A Case Study for Practice: RIOS

A This episode is sponsored by Monograph and Arc IT. You'll hear more about them later on in the episode. I'm Evelyn Lee. And I'm

B 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. Hello, Janine.

B Hello, Evelyn. Hello, disruptors.

A Today's episode is a case study of an architectural firm. I feel like there's been a longing to bring on more actual architecture firms onto our show. So here we go. But it's looking at a firm who's invested in experimenting and iterating with their business model to make improvements to their operations, and they are super entrepreneurial to the nth degree.

B So Rios was a featured speaker at Monograph summer virtual conference Section Cut. And, Evelyn, you actually attended their session and flagged this session as one of the talks you were really excited about. Tell us why you have had an eye on Rios.

A So I first learned about Rios through a presentation made at a conference. I can't remember exactly which conference. But at the time, they were really talking about how they launched this store in concert with their firm. And it was really interesting to me because they were taking patterns that they found or patterns that emerged out of their architectural design and essentially putting it on textiles and housewares and selling it in a store that when they moved their firm, became the 1st floor. Like, they dedicated the whole 1st floor to storefront. I also was on the AIA California board with Bob Hale, who's a partner at Rios. So, you know, in all the conversations that I had with Bob on and off over the years, we've never really talked about how Rios operates and functions as a firm. And it was really a a wonderful surprise at SectionCut to hear from the new co CEOs, Jessamine and Andy, about everything that they are doing, literally, I think, you know, Janine, you kind of said it, all the things that we talk about on practice disrupted, they're enabling in their practice.

B Rios is a design collective working beyond boundaries. Founded in 1985 as a multidisciplinary design firm, the design studio has evolved to meet the changing needs of a changing world. Combined, their talents comprise a wide range of professional skills, including architecture, landscape architecture, urban planning, graphic interior exhibit, and product design. Based in Los Angeles, Rios works everywhere with transformative projects in San Francisco, Austin, San Diego, Sacramento, Puebla, Mexico, and beyond, applying a strong, interdisciplinary, collaborative approach to the design process, whether on projects within their office or in consultation with other design firms. Their projects are diverse, including municipal, corporate retail, hospitality, institutional, and residential commissions.

A Let's cut to the interview.

C I'm Jessamine Davis. I'm the co CEO of Rios. I've am the business partner here, so I focus on operations and strategy and things like that. And then this is my partner, Andy Lance.

D Hi. I'm Andy Lance. I am co CEO and creative director. I focus on a lot of our architectural practice, projects, everything from workplace to public space, and then everything in between.

A Had you guys because not everyone who's listening on the podcast has heard of Rios. So I was hoping that maybe you could give us a high overview. You know, what's what's the elevator pitch for Rios? And then maybe talk about how you believe you approach things differently from a practice operation standpoint. I realize that's a 2 part question, so why don't we start with the elevator pitch?

D Definitely. So, you know, we're a 35 year young multidisciplinary firm here in Los Angeles. Our founder, Mark Rios, really pioneered multidisciplinary practice, by kind of dual degreeing, both in landscape and architecture. And I thought, you know, in the creation of Rios, you know, brought with it this idea of a design vision that was collaborative across disciplines and gave people space to really we are a, I think as of today, 238 person strong firm across, landscape architecture, architecture, interior architecture, interior design, environmental graphic design, place making, product design, we have it all underneath one roof. And so a lot of our success is really bringing different points of view to the table and then diversity in in ways to address design challenges and turn them into awesome design solutions.

C So from an operation standpoint, our firm is organized into 12 studios, which I think is not that uncommon. But, each studio has 1 to 2 studio leaders, and some of them are fairly specifically set up. So they might, you know, focus on one typology and all be architects. And then some of them are actually pretty interdisciplinary. It just depends on the studio. So we have a a an experiential design studio that, is incredibly interdisciplinary. And sometimes those groups will be so successful that they end up, you know, kind of going through mitosis. And then that is you know? And so that's how we recently spawned a second residential, architecture studio or, you know, we have some, studio leaders who are so entrepreneurial and passionate about the people they're developing that they will actually incubate other studios within their studios.

C And so we've got within our interior architecture studio is incubating a product design studio. And within one of our landscape architecture studios, they're incubating an urban design studio and so it kind of like it's very organic I guess and things just sort of grow and change pretty regularly. And generally, what happens is, we'll have some kind of entrepreneurial employee who will pitch an idea, and we'll tell them that's great, and they'll go try it out.

B That is unique and kinda interesting to hear that you all are encouraging that entrepreneurial spirit in your design studio, which I guess, like, I kinda wanna push you further on this idea of how how you all envision Rios pushing the way you design and practice, in a new direction that's kinda maybe different than the way that most firms practice or many firms practice, and then how that manifests in your designs.

D You know, one of our tenets of design, we we use the term audacity pretty frequently. We like to be audacious because it sort of is this kind of interesting moment of sitting on the risks, right? So when we're working, we're kind of looking for those, audacious moments of bringing people together to talk big picture, to talk big idea. And using everybody's diverse points of view to really fuel a way to stand in contrast to what we would expect our competition to do. We do it for us, we do it uniquely by us. We really believe that our perspective gives us the ability to elevate the work in such a way that we believe in it fundamentally. And if it doesn't get picked up, then that audacity failed. But if it does get picked up, it succeeded and it's really exciting.

A So here's how I think a typical practitioner is going to respond. They're gonna ask, how do you balance audacity with risk? And how do you really go about celebrating failures rather than, you know, internalizing them and it just becoming, you know, a a sticking point, which it often does at firms.

C In terms of risk management, I think it's like portfolio theory. So I I have a finance background. Right? And so the idea is not to have too many eggs in one basket, essentially, really simply put. You know, we have hundreds of projects at a given time. And so if one fails, that's okay because we don't it's not like we're one of those firms that has 7 mega projects, around the world or something like that. And so we're not gonna always win, and that's okay, but we usually learn something from that loss. You know, it might have been a misread of what the client was really looking for or something like that. Those things happen.

C We learn from them. We always debrief and figure out what we did wrong, but we don't beat ourselves up about it.

D I guess when you fail, it's all about the recovery. Right? When you make a mistake, it's all about how do you strategically get through it and survive it. I always call it redemption weeks. I had a couple redemption weeks last week on a couple of projects where you make a mistake and it's not about sitting and getting upset with yourself. It's about how do we all come together and solve the problem of recovering from this. And I think that type of culture really brings with it people who can take more calculated risks or feel the space, and freedom to take those risks, right? Because there'll always be something to learn from it and there'll always be ability to take a next step, hopefully, if you do a really good redemption week.

B So I got really excited hearing you say that because, you know, we just did an episode where we were talking about mistakes and, you know, how you respond to mistakes is everything. And I think architects in general are very mistake adverse, and they aren't willing to step into the risk. It sounds like you guys have a really high tolerance for risk, which is exciting because I see you guys not only taking it on in architectural projects, but also in all of these additional business strategies that you're running through Rios. So So why don't you tell us a little bit about the 12 small businesses that Rios is running as a company?

C Sure. So we have several, as I said, we have several studios. Some of them are very narrowly focused. Some of them are really super broad focused. We have one studio that their whole manifesto is to do the first of whatever. And so their projects, really range, and they're all super bizarre. And but then sometimes they have to fill in with really practical stuff. Right? So that's the less glamorous side is you have to do 3 regular projects to fund this one super weird one.

C And then we have 2 studios that are focused exclusively on single family residential, which is a huge part of our practice that maybe is less well known. And then we have, a couple studios focused on commercial architecture, but they, you know, have some interdisciplinary components. They usually what will end up happening is 2 of our studios often collaborate together. So a landscape studio might work with, one of our commercial architecture studios or one of our, residential studios on a project so that it really helps the studios get to know each other across the office and kinda pair up. And then our experiential studio often works with the other studios so that they they might have an architectural component and that they'll get some kinda consulting on and etcetera. We've got a 4 studios focused on landscape architecture of different scales.

B I feel like your the history of the firm, the background of some of your founding members, like, having these multidiscipline backgrounds, like, really drove this interest in having a cross discipline practice. But can you talk to us a little bit about the the driver to continue to push that from a business standpoint to actually intentionally be different than typical architecture studio model?

D Yep. Totally. You know, I I think it's it's what really it's always really exciting when we bring new clients in because they usually only know us for one thing. Right? Oh, you do workplace. Oh, you do architecture. And then they come to the office and they're like, oh, holy crap. You do everything. Right? And sometimes that's daunting for clients.

D They're like, you have too much. Right? But it's also sometimes really good because it brings a different point of view for how to solve a problem. So for instance, our workplace practice, I love bringing landscape architects into the mix because you start to imagine gardens on the inside of buildings instead of public spaces filled with landscape. And so you start to reframe and do really groundbreaking design that breaks rules of what's expected. We don't just put wallpaper on walls. We actually think holistically about how to bring everybody to the table to make the best experiences. And so that is kind of the moment when you feel that it's thriving is when you get the people at the table and you're having these amazing conversations that you're no longer talking about walls or elevators and stairs, you're talking about really comprehensive points of view and experiences in the built environment, which is awesome.

C Another thing that I think is sort of not intuitive is that because we do so many different things, a relationship that for another firm might be competitive for us can be collaborative. And so, you know, Andy might have a good friend that he went to school with that works at another firm and, you know, that friend might end up being a collaborator for our landscape team. Whereas if we were just an architecture firm, we couldn't get to work with those friends in that way, in a lot of cases.

A So if I were to summarize how Rios operates, it seems like you are a collective of a lot of different businesses who happen to be drawn together through culture. And I guess if I were, you know, an individual or if I were an independent student leader of one of those business lines, then what is my commitment to Rios? And what is my commitment to fulfilling my own entrepreneurial goals? And then how do I bring that back to the Rios culture?

C That's a great question. I think we have a pretty cohesive culture, to be honest, and it's a lot about being collaborative, being open minded, being joyous, as Andy said, being audacious. I think that the studio leaders are pretty tied into the creative directors as well. And so even though they're these distinct, groups, we have the dialogue between the studio directors and between the studio directors and creative directors on a really super regular basis. We hand projects across the office. We work on projects across the office. Sometimes something that starts in one place doesn't end up there. And, actually, we have staff move between studios, not super often, but fairly often.

C We have architects move into landscape architecture sometimes. And so they're pretty interdependent because sometimes there's an ebb and flow. Like, one studio might get really busy and they might ask for help from someone else, and so we're definitely stronger together. And then, you know, depending on what's happening in the economy or with certain clients, sometimes a studio will fall on hard times and the rest of us are there as sort of an insurance policy or, you know, a safety net.

D And it it when you imagine it in your head, it may appear to be like all these floating people working individually. But I think the the verb that brings us together is this notion of agility that we come together to work fast paced and to think about, you know, big ideas. You know, one of the things that I think is really remarkable is when we are talking business operation and strategy and really looking out, you know, planning for a year of what we wanna do, what what goals we wanna set, you know, that's not happening exclusively at the partner level. That's being shared across the studios and across the office, to really advocate for sort of radical participation as a term that we use pretty frequently, of getting everybody involved to participate in in working together. So, you know, when you start out talking about these different businesses, our studios aren't as individual as as one would seem. They're much more interconnected, and tied into, tons of conversations, lots and lots of meetings, sadly, to make everything, go right.

B I'm just curious about the complexity of managing that, especially from an operational standpoint. I don't if you guys are willing to dive deeper into this, but I think this probably would be the thing that turns some, design leaders away is just trying to charge into that complexity. So how do you guys handle that, and how do you ensure that dialogue is happening on a regular basis?

C Okay. That's a big question. Alright. I'm gonna nerd out for you. So we each of our studios is tracked as a separate business unit, and every project is assigned to a studio. So from a financial standpoint, we have very clear profitability, metrics around every studio and every, project and how those operate. And then we review those with our studio leads every, month so they know exactly how they're doing, and they each have their own budgets for the year and, staffing plans. They set out at the beginning of the year what they think their year is gonna look like and what their goals are.

C And then we meet we have several different meetings and as Andy alluded to, it requires over communication, to be honest with you. And even when you think, you know, we're meeting on Monday about this, we're meeting on Wednesday about that, we're meeting on Thursday about this other thing, which is a regular weekly situation, We still miss somebody and we still drop the ball on something. So there's, you know, it just takes a ton of effort and a ton of information that is transmitted and available via various platforms.

D I think the other the other thing we started this year, let's celebrate our our job titles co CEO. You know, I think it's really interesting to take the format of a co CEO relationship because there's a lot of times where you can talk big ideas, but then getting to implementation is really hard, especially as the people in the room grow greater and greater and greater, you're much more slow moving at getting things actually to be implemented. So, you know, the co CEO structure that we work within is significant to really holding us accountable at implementing a lot of what we talk about from a strategy perspective, or invested time in meeting with every studio director to go over monthly financials, setting annual budgets and goals, understanding how to build staffing, forecasts for every studio based on their project load. So, it's a really interesting structure that Jess and I get to share, to try to be the ones who have to show up and get us across the finish line in most cases. So really interesting.

B Yeah. I was really intrigued by your co leadership model. That is noticeable, especially from a leadership standpoint. I think it's it's interesting that you guys have chosen that, co partnership model, which I think a lot of firms could learn from.

C I think it's super helpful for us because my background and training is in, you know, business management, and so I try to do all the meeting about financial planning and project loads and staffing and budgets and all that kind of stuff, but I'm not very inspiring when it comes to design discussions. So, you know, Andy's much better at that than I am, and he really leads us through design excellence and inspiring people in terms of where we're going. And, I try to be sort of more of the implementation arm, I guess, of the nuts and bolts of things. Takes a lot of self awareness and humility.

D A lot of humility.

A Let's take a break from this conversation to talk about our sponsor of this episode, Monograph. We're proud to partner with Monograph because they are helping to transform the practice of architecture one design studio at a time.

B Tired of using dated and clunky software to manage your firm? Or do you feel frustrated wrangling all of your spreadsheets to get a clear view of where your project stands today? Monograph is here to help.

A Designed by architects for architects, Monograph allows you to track your time, your projects, and your budgets in real time. With our awesome MoneyGantt, you can immediately understand project performance across your entire firm portfolio.

B Need to adjust your projects week to week? Their new tool, Resource, allows you to reallocate your team's time and track its impact on your remaining budget.

A Be proactive with Monograph. Jessamine, I would love to dig a little bit deeper into your background and talk about your journey to an architecture firm. Because Rios is it is the first firm that you've come to work through or work with through not neutral and worked in, and you seem extremely happy to be here. But I would like to hear a little bit more about your thought process when being approached. Given your finance background, you know, why would you come to an architecture firm?

C Oh, it's such a good story too. So I spent, like, a decade in private equity before I came and worked here, and I worked with a bajillion different kinds of companies, which is the fun part about working in private equity and I was a strategy consultant before that so I worked with a whole bunch of different kinds of companies then, and so which is a great training because you can kind of be like, I can figure this out no matter what this is. But my family background is much more creative. My mom's an artist and I was raised in an art gallery and, you know, kinda cut my teeth on architectural digest as a child and, so just beauty and aesthetic appreciation has been a huge part of my family culture my whole life. And I was sort of at a crossroads in my personal, you know, my personal orientation towards work at I don't know how old I was. And it was over a holiday break and I sat down with my husband and I was like, I feel like I need to go to architecture school. And he said, I think you're crazy because you're gonna be a 100 years old before you can practice. So we have children, and this is a super bad idea.

C I was like, I really feel like I need to change my career. And I kid you not, a month later, I got approached about this job. So it was not a hard sell for me in any way. I was very, very excited.

A Well, that sounds like pure kismet there. Was there any connection back to Rios at all, or was it purely that you just sent out fuelers to your network and let people know you are looking and you just happen to land in this space? Yep.

D It's a very LA story.

C Yeah. It's all.

D Glitter and moonshots and And it came together. Crystals.

C It was all karma.

D Yeah.

C And in my case, crystals. Yeah.

B It does sound like it was meant to be, but it's also like really it speaks very highly of the leadership team because I've I've seen in a lot of firms, like the finance part, the operational part being like this secondary piece to the business that's siloed. And just to put it at the front of your co leadership model and to have it operationally part of the entire umbrella of the organization or however you wanna diagram it. I mean, it's just a very insightful way that you guys are thinking about your business. It speaks in-depth to the way that you're you're probably planning and thinking about finance as a priority.

D Yeah. I mean, it's I think the interesting thing is, is we get this freedom to sit at the table and talk about us being calculated risk takers, not full on risk takers. We do take ourselves a little seriously and pushing people to be entrepreneurial. And I think it's because of those variables of bringing in business smarts with design. Like, so much of the time that you spend in school on the opposite side of the equation, I wish I had the wherewithal that Jessamyn has in regard to financials. I've learned a lot from her, in understanding that and I see the ability that that has in empowering secret recipe is, you know, one part financial responsibility, one part creativity, and you can really build a culture of entrepreneurs.

B There's 2 really good questions that could piggyback off that, which is about going further into the failure and if you guys wanna talk about an example.

D I love talking failure. Both and. Yes and. All of the above.

C Yeah. Let's talk about it. Well, first of all, it comes from humility. Right? We are not afraid of, like, we don't have to be the smartest guy in the room all the time. Actually, some of the smartest people in the room are are most junior staff, and having the humility to ask people and learn from them is just I mean, come on. We're not that amazing. Right? Right? Like, we can learn from other people.

D I mean, I can go on and on about failure because I love talking about it because I think it's empowering to talk about it. You know, like, our greatest examples of of learning from failure. Right? We submit on a lot of projects. And, you know, when I was in architecture school, I never read the brief at the start of the semester for studio. And I always thought that was my point of leverage of being a good student was like, I don't need to do what this piece of paper says. There's a lot of times where we get, like, an RFP and we read it very fast and we're like, they want more than this. They definitely need a 10 year vision plan on this. And they don't not only need architecture, they need every discipline associated.

D Right? So there's a lot of times, you know, that we go into to the pursuit of gigs with kind of everything on the table. We wanna put our best foot forward. We wanna, you know, that same audacity we work with internally in our culture is something we love to bring to clients and find really great partnerships with. But we don't win everything that we put out there. Right? There's some tremendous failures where we don't read between the lines or we get overexcited about what we get to present, all those type of things. But you know, when, when those situations work, one great example, we worked with the Trail Foundation in Austin, Texas, on a competition for Lady Bird Lake underneath the First Street Bridge. It's called the Drake Bridge Project. And, you know, we went into that with this monstrous idea of building a floating dock that could hold 750 to 1500 people.

D For people who didn't wanna buy tickets to ACL, they could watch ACL across across the river from downtown and and and listen. Really cool project. The idea was is that the dock would be a visual registry for how high the water levels, were. Ladybird Lake is a, you know, it's a dammed river system. And so when when things are bad, the water is high and how do you actually turn design into something that that marks that? You know, we went into this pitch with a wild idea and they loved us. Right? And so that's where that failure was a great success. We were still the same people, not reading the brief extensively and trying to show them something greater than what they needed. But, you know, I think that's who we are.

D That's the spirit of us is, is really believing in the power of design to to do more than what's what somebody thinks it should do.

C Tell her about your inflatables.

D Oh, boy. Here's a good one. Well, if if you spend 2 weeks with me here at Rios, you know that there was a probably a good decade where every project has, like, wait, can there be an inflatable in this? And everybody's like, no, Andy. Like, don't put an inflatable in this. We did a project. I don't know if I can comp I I don't know if I can talk about it, but it was for a well known city here in, Los Angeles, for a gateway competition. And, you know, we thought we were the shining star in submitting. We were the perfect LA fit for this part.

D This project was written for us. Right? And we went in super geeked out. It was, you know, during COVID, we were learning a lot about what public space could be, what 21st century, it actually felt like the start of the 21st century with the pandemic of really redefining and reframing a lot of challenges that we had to think through again. And so we proposed this crazy idea of elevating giant inflatables 300 feet in the air at 3 intersections in the city here in Los Angeles, with Twitch live streaming from above and every form of projection and exclusivity for artist engagement. And in the end, you know

C They didn't agree. They did not agree.

D It failed. I mean, coolest project ever. Would have been amazing. I don't know how to tether down an inflatable. Look. There's a lot of question marks there. There's a big risk associated to that. If you've ever seen the Macy's Day parade, there's always that one incident where somebody on the ground lets go of their string and chaos ensues.

D I think we would have solved the problem long term if we had gotten the project, but it was one of those things where we fundamentally, you know, it was a public process. So it was me at city council meetings talking about inflatables and how how what the future looked like and, yeah, it did not did not work well. So, you know, that's one of these things where, you know, do you compete with the idea or do you play the competition to win the gig? And I think for us, we were standing strong in saying, let's put a big idea out there. And if it doesn't land or fly in that situation, it can at least give us a lot of thought leadership to continue the conversation across multiple other projects, open up a good dialogue.

A How would your firm be unique in response to when somebody does something wrong? Because I feel like so much growth in architecture firms is stifled from the younger generations inability to want to take any chances. So how do you allow for those chances to happen? And more importantly, how do you respond when they go wrong?

D Yeah. I I think this is where a lot of this like notion of not beating someone up for failing in the sense of like, okay, I forgot to do something. I'm in construction. I totally forgot to detail and show you how to build half this project or something. I don't know if that's ever happened. But hypothetically, a lot of people hide in those situations. They figure they have to, not disclose it to protect themselves and they try to figure it out. But I think in those situations, because we have so many projects that go from concept to construction, you have to learn really quickly that the easiest way to handle a quote unquote failure in regard to letting a client down or making an error, in decision making is addressing it upfront.

D I think this goes back to redemption week, hashtag redemption week is what are you doing to bring the team together to solve the problem? How can you be a mediator of bringing people together, opening up the dialogue, admitting error but showing a path forward? I think those situations are very powerful for all of us and I think it's, you know, a lot of that stuff happens during construction that changes people forever. It gets them to realize that if you hide behind your error, you kind of can't solve it, right? And so, I think that's where we try to lead by example. I make mistakes constantly. My emails, I usually have a couple words misspelled or my team's messages are even worse. And so recovering from that publicly, even the smallest scale error, shows people that you shouldn't hide behind it. You should sort of be upfront and celebrate it. We're all human. So

C Yeah. I mean, any of us who have a more, you know, if you've ever had an authoritarian parent. Right? You see those kids who come who are so afraid of failure that they can't take risks. Right? And so you have to be the opposite of that as a boss. You have to be, nonjudgmental and open and collaborative and helpful so that people can trust you enough with their mistakes and their risks.

D Right.

B Yeah. And I was just gonna say, I think in both stories that you shared, what I'm hearing is this tolerance building for being uncomfortable and putting yourself out there and whether it's you're out in a public arena where you're really putting your heart out there and trying to advocate for something that you believe in, that you've clearly been designing for a long time. It's had a thread in your portfolio, and you really are going for it. Or, you know, at the individual scale where you're showing up on your project and make a mistake, I think, there is this growth process that happens when you're where you need to learn how to be comfortable with discomfort, and it's only gained when you lean into the discomfort. But when you pull away from it, it's like you never get past that tolerance of what's the next level of discomfort you can reach. So I think sounds like you guys have really been pushing yourselves to try and, model that for yourselves, but with your employees and to show them how they can lean into that maybe a little bit.

C Yeah. When I was in business school, they actually made us take an improv class For that exact reason, right, is to be able to think on your feet and be uncomfortable in front of other people, which, you know, if you're an actor, that's probably okay with you. But for us finance nerds, it's really not. So getting to that place. But to your point, it's you have to have a job or some kind of training or something that pushes you through that. And then you just know I trust myself and I'm gonna be okay, whatever that situation is.

D If there's any recorded footage of you at improv school, I will pay whatever amount of money I can to find that and get my hands on that.

B But I do think it's really hard. I mean, definitely like for someone who has a finance mind where you're it's like numbers have right answers. And the same thing for architects who might be very technically minded and or very strong advocates for design where there are right answers and there are wrong answers. Like it can feel really uncomfortable, like feeling like you got it wrong. But I think that, you know, I just think that it's a process of, like, evolving over time and not always just showing up with the right answer on the first try.

C No. I think that sometimes there's more than one right answer too. Right?

D Right. Exactly. I think there's always more than one right answer.

A I would really like to go back to this idea of professional development and growing people over time. I think you guys are laying this incredible foundation for growth at your firm. Why don't you talk to us about how, for instance, Andy, you've had what I would say is a decently long career at a single architecture firm, especially if you look at how often people tend to switch between them. So what was that experience like for you personally? And how has that changed as you've grown into this leadership role at Rios?

D It's super fascinating. Yeah. I don't date around much. I usually pick pick one track, and I stick to it, and I try to work within it. You know, I've been it's it's super exciting. This December celebrates a decade at Rios, which is pretty remarkable. I started as a designer. Coming out of the recession from grad school, hot mess.

D Probably had 2 outfits that kind of looked professional. And over that decade I've really grown, in an amazing way. This company and Marc Rios have really given me that ability to, you know, my whole career here, take risks, pitch wild ideas, try new things, push the boundary, both in operations, but also in the work that we're doing. And I think, it may be atypical to not jump around, but when something's so good, it's really easy to sort of grow roots within it and help build it and turn it into something really remarkable. You know, in my experience here over the past 10 years, I think it's really important to pay attention to all levels of staff. We had an amazing experience last year with a sort of grassroots movement with our DEI, what we call our SII, Social Impact Initiative, that it was, you know, a group of junior, intermediate, some senior leadership involved who really pushed us to implement positive action, immediate action in regard to diversity, equity and inclusion. And it has really spring boarded and it really once again showed us, you can't always just think you know who the next person is to take the risk. You have to sort of teach up and train up this type of thinking to everybody.

D We have a lot of people in our junior staff right out of school who are really eager, tons of energy to jump into imagining business development in some way, shape or form, which I think is really remarkable. I think people are coming eager into their profession and if you find that energy, you kind of have to keep fueling it. I profession and if you find that energy, you kind of have to keep fueling it. I think that's what happened with me here. I think Mark Rios and Bob Hale, they saw that I wanted as many challenges as possible and they would throw me the most important and and challenging things ever and trying to find a way to get through it. Or Mark Mononaga would do the same thing in in my early career all the time. So I think it's one of these things where you have to pay attention to everybody across the office and you have to find people and you have to challenge them. And yet they I guess Jessamine put it earlier today when we were talking what's their superpower and how do you not do everything, but how do you do do your best, right, and and how do you put passion in that best?

C Just to add to that a little bit, we have, you know, this year, we've put in place, a more diverse set of job titles, which to Andy's point is, a way for us to celebrate what, you know, someone's kind of, superpower is. And so we have some people who really wanna build their career along a single track, whether that's design excellence or technical leadership or, you know, I don't know what, or there's some people who are more of those and they're gonna be studio leaders and they're gonna be doing business development and they're not freaked out by the numbers and, you know, everybody's a little different that way. And so we try to make it so that people have various paths and sometimes they change over time, where they can build their career. And the other thing that we really did learn during the pandemic, to Andy's point, was to build relationships across the levels of the office. There's so much energy in our, junior staff, and it's been really lovely to get to work with them on different initiatives and build these relationships with people that I otherwise wouldn't work with on a daily basis. And so we're building business development teams across different geographies, and many of those include some very junior staff. They've got amazing ideas, and they've got great friends from school that they can talk to and competitions they wanna go after and it's just been really fun to harness.

A So within that structure, you also have a unique leadership group where you actually bring in your junior staff to have a voice at the table. Can you talk a little bit about that and how it came about?

C Sure. So we have this thing that we call our management committee. Committee is the kinda dry word, but, it rotates every 9 months, which is also a bizarre term. I'm getting used to it. I'm getting used to these.

D Uncomfort you have to be uncomfortable. It's all uncomfortable.

C So we have this management committee. They meet with Andy and I to discuss, real business issues, HR issues, strategic planning, business development, all kinds of stuff. And it's made up of again, it rotates every few months, and it's made up of different people across office. We try to have diverse studio representation and diverse leveling, and it gives us a chance to really get to know people and how they would operate as business leaders. And we're trying to kind of suss out if they're more of a specialist kind of person and what their perspective is or if they're more of a business person and they wanna grow in that way and it just really helps us get to know there's so many people and in our office and that have really amazing talents and it takes work to get to know them on an individual basis and what those talents are and how to really tune things to make it sing.

A Is this a volunteer type of position or an I volunteer for this type of position? How do you guys do that rotation?

D Hunger Games. No. We draw names out of a fishbowl at a Monday meeting.

C No. It's it's more of a nominating process. Yeah. Nomination. It's an honor.

D Yeah. I mean, it's, you know, it's a really, amazing I'm gonna keep up with the hunger game terminal. It's a it's a good arena, the management committee, because you have a lot of challenging things day to day. Like, I think, you know, Jessamine and I wake up with our other partners every day, and every day there's something new. Right? Just when you thought it was gonna the day was gonna end 5:45, something happens, you're like, Oh, we all gotta get on the phone. We have to talk about this, right? So, it's really amazing to give people a place to feel that energy, right? That need to solve a problem pretty quickly and to be strategic about it and to understand multiple exciting name. Is a really great venue for people to sort of feel, for lack of better term, the burden of of what a day to day business ownership feels like. Right? So it's interesting.

A I have a a final question that wasn't necessarily on our prep sheet. But given everything that you've told us today and that you've shared, you know, my question is is what is next for Rios? Do you have any big ideas? Are you willing to share?

C One of the things that Rios, probably the DNA of the firm is that it's always changing. Mark Rios has this amazing talk he gave our office once where he talks about the individuals who work here as a school of fish. Right? We're kinda going together, but we're still individuals and, it's moving and it's it's not an object. It's definitely a moving, growing organic entity. And so heading into the pandemic, that was definitely an asset that we had. We are always totally happy to evolve and change and throw away, you know, something that took 5 years to build. We're totally fine with that. And so it was easy for us to adapt very, very quickly.

C And so what we've taken out of it is that that's not gonna change. Adaptation is gonna be constant. You know, we've all had to kinda get used to that. Right? This week, we're in school. This week, we're on Zoom. Now you have to test every 5 minutes. Now you're vaccine vaccinated and now your vaccine doesn't work so great. So it's like, you know, the circumstances are shifting, you know, constantly and, getting people to the place where they realize that is the new normal.

C The new normal is that it's not never gonna be the same. It's kind of where we landed, right, is that we just have to be hyper flexible and agile and that's what you know, the one thing that we have talked to people about is, you know, if you're not comfortable in an organism that is changing and growing and evolving all the time, this might not be comfortable for you. And so for us, you know, I think a big part of it is getting to know and leaning into, the energy and the advice of our more junior staff, who have so much to say and, so much to contribute. I think if you're an organization that's a little bit stuck, they're everybody's got junior staff, but if you just actually listen to them, they have a tremendous amount of insight, that you can lean on.

D 100%. I think agility, I think exactly to Jessamine's point, like this is but one of many things to come. Life is always changing and if we can't sort of adapt and survive, if not just survive, thrive, I feel like, you know, last year taught us the human condition of all of us. I'd, you know, for most of the time I had shorts on. You couldn't see. On Zoom, I didn't have brushed hair. My husband would walk in and usually interrupt Zoom phone calls with very powerful clients who would laugh, get to know you at a very different level. And I think, coming out of all of this, if somebody in a business position, in an ownership position was trying to return back to pre pandemic normalcy, I would be blown away and say, You're not going to fit in.

D You're going to stand out in a bad way and contrast in a bad way. And I think it's really learning from these moments to really amplify, new ways of thinking, new ways of doing everything and being much more open minded to celebrating change as a day to day reality, I think is, you know, it's the future of where we're going. So, get on board, I guess. And if you don't want to, I don't know, I don't, I don't know what to say.

B Before we get into our closing thoughts today, we wanted to share some info that we learned from the team at Arc IT.

A Our friends at Arc IT are helping architecture firms with their technology solutions, including fighting back against ransomware and cybersecurity attacks. They recently told us about 1 San Francisco based design firm they help who had 3 ransomware attacks in a span of 6 months. Their latest hit took their generic IT provider over 7 days to recover the data.

B Yikes. Imagine not having access to your project data for over 7 days. For a midsized firm of 40 people, that's a lot of people not having the ability to do work on their projects.

A Cyberattacks are a growing challenge in the hybrid world, and they are costly. The firm leadership estimated that the pure financial cost of the business was just over a 100 k, not accounting for the tremendous mental pressure the team experienced during the attack and subsequent recovery. However, it's important to mention that proactive architecture firms can get ahead of these type of technology threats.

B As you consider your technology infrastructure needs for your business, be sure to check out Arc IT. They're a trusted IT provider who is in the business of helping architecture firms, and they offer tailored solutions for design studios small, midsize, and large.

A ARC IT is offering a free 15 minute cyber security assessment to help you determine how secure your business is. During the assessment, Arc IT will help you identify your top three highest risk areas in your business.

B Speaking of risks, Arc IT is also sharing some helpful tips with practice disrupted listeners that you can implement tomorrow to ensure your business is secure from cybersecurity threats.

A Their latest tip is to use different passwords for every service and use a password manager such as LastPass to keep track of them.

B Tune in next week to hear the next tip from Arc IT. To take your security solutions further, contact Arc IT at www.getarkit.com slash pd to set up your free 15 minute cybersecurity assessment or speak to them about custom solutions for your design firm.

A We kicked off the intro with the show and mentioned that I kind of have a history with Rios. I would love to get your fresh take on what they're doing as a firm and how you felt after you left that conversation with them.

B Yeah. I think you heard it at the end of the interview, but basically, I just was really happy to discover a firm that's doing a lot of the things that we talk about on the show. It's it's rewarding to actually bring on a firm that's implementing some of the ideas that we're talking about. Because I I know that, in some cases, these ideas can be abstract and some firms might feel like they're applying them for the first time. But Rios is actually applying a lot of these ideas all at the same time and having success in implementing them. So I feel like this was a really good score to have them on the show.

A Yeah. No. I like I said, I was just so surprised I hadn't investigated them deeper. I hadn't known about them deeper until the I saw them on section cut. And we'll actually put the section the link to the section cut replay down in the show notes so, our listeners can check them out. What was interesting to me is just how many different business lines that they have going in their firm and how they're truly embracing the entrepreneurial spirit and even encouraging it within was was really actually addressing to me.

B Yeah. And I think that that is something that has been with the firm for a long time. And so when they hit the pandemic, it basically because they have that entrepreneurial spirit and they embrace some of those values, it enabled them to more willingly make adjustments and shift their business model to best support the firm through the pandemic and now even reconsidering where they go after. So it's a it's a great case study in terms of flexibility and adaptability and resiliency in terms of, adjusting your business model over time.

A And I also like this model of co like, the co CEO and the co leading. They're definitely not the only ones out there. We know Gensler is kinda well published for having co leadership. But the the fact that, like, not all decisions necessarily rolls up to 1, but rolls up to a partnership is just really prevalent, kind of the relationship that Andy and Jessamine have with one another and how their strengths and weaknesses play off of one another as well.

B Yeah. And I've definitely seen co leadership at a couple other firms. I think it is a really strong model and has pros and cons to it. But, certainly, a pro is that you are not, as a leader, holding all of the decisions. You know, you are able to work with somebody who understands and might actually complement your strengths or weaknesses in order to make decisions together. So the benefit is really just being able to, collaborate on decision making to make sure that you're you're making the best decision for the firm.

A Well, I I guess, you know, where have the cons come from? And is it really, relationship based on the relationship of those co leaders? Or does it come does it do the comms stem from outside of that, if that makes sense?

B Yeah. No. I think I mean, it's totally dependent on the people involved in the relationship. But, yeah, I think that that's a risk. Like, if the relationship's not, you know, in alignment, which I don't think that's the case with them. I think they're actually very well aligned. Or, you know, I think if when player's not communicating well, that could be an issue. Or oftentimes, I think leaders get criticized for decisions really getting bottleneck at the top.

B And so, you know, I could see things getting stalled out with needing 2 players to make a decision that could prolong the timeline. I think we co lead actually, Evelyn, on the on the podcast. And I don't know. What do you think the pros and cons are? I think I don't know. We don't have to go there

D if you

B don't want to.

A I I why I wanna be honest. Right? I think there were times when our, that professional relationship was tested, and, inevitably, it tests friendship too because we are such great friends. Like, that's that's just kind of the nature of doing projects together. But, yeah, I do think it's rare that you kind of find these relationships in the profession with people that you work so well together. And I've, to whatever extent I've, you know, kind of the proof is in the the pudding. There's this there's this one gentleman that has worked with me and anybody who has worked with me in the past and is now listening to this podcast, know that like, like, wherever I've landed, I've kind of asked some people in my past, like if they wanna come. So thankfully I've had, you know, Willie has followed me, I think through like 4 different employers By now, 5, if you count the transition from Salesforce to, Slack to Salesforce. So, you know, if it's if it weren't for the podcast, I think we would still find another way to work together because we found it to be a really rewarding relationship.

B I agree. And I think that we play to each other's strengths and weaknesses. Like, the things that I'm good at are complimentary to the things that, like, you're really good at that I'm not good at. And so I think that that's really where this co partnership works. And and so I always feel like where I'm not able to lead as well, like, you're always much better at some of those areas. So it's it's nice. Like, we're not, you know, there's there may be some gaps, but, like, where my gaps are, like, you often fill it. So Yeah.

A And I but I also think the other the other plus about that is and and we both have to kinda be accepting of this fact too, is that we push each other to continue to rethink our ideas and our opinions and our stances on on different things. And I and that's equally important. If anything, as a constant reminder that things kind of need to continue to change and adapt, over time, And it's much harder to do without an external force. Right. Like I would not have made those decisions or those changes had not somebody else been pushing on me.

B Right. Exactly. No. Likewise. And I think you challenge me in areas I need to be challenged on sometimes. So I guess coming back to Rios, like, we see that their partnership model is working really well, and it's yielded some good results. You know, coming off this conversation, do you wanna talk a little bit about how you see them breaking down the boundaries of discipline? Because I I know that you were really excited about everything that they had to talk about at SectionCut.

A They are being interdisciplinary in the best way possible, right? Like when, when I ask a lot of firm leaders in architecture, and I said this before on the podcast, you know, and they tell me we're interdisciplinary. We do education, we do, healthcare, we do residential. It's, it's all the same service in different market sectors. I personally do not consider that interdisciplinary. I've been referring so many people to Rios by the way, because they're like, oh, we're going all remote. And I was like, it doesn't matter where you're working. Send in your but I even if you, like, go to Rios and you look at their careers website and you look at who they are hiring for, just the type of projects that they're pursuing, like they're they're really being interdisciplinary. They are constantly seeking new business models.

A I think not neutral is a very tangible outcome of that. Right, it's a it's a it's a product line that has completely spun out, and it's gone through a few pivots on its own. I was just impressed by how they truly embrace the interdisciplinary nature of entrepreneurialism. And it's not it's it's not a reiteration or a rework. And I feel like a lot of firms, when they think about stretching themselves, are just reiterating upon the services that they already have.

B When I think about them as being an interdisciplinary firm, I think that the best example to illustrate that idea, it's really about their people and like the way that they're thinking past the boundaries of how they're problem solving. So, for example, Jessamine has this great background in finance. And I think not a lot of firms would put someone with a finance background in a key leadership role. And for them to do that is a big statement. That means that they're looking at the players and the people that they're hiring and the backgrounds that they bring differently than, what I've seen most firms do. And so they're really putting a lot of value on what each person can bring to the team. And so leveraging her skill set is really benefiting the office in a myriad of ways. But by being able to break down those, like, barriers and work cross discipline across their teams to be willing to take risks and to try new things out and maybe fail, but then maybe get it right.

B Like, those are all the opportunities that

C are gonna

B support allowing the business model of architecture to grow. It's a heavy front end on risk, but I think that the reward is what we're talking about. The long term payoff of getting it right is has a lot of, potential.

A It's risk, but I also think it's it's not uncalculated risk. Right? And it's risk knowing that they have a big enough portfolio that if does go wrong, it's okay.

B Good point.

A I I guess I would like for architecture firm leaders to think about really what is their risk tolerance, and what is the opportunity cost of not putting yourself out there and and trying new things that could ultimately expand your service offerings and expand what you're delivering your clients and the value that you're bringing to the table. And on that note, thanks for listening, and tune in next week. Thank you again to our podcast partner, Monograph. Learn how Monograph can help you take control of your firm's financial health. Follow the link in our show notes or visit practice of architecture.com backslash monograph so that Monograph knows that you heard about them from us.

B Thank you to Arc IT for their support of this episode. Don't forget to visit get arcit.com/pd to set up your free 15 minute cybersecurity assessment or custom solutions for your design firm.

A Thanks for joining us on Practice Disrupted, a podcast by Practice of Architecture. You can find all of our past episodes by visiting practice of architecture.com backslash podcast.

B You can also get involved with our growing community. Find us on social media at practice of a r c h.

A And you can join us in the POA lab. You can apply to be a part of the practice of architecture lab by visiting practice of architecture backslash lab, where you will have more opportunities to interact with us and all of our podcast guests.

B This show is part of Gable Media. You can learn more about all of the podcasts and video content connected to this community by visiting gablmedia.com.

A Don't forget to share with your friends and feel free to let us know what other topics or speakers you are interested in hearing about.