Growing an AEC Startup / The Evolution of a Company

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 Janine Chastain.

B We're collaborating on curated conversations to explore how the industry of architecture 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. Hello, listeners. Hello, Janine. Hi, Evelyn. Hi, disruptors.

A This week, we are bringing on someone I consider a LinkedIn friend, Robert Yung, the CEO at Monograph. In preparation for this conversation, I actually dug into the cobwebs of my Google mailbox to look back at all of our past conversations and essentially see the evolution of his career and his changes over time. I was reminded that Robert actually first reached out to me and invited me to connect on LinkedIn on September 29, 2014 at 10:40 PM. So that tells you something about when he's on LinkedIn too. That exercise also quickly reminded me of how hard he hustles, which is something we can dig into. But I'd also like to talk about how Robert is providing architects a tool to be better firm leaders and his big hopes for the future of monograph as the practice of architecture continues to evolve.

B Likewise, I met Robert out in San Francisco when he was just starting monograph and was going through early iterations. So I'm excited to talk today with you about the evolution of monograph and where it stands today. Before we jump into it, we like to start by asking our guests to introduce themselves. So welcome, Robert. Why don't you tell us a little bit more about yourself and your role at Monograph?

C Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. Jeez. Where do I start? My name is Robert. My parents are Chinese immigrants. I am born and raised in Chicago, now residing in San Francisco. I've always loved architecture. I studied architecture in high school.

C One of the only high schools in Chicago that has an architectural program. I did architecture in undergrad, placed a won a competition that was an international competition that gave me a traveling fellowship that allowed me to travel and backpack to work for almost a year, you know, approximately around 11 months. Did my m mark at the University of Michigan. Did a second master's focus on robotics, and digital fabrication at Michigan. Spent some time working. So I was at SOM Chicago for a little bit before relocating to San Francisco. Did some prefab work, and did a lot of high end residential work before founding DixonMO, and then eventually now find founding Monograph and acting as cofounder and CEO.

A So in preparation for this, Robert, I actually was going back and listening to past shows. And the the second studio podcast, actually, I think, has a 2 hour long show with you on it, where it goes very deep into kind of your love for for Legos and kind of your whole career path. So if any of our listeners want to find out more about that, we'll definitely dump it into our show notes and connect you there. I wanted to celebrate some personal wins that you recently shared on LinkedIn. Can you do you mind sharing with our listeners what that milestone was for you?

C I you're gonna have to remind me what which one was it. I do share I share quite often on LinkedIn. As you as you realize we've met on LinkedIn, I'm more than happy to elaborate. Yes.

A Yeah. I think it was the the student loan.

C Oh, yes. I am super excited. It's taken me a decade to accomplish this, but I I am debt free.

A Wow.

C I am debt free. And immediately after I paid off, you know, Michigan, I turned around and also wrote my first check as an alumni. And that's something I've always told Michigan that, like, the day that I paid off is the day that I also start contributing back.

B Congratulations. Super

C excited. A decade. It's no joke.

A No. So you could've buy any property while you're, in San Francisco if you wanna remain debt

C free. Cannot do it. Right? Like, it's very hard to buy. What's going right now for San Francisco Homes? $2,000,000. It's insane. I'll be renting for a very long time.

B That's why I don't live there anymore. So I I feel like we should tee up. A lot of our listeners know what Monograph is because, obviously, we're big fans. We promoted on the show a lot. We've had some of the past, guests on the show who are from Monograph. And then we recently went to Section Cut, which we were promoting also. So just from your point of view, tell us what Monograph is in its current iteration. What's the vision for it, and and where do you guys see yourself fitting into the industry of architecture?

C MyoGraph today is a project management tool designed specifically by architects for architects with a mission to really help firm owners and people in practice operationalize way more efficiently and way more better than they ever have. Core mission to our current product today. But we don't wanna stop there. The vision for Monograph really is to be an end to end system of record for all things built. And that is something that, like, we're gonna be working on for many years to come and many decades to come. Extraordinarily hard to essentially be a full system of record for all things built. Architecture is just the very beginning of what we wanna tackle. Very soon, we're gonna have to tackle finances, payments, loans.

C We're gonna have to tackle procurement. We're gonna have to tackle construction, CA, and really follow the entire building life cycle for us to really achieve an end to end system of record.

A That's amazing. It's been funny because recently, I've been talking about this whole idea for an IMBD of buildings. And I feel like if you accomplish all of that, we can slice off a view that is actually the IMBD of buildings. So thank you for building that out for me in advance.

C Oh, it's gonna take a it's a lot of hard work. And, like, I have we have a fundamental belief that, like, the only way to achieve a full system of record end to end is is to start at the very beginning. And when I watch other companies within the space and why they have not been able to achieve this as an objective, is because they haven't started at the very beginning. I believe, like, whenever you start something at the middle, you can imagine it's really hard for a company to go, let's work on this this way and work on that that way as an entire organization. It makes it extraordinarily difficult. We're very thoughtful in how Monograph has designed our our vision and how we essentially laid the path fairly linearly of one step at a time with the end goal being a full system of record end to end.

B And I know that, really important part of the tool is that it's really beautifully designed and, and you're trying to make it enticing for architects who you wanna make them want to use the tool. I think that it's also interesting that you've been you recognized a problem in the market of architects, struggling in this area, the business part of architecture. And, I guess, previously, just they were using Excel spreadsheets. They were using really outdated, programs to manage their project management and their business. And so I'm curious, how have you been able to successfully get firms to adopt this tool into their practice?

C So that's a multifaceted question, in terms of, like, trying to address, like, how do we get adoption rate up? But you've nailed it in the very beginning as a premise. Design has to be core. And when I say about design, I I really mean about, like, usability and simplicity. The harder things are, the more likely you're not gonna use it. And the harder something is, and as something looks really, really bad, you're less likely to spend time in it, which then also results in not accurate data. And then you start to run into a scenario of, like, garbage in and garbage out type of philosophy, which is really, really bad and where the industry has been from for many for many decades. So in a multifaceted approach, design has to come first. 2nd, really, is we have to be modern.

C If you think about, like, really, really old systems that are not cloud based, that's the first problem. Especially now that we're in a remote remote world, remote work environment. You need to be able to essentially see that information, log that information wherever you go. So like historical systems that are what we will coin as on prem, which means giant servers in an office, doesn't start to work anymore. And the notions that you constantly has to VPN in to get things done, also, those days are numbered. Does that help, Lisa, clarify, like, how do we how do we first 2 pronged approach, design first, and then usability across multiple devices?

A I wanted to press in on that a little further because the interesting thing about monograph as a product, and I said this a little bit at the intro, and I don't think most people view it this way, is that you're giving everyone at the firm the ability to understand how they are financially contributing to the bottom line. So for me, you're an enabling better management tools Mhmm. Because the individual, no matter where they are, even if they are an intern, they can say, this is how I'm contributing to the firm. So that's what I mean by the product actually empowers managers to be better leaders. But how many of you your customers do you think actually actually use it that way? And then subversively, on the onboarding process, are you kind of encouraging or hoping that they actually might do more of that? Because we're talking about a profession who has historically hidden that data away on kind of a need to know basis?

C Yeah. I can't speak for very specifics, but broadly speaking, it's been enormous. And I think, like, with a focus around transparency and a focus around accountability, as being one of our core drivers for product, it definitely resonates with our customer base. But it's also one of those things that you don't really feel until you're in our product a little bit longer. It's one of those things, like, I see it. I I heard it. I read it. But you don't really see the impact until month 1, until month 2, month 3 when the entire organization now has, like, empowered, because they have that transparency.

C And each project manager and each contributor from a design perspective, has a lot more accountability, which is really, really amazing. We to tell a designer, like, your work matters. How much you work also matters, not just to you, but, like, for this particular project and for the organization that you're working in.

B One of the things I admire about what you all are doing is this recognition that you have very you're very aware that there are problems in the industry. And I think that Monograph and the team that you've built are very focused on creating solutions in practice management and practice operations, but I'm curious, how did you all recognize the opportunity to move away from just being about product, like creating a product and designing a product, to actually creating resources and conversation around addressing those greater problems in the industry.

C My vision for where the company stands is that we are gonna be the thought leader for the entire space, and we want that responsibility. And the only way to achieve that responsibility is to essentially operate this way, where we're less just focused on being a software company. We really have an enormous responsibility to be a thought leader in the space, educate as much as we can, share that knowledge constantly. That's why, like, we we have to work this way. I think if you ask the question when and why, well, I I can't imagine running a company any other way. Right? Any other way would seem boring to me. I'll be less I'll be less enticed, to go to work every day because the the empowerment part is so amazing. Like, the entire work of Section Cut, which is also why we don't name it the monograph conference.

C We have to give it its own identity and its own purpose, means a lot to me and the entire organization because it embodies that mission for us to continue to educate and be thought leaders in the space. And the product itself is just a another vehicle for us to achieve that goal, but not our only vehicle.

A I wanna dig a little bit deeper into the culture of Monograph as a company because you're actually getting some press that are making some tech firms jealous. Right? You've never had an intention to move away from the 4 day work week, and and that was, like, inclusive of when you actually even started taking VC funding. Right? You made sure that your partners kind of hold that sacred. To me, it's the culture that you, Dixon and Moe, have intentionally developed over time is really counterculture to anything that, like, having an architecture firm. So where does that stem from for you? Is it, like, based on the experiences that you had in firms? Is it based on your your upbringing? Like like, where where did that come from?

C It'll be really funny. Right? If you if we look at my personal trajectory, being raised by immigrant families is extraordinarily hardworking. There's no such thing as a 4 day work week, where, like, an a minus was never enough. And even an a was like my dad was like, well, why didn't you get an a plus? Schools don't give out a pluses, dad. So that that's personal upbringings. And then we go into, like, you know, the corporate culture of of architecture and the student life of architecture where the amount of hours we put in are are generally insane. Right? There was a time in my life where I was doing about 80 hours, 85 hours weekly. One would assume with this type of background that the way we started Monograph would have been 7 day work life.

C You work all the time to strive for excellence. But what's fascinating is that it actually makes you question more of this is the only path. And what actually it starts to spark is like a drive for more efficiency and really focus on, like, outcomes and what is that outcome that we want to achieve. When you start thinking this way, it's not all about hours put in and outcomes as a result. Really about the ability to step away from problems most of the time, and the massive impact on the massive solution is generally the big driver, that we really want. That starts to inform, maybe there is another way, and we don't need to work 5 days. And we really wanna optimize for that day off because it will net the entire business extraordinarily more as long as the entire company and culture is aligned. But those are some of the early early reasons.

C Even before that was the ability to, like, work on another project, to get your mind off of things. My cofounder, Moe, is a huge component of, like, working on side projects as an exercise to stretch that muscle. So sometimes you just need a little bit of time away from the core problem, working on something else, and then actually solves the problem on on the original mission. We all, as humans, we need to be able to walk away to really solve complex problems, and that's not gonna change.

A You know, there's been a lot of conversations, I feel, have happening in a lot of social boards right now about

B Mhmm.

A Being a contractor to a firm or picking up moonlighting opportunities. And it's been interesting to see your encouragement of of those things in in that space. Again, all counterculture to kind of what is happening in traditional practice.

C I do have to say it's extraordinarily hard to pull off in all industries. I can confidently say that I'm not an architect anymore. I'm in the tech space, and it works here for Monograph. I don't know how it's gonna play out within practice, And I don't know right now who's who's taking that on as their core mission. But I do think that, like, there's a lot of questioning that we should ask ourselves constantly as as human beings and as participants of today's culture and today's society. If you think about it and ask, well, who set the 5 day work week from the very beginning? Well, we did. We as humans did. There's no we determined one day that we had to work 5 days.

C Who's to say that we can then also determine we need we should only work 4 or 6 or 3? These are arbitrary numbers that, like, we've set in stone, and, like, obviously, everything's always up for question until it's not.

B It's like something that we don't even question. We just have. And I think that trying to manage a 5 day work week has always been something that I've struggled with and not feeling like I have enough time, outside of a work schedule to recover, like because you can't ever quite get it all done. You either, like you can pick 2, but not 3. You know, you can either have fun or clean your house or go grocery shopping. But, like, if you get all 3 done, you're probably gonna be exhausted. So I think it's it's nice to see you guys implementing it and and demonstrating that it can work. I guess I'm curious.

B Taking the intentional step to challenge some of the norms in the industry, Even though you are firmly set in tech and not traditional practice, have you all experienced any pushback, from people in practice about some of the ideas that you're trying to introduce?

C I think if we don't get any pushbacks, we're doing something wrong. Right? Like, I expect pushback. And I think if you wanna be forward in in any industry, there's always gonna be a little bit of pushback, and it's totally okay. I think what's more important is how do we approach that dialogue, constructively and have that debate and have that discussion. But we should definitely be opinionated as individuals, and we should definitely have beliefs. And that alone should drive a lot of, should drive a lot of support and also a lot of pushback.

B Mhmm. I would imagine that it's also attracted a lot of companies to you. Has that been the case?

C Oh, absolutely. I think there's a lot of new and modern companies that are extraordinarily aligned with our mission, our philosophies, and how how we approach things. If they're an architectural company, like, I think the our stance on accountability, transparency, and visibility within the practice is absolutely essential in how we're gonna continue to grow the industry. When those start to align, we get we not only get customers, but we get amazing partners. It means so much to me. Like, it means so much for the entire team here that we have legitimate partners and collaborators to work on the project together and not just product and consumers. But, naturally, we also get a lot of pushback. Like, if you run a practice and you don't align, and you start to be like, well, I don't wanna share the fee.

C I don't wanna share that we're running behind. I don't wanna share how much we make. I don't wanna share if, if we're working more than we should. I don't wanna share the contract for the original scope of the project. And these are legitimate concerns of that practice. Respectfully, like, it's it's okay. I would also say that we might not be the product you wanna buy. Your money means and speaks volume, and I don't have expectations that we need to win every single customer.

C What I do want is to make sure that the people that do align with us, that we work together to strive towards that vision. I'm not gonna win every heart, and that's just that's impossible.

A I'm gonna bring this back a little bit back to Monograph as a company. Over the course of the pandemic, you guys went from a brick and mortar environment, and granted you had a distributed team. Right? You had a, I think, a few a few team members out in Florida, but you've gone completely remote. You would even say that, like, San Francisco is not necessarily the center of of where your team is despite maybe for its founders, but everyone else is a lot more distributed. So, you know, first of all, as a tech company, like, just give us a picture of how far how much you've grown in the past couple of years over the pandemic. And then also, you know, what what were your growing pains, and and what are you still maybe struggling with most bringing on all these new people and keeping this culture going?

C Helen, I don't know if we have enough time, because I feel like that alone, we can spend a long time talking. But more than happy to share, like, at least, like, how much we've grown and, whatever is top of mind for me in terms of the struggles.

B Yeah. Absolutely.

C But, like, if we really wanna know, like, the whole the entire story, oh my god. It that will be that will be a very long story.

B We're here for it.

C Let me see where I start. For our audience, I think it's important for me to to state out some dates. Yeah. January 1, 2021. So last year, January. The entire company was 8 people. We ended the year, so December 31, 2021, at around 45. So in 12 months, we went from 8 to 45.

C We are now March 24, 2022, and we're at 60. We're gonna fairly confident be close to a 100 people, by the end of this year, 2022. So in terms of headcount, oh my god. It's been it's been a rocket ship. I I do agree we would never been able to accomplish this at all if we didn't go fully remote and what I would coin internally as remote first, not remote only. And this is really, really important because I feel like a lot of terminologies of remote first isn't fully complete. I think remote first is fine. Monograph absolutely is remote first.

C But we're not remote only because we do wanna continue to encourage teams and all company events to meet up. I do believe that, like, the lack of human contact is not very good for a company's development or a company's growth. I want to get as close as I can to the team here at Monograph and continue to build that bond as we work together. That is not achievable if we don't spend a little bit of time, physically in in a room together or in the same location.

A How often are you budgeting for those teams to come together? And just for clarity, so Slack says we're digital first, but not digital only too. So, like, you're you're writing you're writing that same wavelength. But, you know, one of the questions have has been, like, how how much do we budget for then for teams to come together? So and, obviously, no one knows the sweet spot. But but what are you what are you envisioning for your teams right now?

C I I think my pushback would be, like, are we asking the right question? Are we asking is is it a budget question, or is it a cadence question? And I much prefer to have the conversation around what is the right cadence for a team to continue to meet with each other. And then the budget needs to be whatever the budget needs Right. For that cadence, for that team to operate at optimal level. I think it's it's a very disservice to to the team itself and to the organization if we go top down budget first.

A Yeah. And I'm sorry for that approach. We're still figuring that that out. The cadence should have been the right question. So thank you for recentering me there.

C Well, it's really hard, and we're dealing with this internally too. It's like, well, what's the budget that we set? How do we set the budget? How do we set the allowance? When really, we're just trying to figure out, working with all the team leads on, like, what is the right cadence with the expectations that the cadence for each team should be different. There's no reason why they should all be the same because the jobs of of a software engineering team versus a marketing team is fundamentally different, which naturally results to, like, the cadence sequence being very different, no different from a sales team and a success team, or a legal team and our ops team. That cadence becomes a very important topic for the entire company to run. Some teams need to meet way more frequent than others.

A And there's definitely even a seasonality, I would assume, to some teams coming together.

C Yes. Absolutely. Absolutely. Like, you can imagine sales. You wanna make sure you have an amazing SKO, which is a sales kickoff meeting at the very beginning of the year. Because, like, everyone's to be excited. It's a brand new year. And the sales team needs to be extraordinarily excited to kick off a new quarter and a new year and really get, like, their amazing energy high and above.

C You can imagine, like, that might not be the right time if you're doing all company events to also, like, run an engineering off-site. And we might wanna space that out. I'm also being very mindful because I wanna be as I personally wanna be in all these offsites as much as possible. I get to essentially see every team as much as possible, and I'm trying to make sure that they don't overlap.

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. Be proactive with Monograph.

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 helped 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 Originally, the IT provider tried to recover all of their files at once. This took them a very long time and resulted in multiple errors and restarts. Once Arc IT took over, they were able to come up with a precise recovery strategy by asking a simple question. What projects are the most critical projects your team is working on now? The team at Arc IT started the process of recovering these files and had the midsize firm up and running within 4 hours. After that, Arc IT was able to slowly recover the rest of their files.

B Because of Arc IT's strategic approach to cyber security and IT in general, this award winning design firm has not experienced any major security threats or downtime events since. Arc IT has been their trusted partner for over 3 years.

A Arc IT is offering a free 15 minute cybersecurity 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 enable 2 factor authentication for every business related service and personal services that store sensitive or credit card information, including Netflix.

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/ pd to set up your free 15 minute cybersecurity assessment or speak to them about custom solutions for your design firm. I do wanna talk about Robert, the CEO, and, like, your growth as a leader. Leadership's, like, one of my favorite topics, but obviously we met you at a point in your life when you were you were working towards this moment that you're in right now, and now you're in it. Now you've talked about the tremendous growth that you've gone through as a company. And so tell us a little bit about your growth as a leader at the helm of monograph during this time of growth and the pandemic and trying to figure out how to live into your values that you're trying to talk about when you even talk about the product?

C It's a loaded question. I don't even know how to start because I I don't I don't feel like I'm done. And I feel like I'm constantly learning more. If I do take back and, like, yeah. Like, it's been some time, and I am I'm actually a very different person than I was couple years ago. And I would imagine that I'll probably be very different a couple years from today.

A I don't know.

C Like, a couple things that are, like, very more apparent to me these days than they were, let's say, just last year, is how much, our values actually mean and how much influence they have on the decisions being made. And I think that matters quite a lot for me to make sure that the decisions we make always align to our company culture and our company values. Naturally speaking with as a first time CEO, I can admit there's a lot of decisions and a lot of work that are that is my first time doing it. And sometimes, we have to lean our own intuition, which is something I've grown very comfortable with in the last 12 to 16 months, of trusting my intuition and making sure that it does it does align with the right morals. And to continue to reflect on frameworks, I I lean on frameworks a lot more than I do ever, and I study frameworks more than ever, to make sure that the decisions I'm making are also consistent. Consistency is everything.

A Where do you go for your your aspirational and to study that? Like, you know, SKO is very much like a technology term, so you you weren't learning that.

C So SKO.

A And well, I just, you know, like, we're going we had our CKO, our company kickoff right now, and we're do we're doing our RKOs as our regional kickoffs. So so where do you go for for inspiration? Like, who are who are your new mentors in this space? What what type of literature and podcast do you turn to?

C Everyone's learning style. I think that's really important for us to, like, talk about, like, what is each individual's learning styles are, and they should be different. As individuals, we all are comfortable in a very different way of learning. I found myself to be a great learner of just doing things. It works really, really well for me. So it's less about the mentors around me and more about the people I constantly engage with. The funny story around SKO is I didn't know what an SKO was. We're trained as an architect.

C We don't use the terminology SKO. But for a period of time prior to our 1st VP of sales hire, I ran monograph sales. So our our first sales hire was like, Robert, when are we gonna do an SKO? And I there's no ego. I looked to Reyna. I I don't know what an SKO is. I wanna do it, but I need I need a little bit more information on what that is. And that's kinda how my daily learning exists. So, like, every day, I surround myself with people that are incredibly smart, with deep expertise in the areas that they work in.

C And I'm learning something new constantly. All the business terminologies and the business side of the equation, surrounded by an amazing chief of staff, our incredible board of directors. I have weekly meetings with current investors and future possible investors. So, like, I'm learning the technology. I'm learning the vocabulary as I go.

A Do you give yourself grace then? I I feel like if you're in this, like, learn by doing standpoint, I I might struggle with that because I'm tend to be one of those, type of people that really beat myself up when something goes wrong, and I know I did it wrong. So do you allow yourself the ability to kind of fumble through through your own learnings? Okay.

C All the time. It like I said, learning styles are very particular. It's absolutely how I'm comfortable with learning. I can also tell you that Moe and Alex hate it sometimes when, like, I'm so rash. I'm just, like, I'm learning so quick. Sometimes at its own deficit that, like, I'm gonna fail. And and that's it's just gonna happen. And it's really, really hard sometimes for your partners to also understand and see you fail and be okay with that.

C That's a constant relationship and constant dialogue that we have as 3 cofounders, That this is how I learn, and they have their own learning styles as well. And we need to be comfortable as 3 cofounders working together, moving the needle together. That, yes, we're all gonna make mistakes, and my mistakes will happen quite fast. But that's okay. Like, I think it's really important when we're talking about learning styles to accept, well, what are the outcomes? What are the the possible outcomes that could be seen as a negative? And as long as you say it out loud, we can devise a plan around it. So, like, it's really obvious that I'm gonna learn by doing. I'm gonna fail a lot faster than most. So the best thing to do to offset that is to also recognize those failures faster than usual so we can course correct faster than usual.

C And that's how we stay aligned. And that's with the acceptance of my learning style and essentially design a framework and a system around it to course correct quite quickly. I can also equally say the same thing if, like, if I learn something, we make a quick decision, and it's actually an amazing decision, we double down. We double down quick. So it starts to develop a muscle around that individual and that particular learning style.

B I'm curious if there's anything that you would tell a younger version of yourself, and I will rerecord this later when he's not barking.

C It's okay. I I don't mind. It's it's more human. It's life. There's dogs. There's babies. There's people. There's TVs.

C There's buses and trams. It's okay. The question was, what would I tell my younger version that it's okay? Like, it took me a while, actually, to learn to fail this quickly. I think it took me a long time. Being trained as an architect, I was actually very I was very polar opposite. I like I strive for perfection. It's extraordinarily detail oriented, and things took a long time. So I was actually a very opposite individual.

C And if I were to tell myself, now looking back, it's okay. It's okay to be a little bit risky, and it's okay to fail a little bit faster. And you don't have to strive for perfection all the time.

B I think that's a really important point because that's something that a lot of my clients who are architects struggle with, and I do too. I mean, when you go through the education of an architect, you're taught to eliminate errors. You're taught to basically look at something and continuously improve it into the to the point where it is as good as it can be. And it's hard to unlearn that behavior, and I think that it does create this perfectionism that people try to strive for. Like, they try really hard to get it right as much as possible, but that also can pull you away from this opportunity that you're talking about where failure becomes a method for learning. And and so can you share maybe an observation about how you started to step away from that trained behavior that you might have learned at SOM?

A That was a specific call.

B Well, we don't have we don't have to worry about SOM.

C I think it was a combination of times at, you know, app in practice for me. I think one of the moments I still remember till this day because I constantly remind myself, and it I'd catch myself doing this too. Like, there's a lot of sayings that we've already expressions that we've already shared on this podcast. One of them is to fail fast. But I think without enough context, it doesn't serve it justice. So you can't you know, if you if you're working on something that have massive impacts that are irreversible, don't fail fast. Please don't. Take your time.

C Be cautious. But, like, I you know, if you're a doctor and you're in the middle of surgery, please take your time. Life is precious. And I think failing fast requires someone to have an enormous amount of ability to, like, be reflective in the moment, to identify that this is something I can't feel fast. So what I've learned is, like, if it's something that's not irreversible and, like, I can't like, there's a we can turn back time totally easy. It's something that's not major. The objective is speed, and the objective is to go fast so you can learn from it. If you've identified that this is something that is not irreversible, this this is gonna have massive impacts that have a lot of trickle down impacts that you might not even be aware of, but you are fully aware that this is a big, big decision, go slow.

C Please go slow. I I would hate to have someone listen to the spot. I was like, Robert told me to go fast. It's like, no. No. No. No. Like, yeah, within context, The trick here is actually learning.

C When are you in one and when you when are you in the other? Because you're you're very rarely in both or either one for all the time. Like, you're not gonna be in a situation where that all these decisions are, like, massive decisions. So identifying that moment, is really, really important.

A Yes. I don't think we have any doctors listening to the podcast cast called practice disrupted. But, if you are, please reach out to us because I'd like to be I'd be interested in learning why.

C I was gonna say one thing to just give another example that might be a little bit more appropriate, because I know no one's here as a doctor. But but for example, if you're starting your own practice, and you're you're literally trying to have an exercise of what the culture of this business is gonna be about, I I would advise take that slow because, like, it's really hard to reverse culture. Culture is something that meets means deeply to you as a founder, as a founding principal, as a founding owner, and it's a it's a vision and a philosophy you deeply have have associations to. It's hard to reverse. If you're trying to figure out, like, how you might wanna work faster, well, you might you might be able to iterate on that process pretty quickly. Because, like, it's a much more it's a it's an it's an item that can be reversible, and you can you can change the motion you go the systems and processes you go and acquire work much faster than trying to change the course of your business culture and your practice culture.

A Because you brought up culture, I wanna kind of circle back to this whole idea of digital first and culture. So a lot of the feedback that we've been getting, when people talk about lack of culture in a digital first or remote first workplace is that the events aren't clicking as well, that, you know, the casual water cool chat doesn't happen. How do you define culture? Because for me, culture is deeply rooted in in the values and how you communicate with one another, etcetera. It it goes much further than than events and, water cooler chat. So how is monograph defining and encouraging all of its individuals to live into that culture?

C I think it's impossible to talk about culture if we don't talk about people, and that's literally our first value. We're people first. I think they're they're joined at the hip. You cannot have a conversation around culture if you don't talk about people. And I think when you start to put them together, you start to have an exercise, well, yeah. Like, water coolers are not enough if you don't genuinely care about the people. Or, like, a an event is not enough if there's already a toxicity in the culture of not caring and not listening. They're joined at the hip.

C You have to do both. And here at Monograph, we're very cognizant of that, especially being 100% distributed, where every team member is across the entire country. We have now employees in multiple countries. Establishing that culture upfront and what it means here at Monograph being people first and how we engage with one another, how we have respect for one another, how we have empathy for one another, yet we also want to have a performance based culture where we're always striving to, like, push the needle. It's very, very important, and it's also, like, important to state and be very direct.

B I think that is a really tricky thing. Like, there's, like, a fine line between expecting more from people and trying to push them and and challenge them and then fostering a healthy culture. And I think that, you know, it's really easy to move too far one direction or the other and then miss the balance that needs to happen, because you don't you don't want a culture where you don't challenge people, where it's too supportive to the point that they're not growing, or you don't want an environment that's too challenging where people don't feel supported. So, you know, how do you measure that? Because it's such an abstract and intangible thing to measure.

C I I don't I don't think it's possible to measure it. And I think it go it comes down to, like, is the team, sentiment wise, discuss with the team team lead? Is it humming? Is it working? And it's really, like, on that team leader, either the director or the head of that department, of, like, letting me know that, is the team working? If it is, awesome. I'm gonna have expectations that, generally speaking, some part of the team is not working really well yet. And and let's work on why that is. And then to have discussions on, like, well, what needs to be worked on? Is it is it accountability? Because then that's something we can state and then work on. Is it the lack of transparency? And we need to improve that to drive motivation? We can work on that. Is it the lack of time spent with me, and we need to reiterate the mission and vision to drive to drive that focus that we're here to we're here to strive for something way more than what we're currently working on. We can also work on that.

C But I think, like, stating these knowns and having a feedback conversation is extraordinarily important. Feedback in itself, I think, in practice, generally speaking, should do more that I think, within the tech space have done very well in terms of, like, figuring out the right cadence that that feedback loop constantly occurs. I know back in my day, I'm not that old, but old enough to say back in my day, The feedback loop was either nonexistence or or way too far in between that we had feedback between me as a designer, me as a technical architect to to my manager.

B Yeah. The feedback loop is something that we're talking a lot about in my workshops that I'm doing with studios. And, actually, Brick, who is one of the Brick came with me at a section cut to talk about the work we're doing. And the feedback loop is, like, one of these ideas that we're really trying to instill in all of the designers there because I think that we forget, like, in addition to giving people feedback in terms of criticism, you also have to give people feedback in terms of the positive things that they're doing. So it's and and to communicate, yeah, to really communicate about all of it.

C Yeah. You you definitely need to do both, and that's really important for any young manager or any senior manager to constantly think. Like, I I use 2 terminologies. Like I said, I like I like frameworks a lot. In terms of feedback, there's generally 2 types that I have realized. It's either a supportive feedback or a challenging feedback. Supportive feedbacks are really easy to give, and almost always you give more. But how many how much challenging feedbacks do you give to another individual? And I think every manager should ask themselves and be honest with yourself, is it enough? Mike, my natural state is probably not enough.

C Unless you're in a culture where you give a lot of challenging feedback, then the the reverse question should be, like, well, how much supporting feedback do I give? And probably not enough. And we always need to strive for for balance. With that said, supportive feedback should always come first. I I I've been asked that before. Like, well, what happens if someone's new and you wanna immediately give challenging feedback? Like, don't do that. You do need to build baseline trust before giving challenging feedback, and you do need to have some type of more deeper rapport with that individual and relationship. And I also get that being a remote first culture is extraordinarily hard, so it just takes a little bit more time. I'll do one more thing, which is one of my favorites.

C I hate running meetings with how are you doing. I hate this because you can almost guess a 100% what the answer is. I'm fine.

B I'm fine. Yep.

C I'm doing okay. I'm like, okay. Well, we're a remote environment. Even us 3 right now are on a Zoom call together. I don't get body language. I don't get a deeper bond with you as an individual. If every time we talk, all I get is I'm fine. So instead of starting meetings with how are you doing, I have instructions for the teams.

C It's like, we should start with if you really knew me. And everyone should answer that question. If you really knew me, you will know x, y, and z. This starts to dig a little bit because you can't say if you really knew me, I'm fine. It does that that does not work. If you really knew me, I sometimes find these conversations a little stressful. I sometimes feel like the industry looks up to me, and I'm not quite ready yet. But fear aside, I strive on.

C I move forward. But you see, you learn a a little bit more about an individual if you start with if you you really knew me versus how are you doing.

A I think there's a whole resource here. It can be another one of, like, monographs quick resources that you can put together of, like, opening lines for meetings. Only because, you know, I've given this example in the past too. We have one of our managers that starts with, here's my here's how my day is so far. You know? And then she, like, literally, if she's having she's having a great day, you know, maybe it's because of the yoga that she found or that walk she was able to take that she managed to get in. And if she's having a really bad day, she expresses it's like, you know, for me recently, it's like my nanny has been out sick, and I've just been having to juggle a lot more with the kids at home. But I do think there there you can either have that resource, or or we'll try to find a way to build it out here in practice of architecture, but, like, great kind of opening meeting lines to really build rapport over time.

C It it's really important, especially in a remote environment where we don't we don't get that body language. I don't I can't get that sense that you came in and you had a really bad day. And I wanna be mindful, because, like, we care, we work together, and we all have bad days. I I just need to know that you are having a bad day so I can be respectful.

A And I think what's equally important with those conversations is that almost the leader goes first. Right? Because The

C job of the leader. Yes.

A Right? Yes. But I I think but I think sometimes they throw out that question without offering up their response first, and then people don't feel like they have their permission to be as wholly transparent as they might otherwise be.

C Yeah. I do feel like I have to do something at least 50 to a 100 times before it actually picks up its own legs, and the entire organization is doing it on its own. So we had I strongly believe in, you know, if you're gonna be a leader, it comes with the job title. You lead by example, and you go first. And you keep going until it sticks.

B Yes. I mean, I love that conversation because I have been having so many people ask me about how to get their teams to engage more over Zoom, and we've been trying to brainstorm different ideas. Another one I heard was the idea of the weather report. So, like, if you were to give a weather about how you're doing today, what would it be? And it was really fun. We did this at a meeting, and a lot of my architects were like, oh, man. It's stormy today. There's a tornado.

C I love this, and I think this is the definition of culture. Well, like because, like, these kind of questions and these kind of, like, ways we kicked off a meeting are very unique to each practice and very unique to each organization. It could be even micro cultures where it's really unique to just your team within within a larger organization. This is how I define what culture really is, and it's not just water coolers, ping pong tables, or happy hours. It's really about how a team comes together, respects each other, works with each other, and engages with each other. So I

A have a question for you. I was listening to one of the podcasts you're on, and, you know, obviously, monograph you've always kind of had the the tagline built by architects for architects. So in that process, and I know you've hired a lot of architects on the marketing side, do you also, do you give, I guess, additional leeway to the potential that person can have as an engineer given their background, even though they might not be as fully qualified as someone who could just, like, jump in and begin to to code right away?

C I would say it's very obvious on the marketing side, because that's that's the side of the company that everyone sees. We actually have architects in every single department. So here's a shout out to Daniel. Go Blue, which I'm really excited because we're both Michigan alums, trained as an architect, and in Monograph, a software engineer specifically on our data team. So totally possible. I believe we have 3 architects on our sales team, 2 on our success team, 1 our product team. Yeah. Like, we have architects all over.

C It's just George is doing a great job. It is the front facing division of our entire company. In terms of training, I we don't have anything, like, solidified in place because it's so unique per department and what you need. But, also, none of our founders or the team leads are afraid to, like, accept career transitions. We just have to make sure that we're still running an amazing interviewing process, and it fits the criteria that we're looking for. And if it does, more than happy. I have a personal affinity because I've ran sales for so long. I'm also really excited that I don't have to.

C I'm excited to share that our new VP of sales, Janae, stepping in. And finally, I get to hand off the baton. But I do have a personal feeling that as architects, we're trained to sail fairly well. If you think about it, we're constantly presenting. Presentation and critiques is in our blood. That is sales to its tee, and we make for great sales talent as long as we start to recognize the skill sets that we already have and how powerful that skill set is.

A Your story is really aspirational to a lot of younger listeners, and I and I feel like a lot of our disruptors are either still in school or relatively new to the profession. So for for those entrepreneurs just starting off on their journeys, do you have any word of advice, short of, by the way, hustling and reaching out on LinkedIn and talking to as many people as you can? Because I think that's how we actually met.

C Well, it depends. Actually, let me see if I can give an answer that's applicable to both entrepreneurs who wants to start their own studios and their own business within architecture. And those that I also want to extremely encourage who wants to take on a tech startup mindset. In both scenarios, my advice is to learn about money sooner. It's really, really important, equally as important as learning about design. But, like, without a common language around money, without a common understanding of around money, It's really, really difficult, near impossible. So, like, learn about money sooner and no pay or pay dividends. So catchphrase there.

C Pay dividends in the long run.

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 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 Hi, disruptors. If you like the content from today's show, you can find all of our past episodes over on practiceofarchitecture.com/podcast.

A Be a part of the conversation by joining us, our speakers, and others in our community at practice of architecture.com/community. Our social media handle is at practice of arch. That's at practice of a r c h. We love to hear from you. Drop us a note to say hello.

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

A dotcom. Thank you for joining us on Practice Disrupted, a podcast by Practice of Architecture. Tune in next week for a new conversation on change in the profession.