Understanding True Innovation in Practice

A Welcome to Practice Disrupted, a podcast where we find ways to create new solutions.

B To current challenges while elevating the value of architects.

A I'm your host, Evelyn Lee, an architect.

B Who spans tech as an angel investor.

A Startup 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. My guest today, Dr. Simone Ahuja, didn't begin her career as an innovation strategist. She started as a dentist. But after being invited by the CEO of Pepsi to give a talk and and discovering there was a fee involved, she was hooked.

A Today she's a sought after speaker, bestselling author, and founder of Blood Orange, where she helps fortune 500 leaders and teams innovate smarter without overcomplicating the process. Simone is a co author of the international bestseller Jegad Innovation and the author of Disrupt It Yourself. Both centered on making innovation accessible, practical, and resourceful. She's worked with brands like Target 3M and Stanley Black Decker, bringing a refreshing approach that blends her research and frugal innovation with her background as an improv comedy teacher. In our conversation, we explore why innovation isn't just for the R and D lab, how constraints can spark creativity, and what leaders can do to make problem solving a discipline that is practiced across the organization. We also connect her work back to architecture, discussing how firms can move beyond innovation theater to real, tangible change.

B Welcome, Simone, to the podcast. It's so great to have you. Thank you for joining us today.

C Thanks. It's fun to reconnect here.

B So we met at the Leadership Summit last year and I know you have a personal connection to the architecture industry, but for those who don't know, could you tell us a little bit about just your connection to architects? And then the follow up would be what are you doing now?

C Yes, actually, that was possibly one of my favorite keynotes ever to come into a room full of architects. I know they're a tough crowd, but I think I could relate because I grew up with an architect. That's my dad. And so I was really happy to share the story of what I learned from him growing up about architecture, about design, about stuff, systems, about people, about influence. And in, in researching for that keynote, I actually unearthed some old articles about my dad from the 60s and 70s and his journey from India to Carnegie Mellon where he got his master's in urban design. And it was fun to. To. To talk about that with everybody at that leadership summit as well as then show him the video later.

C He was pretty happy about that and he was like, thanks for doing that. So that was very meaningful in more ways than one.

B Well, I am so glad that we had a chance to catch up because your talk was just really about innovation both inside a company, well, especially inside a company. And what it means to truly innovate within a company. So why don't you tell us a little bit more about what you are working on these days.

C Yeah, so I think one of the most fun things that I'm working on always is resourceful problem solving. I talk a lot about innovation and I shared a concept with all of you last year at the leadership summit called Jugad Innovation. I'll definitely happy to talk about that today. It's something I learned about in India. It's about how constraints drive creativity, which I know everyone who is connected to design understands increasingly. Mostly I work with Fortune 500s. I do work with associations as well. One thing I've learned though is broad brush.

C Innovation and innovation related problems are the same no matter the size of your organization. If you're three people, if you're 500 people, typically there are lots of question marks about what is innovation? And I like to now call it resourceful problem solving or creative problem solving. Innovation, I've realized over time starts to feel very lofty and it feels like something that's inaccessible or something that's not what we do. As opposed to how I like to define innovation is how do we add new value. And that value can show up in a lot of different ways. That value can show up as saving time that could show up as increased accessibility, reduced friction in any number of ways. It's always about newness, but it might be new to your industry or a new application rather than something that's brand new to the world, which is very rare anymore. So that's, that's what I'm working on in terms of organizations.

C It's really rethinking about how do we make big problems small so that more people feel like they can be in the game. You know, I think, I think at the heart of this is the democratization of innovation and better problem solving so we all know how to do it better. And then the second thing I'm working on is a new book. So that would be my third book about how do we take these management practices and ideas about innovation and apply them to real life, including family life. I have two kids, one is six. My daughter Zara is six and my son Nico is 10. And it's great fun and a whole bunch of chaos and every once in a while I'm like, why are we doing this? Why? There's no, you know, there's no real roadmap. And so the idea is how do we create a little bit of structure with some flexibility so that the things that we have to do that aren't always the most fun are done well, everybody gets aligned and then we have more space for the fun things that we all want to do.

C It actually works pretty well. That's what I'm writing about in the third book.

B Amazing.

A So speaking of your book and speaking.

B Of innovation, which is the first book you co authored, what I loved about that is it was really about, it's interesting how you said innovation is so lofty because it was kind of about what is frugal innovation. So can you talk to us about how you're making innovation or resourceful problem solving accessible? Go dig a little bit deeper into the democratization of innovation at all scales.

C Yeah, that was a really eye opening experience for me to go to India and to capture these sort of at that time kind of business case studies. How are people innovating or solving problems even if they don't have a ton of resources? Now interestingly, that was commissioned by Best Buy at the time we put that up on PBS and it wasn't because they were trying to go into the India market. It was more, we just want to understand how does it actually work. And that was how I started this research. And I learned in going to different regions and studying, not just sometimes it was corporate folks, but a lot of times it was the grassroots entrepreneurs and they were facing severe resource constraints. Like it's not about I don't have headcount or I don't have, you know, budget. It's like I don't have formal education, I don't have access to affordable finance or even water or electricity all the time. But I'm still solving these problems and it was so remarkable.

C And that's when I learned this word called Jugaad. And I saw it all over in India and you see it all over the world. Actually it's not, it's not unique to India. It's just I happen to be studying there. Jugaad innovation is called Jtinho in Brazil it's called ZIJU Chang in China it's called Systemdi even in France. And I think that the bootstrapped entrepreneurs in the United States would call it kind of like Packing or diy. I mean, there's so many different words for jugaad. And I think, you know, the biggest realization I had is it's not only for informal environments.

C You can take that mindset and the process, which frankly I learned from grassroots entrepreneurs, typically very poor people in India and these other grassroots innovators around the world, and bootstrapped entrepreneurs in the US and farmers. And I realized this is a lot like design thinking. Actually what they did, it was very much rooted in empathy, usually a problem they face themselves or in their community. They would create based on that, some kind of low resolution prototype. They test it out with their very limited resources and they would iterate based on what they learned. And it wasn't until years later that I actually learned about design thinking, which of course ideal brought into the fore. Right. And so I think it's really remarkable because it's not just that anyone can do this.

C If you have the right mindset and you have this sort of loose process, it's light structure, but there's enough room to flex in it. I also think the remarkable piece is that when I started introducing this concept in let's say a Fortune 100 organization, the ideation piece, at first years ago, it was like, oh, how do we think like this in this more proliferative way? And thinking about doing things differently or even if we don't have a lot of resources relatively right. Everyone feels budget constraints differently. I've been in the Silicon Valley a lot recently, they feel it out there too. So it's all relative. But I think that the idea piece is one thing, but then how do you execute on it? How do you actually get from idea, make sure that idea actually has worth or value and then map out the steps to execute on it in a way that's not too risky, that doesn't require a ton of resources, and then lets you learn along the way and adjust as you need to. That probably sounds familiar to you, Evelyn.

A It sounds familiar to me.

B I'm sure it sounds familiar to our listeners, but I do think you said a lot. And now I have so many questions. It feels to me like a good point to kind of transition to your second book, which is Disrupt it Yourself because you talked about this mindset shift that kind of has to happen. But it's not only mindset shift. You can't just complain about things, you actually have to motivate things to action to create change. So do you want to talk a little bit about this idea of disrupting it yourself and how it transitioned into your second book.

C Yeah. So I'll start with one thing, which is scarcity isn't a bug, it's a feature. And I think when we think about it that way, then it's like, and we remove this idea that, oh, I have to have this title or these resources, all of a sudden I can see myself in the game. And then we see that resourcefulness wins out over resources many times, especially when you're getting started. So do we need sometimes resources to scale up and grow? For sure. But oftentimes it's, it's helpful to start up with fewer resources, especially in organizations that are hierarchical or maybe sort of stuck in their ways. Because once you start dedicating resources to something, people start keeping an eye on things too. So it's harder to stay under the radar.

C But I think it's also interesting that, you know, 84% of executives say, you know what? We need innovation. But 6% of those executives will say that they're really satisfied with the process they have in place or a way forward. And just adding onto that, I would say a lot of leaders that I talk to of small and medium sized organizations, very large organizations, they all say they want better problem solving and more innovation. And. But there are a few key problems inside of it. So one is sometimes they want to help, but they don't know how. There's often a really inconsistent definition of innovation in the organization. What does it really mean to innovate to all of us whose role is that? And then the other thing is sometimes they know how to do it.

C All the things are in place. They even maybe have an innovation strategy that's connected to their core business strategy. But they're like, I don't have time to handhold or help people through this. And that's usually because there isn't a structure or a process in place that can be passed on to people so that it's sort of like I can be very light touch. And so the idea of disrupt it yourself was take those Jugad style ideas, take those creative ideas that are really, really closely connected to user need, whether that user is somebody who's residing or using a dwelling or some kind of building, or whether it's internal in your own business and really address their needs and use a simple process to get there that doesn't require a ton of resources so that you can gather data along the way, so that you can create some proof points and sort of make your case for why you should be the one getting involved.

B Let's shift this a little bit towards architecture and architects. I mean, I feel like there's this notion of true innovation and innovation theater. I feel like architects, when they apply innovation, they apply all of these creativities to their projects, but then they complain about all of the business constraints that a traditional practice tends to have. We're underpaid, we're overworked, we have a lot of burnout because of that. What are the biggest misconceptions when you talk about innovation and how do you begin to work it out at the organizational level, yes, we're innovative. At our product level. How do we begin to think about that and apply that same mindset at the organizational level?

C I think the biggest misconception about innovation is that it has to be massive. That's one. I don't think it has to be massive. I think it has to be about adding value and just staying really focused on adding new value. I think that it can't be the innovation theater like we've talked about before. You know, it can't be about, well, we had a hackathon or we mentioned innovation in our leadership meetings. It has to be something that's more.

B You know, more tangible.

C More tangible, like we have a ping pong table. That's not, you know, that doesn't mean anything. It means, you know, that you're thinking about it. That's not bad. But what you have to do is you have to have that shared definition of innovation. If we all agree that innovation means we want to create more new value for whoever it is that we're serving and what we're doing, that's a great starting point. If we don't have a system or a process, if we don't consider that innovation is a discipline, then we have a problem. Innovation has to be a discipline, especially right now.

C And we need to teach people how to do it. We need to give them a simple approach to do it and let them practice on it, let them test it out. And I wanted to say right now particularly, you know, everybody's talking about uncertainty. This word is not going to go away. And if I think about innovation and the why of innovation, innovation is some of the best training out there for leaders for navigating uncertainty. Right? Because you're really thinking about what problems exist. You're learning how to rigorously prioritize. You're thinking about how do you action your way forward and learn from that.

C You're making a case for why it makes sense to move forward. You're influencing all the things that you need to do to be a great leader of any kind and navigate uncertainty so you can have speed and agility in your process. To me, that's what innovation is and why it's so important. So just to summarize, I think you got to have a really clear definition. You got to have a process and you got to share that with people. Then on the back end, of course, there's some systems, things around that which we can talk about before we go.

B Into the back end. I think one of the biggest problems around the ability to create change within the architecture profession, and quite frankly, other industries suffer from this as well, is the leader mindset. And sometimes there's this gatekeeping mindset too. And I feel like in order for innovation to happen, in order for that process to be enabled, leaders have to be accepting of giving people, their employees more of a voice in the organization. And then how do they action out these new ideas that are coming towards them? One, as a, as a leader, how do I check myself to make sure I am giving space to the employees? And then the flip side would be like, as a young emerging leader, how do I create or help foster a culture of that kind of managing up?

C I think you're right. So it's really interesting. I mean, I always like to say that innovation, I'm very much a proponent of grassroots innovation. But the truth is, if you really wanted to skip scale, it's got to be top down, bottom up, sideways. I mean, that's culture. You have to be able to build that culture. And if you're a gatekeeping leader, you're going to drive your organization into the ground. I mean, that's, that's real.

C And it's faster. It's going to happen faster than ever. It's not to say there aren't guardrails, you know, that you're not going to provide advisory or guidance to your team. But if we don't let the teams who are the feet on the street and share their ideas, share what they're understanding from the environment and try to bring some of those things forward, we're not going to grow into the future. We're going to either fizzle out or die quickly. So I agree with you that some of that ethos has to really come from the top. And if you really are a large organization, you want robust innovation, you've got to have strategy, you've got to have leadership buy in. You've got to have metrics that are saying, hey, innovation isn't just something we talk about, it's actually something that you're Measuring on, because that's important here.

C We have some governance around this. So I think that's really true. I do think you can start small with that, though. You can start with leadership. Saying things like, we were working with one very large client. It felt very overwhelming to them, understandably. And so we made some baby steps. Yes, we were working on innovation strategy, making sure people understood.

C This feeds right up into your business strategy. It's advancing the pillars of your core strategy. But also when you have a monthly meeting with your team, allow 10, 15 minutes at the beginning of that meeting for people to share their new ideas. Not for people to judge them or give feedback, just to share them. Maybe the leader models that by giving an idea and sharing an idea. That seems kind of out of bounds. Maybe they talk about something that they tried but didn't work and what they learned from it. So those are small ways that leaders can actually start to model that and build that culture.

C If you're an emerging leader, I think it can be really hard in higher organizations, but I also think there's a way to do it. We have a worksheet called Recontracting. I'd be happy to share with any of your leaders.

B Oh, that would be amazing.

C Where you kind of reimagine your role as an innovator. And you start out by thinking about, all right, when's the right time for me to approach this? What is. And then how do I actually do it? It's like a mad lib. You just start filling out, what is the problem that it really is like, what's the problem I want to solve? Why do I actually care about this? How am I going to approach this moving forward? So it's not a big, heavy lift for the leader? When am I going to update them? What are the objections that I think are going to come up? When am I going to fill them in, and what is the one thing I can ask them to do to help? That's not so big that it feels overwhelming, but just enough so they feel connected and help me out along the way. So I think there are things you can do. There is a way to map yourself a route to innovation. Usually it starts kind of small, and that's okay.

B So as an emerging leader, is it better to innovate when the house is falling down, or is it better to innovate when you have a lot of space and the business is good?

C That's a great question. So when the house is falling down. So I think I'll use the current time as an example. When the house is on fire or it feels like it's on fire, everyone contracts and everyone goes to what they believe to be core activities. Typically, things like developing people get cut, innovation gets cut. These are big mistakes. If we look at the data around organizations that continue to support innovation in downturns in uncertain times, they are the ones that always come out ahead in terms of growth, in terms of being leaders in their industry. So I would say that it's in the good times is a great place to start.

C Having said that, if you see something, if you identify an opportunity when the house is burning and you can clearly articulate, hey, we've got this burning problem that's new, I've got this way to quickly test out something that I'm pretty sure it's going to help us and map that out. You should give it a try. I wouldn't say you don't give it a try. What I, what I would hope is that people do it in a way that other people can hear. I think one thing people often underestimate about innovation and one thing I've learned and didn't maybe realize early on in my own research and my own work with organizations, is it's so much about influence. If you don't know how to talk to people, like, we use a framework that in user needs and we think about what do people have to do, how do they want to feel, how do they want to be perceived? Well, it's the same thing. If you're a leader and I'm pitching my project here, something that I think is going to be helpful to the organization, I want to pitch it to you leader, not like, I've got this great idea. It's about, hey, let me tell you about this idea that's going to advance this strategy or solve this problem that you have or you told me, or we all agree is important and it's going to increase, whether it's revenue or membership or whatever it is, you start with that.

C And that is a form of influence. So I think in either case, you have to really get clear about who you're talking to, what's important to them and what's important in that moment. So I would say typically it's best to do it in the good times. If you're an emerging leader, I also think there's room for it in hot times, like right now.

B Right.

A So in the good times, when you're an emerging leader trying to manage up.

B How do you create urgency around the need to, to innovate?

C That's a really good question. I think that's where you have to really stick to what is really important to this leader that is urgent to them. And how do I connect that? I'll give you an example. I was working with a large technology firm and I was working with a lot of their designers, innovation team, UX folks and so on. And one of them said something that I thought was so powerful, which was, you know, they wanted to. They were going to a VP for funding and they weren't really talking about revenue growth at all. Now what do you think that VP is measured on?

B Revenue growth?

C Yeah. Right. And so, so the reframe was, listen, this is something new. So we don't know all the answers, but based on these estimates, I think revenue top line growth will be this. I mean, just give some round numbers that speak their language so that you can actually manage up in that way.

B Okay. No, I mean, I think this is such a great life lesson outside of just innovating and how to have your voice heard, especially if you want to be responded to. I feel like I need to make similar mad libs for how to reach out and pitch how you want to be on a podcast episode?

C Absolutely.

B Don't start by talking about yourself. Start about talking about the other person and how amazing their podcast and this episode that relates to the work that you're doing and the voice you can add.

C You probably do this at home. Like I have kids. I mean, if I start talking about why it's important to brush your teeth instead of why we can gamify this and it's going to end in something really fun or an extra book or something like that. I mean, we do it all day long and it's not meant to be manipulative, but it is meant to be streamlined. It's meant to reduce friction. It's meant to advance and build progress.

B I think that's, you know, as you're talking about your third book, I think you need a whole chapter on lessons that I'm teaching my six and my seven year old. That applies in the adult world.

C Yeah. Well, I hope they, you know, I hope they learn some of that. I certainly learning from them because they're a lot harder sometimes than adults. So if I can get them.

B No, but there's so many things that I find myself doing on a daily basis and I'm just like, this is the exact same thing that I tell architects to do all the time.

C You mean at home? The things you do at home? Yes, that's exactly right. So I'm going to interview you for my book so that you can share some of those with me. So we'll find a time for that.

B So Jugad, you says, shows up on in so many different cultures, and they even have different names for it. And you've been telling us that we need to define innovation. How do you define jugaad?

C So jugaad is a word that I learned when people don't look for the resources, they look at what they have around them and immediately start creating solutions based on that. So it's an improvised solution that is based on ingenuity and creativity, and it's using resources that you have at hand to solve an immediate need. And it's not unlike a hack.

B I feel like architecture firms often talk about how thin they are stretched, right? Tight margins, client demands. It's kind of like, keep your heads down, get the project out the door, and then we need to make sure we have the next projects coming in. How, when I'm running like that, where I am already overwhelmed as a leader, do I take a step back and say I need to interrupt this process to figure out if there's a way to do it differently going forward? Like, literally, I feel so many leaders are just like, I can't find the.

C Time you just named. Based on conversations I've had with senior leaders in almost every major industry, the number one problem that leaders have today, which is they don't have time to strategize. I recently heard about the CEO of a Fortune 50 organization getting caught up in an email and the language in an email when a system was going to be down for some X period of time, which is important, but not when that change is about to happen. So people are getting so distracted, there's no time for strategizing anymore. And right now there are so many urgent meetings that are happening about what about this tariff, what about this change? What are we going to do so that I think it has to be halted, though? Because very often if I look at whether it's healthcare or architecture, I always have to ask, are we working to the top of our license right now? Are we doing the things that really matter most? Architecture, for some more than others, often gets to be a race to the bottom. And I think that's a big pain point for a lot of architectural firms is, well, we have to just keep hustling and we have to keep moving because otherwise we're not going to beat out this other firm by, you know, some tiny margin. But I think that, you know, the example that you and I talked About a while ago of MK think that's an example I shared at the leadership summit where I thought was fascinating, they were looking at their business model in a different way and they pulled out the strategy piece and made it its own function so that strategy didn't have to get diluted in that race to the bottom design fee, which it shouldn't be anyway. But I think what I observed or what I understood about that organization is that they ended up creating a function that was generating, you know, significantly more revenue per person than folks in the design function.

C So you've got to ask yourself, will people pay for that? Yeah, if you pull it out of the design bucket, they're going to be more likely to pay for it. So that's exactly what they did. So I think those are the things that we have to think about is how do we deliver our products and services. I think, you know, I always. People often will say, literally, I'll get leaders calling me, say, hey, you're the do better, do more with less person. I'm like, hold on a second. The do better with less person, do less. Just do less.

B Just do less. Yes. What can you stop doing?

C Yeah, what can you stop doing? It's the strategic abandonment. What are you going to get rid of? If I survey leaders today, and I'm seeing this over and over again, do you have a clear strategy? Yes, we do. Does everyone understand it? For the most part. Do you have a clear process for deciding what works and what doesn't? Yeah, most people do. Do you have a clear process for deciding what you will shed, what you will get rid of and abandon? Nope. Very rarely, very rarely is that present. So I think that is so important today. And interestingly, in another, it was like a Fortune 20 in a.

C In the HR COE, and I was working with several senior leaders and everyone kept pointing to one person saying she's the most innovative. She's just, it's just the way she thinks. She has the best ideas and she can execute. And so I went and interviewed her and I said, well, what is it about you? Everyone says you're so innovative. And she said, I set aside time every week. And she had two young kids. She's like, even if I have to go to a hotel or if I just lock myself or in a room with a whiteboard, I set aside time every week to think. And that is one of the most powerful practices out there.

C And in this culture of hyper productivity, we're always trying to maximize and be efficient. Efficiency is totally useless if you're not being effective. In other words, if you're doing things right, but you're not doing the right things, it doesn't matter. So I know it's hard. So I don't, and I don't want to diminish that either. The real pressures that folks are under. I just, I think what I've seen is that when people do create that space for themselves, they're surprised at the results that they have.

B So you're talking about creating space for yourself. I think it's also important to create space for others. Right. Because innovation we just talked about throughout this course can come from all different sources. So as a leader who feels that I need to have all the answers, how do we create what you call distributed innovation and shift from being those gatekeepers we alluded to earlier to actually facilitating more new ideas?

C Yeah, I love that phrase of distributed innovation. It's like distributed manufacturing. It actually reduces risk. It doesn't leave the onus of innovation only on one person. And I think we've seen over the last 10 years or so that leadership has really changed right from top down. I'm going to tell you what to do to more of a guide and more of a coach. And I think if we ask questions, if we create an environment for openness, that is how we're going to create that distributed innovation. Right.

C Ask people for their ideas, give them some flexibility and some space to try things out and test out little things. You know, I was just speaking with someone from a very small association a couple of days ago who was asking, you know, somebody said, you know, I want to try this new tech platform. I think it could really benefit our, our members. And he said, go ahead, take 100 bucks. And really it wasn't much money. Just try it out. Give them that permission. Is actually in some organizations, unfortunately the word.

C I would hope that in an organization that has more of that culture, people would say, look, you trust me, we're all working towards the same goals, maybe not in the same exact ways. I'm going to test this out and share what I learned. So I think it's really about setting the stage for distributed innovation by asking questions, by providing guidance, by not being top down all of the time, giving people the space to experiment and then hearing from them and creating spaces, I think also to learn. I think there's this whole, you know, it's very kind of stale now, a little bit fail fast, fail forward and fail often. And I'm just going to be the one who says nobody likes failing. Even after all that Fail, fail, fail. Stuff like, I don't know anyone who likes it. So just call it learning because that's what it is, right? If you're learning to learn a new language, for learning how to walk, whatever it is, you're going to fall down, you're going to learn some stuff and then you're going to keep going.

C So if I think the other thing that I've seen that's very powerful and many of the leaders that I work with, when we think about, you know, well, they say, how do you build a culture of innovation? And when we start to implement that, we also talk about it as a culture of innovation and learning. So that learning is deep, is closely connected to the mess and the ambiguity and the so called failures that are going to happen in between. And if you have a space where you actually talk about those, I think the wisest organizations can track those so that everybody can learn from them and it doesn't have to be complicated. So I've got one organization started out doing that on a spreadsheet. It's fine. It helps other people not follow the same path if they don't need to or ask the right people questions. It creates a lot of insight. Like I call it in my book ROI is return on intelligence or return on insight as opposed to just investment innovation.

B And we've mentioned this throughout, innovation doesn't have to be expensive. And I actually like your reframe of it as resourceful problem solving. So what are a few ways when you talk about experimenting with frugal innovation that you recommend smaller firms, smaller businesses test out or create innovation around?

C Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Because I think everyone's overwhelmed. I think it's a fabulous question. Everybody feels overwhelmed, everybody's stretched and overworked. Nobody knows, nobody's clear about what's going on right now more than ever. So I think the idea is how do we actually do it? The first thing is I think make it small, you know, make it really tiny so it doesn't feel very overwhelming. So if you have something that's big, break it down until it's something that you can influence and action then and ask, you know, what is the best problem to solve as opposed to I've got the solution. I think it's going to find a cool audience.

C I think one of the things as an exercise that's really interesting if you want to try to change the way you're thinking, is almost like a hundred x exercise. So if you had a problem to solve that you think is a relevant problem, it would really meet the needs of whoever it is you're serving. What would happen if you only had 10% of your budget or 1% of your budget? Then how do you think about solving that problem? You would be really surprised how people on your own team will come up up with ideas that have relevance whether or not, you know, whether you have a typical budget or severely reduced budget. And I think, you know, other things to make the space for the conversations and the experimentation is where is your strategic abandonment list? Like, what's the what I'm what am I not doing list? And some of that could even be if you're a small architectural firm, who are we not working with? You know, one of the things I was telling my partner this year is like, this year for me is about pattern recognition. Like, in our family, we go on some vacations, for example, in the name of family time, and they are awesome. Recently we went on a vacation that was not awesome. Why? There were no other kids around. We had to do all the cleaning.

C I know that sounds very bougie, but that was, you know, when I work a lot. And so when I'm with my kids, I want to be with my kids and not cleaning. I was like, why do we do this? Don't do those vacations anymore. We can go on fewer vacations, but go on the ones where we actually are rested. So that when we are with our time, our kids, it's. It's very focused time. It's not. I'm really exhausted from cooking and cleaning, per usual.

C Right. So what is. What are those? Like, where are the patterns? Who do you want to get rid of in addition to what do you want to get rid of? And that's a hard one. Again, I understand that that's a. It's hard to shed certain types of clients, but often you'll find that a lot of your problems come from a specific type of client or a few people or a few organizations.

B I feel like a lot of the most frugal clients are often the most difficult clients to deal with. Honestly, it's really.

C And it makes sense. I mean, I think that's true in any business because those resources are so big to them. And it doesn't mean you can never service. It just means that you have to take that into consideration in a portfolio of who you serve.

B What is the biggest mindset shift that people can have right now, no matter where they are in an organization, to shift towards opportunity and what's next.

C So I think the optimistic portion of this podcast is right now, there is tremendous opportunity for all. Disruption often brings a lot of opportunity to those who can see it. I think it starts by reexamining with a new lens. You were talking about emerging leaders. What did they see that maybe the rest of us don't see? It starts with asking what happened if we really didn't have any budget but we still had to solve this problem? What are the existing resources that we would use right now? What can we learn from other industries and how they've solved problems that have parallels? And then thinking about how do we make things very small so we can test them out and learn from them?

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 practiceofarchitecture.com podcast. Be a part of the conversation by joining me, our speakers, and other disruptors in our community@practiceofarchitecture.com community. Our social media handle is practiceofarch.

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B Conversation on change in the profession.