Best of Practice Disrupted

A 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.

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

B Welcome to Practice Disrupted.

C Hello, listeners. Hello, Janine. Hi, Evelyn. Hi, disruptors. We want to welcome you to episode 100 of Practice Disrupted. We're celebrating this milestone by taking you on a delightful little journey to highlight some of our favorite past episodes, some of our most popular episodes, as well as listener favorites. We're calling this the best of Practice Disrupted. And while we may not hit on every favorite episode, we're going to walk you through the various themes of change we've explored since launching the show back in June of 2020.

B When we started preparing for this specific episode, I reached out to our community to ask for a little help. I asked them to, 1, let me know their favorite episode and why, 2, tell me how the show has helped them or their company, and 3, send words of encouragement. We'll be sharing how they responded throughout the episode, but I wanted to make a note that we do really appreciate it when you all reach out. It means a lot. That has helped us achieve 5 seasons and counting.

C One super fan we had the wonderful pleasure of meeting in person was Mora Fernandez Abernathy. She's a principal of Studio VARRA in San Francisco, and we met her at the AIA Women's Leadership Summit in San Jose. And she started listening to Practice Disrupted during the pandemic and found that it kept her company during some of those difficult days of navigating the uncertainty the pandemic prompted. She still listens, and when she hears a great quote in an episode, she sends it with the timestamp to her team or professional friends so they listen. Thank you, Maura. We cannot wait to hang out again soon.

B I also wanted to share a note from our friend Shannon Christensen, who is an architect and principal at Cushing's Terrell in Billings, Montana. She wrote to me on LinkedIn with the following note. Practice disrupted always seems to have timely relevant content just when I need it. I am frequently forwarding links to your podcast to share with colleagues on something that they must listen to. Recent examples include your conversation on the value of BIM with Slantus to the power of team level agreements with Future Forum. I get a smile on my face and do a little head bob dance whenever I hear your intro music as I drive across Montana. Keep up the great content. Congratulations.

B And we just wanted to say, Shannon, thank you so much. It makes both of us smile knowing that you're playing our episodes while you drive across your beautiful home state.

C So we've hosted over a 120 guests across the 100 episodes, but thought the best place to start this episode was to revisit our very first one and the thesis for this show.

B Seeing what we produce for season 1.

D So a

C lot of you are probably asking why are you starting this podcast? And Janine and I have been talking a lot over, I don't know, the last 10 years that we've known each other. Right? Pretty much. We're talking about the various different themes that we see continuously come up in the profession. You know, a big one obviously being architects don't get paid enough. People don't value us or for that, you know, for that matter, they don't really understand what architects do. I think there's a lot of internal things going on there too, Janine.

B Yeah. There is some struggle, I think, within some firms about firm culture and a lot of people are looking for that idea of work life balance and how to take practice, which is really demanding and still find ways to step away from work at the end of the day and do what they need to to take care of their families and themselves. But there's also that idea of like a lot of commitment into this profession over a long period of time. And sometimes people feel boxed in and they're not sure how to how to get out or how to do something different with their careers that still leverages the education that they've received.

C Yeah. Which are all, I think, big kind of questions to respond to. And I don't think we're gonna answer them all in this first episode, But hopefully, we can begin to really explore them out of over time and help help architects get unstuck, I think is is a big theme that's going to be running throughout each episode.

B When I hear that episode, it reminds me of all the time we spent recording at home during the pandemic. Every episode was developed over several weeks. Typically, we start our process with an idea on change that we wanted to explore, and we sometimes have a guest in mind that we wanna interview. But throughout the series, we focus on practice management, and I want to transition into this first section, which includes a series on practice management and practice as a whole with a quote from a friend and a client. Kate Haywood is an architect and the founder of Daily Design Group based in Memphis, Tennessee. She writes, okay. So you know how things happen where you don't really know where or how you started thinking about things that end up impacting the way you think? I feel that a lot of the info from the show is just now part of my life, so it's a bit hard to pinpoint. Kate, thank you for sending us your favorite episodes.

B After a 100 episodes, I completely know what you mean. Let's jump to some of the best episodes

E on practice.

F What is design and extend it to a lot of different realms and ways of approaching. So we're designing the process as much as we're designing the building as much as we're designing the staircase.

C It's it's act yes. Design thinking applied to the firm, which is really interesting because I hear a lot of architects talk about, oh, you know, the business the business world is all abuzz about design thinking, but rarely ever are they themselves applying it to their own business model. So that's that's really interesting.

F And it it helps. So we've also the partnership has expanded in in the past few years. So 2015, I think there were a series of new partners came on board, all from within the firm. So there there are folks that have have worked through this process all the way through. But I think when you approach a problem in this manner, it allows, lots of voices to come in to to work and then it also it allows you to kind of to have a leadership structure that is really based more on making sure that we're asking the right questions and getting to the right answers as opposed to saying I like that one. It's more that we've come to the process and everybody together has asked all these questions. They've all been evaluated. Yes.

F People need to make decisions at some point if there's things that are equal. But at that point, you're not making a decision just based on what it looks like. You're making a decision with all of this other underlying information that's come along with the process.

D I got started in architecture many years ago. Both of my parents were teachers, and I wanted to help a lot of people make better communities. And the interesting thing is I really didn't know what an architect did when I started school. By the time I graduated, I knew I wanted to really work on things that exist beyond the property line, and so I guess I would say for the last 3 decades, I've been working on these issues while staying within the traditional architectural profession and trying to kind of broaden what it is an architect does. You know, we're best suited, I think, to solve a lot of these issues that society is gonna come up against, you know, whether it's a climate crisis or social equity or just anything, and they exist beyond the property line. So I think we need to have sort of a transformative in the future, you know, we have to transform what it is an architect does, and it's I sort of think about it the same way that the law profession kind of expanded what they do. You know, today, you can't really do anything without an attorney. You really need an attorney to attorneys write our policy, right, which is public policy that architects design within, and I would really wanna get to a day when we can't do anything without an architect.

D You know? We need to have a designer on the staff of the city that's looking at, you know, putting in bike lanes for instance. We need to have an architect working with a civil engineer, and architects are collaborators. That's what we do, and I think that's what we're educated to

E do.

C You help us explain a little bit about who and what the large firm roundtable is, and then to whatever extent talk to us about the conversations that some of the world's biggest CEOs are having about the future of architecture.

G So the large firm round table is a ability for large firms to get together essentially twice a year, just talk about some common industry objectives, problems, signals out there, and their subgroups. So there's a the technology subgroup, there's an HR subgroup, there's a legal subgroup, and it's for like minded peers to at least in a antitrust way, share and openly, exchange things that might make the industry better.

H 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. 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.

H 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.

I You know?

H 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. 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. I don't know because it's sort of good marketing, but there may be ways that you are supporting your clients better. And so one of the examples I would use for those, we design schools, and a lot of the school committee meetings happen at night.

H 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. Those are those are conversations that you're not gonna have with every client. But from our point of view, it's, you know, 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 works. But don't be afraid to shift things around. You can always reshift them.

B This next series addresses workplace culture or what we like to refer to in the architecture world as studio culture. We're kicking the section off with a quote from our lovely friends at She Builds Podcast who wanted to wish us congratulations on our 100th episode.

A Hey, Evelyn and Janine. This is Lizzie, Jessica, and Nerjidi from Shebuilts podcast. And we're wishing you congratulations on a 100 Woo.

E Woo. Woo. Woo. Woo. Woo.

J Our favorite thing about the content you're creating is that it broadens our views of what architects can do. Every episode we listen to inspires us to think critically about our chosen path as we navigate this profession.

C Yes. We love hearing your take on the profession and how it's changing and how it can be better. True disruptors in the very best way.

J That's right.

C We can't wait for your next 100 episodes. Congrats, ladies. Keep doing what you do. Cheers. Woo. Woo.

K Without trust, you have nothing. Without trust, you can't have happiness. Without trust, you can't have satisfaction. You can't have engagement. You can't have involvement. I would say you can't have sustainable innovation. So all the things that you want in a business, loyalty, your commitment, you can't have them if you don't have trust. So that's what the majority of our question set is whether or not you trust the person you work for, which determines 70% of your experience.

K There's the leadership effectiveness part. And then the rest is, do you trust the people you work with? Because if you trust the people you work with, then you can actually care about the people you work with and they care about you. That's what drives high performance. People that are willing to do great work, with each other because they actually care about each other. So that's the trust part. The maximizing your potential is where we take the data and we actually do demographic comparisons. So we make sure that no matter who you are, no matter what you are, no matter what pronoun you use, and no matter how long you've been at the organization, you should be treated the same. What level you are, you should be treated the same.

K So it doesn't matter. So we do this demographic comparison of of the data to see if there's a group of people who are having a different experience than other groups of people. If so, we let leaders know that. That, because that's not fair and and equitable. So that's really the maximum energy potential that that if if I'm feeling I'm being treated like everyone else, I'm gonna really lean in and do whatever is required, to be successful here. And then the leadership effectiveness, we have about 11 questions we ask about your leader. So we can learn what that interaction is. And, that is the most meaningful data.

K It's that data you can use and actually predict about 70% of the rest of what you're gonna learn from that survey, strictly from that experience that that people are having. 2 things are are are absolutely true. People do quit their leader as soon as they have the opportunity to. So there are some people who may have been stuck in a job during the COVID experience. They can't wait to quit their leader. It's not their company. It it it's their leader. And that's why we we measure that.

K The to you know, we measure something called innovation, innovation by all, and that you can predict based on the experience people are having, working for their leader.

I I think staff development starts with staff, and so hearing what they need is really important. A lot of times, like, it's it can it can feel very top down. And so understanding that, like, you know, like, what you might think as a principal of a firm is best for your people may not necessarily be the best thing that the people are are needing. And so it I think it should really start from kind of like a an employee listening session or conversations that you have with individuals, understand what they are needing in their careers in order to help them. I think listening is just it's so critical in so many facets. But especially as a leader, I think it allows you to really get input on kind of where to kind of set growth and and chart kind of a a course forward. So that's probably step 1. I I think I I'm a fan of employee reviews, but I feel like, you know, an annual review process isn't isn't a cadence that's helpful.

I Like, it it really needs to be a culture of constant feedback. And so it while we have kind of a formal, you know, review process within our firm, there's much more of a culture of of giving feedback in a really timely manner. And so employee growth happens on a daily basis. So it doesn't have to be this big thing that, you know, that that's implemented that requires a lot of time to manage. It can be, you know, just small changes on project teams and and how we kind of coach staff and and and advocate for them in in their future growth. So I'd say those are probably the 2 things that come to mind right off

C And those are two great things.

B So in our planning conversations, you know, we had a lot of dialogue about communication and empathy as key values of your leadership style. And I I kinda heard it in how you answered this last question. So I wanted to ask you to share more about why this has become important to you and how you've integrated both of these values into your work.

I It's weird putting titles to things that, like, I I'm it's so inherent to kind of what I do. But communication and empathy, like, I think sum it up fairly well. Like, in this role, I really need to understand what people need and want. And in order to do that, you have to listen. And you have to listen from a point where where you have to be open to kind of where someone's coming from. And you can learn a lot from what someone says and be and and and then then be able to respond in the way that they need. I think, you know, the empathy piece comes in where you you need to meet people where they are and and not where you you think they need to be. And and that's a big piece of kind of that listening.

I Every moment is different than the moment before and shaped by moments before. And so it it that's kind of like my my yoga thinking. Right? But every conversation is different from any conversation before, and people are coming to it differently. Like, whether or not they ate something that upset their stomach and that's causing them to come to the conversation and then not be present or it really depends. It's weird putting kind of words to kind of a a leadership style that I know so inherently to myself, but I do think that communication and empathy are kind of like the the the bedrock kind of words that I would use for for my in my leadership style. In in any role that you're dealing with people, it's really important to understand what people, like, need and want, and and listening is a huge part of this. I think that, like, in order to understand where someone's coming from, you have to listen first. You can't come with preconceived notions of where they're showing up from.

I And the empathy piece comes in to really kind of, like, you know, like, you have to meet them where they're at and and where they're where they come from is is very different depending on the day, the time, what conversations they had before. It's helpful to kind of listen, ask questions, get really curious. I think curiosity is is really important, and it helps to have kind of a starting point for whatever whatever conversation that you're you're needing to have. For me in the in the staffing role, understanding what someone wants to do with their career is is is the big piece. Right? And and that way, I can then open kinda help open doors and place them on projects that then kind of allows them to grow, into that space. But you can't know where someone wants to go or grow to unless you ask the question and and really kinda dive deep and and really understand kind of where that that drive comes from too and and and then be able to kind of respond accordingly. On the other side, the more kind of, like, a tangible side, like, if a PM, comes up to me and says they need help on their project with an additional staff person, getting clear from them on on what's needed so I can match the right person to the role is also very critical in the staffing piece of my role in particular. But in any in any situation, whether it's you're trying to get something from someone, like and, you know, whether I'm trying to maneuver, like, a a person onto a project, you have to listen first so you can kinda speak speak that person's language and speak to what they're really wanting.

L Realizing that when I started to put tools like team level agreements into place with my team, it had a really transformative effect on our ability to work effectively and flexibly together. So that's me.

B I kinda wanna just clarify quickly because I I know you both mentioned Slack and Future Forum. Just briefly, how do those 2 organizations work together or fit together?

A Yeah. So we're all, employees of Slack. And, at the very beginning, you know, many of us had different jobs. But when the pandemic hit, I think, like so many other people, at first, we were like, okay. Just gotta make it a couple weeks virtually with remote work. Then a couple weeks turned into a month, 2 months. And I think at some point, Brian, Sheila, and I, who are all cofounders of Future Forum, realized that it didn't matter if the pandemic was gonna be over the next day. We had fundamentally shifted how we were all working.

A And I think all of our original expectations about office work, how work was getting done, how we could work together, that was thrown out the window. And so we started Future Forum within Slack. So Future Forum is sort of an organization within Slack. It's our research arm and dove into, at first, the data of, you know, what was happening on the ground. And data turned into, well, this is interesting, but how do we make this work better, which is what led to some of the executive conversations and shops that Krissy talked about.

C One of the things that people don't entirely realize about Slack is we were very much in spite of our product, which I think works well in a hybrid workplace, in a remote workplace, in a flexible workplace, we were very much an office based company. So 5% of our employee base was office based. Everyone had an assigned desk. Leadership at that time was very supportive of everyone coming in the office to get the work done. So even internally for us, this is a very big shift away from what how things were pre pandemic.

B Now a lot of our listeners work in companies that have very different culture than tech, so I thought maybe you could also give us a sense of what working for a company like Slack or Future Forum is like. How do you describe the culture?

L Yeah. I love this question. I get asked it all the time, when I'm interviewing people, to come work at Slack. And the thing that it always comes down to for me is the people. You know, Slack is a very people first company and really takes the time to listen to people, to be empathetic, to understand what people need. And when we look at what's effective sort of in this new world of flexible work, it's the exact same things. It's about people. It's about having empathy for, you know, what's working, what's not working, what are the challenges people are having.

L You know, beyond the the focus on people, dissatisfaction with the status quo really comes up. You know, Slack is always looking for better ways to do thing, whether do things whether that's within the product or whether that's within, you know, how we work together. And that comes back to this sort of, you know, core behavior that we have around looking at things in a smart way and not as in sort of IQ, but looking for better ways to do things, looking at things sideways, being playful with the way we get work done. And I think those are all really key things to to keep in mind when we are looking to the future of work, especially.

A Yeah. I would add that when we when we think about flexible work, what we've seen in our work on future forum and in writing this book is that those who are innovating and those who are forward thinking in how they're, you know, implementing flexible work are not just tech companies, actually. If you look in the book, a lot of the examples are from companies, that you wouldn't expect, like the Royal Bank of Canada, for example. It's less about being in tech and that culture, and it's more around your ability to enable experimentation to be agile and willingness to be vulnerable and say, we don't know the right answer yet. We don't have the blueprint, but we're willing to try and see if this works. We listen to our people and move forward from there one step at a time. That, I think, is more important than, you know, other aspects of culture that we typically associate that word with. But I'll also add something about Slack that comes up a lot in terms of culture and people first that I have always loved and I keep hearing when new people onboard is, there is a slide in new hire onboarding at the very end of, I think, day 1 orientation where you end the day and it just says, you belong here.

A And in many ways, it's just so powerful for people to see that and for a company to say that and focus on, like, their people, and to acknowledge that they belong here and build that empathy. So that is a good Slack example that I feel like has been very powerful for the last 6 years that I've been here.

C So a major driver that is prompting so much of the change we discuss is technology and that in part does come from my background at Slack, but it also becomes from the fact that technology is continuing to evolve within practice. And in this next series of past episodes, we'll discuss remote work, computational design, and tech. James Hanley, the digital practice leader at Grey Puksand based in Sydney, Australia, and a past practice disrupted guest says, no way I could pick just one. A few of my favorites include episode 74, the future of computational design with Andrew Heumann, episode 44, leveraging tech to solve challenges in AAC, and episode 52, managing a virtual practice. Every episode brings something different to the table. Well done on reaching 100 episodes. Honored to be a past guest. This podcast is doing great things and sharing so many great insights and education entire amazing industry.

C Congrats again, Janine and Evelyn. So thank you, James. We also enjoyed your episode 93 on design technology management and training. Question for you. So one of the feedback that I'm getting a lot from principals is the ability to to train like the emerging professional. Right? And I think there, for some reason in our head, and it's funny that you and Janine even just said, like, you would go weeks on and just sitting in front of the computer doing Revit. But people have it in their mind, right? Like that there's this notion that training an individual means if they have a question, I'm just sitting on the other side of the wall so they can tap me on the shoulder and ask the question. Or or I can be walking by their desk and seeing, I don't know, seeing they're doing a red line wrong or something.

C So what, I guess, what is your response to that and kind of bringing up a recent grad in this type of environment?

M Yeah. I hear that also. I think, you know, you're you're familiar with what you know and what you experienced, and sometimes it's hard to see how something might work differently. So firm principles are like, well, this is the way that I was trained and it was really valuable to me, which was I'm sure certainly true. And so feeling like their staff are gonna miss out on that can be a challenge, and seem like a large barrier. It's important to let go of the way that you had done things, I think, and try to consider how might we do things differently for a generation that maybe doesn't necessarily respond even anymore to that way of learning. And and that's hard but you know training and bringing in a new intern we had an intern over the summer and it it it really wasn't that hard. I mean, they're in they're plugged into our system again.

M They have access to everything that we're working on. Everything we do together is done in a setting where we're screen sharing our work and talking about our work together. In Slack, they have access to the entire staff. And so that's one thing that's quite different is if you need to ask a question, you don't have to depend on somebody being right next to you because, I mean I've been in firms where the principals weren't around or they were just too busy and so on one end they may think that they're providing better mentorship by being physically present and leaning on just that physical presence. Again, not necessarily having to have an intentional program of mentorship and depending on that organic thing happening where it doesn't really happen as often as it it truly probably should or need to. So by not being able to depend on, oh, you know, Sarah is just right there. She can come to me if she needs me. I have to think Sarah needs this support.

M What do I need to provide? You know, what system do we need to give for her? What access does she need to have, and and plan that out for her? So it's fundamentally different. I think it's really hard to get people to shift and think differently about how to provide that sort of mentorship and education, but we've done it quite well. So I have biweekly meetings with my team. We have career development planning boards that we do together. We've recently started doing Loom videos and building up a library, educating each other on how to do certain things because it's a lot easier to just perform the action and record what you're doing and send that to somebody. And we're always all available to each other. And I think that speaks back to also culture is that everybody loves that you can just ping somebody and say, hey. You're really good at this thing.

M Can you help me with this? And then they can respond whenever they're available, but that interaction has been enacted and the engagement happens on everyone's own terms. So there's always an opportunity to request help or mentorship, and it can always happen because there's, you know, there's a record there that allows people to do it when it works best for them. So I I love it. People have enjoyed it. And, yeah, the younger generations are sort of used to using tech. So fortunately, it's an environment that I think that they feel very comfortable.

B Programs like Rhino and Grasshopper, how did that emerge into the industry? Was that, you know, because architects were designing and they felt like they needed these tools in order to achieve the designs that they were seeking? Or, you know, what really drove that?

N Yeah. It's a good question. And I I mean, I probably won't do a great job as far as the, like, actual, like, history of it and, you know, specific things, but but my my understanding is that, you know, there were a few pioneer architects in, like, the nineties that were really interested in pursuing, like, radically different formal strategies, And they started turning to tools like Maya, which is actually like a 3 d animation software, and even even maybe predecessors to Maya at various points to build these, you know, crazy new forms and shapes. And then in order to actually realize them, the architectural tools like AutoCAD that were available at the time just couldn't handle these complex forms. And so architects like Frank Gehry started looking at tools like CATIA, which is has been used for a long time by, like, the aerospace design industry. It's a tool you use to design, like, airplanes or, you know, complex ships or other machinery. And so they found that by using tools like CATIA, they could model these more complex forms. And so gradually, other practices wanted to be able to adopt these sort of same sets of techniques, but maybe didn't have access to expensive tools like CATIA.

N And so various other tools emerged on the market. And Rhino was originally actually, I think, an AutoCAD plugin for doing 3 d modeling and eventually became its own piece of software, and it was designed for modeling these complex free form shapes. And then gradually over time, an interest in sort of scripting or programming over the top of these tools became almost a necessity because when you're building complex forms, inevitably, the pieces and parts that you're actually going to build with are going to be different. If you're building a box, you can kind of repeat the same square element over and over again. If you're building, you know, a swoopy form, you know, like a Zaha Hadid building, then every piece needs to be bespoke and custom. And you could either model that manually, which is incredibly time consuming and complex, or you can write rules and logic that take the forms that you've modeled and automatically generate the more detailed components that make up those things and help to solve problems of, you know, how is the structure going to work and how are all of these parts going to fit together? So over the last, like, fifteen, maybe even 10 years, we've seen this explosion of various scripting tools that permit basically, like, writing code to drive the software that you're already using. So in Rhino, it's Grasshopper, in Revit, it's Dynamo, and other programs like Blender also have their own version of this, where you can kind of make custom rules that generate the designs that you're trying to work on.

B We were inspired by our work with AI San Francisco's Equity by Design movement to include a storytelling series within the podcast to provide educational content for firm owners on equity, diversity, and inclusion. Because so many amazing friends stepped up to help us on the series, we were able to share very personal and real stories from across the industry.

C Namrata Dani, an architect at Cooper Carry in Atlanta, Georgia wrote, I couldn't just pick 1. I was hooked after listening to the episode on cultural identity and architecture because not many people talk about how those backgrounds affect our careers and trajectory. Some of our favorite past episodes are episode 57, Southeast Asian American Architects, episode 54, Architecture and EDI plus J, episode 53, Immigrant Architects, episode 48, architecture, identity, and culture. Number 35, Asian American architects. 65, training confidence and technical detailing, and 47, architecture and talent development and practice. The cherry on top was meeting you and Janine at the AIA Women's Leadership Summit and Aspire Conference. Excited for your 100th.

B Thank you very much, Murata. We enjoyed meeting you too. Because these episodes are so complex, I've narrowed it down to 2, our oldest and our most recent episodes in this particular series. In this first episode, you'll hear from Beresford Pratt, an architect based in Baltimore, who shares his experience as a black architect growing up in a culturally diverse community and then making the jump to Minnesota. In the second, you'll hear from our very own Evelyn Lee who shares her experience of becoming a mother for the first time while navigating her career.

O As we center around this conversation of race, equity, and architecture, I would like to share a little bit of a personal story just to help paint the picture of how I see the future of architecture. Being born and raised in the towns of Gaithersburg and Germantown, Maryland, which happened to be in the top 5 most diverse towns in the entire nation. I never really saw race to be a challenge, but more something to be celebrated. My friends and I were all for the most part 1st generation Americans. I remember on hot summer days, we would cruise around on our bikes and then return home to one of our friend's house just to get a cool refreshing glass of water. It wasn't uncommon for us to also be introduced to a very tasty cultural treat, like some Puerto Rican tostones for my friend Jose, or some Jamaican oxtail for my friend Mark. Or maybe it's just a simple American burger from my Irish American friend Brandon. This is what I thought America look like everywhere.

O However, I soon realized that this was not the true experience for every single American across the nation. When my family and I moved to Minnesota at the age of 13, I learned and experienced very quickly what it was like to operate and live in a much more homogeneous society.

P There are

O many moments of uncomfortableness, feeling unheard, and even racism, subtle and overt. To date, this has been one of my biggest challenges with the architectural industry. Black architects only represent about 2% of the entire licensed architecture population within the nation while they actually represent 13 to 14% of the entire nation population. When first lady Michelle Obama was speaking at the 2017 AIA conference, she articulated it the best. She simply said, so many kids don't even know what an architect is. How can you be something when you don't even know it exists?

C I think I've hit rerecord on this story at least 20 different times. I've always been considered a a workaholic. I naturally fall into that category where everyone's constantly asking me, how do you do it all? How do you do practice of architecture? Do practice disrupted? Participate in the AIA all at once. And the thought of adding motherhood on top of that, even though it's something that I really wanted, In a way, it scared me more so because of the unknown, but also because I didn't really have anyone to talk to about that decision at that time. But I remember coming up with this agreement with my husband that when I turned 35, that is when we would start trying to have kids, not fully knowing, you know, if this is something that would going to be able to happen right away and having seen several of my friends struggle with fertility. Thankfully, we were incredibly lucky to get pregnant relatively soon, but I also miscarried my first child. And I was left alone with those feelings, not entirely knowing what to do. It was before the end of the 1st trimester.

C We had told our parents a little bit out of overexcitement that we were expecting. We hadn't told anyone else, but I also definitely wasn't showing. And it was a second visit to the doctor after we had previously confirmed kind of the size of the baby. So I told my husband that I didn't need him there, and I have this empty feeling of being told by the doctor that there's no heart be present. And I didn't I didn't know how to handle it. I didn't know who to tell other than my husband. And I remember going home in the middle of the workday and wondering if I should go back to work or if I should actually take this time to deal with my feelings at that moment. Ultimately, I ended up taking the half day off, but it wasn't without my husband's encouragement.

C And then the second pregnancy, which was successful, was addressing to navigate purely from the fact that I was the first person in my company at that time to the first female to have have a child. So navigating short term leave, maternity leave, what that looks like, and what my return to work plan looks like all on my own with the help of our bookkeeper was really interesting. Thankfully, I had a really supportive firm, but they didn't know who to talk to. I felt like all the individuals that I knew who had been a mother were raising their kids in this time where they were trying to hide their pregnancies, not sure when to tell their clients. And a part of me wanted to believe that things had changed, that we were in a different place, that this transition was doable. I think part of me, I was I was just talking myself up in order to, you know, say, like, this this is okay. You you can do it all. And somehow I I feel like I I've managed to to do that.

C And now and now I have 2 kids, ages 57. And I still get that that question a lot. How do you have your full time job? How do you do the practice of architecture? How do you do practice disrupted? How do you volunteer in the AIA when you have 2 young children at home? It really comes down to my community and the choices that my husband and I have made in order to continue growing our careers in the way that we wanted to grow them. This leads us to our series on career transitions. Navigating the profession of architecture and attempting to move forward in our careers while aligning ourselves to work we love is what brought Janine and I together to collaborate on Practice Disrupted in the first place. It hasn't always been clear where our career journeys were leading us, but we both leaned into the opportunity to pair an MBA with an architecture background. And we've crafted episodes across all 5 seasons to support people who are trying to figure out their career path.

B Ian Merker, an architect and associate vice president at Canon Design, who is based in Sacramento, California, wrote to us and said, hi, Janine. Of course, I support practice disrupted. Here's some of the reasons why. Number 1, episode 7 with Laura Weiss got me hooked. The episode was released at a point in my career where I was at a crossroads. Laura's words were a call to action to continue to focus on the process and find a way to do meaningful work that moves towards my values. Number 2, your interview with our CEO at Canon Design in episode 86, that show helped my company by reinforcing that this staff member has chosen to work with the right people. I've been a proponent of changing the way we practice architecture from early in my career, and it was redeeming to know that large firms like ours can move the needle on innovation.

B And number 3, it never ceases to amaze me how many superheroes and great minds are in the architecture profession. You've curated a forum where their voices can be heard and inspire others. Never run out of ideas for new topics.

Q What I'm what I'm seeing in in what's become part of my coaching is this need to go from an awareness that something needs to change back to the career thing. You know, we want we want or need to take the next step in our professional journey to an understanding of why we are where we are and where we really wanna go next. So I find myself guiding my clients away from a next step that looks like, you know, it's just about finding a job, right, the tactics around networking and resume writing, which I don't do. Right? But but that's what's on people's minds, that level of, you know, tactics, and instead encouraging them to take a pause, you know, pause for reflection and exploration. And to be clear, this is not about having resources, as in I have enough money in the bank to take time off and figure out what's next for me in this kind of leisurely manner. It's about using your time smartly and making this an ongoing practice, an ongoing practice of of exploration and curiosity, not just something you need to do reactively when your your back is against the wall. You know, at the end of the day, it's really about slowing down, sometimes seems counterintuitive when it comes to things like jobs, and it's about being thoughtful. You know, do we wanna continue down the current path, or do we wanna wish for, do we really wish for something else? And here it's worth adding that this is not about being right or wrong, with your next move.

Q There actually is no single path to professional success, and by the way, you get to define what success looks like, which is again another hard thing to do because we've been socialized to believe that success looks like certain things along the way. What it is about is about being deliberate and being honest with yourself. Right? It's back to that clarity and courage. It's it's about learning. So that's a long answer to the question about what we're still what I'm seeing, from people who are, you know, looking looking at what's next for them on their group.

E You

R both followed your interest to school, and I went through the, you know, challenge that architecture school is, which, you know, we could talk a lot about what you learned in architecture school, but I wanna know what you learned about yourself through that process. And I know that, you know, if you pursued your MBA too, what did you learn about yourself in, you know, in both of those instances?

B Yeah. This is a really interesting question because I think that when I was in architecture studio, I I couldn't see the lessons that I was learning. It was only when I went and got my MBA and went through that rigorous process that I was able to look back at my time during undergraduate studio and kind of see where those really deep inflection points had happened. You know, it's hard it's hard to see it when you're in it, but I think going through that second really intense education was helpful in reflecting on that.

R I wanna know too, with both schools being so challenging, what propelled you from architecture to an MBA? What was that connection?

B I remember really vividly taking a break from architecture studio one day, and we have this really cool courtyard outside of the studio environment where people would go sit. And I was just sitting there one day and I just I knew at that moment, I was like, I really wanna go for my MBA. And I think I was in maybe 2nd year of architecture studio because I just I could just feel that I wasn't gelling. I never really loved studio. Like, I always loved my seminar classes, and I loved the community of architecture, but I never really felt passionate and in love with architecture studio, the, like, core piece of the education. And I knew that eventually I was gonna wanna go get that business degree. I just didn't know how. But I could tell from where my strengths were naturally that I was a natural leader.

B I knew that I was interested in business. My dad is an entrepreneur, so I knew that I was always interested in entrepreneurship. And I just couldn't quite connect the dots in terms of formal architecture studio being enough for me.

R I think that entrepreneurship and architecture school both have creative threads and that you have to understand complex systems and components coming together and that you it doesn't just have to come into the shape of buildings, but it can be in the shape of business. But, Janine, that's interesting to me that, like, 2nd year studio, and you already knew it. How long was the gap between architecture school and your MBA?

B That's a good question. I I finished with my BArch in 2009, and I started my master's program in 2013. So I had worked enough. I was I had been out in practice enough to know and I think that also, like, when I had gone out and practice, I went in in the middle of the recession, so it was like it further ingrained in me that I wanted to pursue an additional education to not be in the same situation that I found myself in when I left architecture school and couldn't find a job, because that degree on it on its own at that moment in time wasn't enough to

R that's right.

B To start a career. And I was like, well, I never wanna be in that boat again, so I should go get this degree that's gonna really make me valuable and self sufficient.

R There almost has not been, like, one interview that I have done where the recession has not come up as some sort of career shaking moment and really helping people propel themselves into that second interest, into that other realm of something tangential that actually ends up, like, really growing legs and being a solid place to be. So thanks for telling about that. Evelyn, I wanna hear about you too. What did you learn first about yourself while you studied architecture?

C I actually loved studio, but there was this innate understanding that I was, like, never gonna be the best designer. And there's this and it it took me a while actually to come to terms with it because I think if you think of if you think about, like, how meaningful studio is and and where you want to compete or where you want to show up and do your best with an architecture school, I I actually really had this big personal struggle with it, and I I tried to leverage my understanding of technology and tools and my ability to learn technology quicker, as a as a way to differentiate myself through that process. But I I think I knew way back then that I was never going to be a designer, but I was one of those people who, like, I set a goal and I there's a path and I needed to get through the path to finish it. So, like, not pursuing architecture after grad school was, like, never or after my undergrad and then my grad school at Saric was, like, never a question for me.

R You realized you're a finisher and that you once you're on a track, you gotta stick with it?

C I I was. It was because it because having a goal and reaching that goal was so much easier, like, it's it was easier for me to manage in my mind and kind of in professional development and what I was taught about my career arc and, like, not having a goal and having to explore.

Q I love this.

C Which I think for a lot of, like, people is, like, when they think about stepping away from architecture, that becomes, like, the difficult part of of that career transition. But yeah. Sorry, Amy.

R No. No interruptions for me. It's just interesting that, like, you both of you had these insights of, like, this this isn't completely me. I like it, and I'm glad I pursued this interest, but, like, this isn't the full cookie. Like, there's something else that is part of this recipe. And, Evelyn, similar to you, I I like architecture. I really enjoy it. There's a lot of, you know, parts of it that I completely connect with and other parts, like, I just have to get through.

R And there I did kind of had that same realization. Like, I wanna be a finisher. Like, I wanna get through this, and I wanna get that licensure. I want the AIA behind my name. You know? Like, there's that aspect of wanting to stick with the track that other people are very much, like, okay stepping away from and not doing the full, like, closeout of it. And so, I think that's a a very valid and good insight to realize, like, yes. I'm a finisher, and there's more. And maybe that's tiring.

R Evelyn, do you feel like once you kind of had that insight of, like, I wanna finish this, but I also know I want, like, this MBA aspect, like, how did you reconcile those 2?

C Yeah. I I mean, for me, it was like I didn't know I wanted to get an MBA my 2nd year, like, Janine. For me, the MBA was kind of an active break for me to reassess my career. Like, I okay. I've I've done that. I did licensure, and now I have no idea what I wanted to do next, and it was just like the right time at the right place in my life for me right there. I had no external commitments that was kindly keeping me from making that decision. I could choose to go to an MBA school wherever I I got in.

C I had you know, I have I have no, like, family, no children, no husband. It was just a good time to to take a break to reassess and completely break actually from architecture and the AIA altogether. And my biggest lesson there was that I missed the profession. So I took a complete break. I stepped away. I said, I'm not gonna be a part of any green building clubs, any, like, real estate or development programs. Like, I don't like, that's not for me. You know? And I tried, like, the management consulting track.

C I looked at the people doing, you know, the marketing club. I started in UCLA before I transferred to the Presidio. So the entertainment industry, of course, is big in Los Angeles. And I kind of played around with, like, all of those areas, and I was just like, whatever I have to do, I have to come back kind of to the built environment and and to architecture because I some I missed it. In 2016, is when Blake cofounded Architecchio with Leota, and we are going to learn more about that today. Let's cut to the interview.

S So, so I studied urban planning at Cal Poly, and then I did my m r at CCA, California College of Arts in San Francisco, and spent way more time in school than I'd like to admit. It was 8 years total. And then I went and I worked as an architect for almost 3 years. I worked at SOM. I worked at Studios Architecture in San Francisco. And, you know, through some frustrations that I had with the field and more opportunity that I saw in the the tech industry that I wanted to explore, I ended up deciding to leave my job at SOM in around 2015 and go and try working in this this kind of new and emerging field called user experience design, which obviously we all know now really well. But even 5 years ago, it was kind of less known, especially in the architect community. And at that time, Leona was working as a product designer at Autodesk.

S We'd both come home from work every day. We talk about our days. You know, I'd hear about the awesome work that Leona was doing as a UX designer, and and it just seemed more interesting than what I was doing as an architect. And I decided after many months of kind of thinking about transitioning into something else that I was gonna try it, and I gave myself 3 months. I've kinda made a deal with myself. I said, alright. 3 months, I'm gonna go try and find work as a as a UX designer. And if I failed, I didn't like it, I could always go back to architecture.

S And, after a bunch of interviews, at various tech companies in San Francisco, I finally ended up landing a job at an an up and coming design agency called Matter. And, I got to work on a bunch of cool projects that kind of bridge the digital and physical worlds. So it was a really good for me into the tech industry. And, you know, after some time working at MATTER, I went to another design agency called Method, and I worked on a bunch of innovation projects there, designing products for the Department of Defense, DNA sequencing company, a ARVR app, and a bunch more. And after about 2 years after leaving architecture and working as a product designer, I had worked on almost 10 separate projects that spanned industries of health and entertainment and defense and hardware design and consumer goods, and real estate.

C That's definitely a broader portfolio than you would get in that same amount of time at an architecture firm.

S Exactly. And and and that was the precise reason that I was kind of unhappy is I was working on projects that were just many, many years long, and I didn't have the variety of work that I really wanted to. And so I kinda dipped my toe into the design agency world, and and that, frankly, just had a blast doing it. And then, I got a call from a a small innovation group at Google called Google ATAP, which is Advanced Technology and Projects Group. And I ended up joining helping to design kind of the next generation of technology projects. I mean, generally, that group looks at projects like 5 or 10 years into the future, so they're kind of a bit more on the research side. And I ended up joining and working on a new project called Jacquard. And Jacquard is a platform that integrates technology into everyday objects, like your jacket or your shoes or even your couch at home.

S And one of our first collaborations was with Levi's where we took one of their well known trucker jackets, and we built Mhmm. In a new sleeve, essentially. And it had our kind of special conductive fabric woven in. And you could do things like brush the sleeve with your hand to control your digital devices without taking your phone out. And so this was meant to unlock this whole new paradigm of interacting with your devices and explore this kind of future of how technology would become more human and more naturally integrated into our everyday lives. So I had a lot of fun and worked there for a couple years. And then most recently, I ended up joining another company called Atomic. And Atomic is a company that starts companies, which is very meta.

S It's basically part venture capital fund and part start up incubator. And so rather than write checks to other entrepreneurs like most VCs do, it only funds ideas that come from inside its its own four walls. Mhmm. Since joining Atomic in 2020, I've had the opportunity to help start 3 new companies. One is a company that builds backyard ADUs. Another is a company that sells really beautifully designed emergency preparation kits. And the third is a company that provides really fun interactive virtual events online that you can take from experts all over the world.

C Those are 3 companies given the state and climate of where we are right now that I feel are taking off.

S Yeah. They were I mean, they were born out of the constraints that COVID presented us.

C Yeah. Leona, how about you?

T So I am currently, at Netflix, leading and building a team of product and design leaders creating technologies to power Netflix Studio. And if you guys, are a member of Netflix USC, We have this infinite catalog of content we're making every year. So our team, is responsible for the innovations behind Netflix Studio and, helping us to create the best content for our members. We're working in a space where in Hollywood or filmmaking industries, technologies or even software are not that common. This type of innovation is not that common. And so, it's been really fun, I would say. For the past 3 years, we're helping Netflix to scale from, you know, 5 to 10 original titles now to last year, we launched more than 700 titles, globally. So, yeah, in addition to working at Netflix leading, you know, a team of really exceptional product and design leaders, I myself is also a, serial entrepreneur.

T I've founded multiple companies, ranging from VC funded to bootstrapped, startups, and just making and launching products just gets me up every day. And, lastly, I would say I am pretty actively involved in the Android Investment community, focusing on both tech start ups as well as the creative industry. So, if you have heard about the, spatial syndicates, that's one of the Android Investment Syndicate, spun out of the r g techy community. I will say it was back in 2014, 15 when, like, and I, we had many friends from school and from our adjacent, architect communities reaching out to us individually and asking for feedback or advice on how to transition into working as a designer or engineer in the tech industry. That was the time some of the biggest unicorns came out of the Bay Area. And then that was also the time, like Blake mentioned earlier, when he was working at SOM and I was working at Autodesk, and our offices were just a few blocks apart on Market Street in San Francisco. And every day, I will get off work at 4 PM, finish all my work, and I will grab dinner and go to his office to meet him and so we can go home together. But I feel like every time I'm when I arrived at his office after 6 PM, that was just his stay really started.

S I'm just catching my second wind.

T Yeah. Exactly. I I still remember how, how many nights I was hanging out at Asilen's office, it was full house, till 1 AM. Everyone was still there and working really hard and, while I was just there watching Netflix. So that was a time I think a lot of architects, especially our friends, started to see that contrast. Working as a designer, the work life balance they're getting, the impact they're getting, comparing to, you know, the designers working in the tech industry becomes so much more, marginal. And so we had a lot of friends reaching out to us, and we quickly found out it's just becoming unscalable if we spend 1 hour or so more to talk to each individual friend. So we gathered some of our friends who went through very similar journey and then started a first a lecture with a, firesite chat, and then that was really well received.

T We had close to 50 people showed up, for our first fireside chat.

S 65. We we thought 10 or 15 people would show up, and 65 people showed

E up. Wow.

T 6 x. There you go. Yeah. That that's, and then, that's how we started. And then we started to formalize this community and really trying to make it helpful for more and more people who wanted to transition between these two industries.

S Yeah. So, you know, we a lot of a lot of folks are reaching out to us. And as Liana said, we just felt like after the 30th coffee date, we needed to better scale ourselves. And, you know, as she mentioned, we put together this event. We invited 5 of our our close friends who had transitioned from architecture to tech successfully. They were working in ARVR, cryptocurrency. One was working at a as a software engineer at Uber. Leona was, I think, working at her own software company by then.

S I was working as a product designer. We basically just kinda talked about, our experiences, and it was super well received. The way that I remember, like, then the word the name architecty coming up is Leona during the event saying to me, you know who you are? You're you split your time between architecture and tech. You're an architecty.

E And I

S didn't I didn't know if it was accusatory or if it was, like, congratulatory. But for some reason, that name stuck around. And so we ended up calling our our sort of ragtag group of former architects who now worked in tech, Architec y, and, and that turned into, you know, a bunch of other things. Right? So, more people reached out to us after that event. They asked for, like, more tactical workshops where we'd walk through what a product designer actually does because a lot of architects at that time were interested in going into product design. And so we we then held a half day workshop that kind of was, like, how to become a product designer 101. That also sold out, which was really surprising to us. And we just realized that, especially in the Bay Area, a lot of architects were just not super satisfied with the jobs that they were working on.

S And a lot were really, really interested in exploring roles outside of traditional practice. And we we realized we were not the only ones that shared this sentiment and thought, hey. There's probably so many more people in the AEC industry across the world who are interested in working in technology. And so we started a Slack community. We didn't advertise it or anything. We just let people started kind of sharing it word-of-mouth. And then fast forward to now, and I think we have over 1200 really amazing people from around the world that are active in the community, and it essentially runs itself. And so people share knowledge and advice.

S They mentor one another. They post jobs. They share events. It's a really beautiful thing. And when people find out about this architect y community, the overwhelming reaction we hear is, I can't believe it took me so long to discover this gem.

C Mhmm.

K And it's

S just it it makes us so happy because it just it turned out as kind of this, like, this funny thing, and it has actually turned into sort of the serious thing where people get real value.

C Rebecca Bookbinder is an art director working in film and television. She has collaborated on notable productions including The Mandalorian, Star Wars Episode 9, The Rise of Skywalker and The Dark Crystal Age of Resistance. A graduate of my alma mater at SCI Arc with a master of architecture, Rebecca's background in architecture and fascination with the ephemeral has led her into the world of filmmaking and ultimately has informed a career in set design and world building. Her work in television and film transports audiences into imaginary worlds for people to experience. She believes her career has been a balance of taking risks and serendipitous moments that led her to where she was meant to be. You can see more of Rebecca's work on October 30th when season 2 of The Mandalorian airs.

B So why don't you tell us about when you first met him and then becoming his mentee and and pursuing a career that was directly related to a lot of the work he was doing?

E Right. So knowing that I really wanted to work with him after I went to one of Cyrus famous lectures that they have, and he happened to be there. This is, like, maybe, you know, a month after I graduated. And I went up to him and told him I was really interested in the work that he did. At that time, I was like, oh, I wanna become a production designer, not knowing, like, the the the new avenue he had taken. And he kinda laughed. He said, oh, really? And, he said, well, send me your your portfolio. I sent him my portfolio, and he sent this, you know, really lovely, critical review on my on my thesis.

E And, I ended up, you know, within a week working for him. And it was interesting because, you know, looking back at it now, my first role with him was as a low end, I guess, concept artist. I really could never call myself a concept artist. But I was making these collages for him, and I was, like, you know, churning them out, spitting spitting them out because he just wanted to see what these worlds that he was envisioning would look like. He even took me up to San Francisco on a trip because they were going to pitch this idea at a at the headquarters of a of a company. And between the breaks of the meeting, he would come and tell me, you know, let's let's do a collage, you know, showing this. So so, like, I get 15 minutes to do a collage to, you know, visualize these things that he wanted to share with the client, and it was really interesting. It pushed me to my my core.

E But I feel like I should probably go back to what he does now, which is not he's not working film anymore. What he does now is that he speculates futures for companies to see where these companies can start to take their their products and, the possible place that it can go. And he likes to do this through one world building, but also with a narrative attached to it. Because he feels that storytelling is the most basic way that we can communicate as humans. And, it became quite a powerful and interesting way to to realize all these things that I had learned at SCI Arc, how I can apply this to a field outside of architecture.

C Last but not least is our work to encourage architects to become more entrepreneurial While leaning in on how to build our own businesses, practice of architecture and Apostrophe Consulting, we've interviewed really talented entrepreneurs. Here are 2 of our most popular episodes

P I think that architectural practice with and I I have, like, 0 basis in terms of research to back this up. This is what it feels like to me. And I left it fairly early in my career. So what I would say is that architect felt practice that the, the framework works great up to a certain scale. It's a framework that I think is good for small firms. I think at a certain scale, you become inevitably a click farm, right? Like you're, you're hiring, you're, you're, you're sort of trying to acquire labor as cheaply as possible and repackage it and sell it for profit. And that, and that comes with some really, really difficult cultural problems. And, and, and you're trying to, and like, look at the end of the day, architects either sell compliance or they sell aspiration.

P And if you sell aspiration, like you have a tension there that, that cannot easily be resolved. Like you can't sell the aspiration of a better world through how we have an impact on our built environment while at the same time having a business model that depends on, you know, trying to squeeze out as much as you can from employees. And then, you know, and every architecture firm does this every 10 years or so. You, you know, you, you have, you, there's a lot of work, you hire a lot of people, then there's less work. And so you fire them. And then you have work, and you have a lot of people, and then there's less work, and you hire them. And so I, you know, there's people out there like Phil Bernstein who have studied this and are probably much more eloquent at talking about it than I am. But, but the, the problem to me is not architecture in of itself is the vehicle.

P The the business model of it is one model for it. It can't be the only one. Right? And so why can't we have other versions? Why can't we have other, other ways of practicing? And and the reality and and they said when you really begin to sort of scratch on this, they they do exist. There are other ways of being a designer out there in the spatial world. They're just not wrapped in this word architect. And so again, this is where like the freedom comes, comes through. Like there's amazing interior design firms that do all kinds of work, which traditionally could be considered architecture, but like they don't use that word, and they, they charge better. They, they have a better ability to, to collaborate and to hire different kinds of folks.

P They're, you know, not to say that interior designers is better as a whole, but like, they're, it's, it's, they're definitely not bound in that, in that, in that sort of way. There's plenty of interior designers out there who are also terrible, but, but you begin to see now, and I think that hopefully what WeWork did was to make it okay to not work just, you know, to not just be at Affirm. And then it's okay to go work at a at a on the on the client side. It's okay to go work at a product company. It's okay to do these things. Not only is it okay, it's actually probably more fun. And then you got to the point, you know, or even very quickly over the arts of time there where like all of a sudden we started to get a ton of resumes, people from people that were just coming out of school. Because for them, you know, the FOMO of seeing all of their friends go into work at, like, you know, Stripe and Slack or whatever, like, what am I gonna do? Go work for like, you know, some 72 year old person who like, like, it just doesn't even understand the world as it is today in the 21st century.

P And so it just like the, the lack of connectivity there or the, the lack of, of context in a lot of those companies and a lot of those firms was, was, was just so significant that you walked into them and it, it already felt, it already felt like dated. I mean, I would even, I won't say it publicly, but I would even go as far as to say that even some of the younger generation that like still got caught up in that sort of 20th century model, you walk into those companies today and they still feel they, even though partnership isn't that, isn't that old. Right. And so, you know, I think it's, I think it's a scaling problem. I really do. You know, I think boutique firms do awesome work. And I think that, you know, as long as they treat their employees and their customers have like, well, like that's, that's totally fine. But I think that when you go into the tens and hundreds and even thousands of people, you have some real issues to have to try to work out because feeding that machine is not easy.

P And even with all of the best of intentions, it's a, you know, it's a hard thing to do. So either, you know, go into, so like you have to go into parallel fields, you gotta get into more strategy, you have to get into into more technology. Like there are companies out there that are doing really amazing work there and to sort of like expanding their work into, into, into other fields so that, so that the ebbs and flows of physical work, aren't the only things that define them, but there's many who aren't, I think at the core of it all, is it just mostly a lack of creativity? It's like you you've been handed this manual, right? Like professional manual of what you're supposed to do, and you don't even question it. You just kinda like go with it. Like, it's kinda crazy to me. Like, you just, it's like, cool, but no. Like, why, why would we do this? I, this is probably why I, I don't know, I would never probably get invited to anything that has to do with AIA, but like, I don't think that, like, the effort that the whole industry puts on tradition is well founded. I think actually it's, it's quite destructive.

P And I think that it requires a whole reconstruction. And I hope that it happens at some point, but I'm certainly not gonna like wait around for it to happen myself, and I hope that people out there don't either. Like, the world is wonderful, and there's plenty of amazing places to to go do work, including within firms, but it's not the only way. Like, if you ever feel somehow or another you don't fit, you're right. You don't fit. So go somewhere else. It's not you. It's them, 100%.

C 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 enabling better management tools

S Mhmm.

C Because the individual, no matter where they are, 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 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?

U 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.

U 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.

U 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 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.

U 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. 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 another vehicle for us to achieve that goal, but not our only vehicle.

C In closing, I'm pretty sure that we haven't captured every single favorite episode out there. But I hope we've managed to capture the spirit of this series and its progression over time. Janine, what do you want to share with our listeners about crossing this milestone?

B It's very surreal that we've produced a 100 episodes. It's not something that we did all at once, but over a long period of time and many, many, many, many hours of chipping away at the problem we saw and asking questions one at a time. I sometimes panic in the middle of the night when I realize that my voice is out there pontificating and soapboxing. And at other moments, I'm completely amazed when I realized the reach and the impact that the show has had. But overall, I'm just really proud of what we've created and that we found a way to tell a fresh story on practice management that needed to be heard, and I'm so appreciative to everyone out there who's been along for the journey. From a personal standpoint, I just wanna say that this project has helped me build my business. It's allowed me to address some of the answers I've been searching for in my career, and unexpectedly, it's also really helped me heal some of the bruises I gained when I was trying to practice architecture.

C It does seem like our conversation really only happened a few weeks ago, so I can't believe that we're at 100. And as reflecting back on the 99 episodes and this mission to create change really through storytelling, and that we were fortunate enough to meet and exchange ideas with all of these talented architects who also happen to be, some of them, entrepreneurs and innovators, not only within the US, but some of our guests have been global. So it's been great to learn from their perspectives. But most of all, I think what I realized through all of this is that we are definitely not alone in this way of thinking, that there is a whole community of others out there committed to doing the work to expand what it means to practice architecture and to change how we've been practicing, and at least tuning in each week to learn more about how they can be chain makers within their own firms and practices when it comes to doing things differently and really moving the needle on the status quo.

B So some of you may be wondering what's next, So we wanted to outline kind of a couple of thoughts there.

C We're gonna take a cue from some past guests on mental health and take a break through the holidays. And while we're at it, we would love to encourage everyone else to do the same, to take some time to rest and recuperate. I know that's a busy time of year for many people at the end of the year, but it's also important to take care of yourself through this time.

B And if you are looking for content during that time when we're away, we will be releasing some of our favorite past episodes to fill the gap so you can look forward to that on a weekly basis while we're gone.

C We've introduced a lot of new formats through the podcast. If there's any type of new format that you would like us to try out, any new speakers that you would like us to bring on, feel free to reach out. One of the things that I hope that our listeners have learned through this episode is that it really makes our entire week when we hear from you because it means that somebody else is listening on the other side. Leave a review on your favorite podcast app if it allows for that, like Apple Itunes. And also, Janine and I are actively booking speaking gigs for 2023. So if there's anything that we've covered in the podcast that you would like us to speak to, or if you'd like to bring both of us along to help you moderate a conference, get in touch. Thanks again for listening. Yeah.

C Thank you all. Happy holidays. Happy new year and see you in February.

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

H Be a

C 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 arch. 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 g ablmedia.com.

C 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.