The Unconventional CEO, The Psychologist Turned Firm Leader

A Welcome to Practice Disrupted, a podcast where we find ways to create new solutions to current challenges while elevating the value of architects. I'm your host, Evelyn Li, an architect who spans tech as an angel investor, start up advisor, and founder of Practice of Architecture. Whether you're a seasoned architect or just starting in the field, this podcast is your gateway to think differently about the role architects play within our global community. Hello, disruptors. Welcome to this week's episode of Practice Disrupted. Today's guest is Ellen Banksy, CEO and CFO of Turner Fleischer Architects Inc, one of Canada's most progressive design studios. Ellen's unique 34 year journey from psychology to architecture leadership is a testament to her transformative vision. At Turner Fleischer, Ellen has redefined their traditional business model, proving that operational teams are the backbone of a successful design practice, not just overhead.

A Under her leadership, the firm has expanded its technological capabilities, integrating advanced tools to digitize both their practice and projects. Ellen is also deeply committed to social impact, fostering a culture of community engagement and continuous learning within the studio. She established TF Academy, which empowers studio members to grow and give back in meaningful ways. Today, we'll explore how Ellen's diverse background and innovative leadership have driven Turner Fleischer's success, and how she continues to challenge the status quo in the architecture industry. Let's dive into lessons Ellen has learned throughout her impressive career, and how she's shaping the future of architecture practice. Hi, Ellen. Welcome to Practice Disrupted. We're so happy to have you here.

A Thanks for joining us.

B I'm really happy to be here as well.

A Now we've just read your intro and your bio. So obviously you have a very unique perspective coming into your position as CEO at Turner and Fleischer. But is there anything else that it would be good for our audience to know or to supplement your bio or just anything you're looking forward to here in the near future as we enter the last quarter of the year already?

B Yeah. I guess something that I always like to share is my focus is I work really hard, but I also play hard too. And I always set a adventure activity goal for myself every year. And I I climb mountains and I hike and I set something that I have to train for and do. I've climbed Kilimanjaro. I've done Machu Picchu. I I did Mapucal in Morocco last year. So I'm excited to think about what my adventure for this year is going to be.

A So have you have you accomplished your goal for for 2024 and you're looking to 2025? Or Yeah. So what did you do this year?

B 2024, I did, was my 60th birthday, and I started it by climbing Mount Tukal in Morocco, which is the highest mountain in Northern Africa. And I ended it by doing the w track in Patagonia. So I booked it because it was 60.

A Wow. And congratulations. So you are not only the CEO, but you're the CFO of, Turner and Fleischer. And you've been there for over 34 years, but you have a non architectural background for all intents and purposes.

B Yes. Yes.

A How did you come to Turner and Fleischer? Help us by helping us start at the beginning.

B Absolutely. And I always when I tell this story, I feel old, but I I had worked for 5 years at a computer company, and I have a degree in psychology, but I always knew business was going to be where I would end up. But I was very idealistic in my youth. I moved to Canada because I followed a guy, and I needed a job. And I started as a receptionist in a computer company, and 5 years later, I was running it. So I knew right then that running companies and people and processes was my thing. But the person that I worked for really didn't have values that aligned with mine. And so with a 1 year old baby in my hand, I walked out the door and vowed that I would never do that again, and I would only work for somebody who had values that aligned with mine.

B And, it was hard for me to find a job back then because with a psychology degree trying to convince people that I could run a business, nobody actually cared. And I answered a little ad in the newspaper because we didn't have LinkedIn or anything back then, and it all it said was Peter Turner, architect, accounting. And I think literally with a phone number. And I went in on a snap You're

A paying for every character, I guess. Right? That's exactly

B what it was. It was. For sure. I went in on a Saturday morning, and I met Peter. And within moments, I knew he was a really, really wonderful human being. And he had a box of software on his desk, and it was called wind 2. And it was an architectural ERP system that somebody who had walked out on him the day before, literally, and said, you do this, in frustration. He handed me the box and said, can you do this? And I thought, there's no inventory.

B There's no shipping and receiving and returns and all of that in all of that. I thought it's people. It's just people. It's just time. It's people. I can certainly do that, and that and and it's design. And so I said, sure. And I started on Monday.

B And there was about 12 people in the company at that point, and that's the origin story there.

A So I have to ask the question because he met with him on a Saturday. Was there any hesitancy with you knowing that the leadership of the company that you are going to be working with is meeting with you on a weekend?

B So interesting that you asked that. Not at all. I actually was grateful because my husband was home on the weekend, and I didn't have to figure out what to do with my my son at the time. And I was I was grateful to go in on a Saturday morning. It never even occurred to me that it was a Saturday. Yeah. Yeah.

A And then I also have to ask, so obviously, you have this love of business, but you went and got a psychology degree. So what was the thinking in in that originally?

B Honestly, it was just where my passion was. I love people. I love understanding people. I love interactions with people, how they how they communicate and how they get along. I never wanted to be a therapist or anything, which is why going to grad school, I didn't have the money for it, but I also didn't know what I would have done. And I tell people now that in my role, a psychology degree is probably a big part of my superpower, actually, especially in a professional services industry. We're dealing with people. Right? With that's what we're dealing with.

B Our clients are people. How do people interact? So I actually think it came came in very handy for what I'm doing.

A Yes. I think you have essentially a degree in a certain level of emotional intelligence and being able to take that and apply it to business, honestly. And the ongoing conversation around the soft skills that leaders need to be successful this year, it's really super relevant.

B Yeah. And I think for me, I had that combination of and I always tell architects that, architect that understands finance and design is like that amazing unicorn of a person that that can really do great things. I loved finance. I loved details. When I was a kid, like, I loved filling out forms. My father always used to think I was really weird, like and that's why he knew I was gonna go into business. So once I got into business, I really, really loved organization. I loved finance.

B I loved the detail orientation of finance. I I'm the kind of person that I need you know, I always told people when I hired them for my finance department, people that work well for me are the people that if you're balancing your bank account and it's 5¢ off, you're not gonna stop till you find it. That was me. And so when I when I started setting up for Peter Turner, his his business, it was an amazing opportunity for me to set something up for a group of people who really didn't know what they were doing because they weren't taught how to run a business. He was very typical. His mom was in there doing the book. She sat with me for the 1st 10 years doing his bookkeeping. And she and I sat in the space together, and and so it was great because I was able to set it up logically how I thought it was supposed to be set up.

B And that did not include any of the industry norms that the architects in the studio formed their perspective of business. So I was able to set it up like a an actual business from day 1, and I just shared this with with my studio this morning. The same business set up from 34 years ago is still how I run the company now. The exact same structure of projects and billing has not changed.

A So then the architect in me has to ask, you know, architects struggle a lot, I think, when they hire external consultants outside of their expertise. Like, we're we're used to working with MEP and civil and structural. Right. But when we bring in people with business backgrounds, we're so prone to saying and getting frustrated with the fact that you don't understand what we're trying to do here. We're special. We're special. We're you're different and unique. You know exactly where I'm going with this question.

A So what was it like for you being this this, yeah, this this young mother? And maybe they didn't know you're a mother, but just like this young person with a psych background in psychology, trying to set this up for them. How did you go through that change management?

B The way the the way the story goes is I did it for a couple of years. The recession in the early nineties was when I started, and we got to a point where they were pushing back against what I wanted to do, and then the recession came. And then there wasn't a lot of work, and I needed a full time job. And so I made a decision to leave, and I left. And I worked in another industry. And when the recession started turning around and business started getting busier again, Peter realized that he actually needed me because he actually didn't know how to run the business and, came back to me and said, would you come back? And at the time, I said, well, I'm not I'm not ready to come back, but I will work for you at nights and on weekends. And so I worked my day job, and then at night and on weekends, I worked for Peter. And I continued to set up his business and provide him the support until I was ready to go back because by that point, there were a few other partners in, and I could see sort of where the business was coming out of the recession and new sectors they were getting involved with, and they were actually doing some really cool things.

B And so then I leveraged my opportunity to say, I will come back, but I will only work 3 days a week because at that point, I had 2 young kids. And this is what I wanna make and this is what I wanna do, and that's how I went back. And really, from there on, I knew that it was up to me to define how I was going to work with them and how they were gonna work with me. And as I continued to prove the model successful, it became harder and harder for them to refute what I was trying to do.

A That's amazing. And I, I think what's also what I hope our, my younger listeners would especially tune into is that you were obviously in a position where the hiring manager felt that they wanted to bring you, like, you were the right individual to bring onto the job, But that also placed you in a position to negotiate that setup with them. And I feel like so many architects, they ask questions about, like, what they can ask for. And I, you know, the first thing that I have to tell them is you, well, one, you don't know what they will say yes to unless you ask at all. So I appreciate that the negotiation process that you went through.

B I think and and what I tell young people today is you have to be confident in what you know you can do. And even if you're not a 100% sure, don't let them know that, but be confident that you're gonna try your best to make it happen. And and you have to have faith in yourself more than even you have to have faith in them, and they have to believe that you believe in yourself. And so it was it was a process. It was a process to get to the partner table. It took me 8 years. I tried 4 times. And I I just as I was trying, I kept building and building and building until it became unassailable that they needed me at the partner table in order to continue to grow and develop what I had built.

A Let's talk about that. And, you know, in parallels that kind of a little bit of your own resilience, see, I would imagine. Because I think, you know, a per like, I've I've definitely known people that are like, well, if you don't want me there, I'm gonna go some somewhere else. So, one, what is it that made you want to continue to pursue that again and again four times over?

B You know, I love and I still love what I do. I loved the people, and I loved what we were building. And I have been known to be, you know, called, you know, like a dog in a bone. Like, I just don't give up. And and so the harder it was, the more I fought, the more I fought, the more I wanted it, the more I built. Because at their even though I wasn't a partner, I had all of the ability to make the decisions. So I had a lot of autonomy in what I was doing and what I was building. And at the last go round, I had decided that if I didn't get it, I was leaving, and I had actually carved out another career path for myself.

B So I had made a decision way back then in 2,008 that if I didn't make partner, I was gonna consult. I was never gonna build another business again, but I was gonna consult because I know I knew my model was successful, and I knew there was a need in the industry for this model. And so I built my network and went back in for the last time with a lawyer by my side. I it was there was no gonna be no other time but the last time, and they realized I I meant what I said. And and it was actually okay. I actually there was a part of me that thought consulting was it was gonna be fascinating. And I had 3 little kids at that point, and I was like, I could set my own schedule. I could go when I wanna go.

B I wouldn't be ultimately responsible for anything. I could just go in and out, and I think that was really what they saw, that it it didn't matter to me at that point. It would have been sad and I would have been, you know, upset that it didn't work, but it gave me the leverage to create something new that seemed exciting.

A They saw what you were up to and they they realized that you were indispensable because now now you're CEO and and CFO. What changes are you most proud of when you think about the the kind of the different transformations? And maybe we can, you know, start with 1 and walk through a few of them. But what's your most favorite story to kinda tell about the things that you have implemented?

B I feel like my what I am most proud of is what I've done actually in the last 5 or 6 years. So up until then, I was doing almost everything by myself. So I didn't have an HR team. I didn't have a marketing department. I didn't have a digital department lead. I didn't have for sure, I didn't have knowledge management. So I was doing it all. I had a finance team.

B And then as we grew over a 100 people, I realized I can't keep this altogether. This is gonna blow up in my face. And so I brought my CTO in first, and that was the day before we went remote in the pandemic. So I went into a pandemic with a 120 staff with no HR. So my HR leader was the next person that I brought in, and what I'm most proud of is now the depth of my operations teams and the way that I always knew that the model was flipped for me, that it wasn't a model where I never thought of overhead cost as operations cost as an overhead burden. I never thought about that. Utilization is not a word that anybody that works in our studio even knows or understands, but what I'm most proud of is now I've got incredibly deep operations teams, and the model still works. And the operations teams are the foundation of our studio, and what they are doing and the power that they have to provide the designers with the time to focus on design is what I'm most proud of in the way that it has all played out.

A What is this mindset that you've carved out? Because, you know, I even talk to a lot of partners that talk about how how many billable hours that they have, right, which is another way of talking about utilization. So how have you created this kind of flipped mindset that is an unusual in in this space?

B Because I've set this up like a a business, and so our financial process is based on a very strong business model. Right? So we sell time at the end of the day. Right? We we're we're using our knowledge and our skill to create drawings and buildings and all of that, but we sell time. That's what we do. And our business model allows us to very efficiently bill the time, understand where it's spent, propose our fees properly, ask from for additional services with sign off before we just go ahead and do work, understand our WIP. All of those basic concepts are how we're successful. We are not gonna be successful by telling somebody you have to be 90% billable, and if you're not, that's like, you know, a red mark or a whatever. And we want to allow our studio members to have access to learning programs so that they can develop their skills.

B We want a digital department that is adding operational efficiencies. That to me is the way that you do it, and when you have members of your studio who are learning and growing and excited by the work that they do and want to be together doing it, they do great work without billable targets.

A Have you figured out a way to eliminate time sheets yet?

B No. Because you can't. I just I just got this course today to we have an academy here, and I teach a course called the Businesses Art Studio from Time Sheet to Collection. And I say to my students that, you know, they walk everybody hates time sheets. Everybody hates timesheets. And my goal from my lesson is when they leave, that they will be doing their timesheet with intention because they understand the impact. And my my presentation starts with every single person in our studio participates in the business of our studio because the business of our studio is selling time and the time sheet is the basis of it. And our time sheet is we have four levels of a work breakdown structure and a 5th level on top of it.

B So for every 15 minutes that you work, you have to enter it down to 5 levels, and you have to write a very detailed comment. So it's a lot of work, but if they understand what we're doing with that and how we work it through our whole process, when they do it, I'm hoping they do it with more intention because they know they're making a difference.

A K. I just had to ask because that was literally the bane of my existence in any well, in in in any consulting group, and it was, like, the most freeing thing when I went in house Yeah. To a technology company, which is obviously very structured very business wise very differently.

B Yes. Yes. You you can't get around it. And when I meet companies that don't do it and say they can't do it, then we talk about what is their success financially as a business. And it is a 100%, the delta. And not only do my my my studio members do timesheets, but they have to be submitted and reviewed and approved by their manager by end of day Friday every single week because my project managers are in the system reviewing the entries for accuracy at the beginning of the following week because we believe data is everything. And so how do you know how you're doing on a project or a budget if you don't know how someone's doing on executing the task that you thought it was gonna take them 6 hours to do? And maybe they did it in 4, and maybe they did it in 8. But our fees are budgeted from hours down to the task level.

B So you can't get that combined understanding if you don't enter the time to the same level.

A I agree. I do hope that for architects' sake, for consultants' sake, that, you know, the the AI the AI gods out there are putting together something that helps, like, this is everything that's going on in your screen, and I know exactly where to put your time to and That

B would be that would be amazing. But we also have we've created some really awesome Power BI dashboards to help our studio members find the right, like, code and portion of the w b s. Like, everything we can possibly do. And you can, you know, you can copy time sheet from week to week, and oftentimes, you're doing similar type things from week to week. So we have we've leveraged our digital team as much as we possibly can to automate where we can.

A So you mentioned the academy. Is that, like, another thing that you're proud of that you've implemented?

B So yeah. So our TF Academy is something I'm super proud of. Started in 2015 because I saw the need to connect who I call the Grays, which are the people who have more experience, with the Greens, who are people who are newer to the industry, to give them a way to share knowledge with each other. The Grays had the industry knowledge and the Greens had the technological knowledge. And as we all know, there's there's a lot of impetus to get farther ahead in your knowledge and your career faster, but where are you gonna do it? You're gonna go to night classes, And when new software programs, like back then, Enscape was coming out, well, there were no Enscape classes. So how are people gonna learn how to do Enscape? So people teach each other. And what started out as, you know, putting business cards in a little box for a class that you wanted to take, and we had printed out syllabuses, and is now run by 2 studio members that have masters in adult education. And it's all all of our registration process is automated.

B We've got I don't know, this semester. Semesters are are 6 months long, and I think we've got over 300 individual sessions happening. We have courses, workshops, electives. There's a whole wellness stream in our academy.

A It's literally like a university kind of academy. Wow. I had no idea it was this complex when we talked about it earlier.

B Yeah. No. And, you know, it's interesting because so something also that I'm really proud of is during the pandemic, we went into the pandemic at a 120, a 125, and we came out at 2:50. And that was not planned. Literally, that was not planned because I renovated my studio during the pandemic, and I only put 220 desks in. And I thought that was, like, plenty for, like, a very long time. And I think one of the things I think there were many reasons why we why that happened, why we doubled in growth, but the academy was actually a big part of it because we didn't stop it. We just moved it all virtual, but it was a way.

B So classes happen from 8 to 9:30 in the morning or from 5:30 to 7 at night. Some electives are at lunchtime. It gave people a way to get together and be together and be learning and meet each other, which was really hard to do, obviously, fully remote. And now we're back. We still do we do hybrid in the academy, and it's amazing. People love teaching as much as they love being students in the academy.

A I think it offers so many people an opportunity, like you say, to teach, to learn to speak, to communicate. There's so much learning that I find learning by doing kind of learning by teaching too. Give us a little bit more information about the type of tracks that you're running because I think, you know, so much of professional development and architecture firms I find is focused on the project side. So I imagine you have some of that, but you're a person that is really interested in data management and has a psychology background and is really interested in people and interaction. So so what are some of the other tracks that you have as a part of the academy too?

B Our courses tend to focus on courses happen once a month for 4 months, so that's they are mostly practice related, practice design related, sustainability related, but usually focused on the practice of architecture interior design, experiential graphic design. Our electives are our workshops are smaller and they're more hands on And those are also more practice related and and technology related. So learning softwares, learning coding, learning condo suite design is one of them. We also do intro building code, building science. We bring in experts to teach those electives. And then we have a whole health and wellness stream. And so in the health and wellness stream, we bring in always something around personal finance because I I feel very strongly that that we don't teach it in high school. We don't teach it in university, and it's something that people struggle with.

B We have a multicultural studio, so we have a lot of newcomers to Canada. And so finance is always a big topic, investing, planning. We also have a a huge mental health focus. So we had last week, we had one about decoding anxiety communications. I sat in one yesterday about assert what is assertive communication? So what is passive, what's aggressive, what's assertive? We have a lot of sustainability focus in our electives as well. We do a lot of walking tours. We do a lot of we do forest bathing. I mean, it's

A it's pretty This is wide ranging, it sounds like.

B Yeah. Yeah. It's pretty deep. And, again, it's it's especially in this hybrid culture, it still continues to serve a purpose to bring people together and get to know each other in a different setting.

A What do you say to the firm owners that are hesitant in spending so much time and money developing their their people outside of billable project hours? And there we go again into the utilization. I know.

B I know. And and I I tell people this all the time, and and it's not it's not wasted on me. I'm totally aware that because I'm the CEO and the c CFO, I get to ask myself for money for the programs that I wanna do. And I know that that's part of the reason why I get to implement things. Right? And it's all on me, though. If I if it if it doesn't work, I have to take the the the brunt of that. But I get to I get to do what I feel should be done for our studio. And my partners trust me, and they they know that I am more focused than anybody on the bottom line results.

B So I am going to make sure that whatever we're spending, whatever we're making, it it it balances and we can do it. Right? And I end my I ended my academy class this morning. My last slide is, you know, profit drives growth. People don't like to talk about profit in our industry, but but if without profit, I couldn't have the academy. I couldn't have the social impact that we do. I couldn't have my digital team, I think, is 12 or 14 people now, and I'm proud of the fact that they're 9% billable. Couldn't do it. Right?

A So you've you've alluded to hybrid. Now what were your lessons learned through through the pandemic and the decisions that you made for what return to office and hybrid looks like coming out of the pandemic?

B It's a great question because I can tell you I love working in the office. I love it. I'm here me and my partners are here 5 days a week partly because we love it, partly because we realize now that if we're asking people to come in, we have to be here and be available to help teach and mentor them. There's no point in them coming in if they can't get access to knowledge. But I won't lie. It took me a while to stop lamenting the fact that I wished we could go back to the time when we were all together. It took a while, I'm gonna admit some therapy, for me to get wrap my head around. We're never going back to that.

B And so I have to be able to provide a place where we recognize all desires to work in any capacity and ensure that we're providing the support and the culture. Like, we have people that come in, lots of people that come in because they like being here, because it's an environment that they want to be in. And I think that's really important. You have to be intentional, and it's not about, you know, just the happy hour. We do that too. But it's it's really to me, it's about the the collaboration and and the opportunities to learn.

A How has your use of technology and how teams communicate with one another changed at all? Has it changed at all?

B Oh, yeah. I mean, so the problem of 220 desks and 250 people, that was real. How do we do that? And we wanted our studio members have to come in 2 days a week. If you're a project manager, you need to come in 3, And if you're a manager and associate, you need to come in 4. Everybody that wants to come in 4 or 5 can get their own desk if they would like. We had to find a way to desk share and then therefore share technology. So that was the first piece of coming back was figuring out how to how to share one computer effectively, powerfully so that people weren't losing speed because that wasn't something that made them happy if they had to share a computer, but their work lagged. So that whole piece, absolutely.

B We also because we've got a digital department with the depth that we have, I'm so proud of the fact that we have 2 dedicated software developers on our team at this point. And what that has allowed us to do in the last year and a half is automate many of the workflows that required the exchange of information from person to person. So I like I like to use an example. We are the prime consultant a lot of times. So structural, mechanical, and electrical are submitting invoices to us. And, you know, maybe it's about 350 to 400 of these invoices a month. We used to, you know, pass them to the PM and we'd have to review them and then they'd sit on their desk in the old days.

A Literal paper passing. Yeah.

B But then they would, but then they would sit in their email and then, you know, if you're not here and you can't say, hey. Where is that? So all of those types of processes, our software developers have created custom applications for. So everything is submitted in a form and then passed from person to person within this app. You can see at any minute where it is. You don't have to ask anybody. It's there. And if you haven't gotten it back, you message them in this form. And so almost any workflow that requires approval has a has a form now.

B And that really like, I can sit wherever I am in the world, and I can approve hold and write off forms. I can approve purchase orders, and everybody immediately gets that information and can continue doing their work. And if we didn't have dedicated software developers, we would never have been able to do something like that.

A How do you attract those type of individuals to work at an architecture firm?

B Because the depth of our digital opportunities is so it's it's so expensive, they get to play. They get to learn. They get to work with really smart people doing really cool things. And the entry point is it's easy. So it does you don't have to be a seasoned software developer to come into this because a lot of the things we're developing, not to say they're not complex, but they're not well, they actually, they didn't start out as complex. Now they they just developed our own scheduling app for us because we were using a shared Excel spreadsheet that, you know, 250 people were taught like, it was bad. So now we have an app for scheduling, and so all 250 people are scheduled within their own app. And now they are creating a fee proposal app for us.

B So this is probably the most complex app that they've created. So our massive Excel spreadsheet where we budget by our task codes within our phases and create our fees, they are now creating an app for that. And that's definitely the biggest lift that they've done so far. But, yeah, we don't we don't have a problem attracting people to our digital team, and our digital team probably has the lowest turnover in the studio because they get to do really great things. And, again, they're not bound by being billable or not.

A I often talk about alternative career paths and you kind of flipped it on its head for me because you were talking about alternative career paths within what has historically been a traditional practice. And a lot of what I also struggle with is these individual contributors and architecture firms who wants to individual contributors like, in just, I'm just trying to put it in context for take it out of tech speak and into architecture speak. Like the BIM managers or the marketing managers who don't necessarily want to ever manage a team, but they just kinda wanna work cross functionally across a lot of teams. So how have you set up opportunities for success for those individuals in your firm?

B So now we have a lot of opportunities because our our ops teams are so deep. So our marketing team has 6 people, and we've got a a wide variety of different roles there. So it's not And the same with our digital. We've got levels in our digital. So there's career paths within all of our ops teams that are very clearly defined. In fact, this year, we just went through a process where we wrote a role description for every role. We never had that before, and we leveled everybody. We have transparent pay bands now, and so everybody knows where their career path can take them.

B And, you know, we like to look at it as sort of like a subway map where they can get off at an exit and try something else out. And if it doesn't work, they can come back and then try something else out. So an example of our most recent career path that we're just in the middle of rolling out is a practice adviser. So we have 2 very, very senior people with the title of practice adviser. So they review drawings. They that's all they do, and it's quality control. They mentor. They train.

B They take people to site. That's the full that's what their role is. But we need more for the size of the practice. And we knew that we needed a way for people earlier in their career who may decide that's what they wanna do. Like, they're done in projects. They wanna stay in architecture, and they're obsessed with quality. So now we've got this new career path that starts at the project manager level. So you can choose to be a project manager, You can choose to be a practice adviser, and the other alternative career path we're just rolling out is you can choose to be a design lead.

B So you can you can make that pivot after the job captain level to whatever area you are more interested in. And so it's really helping us not be so linear because before it was, you know, senior designer, job captain, PM, manager. And and, you know, not everybody wants like you said, not everybody wants to manage people, but you don't wanna feel like you can't get anywhere. So all of these new paths, you could end up as a partner in any one of these paths. And the same thing with our operations teams. There's clear paths all the way up for all of the teams and all of the roles.

A You've opened up other doors to partnership that you didn't have when you were going into partnership, essentially.

B There was no way I was gonna replicate what happened to me because I truly believe that the best partner groups are the most diverse because you need alternate ways of thinking. You need even within architects, you need architects that are more, you know, financial focused. You need designers, really great design focused. You need business developers. If your whole leadership group looks the same, you're never gonna change and grow.

A Well, let's go off of that change and change and grow. So you were 250 post pandemic, so what are you now?

B We're still having to be honest, it's taken us a while to kinda settle into 250. When we came out of the pandemic, we didn't even realize we were 250. And so a lot of what we did with the role descriptions and the leveling was really how do we function as a studio of that size. So we're we're staying in that lane right now. We kinda like this lane.

A The interesting thing is all all the things I see coming out of Gen z, the ask, the understanding what their career path is, understanding, like, pay transparency, I think is, is huge. Not only from a personal growth standpoint, but actually from an equity standpoint and understanding what everyone's getting paid across the board. Did you ever throughout this process discover any inequities that you had to kind of write? And then how do you have those conversations? Do you always level people up? I've been talking to some, some firms that they realize that the pay equity is so great and like to actually make it work with what they're bringing in, they have to kind of level, like, have honest conversations about loving leveling people down a little bit.

B This is really, really great question. So we hired so I've got an amazing people in culture team now. They're deep. There's there's 8 of them, I think, and they're awesome experts in how to do this and have taught me a lot. But we hired a consultant to go through the process of pay job evaluations and pay bands and leveling, and it was a year long project that we finalized on March 27th this year. And he said to me, I've never had a client who pulled the trigger on absolutely the whole thing. And it was a lot of money, but if you're gonna do it, you have been for me, if I was gonna do it, I had to do it. And the way that I look at it is it's an investment in the future of the studio.

B And if we didn't make that investment and it's it's, you know, it's impacting our financial results this year. There's no question. It was it was big. We honestly leveled everybody up, but we had to. I couldn't live with myself if I knew and didn't do it. And, personally, for me, I I would rather shrink the company than look anybody in the eye and say I'm sorry, but I might even have to level you down. It just didn't feel and the other thing that was I'm not proud of and it just kinda happened, we we had pay bands issued when I first brought people and culture in, but we only did it for the architects and the designers. We didn't do it for the operations people.

B And here I am, an ops person, we were just so focused on the architects, the architects, the art the interior designers. Right? So now everybody across the studio and it was really interesting to go through the process because, you know, if you're a level 4 in marketing, you're in the same band with a level 4 in architecture. And that was hard for some people to really take in and and understand and own. And it was fascinating, the conversations that our group who we our team who we brought together to do this was people from all areas in the studio. And I'm so grateful to be on the other side at this point and know that there is really true transparency and equality across the studio and opportunity.

A Opportunity. And I think there's, like, that huge mindset shift that you just kind of mentioned. I feel like, you know, and you you even admitted to it, you know, as as your own mistake, but, like, the focus on architecture and interiors and then the defocus on, like, all the supporting functions that a firm honestly needs to to survive. But but in many firms are can they consider themselves kind of second class citizens, they don't have a voice at the table. So it's it's just so refreshing to kind of hear that the you guys were forced almost into having these conversations. And really, what does it mean to put these people at the same level?

B We made it a conscious decision to do it. And even today, I was talking to my communication specialist and and she said, why did you use the word overhead burden? That's a horrible term. I said, but that's a term. That's a term. It's overhead burden. It's a thing. And it's not a thing we talk about, but it's a thing that is talked about. Right? And so many places and this is what I tell people because I think some of your listeners may be like, oh, well, she's been doing this and she's got a big team and blah blah blah.

B What I tell people is start with 1. Start with 1. So if you wanna make a, any team, but let's say a digital team, you've got probably 4 or 5 people that are designers that are doing maybe 20% or supposed to be doing 20% of their week focusing on digital because they happen to be interested. Right? I meet thousands of these people when I talk. Take that 20% from 5 people and hire 1 and start that's how I started. I didn't start with 13 or 14. I didn't start with 8 people in people in culture. Start with 1, and then make that work, and then grow it, and then grow it, and put the processes in place and the communication.

B Right? So everybody needs to be like, I hear it all the time too. Oh, leadership would never go for that. Right? You have to have the buy in from the top down, and I realized that it's hard in a lot of a lot of companies to gain that collective buy in. But, again, it goes back to what we talked about in the beginning. You have to be confident that the results you're going to show are going to make it work their while to trust you to take that risk to do it. Right? And the risk for 1 isn't that great.

A I have a question. Man. I I every time I talk to you, I was like, we need to we could have multiple lunches on this. Because it's just so fascinating to me how you've you've kind of set everything up and and continue to evolve things. But one of the interesting things is that you said at the very beginning of this episode was, you know, you you set up the business way back when in, 34 years ago. And, you know, my business head keeps telling me, like, we are like, my my business is I'm constantly pivoting. I'm constantly looking for opportunities. So what is that foundation that you've created that lets you do more moldable stuff on top to ensure that you're you're growing and changing the way you need to do?

B So the the the foundation, again, is the way we track and build time. That that's the foundation. That's it. And and and people wanna make it so much more complex, so much more complex than it is. We have to look at it this way to do this. It's so confusing. I can't get into my system. You know, my ERP doesn't work.

B My PMs can't get in. We can't, can't, can't, but it's really a simple model. It's just how do you track and build time effectively. And if you can do that, you're gonna then make some money that's gonna allow you to pivot and grow and adapt because everything that you do in terms of growth and change costs money. And if you have them you have the I don't ever have to worry about changing the infrastructure because it works. And I know it works. If it didn't, I would have changed it. And but it it it does.

B And so that allows me and that's what, you know, people always say to me, how could you be in the same place for 34 years? Like, how could you still like, that's insane. Right? So a huge percentage of my staff weren't even born when I started.

A You hear a lot less. I mean, I think it's just a generational thing. Right? I'm I'm in software engineering. The average turnover of an engineer is, like, 1.75 years.

B So Right. But for me and what I tell my studio members, because obviously, we're all in the same, you know, era. Right? I have I think it's 40% of my staff or 25 to 35. Like, it's a I'm it's big. But as long as for me, as long as I was changing and growing and learning and having fun and doing it with great people, I still get up in the morning and most days, you know, I'm psyched. Like, what I'm I'm excited about what I'm coming in to do, and we spend more time at work than we really do in the other parts of our lives. So for me, it has to be enriching and fulfilling. And if it is, why leave

A it? Looking back at your entire journey with Turner and Fleischer, if you were to think about your I don't know. Like, when you, when you just got asked back in, is there anything, or or if if I was a a young professional at the beginning of my career, is there anything that or or just trying to start a firm, is there anything that you would have done a little bit differently?

B So if I could change one thing and tell my younger self what I could have done differently, it would have been not to think that I could do everything by myself for as long as I did. To realize delegation is actually a really awesome thing, and bringing in people and building a team to help you allows you to achieve more faster and better.

A Hi, disruptors. Thank you for joining us today on an episode of Practice Disrupted. If you like the content for today's show, you can find all of our past episodes over on practice of architecture.com/podcast. Be a part of the conversation by joining me, our speakers, and other disruptors in our community at of architecture.com/community. Our social media handle is practice of arch. That's practice of a r c h. We'd love to hear from you, so feel free to drop us a DM and say hello. Tune in next week for a new conversation on change in the profession.