Designing New Workplace Policies

A I'm Evelyn Lee. And I'm Janine Chastain. We're collaborating on curated conversations to explore how the industry of architecture is changing.

B Together, we'll find ways to create new solutions to current challenges while elevating the value of architects. Welcome to Practice Disrupted. Hello, listeners. Hello, Janine.

A Hey, Evelyn. Hey, disruptors.

B So I have met Diana more formally in the last year or 2 when we were asked to serve on an AIA panel together. And I was actually, Diana, I was actually searching through my emails, and I couldn't figure out which panel we were asked to serve on together. But I was instantly intrigued by her firm. I think that we were talking about hybrid practice and what this practice looked like emerging from the pandemic. And Diana, Saum Architects had this amazing story of what she was doing post pandemic and how she didn't really actually need to adapt too much during the pandemic. So we'll cover that, but, essentially, she's built agility into her practice. And while most firms found themselves scrambling during remote work, Som was never an entirely remote firm, but had less of a struggle during the shift.

A And before we hit record, I was talking to her about being an entrepreneur and, like, her going out and starting her business and, like, some of the learning curve that just comes with becoming an entrepreneur. And, I frankly, I'm just always excited to talk to founders and people that are willing to go out and take the risk to set up a company. So looking forward to hearing more about your business model and all the lessons that you kinda have tapped into on your journey. So, Diana, welcome, and, maybe we should kick this off by having you introduce yourself.

C Well, thank you. It's great to be here with both of you. I am Diana Nicholas. I'm the president and CEO at Saum Architecture. So we founded Saum in 2014. I have a partner until I'm a cofounder. I've had you know, I'm almost 25 years. Like I say, I'm 25 years into my career, and I've worked for a lot of different firms across the country, worked total internationally, Done a lot of different project types along the way, but I've always had an interest in firm culture.

C And I've always advocated in different ways for either different ways of working or things that or more fair ways of working. And sometimes that got me in trouble, but often it's allowed me to advance my career.

B So why don't you tell us all the things that people typically ask about SOM? So how big is it? You said you worked across a lot of project types. You know, where where are you focused right now? And then we'll kind of dig into this this particular question about culture that you just raised in your intro.

C Sure. So Saum, architecture is 25 people. We are 88% female at the moment because that changes, but it's that's been fairly consistent. We've been 25 people since about our 3rd year, so we're 8 years old. We have worked on a lot of different project types. Some of those have been, you know, with clients that followed us when we started some. They have been with clients who are other architects. So sometimes we work with designer architects on high profile projects or just team.

C We are a woman owned business. But a lot of questions I do get are about how we work, and that was true before the pandemic. And then in many ways, it was something that was much more in demand after the pandemic started. Because when we founded the firm, we founded it with the idea of creating a level playing field for everyone in the firm. So principal all the way down to, you know, the summer intern. And by level playing field, the way that we approached it was that everyone would have the ability to work remotely. So everyone has a laptop on day 1. Everyone would have flexibility, which we've now can or termed as radical flexibility because it's across 7 days, it's across 24 hours a day when you want to work.

C So, you know, some people work better at 5 in the morning, some people don't wanna start until noon. So we did it for that reason, but also we really we want people to be able to push to pursue their career goals despite or in addition to their personal responsibilities. So that might be parenting, It might be taking care of your own parents. It might be that you wanna teach. It might be that you're taking a pottery class. We wanted people to all have the opportunity to advance. So people really wanna understand how all of that works. So not only at, you know, early on, how do you work remotely? How do you collaborate? But then secondly, how do you do this flexibility thing? You know, how does that work? You know? And then the short answer is trust and communication and making sure your work is done.

C We can get more into the details of that. We also have unlimited vacation, which we get a lot of different questions about that. People wanna make sure it's actually working because I know there are companies that have unlimited vacation where it's it's not utilized or it doesn't work very well or you have to get too much, you know, approval in place before you can use it. But it's actually something we've not had any problems with. We very rarely even track it or look at it. So we get a lot of questions about that.

A So before we get into the logistics, I I kinda just wanna tap into something that you just said. You mentioned that you wanted everyone to have an equal playing field, and and 1 example was just recognizing that if everyone has a laptop, that is 1 way that you create equity in the firm. That, to me, is so insightful because I've definitely been in firms where there's hierarchy, whether you have a desktop or a laptop and what you're capable of doing or not doing. So I I guess I wanted to ask the question, where did you discover this philosophy that you wanted to create this idea of equity in your firm? Like, what prompted it?

C It's a great question. So when my cofounder and I started Salem Architecture, we had worked for another firm. So I moved to Boston in 2008 before the economic crash, and I interviewed with 8 firms. And at that point, I had an 8 month old and a 2a half year old. And so I was really I walked in the door of all of these interviews and I asked them straight on, what's your work life balance like? Can I have a VPN connection? And the the range of answers that I got was fascinating. But when I went to Burt Hill, I was told everyone can have a laptop. And if you live further out of the city and you take the train in, you can work on the train if you wanna do that. Meanwhile, I had other interviews where I was like, you're gonna live that far away from Boston.

C How are you how are you gonna make it in on time? How are you gonna be able to work late? So for me, it was it was a lifestyle choice. There but I also liked the people. I liked the project opportunities. I saw that I was going to be given a decent amount of opportunity for that point in my career. So I have to then give credit for that idea to my now partner because he had established that culture in the studio we were in at Burt Hill. And so I sort of lived that culture, which was, a more miniature version of what we do at SOM, I would say. And then when we started SOM, we both agreed we wanted to just kind of explode the whole thing and really make it into an experiment. So that's what we did.

B I think an experiment is, like, a really good way to term that. I would say that most firms hopefully, most firms are still experimenting with how they are working post pandemic, but we definitely have heard that the firms are all there are those firms that are still trying to go back to the way things were pre pandemic. So you've talked about culture in the same sentence as you've talked about remote work, and I feel like that's often 1 of the most things that people say went away during the pandemic because I think they have a particular definition of culture. So, you know, how would you define your culture at and how do you build culture while allowing radical flexibility if we're not all coming into the office at the same time and we're not necessarily all doing the same social events at the same time that, you know, the happy hour at the end of the

C day. So even in your in your question, you've asked about culture sort of in different context. I think I think there's so many different definitions of culture at the moment. Right? So, yes, for be being remote has always been part of our culture. And by that, I mean, the way that we work. But if you look at culture as the way that sort of the vibe of your firm, how people relate to 1 another, what the expectations are across teams, across, you know, leadership versus other teams. It's something I have to say that the principles don't dictate. Culture at some has evolved to what it is because the people have made it that way, have have done that work for us.

C And in that way, we've been very fortunate because people have been open minded. They see the advantages of working in the way that we do. But your point about how does that work with radical flexibility, that's so integral to the whole thing because we all recognize that we all have other things besides our lives in architecture. And to that end, we actually probably talk about our personal lives more than a lot of offices do. But, you know, I know that I need to work at certain times, and then then at other times, I need to be away. And that changes on a daily basis, and that changes on a weekly basis, as does everyone else's. Right? It's not like I'm gonna say my flexible schedule is Monday, Wednesday, Friday from 8 to 5. Although, if that's what people wanna do, they certainly can.

C So a a component of the culture that's resulted is that everyone sort of contributes to helping everyone else achieve that, the ability to do what they need to do. So I might tell you, you know, I'm gonna take off Thursday afternoon and half of Friday and, you know, I need some help. I'm gonna give you XYZ in advance. If you have any questions, call me. I have a cell phone. We all use our cell phones as our work phone. Our personal cell phones are our work phones. So people know they can get in touch with me, but they know I'm doing something that I want to do or need to be doing.

C Right? So because we all support each other in that way, our staff has told us, and this is why I feel so strongly that the staff is responsible for the culture and sort of has, you know, their their finger on the pulse of it. They say that it that we don't really have competition in our studios in our studio in the way that other studios have. I mean, we've all worked in firms that have sort of differing levels of competition, But fundamentally, people are all trying to move in the same direction, and they wanna help their colleagues move in the same direction. But 1 other piece of your culture question that I have quite answered is really how do we stay in touch? How do we keep that culture glued together? Right? And there are a number of things that we do, some of which other firms do now quite frequently and, have even given us ideas during the pandemic. But we've always had, Monday meetings. So pre pandemic, people would typically come into the office for that Monday meeting, and we would all talk about the projects that we have, staffing. We would talk about marketing. We try to be very transparent in the overall business information.

C So that still happens, and that happens every Monday, but it's it's truly hybrid at this point because we have a group of people that like to come in on Mondays. It's it's very much hybrid, and we can talk later about the technology for that because that's still evolving too. So anyway, so there's the Monday meetings. Now that post pandemic, we've hired people in other states, and by that, I mean, North Dakota, Texas, New York, you know, things outside of New England. We fly everyone in for a quarterly in person meeting, and that's been a great thing for us to all get to know each other. The last time we did it, we also did it with our annual picnic the day before, so we all get to hang out. So we do that. We do things like we have annual bowling night.

C We all go out and bowl in a pizza. I mean, these are not these are not radical things, but they do hold us together in different ways. We also have what I would describe as a very robust happy hour culture. So that originated as a Monday tradition at Psalm at about 3 or 4 o'clock because people would all come in on Mondays before the pandemic, and a lot of people would need to go home because they had personal responsibilities or they had a long commute, so we would start it at 3:30 or 4. That still exists. There's still a a group of people and then others that kinda come in and out on Mondays, and we have this kind of early ish happy hour. So that's another way to keep our our culture moving. We also have, you know, during warm weather, we have group bike rides, then we have a big lunch with that.

C Anyone can come to a lunch. They don't they don't bike. So lots of different activities. And then we've also recently implemented something that's been fun. I think we need to take advantage of it more. But because we realized that, you know, in the virtual world, you're working so much more with your team, we told everyone in the office, if you wanna go to dinner or lunch with a group of people from the office, whoever you want, whenever you want, we'll pay for it, and you can do that twice a quarter. And so we're encouraging people to sort of get out of their project teams more to kind of understand what other people are dealing with in life and work and what they wanna

A do. My follow-up question to that in my mind immediately goes to the things that project leaders are often trying to control, which is deadlines, accuracy, when everybody in the firm has flexibility and you're trying to manage the complexity of everyone being in different, their normal is different. So there's no, like, consistent normal, in terms of their scheduling or their availability. How do you then manage that to protect hitting deadlines and trying to protect accuracy within the work that you're doing?

C That's a great question, and it's 1 that we have had for years years. And so in probably 2017 or 2018, we actually did a study of where people work and when they work. And it was amazing to see that the majority of people are still mostly working 8 to 5. So in that way, we don't it's not it's not quite as disparate as you as it sounds like it could be. Right? So that helps. We expect teams to communicate internally a lot about when they're gonna be working. So pre pandemic, when people would come in on Mondays, then they would say, okay. When are we gonna meet later in the week? And at that point, because, you know, we weren't using Zoom or Teams, then we would use GoToMeeting, but really just the audio.

C Teams would say, okay. Let's all come back on Thursday, and you're gonna bring your design of, you know, that space, and I'm gonna bring the details of the space, and we're gonna collaborate. Or we're gonna get together and call the consultants and have a talk or whatever. So there's always been this sort of extra layer of communication on when we're gonna do what together. So now, you know, we have internal meetings pretty much weekly for all of the teams. It depends on the principal and the project manager and what they wanna do. But that that really drives a lot of the sort of deadline deliverable aspect of what we do. But it's you know, I can't say it's perfect.

C But to go back to the fact that it is an experiment and there are still growing pains, you know, depending on the project or the client, things shift. And we also end up moving staff around on projects like everyone else, and that will kind of, you know, cause the way you're working to change.

B I wanted to also go back on a few of the things you said. So you've obviously started hiring more geographically distributed individuals since the pandemic. But a lot of the things that you talked about that kind of drove your culture together, were still the things that were happening in person. How are you managing, and and bringing these more remote hires kind of into this culture. And if our listeners didn't catch it, you guys actually still have a physical office, among the radical flexibility. So but how and maybe you could start with your Monday meetings. Do you make those individuals that are calling into those meetings feel like they're a part of that that meeting? And and are there any other steps that you're taking to be conscientious of the remote workers that, you know, can't physically ever show up in the office except for when they fly in quarterly and and their growth over time. Because some of what we see between architecture firms who have started more remote policies is, you know, the second class citizen kind of aspect of being the remote person.

C 1 of our remote employees, the ones in Texas, worked at SOM for a while and due to her family situation, moved to Austin. So in that way, you know, she's she sort of has had more, quote, unquote, hands on experience with the culture and how we work. The quarterly meetings are are very important in that way. But to your question about the Monday meetings, when I say they're hybrid, I mean that we might have 6 people in the office, and then everyone else is on Teams. And so, you know, there are people in Cambridge just down the street that are calling in. So in that way, I think that the people that are in North Dakota or New York, you know, they feel the same in that way. And we've had people, especially since the pandemic, who have maybe been in the office 3 times, which is fine. It depends on what, you know, what their responsibilities are.

C I mean, your question is is a good 1. How do we make that? How do we maintain a sense of equity? And I think it's something that we're still learning how to do. We also try to, you know, reach out to those individuals and sort of check-in, I think, in a different way because they're remote. The 2 who are the furthest away, well, the 2 who are the least familiar with our in person culture, are actually just out of school. And that's that was not something we planned, but we had someone apply, and she was fantastic. And then she had a friend apply who's also been amazing. And and we are still learning how to work better with them and involve them, you know, in a project in projects more continuously or give them more defined roles. But it is challenging because they're younger.

C It's all that's always been 1 of our lessons learned from the beginning. You have to hire people who have the willingness to ask questions. And there we've hired some people at times who didn't really like to ask questions. I mean, way back, we used other software before Teams. We used Slack. We used, GoToMeeting. We used Skype. Different things.

C But regardless of the platform, we we need people to ask those questions. And when they don't, it's there's sort of failure on both sides of the equation.

A That is really insightful, actually, because I think that's picking up on a differentiator in terms of how people like to work and and who would be best suited at a culture where it's highly collaborative and flexible is somebody who's gonna be really highly inquisitive and not wait to go figure out what they don't know. They're gonna be engaged and try to reach out and fill the gap, versus someone who might prefer to work on their own and kind of process things internally or follow the lead on something that, you know, is being given to them. I don't know. It just I mean, to me, that's, like, a really subtle but very helpful idea that makes it clear to me why why some people could thrive in 1 environment and others can't.

C Yeah. And it you know, I think that that some of that has to do with, like, the actual day to day work for those individuals, but we had a great a great, experience with a really talented young architect. She graduated, came to sum. She worked for us for about a year. And then to her credit, she went to lunch with a couple of the leaders, and she said to us, I really like being here, but I wanna be at a firm where a group of people are going out for drinks together on Fridays. I wanna go somewhere where we have, you know, more young people when there where there are ARE study groups, which now we have, but at the time, we didn't. And she also, at that point, wanted to work on more ground up construction. And so we said, you know what? We get it.

C So we got her interviews at some of the top firms in Boston. She took a job at a really, really great design firm, and she she was thriving. What's you know? So it has to be a discussion with people too about you know? And and like I said, I was it was to her credit she said this to us. But it was also good for us to hear that and to think about that with future hires to, you know, make sure that their social needs are met met to a degree, that they are supported if they're studying for exams. And so we continue to sort of look at that particularly with the younger crowd.

A And I just wanna clarify, like, I don't think that there's a right or wrong way to do it, but what I think is important about this concept is that and a and a lot of the conversations that I'm trying to have with my clients is just to think about how everyone is a little different and, you know, in the same way that some people might like reading information, others might like listening to a podcast. There's so much variation in terms of how we prefer and like to communicate and work that, really, I think that's at the crux of this conversation is helping people understand what their preferences are and then helping people move into firms and firm cultures that thrive or support those preferences?

C Yeah. Yeah. I'm gonna latch on to the fact that you brought up the client in this conversation because, you know, every team has to respond to their client needs. But we have several clients who totally get our business model. They understand it. They know that we happen to have a lot of women. And and I only bring that up as as an example because we have we have this public client who loves the fact that on this big multiyear project, we're into the 3rd consecutive pregnancy. We have a lot of kids happening in our firm, which is exciting.

C But but, generally, clients do recognize the value in what we bring because we have a high level of retention. They know that we have our personal cell phones as our business phones, so they know they can reach us when they need to. They know that people are empowered. And so because people always say, well, you know, what do the clients think? How does this help them? It does help them. Like, it oh, at least it's enriched the relationships that we have with the clients. And I think the culture then sort of also provides clients with benefits that are not something that people really articulate. But as an example, we do have a lot of people go on maternity leave. Every single person has come back, which is unusual in this profession.

C And so that's a benefit to the client because you've got that person with all that history back on the project later in the later phases or, you know, whatever on another project with the same plan. So it allows us to like, the culture is obviously supportive enough people that if they take time away from the firm, they could come back and pick up. And they may come back and get a promotion and, like, become a project manager. If that's what they wanna do, that's what they do. That we haven't talked so much about the fact that we have a lot of people who target fewer than 40 hours. And so a lot of those people will come back and manage a project, and their target number of hours might be 24 hours a week. But because it's gonna be worked at different times across the week, they can still service clients, they can still communicate with their team, they show up every they show up most days for some time. Again, it just all feeds back into that sort of supporting everyone and making sure that they're doing what they want outside work, what they wanna do inside work.

B So let's do dive a little bit deeper into the fact that we haven't talked about that most people target lower lower hours. I feel I mean, this is such an unusual concept, and I've literally been in just looking at 1 of the many Facebook forums that we are both in. And I don't know if it was the Mothers of Architecture or the Women in Architects Collective, but someone literally just said, I am scared to have a conversation with the partners about cutting back on hours. So so how does that work within your firm?

C For 1 thing, if we say 24 hours, we don't mean 3 days a week. Right? We mean when you wanna work, but you're still meeting the needs of your client, your team, you know, the expectations, around you. You may end up working more than those target hours. And what we see about flexibility is that it works both ways. So if we give you this flexibility, but we want you to come to a client meeting on Thursday afternoon because you are developing a relationship with them, you are advancing your career because you are key to the success of the project, you need to have backup. So if you have other life responsibilities, you need to make sure that that can be managed somehow so that you can come in and do that meeting, or even if it's just attending it on Zoom, you know, you are present in the way that you need to be present. So so that's sort of 1 aspect of it, how it works. Also, it's a target number of hours.

C So we have, you know, with people who work 32, a lot I would say we have, like, 5 or 6 people right now that target around 32. If they work more hours than 32, they get paid hourly all the way up to the 40 hour salary mark. Right? So it's not like if you put in extra effort, you know, it's not acknowledged. Right? But that also has to do with you've been given this responsibility. You're the 1 managing your time. We're not gonna manage your time. So if you say you wanna do 32 hours, if you say you wanna be a project manager, you're the 1 that's gonna make that happen. So you're gonna learn how to delegate, you know, enough that you can stay around 32 hours.

C You're gonna have to make sure you have that backup. You're gonna have to be communicating, and you have to make sure all the deliverables are done. So in that way, it it does work. And that's that's been a piece of the experiment that sorta I would say sort of started to come into our culture about 2 or 3 years in. I mean, a couple of examples at that particular time. We had 1 woman who had had a child, had been working at a really really great Boston firm, and she decided to come work for us. And so anytime somebody goes on maternity leave, they can ramp back up in any way they want. So she said, I wanna start at 24 hours.

C And I said, okay. We want you to be a project manager on this federal project. And she said, okay. I've not really been a project manager, but I'm really interested in it. She was amazing. Like, it was it was a fantastic success story, and she said, I would have left architecture if I'd not come to work at Song. On the flip side, we have an architect who took off about 6 years when she when her children were young. And so, you know, we kind of we knew her through some other people.

C We hire a lot of people through referral, and she started. And 1 of the art other architects came and said, you know, she doesn't know Revit. And we said, yeah. We know she doesn't know Revit, but she's smart. She's gonna get it. Of course, she got it immediately. Now she's a project manager. But there aren't a lot of firms that are gonna take somebody who's been away for 6 years.

C But we try to support people in the ways that they need to, again, to do what they want to do with their careers.

B So there are a few things that I do wanna cover. I mean, 1 is that, you know, you have a lot of principals asking you, what does this do for the client relationship? When do you begin to introduce the way you work to a client? Is that is that something that comes along with your first, like, RFP response or the introductory meeting? Or is that something that actually gets introduced later? And then secondly, just because I'm putting it out there so I don't forget it, what what is your tech stack right now when it comes to managing through projects and communicating with everyone and and making sure work is moving forward in the way you need it to.

C To start with your question on when does that conversation happen? I think we became more and more comfortable talking about it, you know, as the firm grew in the 1st few years. We did a really large collaboration with another design firm, and this was pre pandemic. And so we had 5 people working on their design project with them, and they wanted our team to collocate. And so it was in part a conversation with our team saying, okay. You have this opportunity. We want you to we want you to work on this project. We we, the principals, are gonna have a conversation with their leadership and explain that you may have some days where you work remotely. And everyone kind of agreed.

C Okay. What needs to happen is that our team needs to come in 5 days a week for a while and build that trust. And it and in our experience, even at Burt Hill, we collocated. And once you can build trust amongst the team, then people can work work remotely. So so in that case, you know, it was a very, direct conversation because it had to do with the day to day physical place of working and how people work. And and I have to say our team members also respected the fact they were working with other other architects who didn't necessarily have these advantages in their sort of work life balance. And so to that end, I think they tried to go in and, you know, and sort of, you know, parallel that culture, but they have the opportunity to step outside of that when they needed to. But if you're looking at the client, let's say, like, the end user sort of owner client, You know, we used to have that conversation sort of more carefully early on, I would say, and it was fine.

C You know, we would emphasize the fact, okay. You can call them anytime. They're not, you know, still working on your project. You're still focused. There were people there are clients who had no idea, like, the the architect I said who came in after, you know, she'd had her first child, was ready to leave architecture, worked 24 hours a week. The client never knew she was working 24 to 32 hours, so it's fine. But to your question about RFPs, a lot of, I mean, a lot of public and private RFPs now ask about your diversity, equity, and inclusion policy. I we submitted 1 that's very weak, and it was even more direct in that language.

C Because it used to be like, oh, do you hire MBEs and WBs to be on your team? Well, we are WBE, but, yes, we do. But now it's what is your policy? We don't have a DEI policy. We don't really have many policies at all, but I end up explaining this whole thing. You know? Like, we found to the firm in 2014, trying to give everyone a level playing field. So our DEI is kinda baked in, and the proof is in the pudding. We have people from 11 countries, and we speak 9 languages, which for 25 people is a nice sort of diversity, you know, statistic if that's what we're gonna we're gonna look at numbers. And then the fact that we've brought in a lot of women, and we're keeping some people in the profession, those are great things to put into RFPs. But after clients work with us for a while, they kinda get it.

C You know? They get why we have so many women. They get that we we do work in a different way, but they're still getting what they need. So that that discussion has evolved. I think we're much more comfortable describing it to people, describing it, you know, so that they understand that there is a benefit for them. Occasionally, people don't really get it, you know, and they don't or they just don't react. They're like, okay. As long as I get what I need, and that's kind of it. You know? But some some clients are just fascinated by it.

A Yeah. I mean, I am. I'm so intrigued by this. I wanna go back to the unlimited vacation. Do do people get paid for unlimited vacation? Is there a point where you stop getting paid but can take time off? How do you financially support that, and how do how do you make that equitable when people may take different levels of vacation?

C Well, it's not our job to make it equitable. We've given them all the the opportunity and that in and of itself is sort of the equitable piece of it. So the same as sort of what hours people work and how the radical flexibility works, We've gotten this question enough that we finally tracked the vacation to look at, you know, how much vacation people take. On average, it's about 4 weeks. We also close the week between Christmas and New Year's. But it's it's fairly consistent. I will say if there's somebody I know that's been working a lot and hasn't taken any vacation, we tried we tell them to take vacation. But this but our unlimited vacation actually dovetails well into the flexible schedule.

C So for instance, let's say that you have a doctor's appointment and you need to take 2 hours out of your targeted 40 hours a week. Sink in as unlimited vacation. You don't have to make it up unless you're really need to for your project. So we haven't had any any challenges that people are abusing it. I will say we've had people who've had life circumstances that have necessitated them taking more and probably probably taking more than some employers would be psyched about. But those people, they remember that we as a firm were there for them and supported what they needed, and that's an important key to retention. You know, you don't wanna you don't wanna say to someone, oh, you've taken too much unlimited vacation this year because of XYZ in your life, so this isn't working out. You don't wanna hire a new person if you know, that that person could be really talented, and they just had this period in their life where they needed that time.

C But we don't we also we have several international people. So often, like, we have somebody who goes to Spain every year in August, and she goes for 3 weeks. And she usually will take a full week of actual vacation. And the other weeks, she'll work part to full time depending on her responsibilities while she's there. We have somebody, who's works in Abu Dhabi quite a bit. So she does take some vacation around the edges of that, you know, getting there. She likes to travel a lot. So we have people that really blur their vacation and their work life all the way up to the principles.

C Like, I went out on a boat for 3 weeks this summer, and I worked part time while I was there. So, you know, it's it is very important for the leadership to sort of emulate what we're offering so that they know that it's legit, and they know that it's not just for the leaders. So unlimited vacation is it's when it's just like everything else at some. It's interpreted differently and utilized differently by everyone in different ways.

A Yeah. I would imagine that people are just so appreciative that you're doing this differently that they would probably not wanna abuse it. They would want to ensure that it continues on. But, yeah, most of my frustration working at firms was not feeling like I had enough vacation, always struggling with, like, you know, if you have a doctor's appointment, like, how to work around that, you know, needing that little little tiny bit of flexibility here and there. So it's exciting to hear that you're succeeding in offering this really radical new way to help people take vacation.

B The misnomer with unlimited vacation is that you actually and if you have a great firm culture and, like, a dedicated workforce, you actually, probably, more often than not, actually have to tell people to go on vacation than you do, like, people abusing it. So and and Netflix is known for having always had unlimited vacation, and they had to actually eventually establish a minimum vacation policy because no 1 was taking their vacation. I don't know if the culture at Netflix, they have this thing called radical transparency, which actually has is a super competitive culture, I think, in the end. So I don't know if, you know, the culture was counter to that. But in most instances, and Salesforce has unlimited vacation, they we don't have anybody that really abuses that policy. And I I constantly have my managers telling me, like, you you seem a little stressed. Like, why don't you just take some time off, refresh, like, come back, you know, fully fully prepared to tackle the next thing.

C Yeah. That's good. It's also I feel like in our culture, you know, we really try not to have a lot of overtime. But still, you know, after some big deadlines, it's it's not like we're saying, oh, you can take some comp time or, oh, you can take some of your vacation now. It's like, recover. Right? That's fine. You've got the time off. Do it.

C So I think in that way, it sort of oddly supports the challenging side of architectural practice is that people can refresh.

B So I

A wanna go back to Evelyn's question about tech because I I didn't mean to, like, detour us.

B Yeah. I mean, I do think people so you obviously use Teams. I think another question that people constantly get is, like, what are you using to manage your Autodesk or Revit models and make sure that people aren't in it at the same time or or, you know, they they have been 360. So just just kind of helping us understand what are you investing in behind the scenes to to make this radical transparency work better? And and I and I love the fact that you continue to bring in the word experimentation into the conversation too. But yeah.

C I wouldn't say we're doing anything that's hugely out of the ordinary in terms of tech. I mean, I mentioned, you know, that we were used GoToMeeting, Slack, and those things early on. We've had BIM 360, which now has a different name, BIM Collaborate. What's it called now? We've had that for a while, but now everyone has it. You know, originally, it was, like, buy a few licenses for XYZ project. So everyone has that. About 6 weeks ago, we transitioned to, everything to the cloud. It's time our server was on its last leg, and that's really how people are working.

C I think I'm struggling getting used to SharePoint and all that stuff more than most people. It's making me feel very old. But now, you know, that's also become a different way of working, like, utilizing Teams for more than just chatting. We use Bluebeam a lot. We do a lot of Bluebeam markup sessions, which I love, but I also get to a point with teams where I say, you have to print the set, and you have to come look at it before we're gonna issue it for bid. Because the folks in the field are still looking at that paper, and you're not looking at the paper. But people but we do pretty well with with with Bluebeam. We even use Bluebeam for some like, some people actually use it for sketching, which is kind of an interesting choice, but but it can be used for a lot of different things.

C What else do we use? We use team Gantt, Tom, and we're starting to look at that more for not only scheduling, but staffing. But we also use Deltek Azure, which is, you know, something a lot of firms, I think, our size in the industry use. We've had that for maybe 4 years. So, you know, that's most of these are standard technologies. We haven't even really gotten much into, you know, like MURAL or MURO. You know, we interact with other teams that are using it, But nothing crazy there. Nothing experimental is happening in that regard, I would say.

A I'm curious, like, what shifts did you have to make when you started working in this way? Obviously, you've been doing it for a while, so it's not new anymore. But I'm curious, like, when you first made that transition, what were some of those shifts? And and maybe is also, like, in terms of advice towards other firm leaders who are considering making some of these shifts, like, what are things that you would recommend them to think about?

C First of all, I think this this point in time right now is fascinating, seeing what firms are thinking of doing, what firms are actually doing, what firms are just dead set on getting everyone back in the office versus not. The whole thing is it it's gonna take a while for things to shake out, and I think it's also going to have more and more impact in the labor market and where people choose to go. I think they're not gonna go always to the top design firm if they would rather have a different lifestyle. So if I were talking to team leaders, I mean, usually, I walk people through sort of, like, how to do this and what we've done and why it works. And some leaders are really receptive to that, and other people just say, there's no way we could, like, we just couldn't do it. And and I will say this would be harder to do in a larger practice. Like, I acknowledge that. But there are some larger practices that are doing a pretty good job of it.

C But what I would say is now is the time to be bold, whether you're the leader or you're the person who wants to see the change because we're in this kind of shifting landscape. It's the time to push things and experiment and try things. A lot of firms have really, really shifted the way they operate. Talk to and I would say to leaders, talk to your staff and see what they need to be successful. You know? They might say I need 2 days at home, and that's all they need. They might say I want radical flexibility. You don't know until you ask. Right? So do some surveys.

C We've we've done surveys a couple of times, and, again, not a radical tech. But it's really important to give people a voice. And then look at how you can make a case for how this could better support your clients. Not only because of sort of good marketing, but there may be ways that you are supporting your clients better. And so 1 of the examples I would use for that is we design schools, and a lot of the school committee meetings happen at night. Right? So we've had we've interviewed people from other school firms, and they come in and they say, I'm exhausted because I was at a school meeting till 11 last night, and my boss is expecting me to be at my desk at 8 AM the next day. That's not good for anyone, really. So, you know, that client is gonna get somebody who is not completely exhausted because they're going to 2 night meetings a week and trying to deliver the project.

C Those are those are conversations that you're not gonna have with every client. But from our point of view, it's Yeah. It's better. So so leaders need to think, like, what what's in it for the firm, what's in it for the people, what's in it for the clients, and go from there and see what it looks. But don't be afraid to shift things around. You can always reshift them.

B Is there anything that you ended up really doing differently? And then with the with the pandemic, given how you worked before, And is there any and you mentioned a few things that you're kind of experimenting with now. I mean, where where do you think Saum, in this way of working, maybe, if you're willing to tell us, struggles with the most or where are you where where are you really looking to experiment more going forward?

C So right now, what I would say is our biggest challenge and probably our biggest experiment on the horizon is what do we want our office space to be? So we moved offices the week before the shutdown happened in Massachusetts. And we intentionally downsized because, you know, even when people were coming in 2 or 3 days a week in our last office, everybody had their own desk. Like, we just didn't we didn't need that. We do a lot more digital, less paper, all of that. So we moved into this office and, you know, probably the 1st 12 months of the pandemic, only my partner was the 1 coming in every day. And now we have people coming in some days. And so, you know, is it gonna be a conference center? Is it gonna be, like, this hybrid of collaboration space and desks? Is it gonna be a resource center? We don't quite know. And so we're looking at different furniture solutions and different AV options and, you know, how you know, we have a lot of people that are perfectly happy to literally come sit on the couch that we have in this office and work.

C I'm not 1 of them. But there are those of us who still want a desk to come to. So some people have permanent desks. Some people don't. So I think that's gonna be interesting to observe and see where we land. We do think that at some point, clients will come back to our offices, but we don't really know when. So we're not gonna design it, you know, specifically for that either. So that's that's something that is evolving.

C What do we do differently beyond that? What have we been doing differently beyond that? People do come in less than they did before. So while, you know, like you were saying, at the beginning, there wasn't a big change for us in terms of the fact that people work remotely. But we used to see people more. We used to all come in more. I mean, I personally used to come in probably 4 days a week, and now I come in 2 days a week maybe. So that's we're still getting used to that in some ways even though we're doing it for a while.

A You mentioned that you think that this moment of change will yield different results. What do you think the firm of the future looks like in terms of where the industry is heading? What do you think are gonna be the top trends that are gonna help firms continue to succeed in as we move forward?

C You know, it's such a diverse profession, like, the types of firms, the sizes of firms, the way they work. I think that this is I think that sort of diversity is just gonna expand. So for me, it's the fact that people are gonna have choices have additional choices when choosing where they want to work. So I don't think there's gonna be a single firm in the future. I know that, you know, the AIA is thinking about what this firm of the future is gonna be like. A lot of people are thinking about it. I think that, you know, I'm not tech enough to really start talking about the way that augmented reality is could impact the firm of the future. But those things are definitely gonna have an impact.

C I mean, it's coming. Right? But I think architectural culture will just continue to diversify, which I think is a really good thing.

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