilling or if you're resourcing phases correctly, based on how fast an employee can act and where their proficiency is in the various different phases.

A You can also track, in a way, individual employee productivity and proficiency. I would say, more or less, you're you're really tracking proficiency of the individual employee. But I think you should also be tracking, you know, a professional development. You know, how far are employees moving across the career ladder? What how How are you logging those annual reviews? Or how are you logging the the anecdotal reviews that you give your employees? Because you've identified a learning opportunity right after you you came you know, they came out of a meeting. I used to have an employee tell me that sometimes they feel that what I hear when I come out of a meeting is what very different from what they have interpreted come out of the meeting. So one of the goals that we set for that employee was after each meeting that we attended together, we would how Just sit down for 5 minutes, and they would kind of rattle off what they think they heard and what the next steps and outcome is. And then I would how Say, well, this is my interpretation, and then we would take that and we would write those notes down. But we literally wrote that down as an objective that we could follow.

A And then the next time we had our review, we can see how far that employee has come even even in that little area. There's so much to track around business development. I wanna go a little bit broader than marketing on this one. Janine, feel free to chime in how here, but, you know, any interaction you have with a potential client, you can you can track. Every how If if you're on the residential side, you can track every single interaction you've had with a family member. If they mention a how Birthday if they mention an anniversary. Those are all of a sudden opportunities for you to reach out to potential clients impromptu because you happen to remember a significant date in their life. Nothing more than to say, Hi.

A Happy birthday. It's been a while. Would you like to go grab coffee, or

B would you like to go grab lunch? Oh, a 100% agree.

C How

A Yeah. And then, you know, from there and I I struggle with this number, right, because architecture firms often say a lot that 80 to 90% of how Their work comes from repeat clients. So how are you ensuring that you deliver a consistent client experience? Is there data that you can keep around hot topics, maybe even political or religious topics that you just make sure you never bring up with that client. Or are there favorite how sports teams that you need to make sure that if you knew the game if you knew the results of last Sunday's game, then you just have an easier conversation how opener with that client. And we talked a little bit about this, but I think it also goes back to maintaining an overall employee and client experience.

B Yeah. You mentioned also, when we were talking offline about the preferred communication styles. Like, that's something that you can track within a shared communication document with your team that so that your how your coworkers understand, like, how your client likes to communicate. What are typical norms to expect? Are they gonna be all email, or is it better to just pick up the phone? And I know we're sharing a lot of ideas here, and and this is certainly not intended to be something that you would adopt all at once, but rather something that you build over time, and it needs to live in a place where it is, again, accessible to promote that transparency and create efficiency around access, but also, like that it's like a living document where everyone in the studio can have access to some of these items, and they grow and evolve over time. And I think the biggest takeaway that we definitely were discussing after our conversation with Chris is this idea that all architecture firms are knowledge firms. He's talked about that a lot in his work, and we agree. And we think there's important data points that we need to start learning how to track in our

A firms. And I I think it was it's interesting here. You know, I'm working very hard to set up more personal productivity systems for myself how this year. And, you know, I think we all have to acknowledge that in order to become more productive, It takes some time to set up, like, what is the right system, for you to use. So so that's gonna be true of, Like within firms. Right? It's gonna take some time to figure out where should we be storing this, how should we be storing it, how often should we be collecting it, how How do we continue to look at this data and decide whether or not we're improving or not? But the reality is it saves you a lot of how Time in the long run. So, like, a really a really personal example here is I'm constantly having I have 2 young kids, how 5 and 3. And I can never remember what size clothing I ordered from them the last time.

A All only that they're just, like, growing out how their clothes. So that means every time that they go out of their clothes, I need to go and hunt down their shirts, Their pants, their shoes to get the size so I know what, like, the future size is. So literally this weekend, I spent this weekend putting all of their current clothing sizes into a spreadsheet on my computer. So the next time I order And I need to order 1 size up. I just opened that spreadsheet, adjust the order the next size, and then record that. And it's all in one place now. And it doesn't have to be huge tedious things either. It's just if you find yourself accessing something very frequently and it's 20 subfolders down, and you just need it in a place where you can, like, pull it out immediately and reference it continuously.

A Inevitably, how Probably somebody else at the firm also wants easier access to that information, and you're just creating a a quicker path to find those things.

B Can you share a little bit about I know you were telling me about the OKRs, and I think I guess they're similar to KPIs in some way. Can you tell me how how those get used in your company or what what people can take away from that.

A So I think a lot of it also is kind of what do we do with these data points. So a lot of technology firms that I create, that I've that I've worked with, And even some architecture firms, they use the data points to create what we call OKRs or objective and key results Or key performance indicators. A good one is an NPS, a net promoter score. So what is your what is the likelihood that your employees are going to go out and say, this is an amazing firm to come work for. How Yeah. The higher your net promoter score is, the more likely every single one of your employees are going to go out and do that. So you can gather data around that by doing an annual employee survey. And then how The KPIs for us that come out of that or the OKRs is just like, well, our employees are telling us that we're really bad communicators, But they love our events.

A So we really want to move the needle on how well we communicate with our employees. So That would become a primary OKR, and you would work to create and improve that the next time you do an employee annual how Survey. So that's just one way of of using knowledge just even of how your employees feel about the culture of your firm.

B Yeah. And I think we also talked about benchmarks and the opportunity when you realize those data points or you realize patterns in the data that you create these benchmarks and that you can consistently start measuring against them. I know, like, this makes sense, and especially when we compare it to the idea of, like, building performance, like energy performance. You can measure that over time. Similarly, within your organization, there are things that you can measure over time to track, like, how is your business improving and growing? Again, I know we're sharing a lot of ideas here, but I think, you know, one of the things that was really exciting for us, especially, as entrepreneurs, was to listen to Chris talk about designing the business and and building it in a way that it grows.

A Yeah. So the conversation how was a lot about knowledge management, but it was also about designing your business in a way where you're not overwhelmed how And where it's working for you. Right? So Chris talked about how he was really intentional about how he approached his business. He wanted a business that had a stable source of income even through the pandemic. And how Software for him was the solution. Right? A subscription based software where people are going to continue to pay, so you don't have that cliff that he was referring to where all of a sudden, you're worried about how you're gonna make payroll the next month. So he was really intentional about built designing his business that way, and he did it very carefully. And he grew at a scale that was most comfortable how to him.

A So he bootstrapped it. He didn't really take on a whole lot of debt. He didn't need to fundraise or bring on any financial partners, And he's doing okay in one of the most expensive cities in the world, and pretty happy with where he is, serving the clients that he wants how and getting all the all the knowledge development that he needs out of what he's doing. So there were

B so many things that we talked about in this interview, and I just wanna point our listeners to the show notes. There's a lot of links that we're gonna include that there's, you know, different articles and reading and resources that you can Follow-up on if you're interested in these ideas to learn more.

A Yes. And at the very least, if you're at a company that doesn't do an employee annual survey, how Ask them why or ask yourself why you don't do an employee annual survey. Thanks for joining us on Practice Disrupted, a podcast by Practice of architecture. Visit us at practice of architecture.com to find out more about future episodes and the changing nature of practice.

B We have several ways how you can get involved with our growing community. Find us on social media at practice of arc. You can also become a member of the POA lab or join us on Patreon.

A And if you wanna take your career or practice to the next level, Janine and I also consult, provide workshops, and speak regularly on this research, And we would love an opportunity to collaborate with you.

B This show is part of Gable Media. You can learn more about other podcasts us and video channels in our community by visiting gablmedia.com.

A We are also looking for sponsors who want to partner with us in 2021 and beyond. If that's you, please contact me directly at evelyn@practiceofarchitecture.com.

B If you like the research we're doing here, Please help us out by leaving a rating or review on Apple. We appreciate you subscribing on your favorite podcast app.

A Don't forget to share with your friends, how And feel free to let us know what other topics or speakers you're interested in hearing from. Thanks for listening, and see you next