351 - Designing the Sky: The Art and Science of Aviation Architecture with Mancini Duffy's John Anthal

Welcome to Listening with Leaders. I'm Doug Noll, lawyer turned peacemaker. I teach executive leaders how to listen to emotions rather than words so that they can become the leaders everyone wants to follow. And I teach those same leaders how to be authentically present, available, and connected to their families despite being insanely busy. I have learned that we are 98% emotional and only 2% rational. Learning how to listen to emotions is, in my experience, the foundational skill of life. Stick around to the end of the show and I'll reveal how you can be on our next guest in 15 to 20 minutes. So let's get started. John Anthol, welcome to Listening with Leaders. You are a principal with the design firm Mancini Duffy, which has offices all over the United States, and you are a specialist in designing aviation terminals and spaces for major airlines. Fascinating work. Got to be doing a lot of thinking about that. Yeah, well, thank you. Welcome. So let's just start off a little bit about your backstory. Tell us a little bit about how you— what— where you are, where you came from, education, and how you got into the aviation business. Sure.

So I'm trained as an architect. I went to the New Jersey Institute of Technology in New Jersey, Newark, New Jersey. I worked for some small firms in my home state of New Jersey, and then I was brought by Christian Giordano over to Mancini Duffy in New York. Coincidentally, it was as a BIM manager position, which is where I help teach some folks in the office how to use a new software. Ah. And I did that for a while and then transitioned back to working on projects.

And you've done some really pretty phenomenal aviation projects. Tell us a little bit about that.

Sure. I honed in on some airport lounges early on in my career with Mancini, and it really interested me. So I began to ask to cultivate more of that work there. We now have probably close to 20 different aviation partners that we work with, major brands that everybody's probably flown on. And we do everything from high-end airport lounges to their operation spaces and even GSE shops and mechanical spaces that they have elsewhere on the airport.

So what makes the aviation work so interesting to you?

For me, it's all about the pieces, right? It— there's a lot of people involved and it's almost like working inside of a watch. Everything has to continually move. It's not an isolated project, right? So all of your things impact other people and other functions and everything needs to continue to move smoothly. So taking those things into consideration makes the project all that more interesting.

I'm a pilot myself, having flown into many airports. Yeah, in a commercial airport and a commercial aviation space, you've got all kinds of stuff going on and you gotta design and build around all that. It just can't stop and say, oh, we're gonna be closed for a year while we fix this thing.

Nope, certainly doesn't work that way.

So, so how do you go about, how do you go about thinking about that?

For me, it's really about trying to understand the needs of the people around you, not just the client specifically, right? So if we're say designing a lounge for an airline, we need to understand who's literally adjacent to our space, right?

Below, above.

Because there are functions of the airport that might be impacted by what we're trying to do. Uh, and in order to keep everything moving, you've really gotta keep open lines of communication between those stakeholders, your own client, and the rest of the people involved in the project.

Are you involved— is all you do is design work, or do you do construction supervision as well?

So as an architect, we are responsible for overseeing some of the construction work done by the GC.

Okay.

So we are involved on site as the thing's being built.

Yeah. So that means you're doing some traveling.

Yes, absolutely.

So how many projects have you done now?

So in the aviation space in the last 10 years, we've done probably upwards of 115 now.

Wow.

Yeah. Yeah.

So this has become your niche area, huh?

Absolutely.

Yes.

This is my niche.

Are you one of the top guys in the country doing this work?

I would like to think so.

Yeah.

And I hope my clients think the same.

Oh, that's great. So you've been doing this now for quite a while. What is it that gets you up and excited in the morning to, to go out and do this work?

Every project is different, right? Some people really enjoy working on one type of thing and doing that over and over again. But what I would say is in the airport, nothing is the same. I could do a lounge in one space, but it's going to be something different somewhere else for someone else. And that, that complexity and that newness with each project makes me excited to work.

So you have to— it sounds like it's just a process of continuous learning. Yeah. Yeah.

And that's also part of the fun, right? The challenge of trying to do something that maybe you haven't done before, even when you've been doing it for 10, 15, 20 years. Yeah.

I remember when I was a lawyer, that's what, uh, there were a lot of things I didn't like about being a lawyer, but one of the things I did like about being a lawyer is every case that came in required me to learn a whole new thing about my client's business to understand the foundations of the lawsuit. And it was constant learning. Nothing ever happened. Really interesting stuff.

I can imagine.

What do you— I did construction litigation. This was like 40, 40 years ago or more. So I understand the business. I'm curious about what kind of problems do you run into that you've got to solve on the fly?

So I would say there's oftentimes a lot of projects happening simultaneously, particularly if we're working in a building that's under construction and the initial construction, new construction.

Yeah.

If they're building a new terminal, there's the base building team and that's like a whole set of contractors and subconsultants and probably group of financiers that are involved as well. And then you've got all of the tenant spaces that have to happen, right? Includes airline lounges and airline operation spaces and concessions and food and beverage and all of that.

Baggage, everything.

Baggage, yeah, baggage handling systems. And all of these component pieces are happening on an accelerated timeline because there's Everything is always due yesterday.

Right.

And so trying to collaborate with those folks on the fly is difficult, I would say. Part of the fun, but certainly a challenge. And sometimes it comes down to trying to figure out who's got the right of way. And so it forces you to listen to what their concerns might be, why they might be dead set on a specific solution, whereas your team might be looking at something else. And then trying to work through that problem with them so that you can find a happy medium that gets both resolutions adequately put forward.

I would say that sounds like 90%— after you've done the design work, that sounds like 90% of your job is— Oh yeah. —is working those conflicts.

It absolutely is. Yeah.

Yeah. I remember watching the new terminal at Salt Lake City go up and I just, every time I flew and looked at it, I just shook my head and said, yeah, this has gotta be a disaster here every 20 seconds. Now, just because of the complexity of what's going on.

Yeah, I agree with you. And to me, that's what makes it interesting. That's what makes it fun.

So how do you keep track? You must have a staff that works for you. How are you keeping track of all of this stuff?

So in my position, I typically coordinate with the client directly. I become like their go-to if they have any concerns, any questions at all, they can come to me. I may not know every answer right off the bat because I can't be necessarily in all of the details of every single project. But as they come up, I'm able to go to my team, communicate with them, understand the problem or the issue, and then work back with the client. So I can be like a single point of information for them. That's nice.

So they don't have to deal with the GC. They, if they want to, if it's a GC problem or a subcontractor problem or some other problem, they just come to you and you deal with it.

Yeah, it can be functioned that way.

Yeah. So I'm just curious about what it is that you bring to the table that makes all this work. Obviously you've developed an expertise at it. I think you're probably the one of the top guys in the country that does this work. What is it about you that has made you so successful?

I think it all comes down to trust. Every, everything that I've ever done, I do it with the intention of earning the trust of the person that I'm across the table from. I've, I feel that if everybody has their own job and their own requirements for that job. Even my clients and the people representing my clients. If I can make their life easier, if they can trust me, if they know that what I'm doing is done well with intention, with thought, and with care, then they can sleep at night, right? So it's about making it easier for the person that you're working for, and then ultimately that just is going to yield good work, solid, solid relationships, and then secure the future work that you, you want to work on.

So How do you figure that out? Making mistakes. Isn't that the way we always learn? I, I think so.

Yeah. I would say early on in my career, I was probably a bit more headstrong and I felt that it was important to be right and to dig your heels in a little bit and make sure that you always have the answer. And that's not reality. I think what's more important is understanding how you can react to a problem either whether it be created by your own misstep or just a problem that the project faces in general, and trying to assess it to find the best solution and how you help carry the project and the client through that phase is really important. And I think maintaining a sense of calm and surety through that process helps build that trust.

I would say that probably listening is an important skill.

I would 100% agree.

How did you learn how to listen? Most people don't know how to listen. It's a learned skill. I'm curious how you developed it.

I honestly, I don't really know. Again, it's ad hoc, probably by making a lot of mistakes. You, you fumble through life until all of a sudden things start to make sense. And I think we just build on that knowledge and that experience over time.

I would imagine that you run into people who don't listen very well.

I can say that I wasn't when I was younger, for sure. Absolutely.

It was something you grew into. How do you manage people that can't or won't listen?

I think it's important to show them. So one of the ways that I build relationships with my team and the people who might be working on projects on my behalf— you need to make sure that they feel heard. So if there's a concern or something that they have, I think it's important to to let them vent about that and then try to understand where they're coming from. Like, why is this stressing them out? Why is this particular detail so important to them? And then try to give them context. So you hear them and then instead of trying to rebuttal it or dismiss it, I think you give it context and say, okay, in the project, that particular detail is important for these reasons, but here are the other things that might be overshadowing it that I don't think maybe you're not privy to or that you don't see. It's not in your field of view at the moment. And as you widen their perception of the project and their position in the project, an understanding starts to occur and they un— they begin to have a better sense of what the process looks like.

As you were just describing all that, it struck me that you're involved in very emotional work. People are emotional all the time. They are, yeah.

People get hotheaded, people get— Absolutely. Precious about design. There's a lot to it. There's ownership and sense of—

Most, interestingly, I teach a class, a graduate class called Decision Making Under Stress and Uncertainty. And one of the premises of the class is all decisions are emotional. All behaviors are emotional. There's no such thing as rationality. And as I'm listening to you talk, I just see it, seeing it play out because yeah, you can bring all your skills to bear to create a design, but putting that design from a piece of paper or a CAD drawing into concrete is a very different kind of process. Blood, sweat, and tears. And it's not always linear. You'd like to think it, you'd like to think it lay out on the Gantt chart the way you want it to, right? Yeah, but it doesn't. And that's because human beings are emotional. And I think in construction, that's particularly true. I know every construction person I ever know would deny me saying that, but as I look back on it, I think that it's highly emotional.

I think we, we become emotional about different things. So in the design world, I think when we create something, it feels like an expression of ourselves.

You own it. It's your identity. Yeah.

It, this. You know, no matter how small it might be, this detail of how the door meets the wall jamb and like all this stuff, like those items are important. It's a decision that we made with our heart, right? And then when we get in the field and we're working with somebody who's— we're dealing with practicalities and okay, you're asking me to do something to a 16th of an inch. Do you know what that means? The contractor's gonna, gonna say it's impossible. I cannot work to that level of exactitude. In this environment, and you've got to learn how to talk with them and understand why they're frustrated, right? To you, it's a paper, piece of paper, it's a drawing, it's easy. But have you ever tried to fit a joint? You know, it's not gonna happen. Yeah. So there's reactions that are going to be highly emotional for different reasons.

Do you— that interplay of being able to work in the field as the design is being manifested physically and learning from the contractors probably affects the way you think about future designs, doesn't it? Because you're thinking, I I need a tight joint here, but I know I'm gonna get pushback from both the GC and the subs that I gotta do this work. How can I design this in a way that makes it buildable?

Yeah. And I think one of the most beautiful things that happened in my career early on was that I got to do a project in sort of a design-build format where we had to work with a contractor very early on as we were developing the design. And so we would turn around and I'd look at him and he'd just shake his head and say, listen, I understand your intent. Let's talk about how I can actually make this happen. And we'd go through the process of talking about the detail, and he would explain why something needs to be built the way it needs to be built and how it actually goes together and what the practicalities are of that. And, and that piece of knowledge shapes the way that you respond in the next project. That's right. And I think every architect, every designer should have to have that type of interaction in order to better their craft, for sure.

Yeah. I'm laughing because I remember hiring an architect a long time ago to design a home for me that never got built. It was unbuildable, at least to the price that I wanted to pay. Oh, that happens. So where do you think your career goes from here, John? You're going to continue to do aviation work, obviously.

Yep, absolutely. A lot of the work that we do right now is not at the small scale, but at the interior scale, right? So we do a lot of stuff inside of the main terminals. Our next step is breaking into more of the base building work and eventually doing concourse expansions or full terminals. It's a longer road, obviously, but I stand firm that I'm in the belief that it's about building trust and working with the airlines over and over again on increasingly larger and more complex projects will yield that trust.

Yeah. So I imagine that you're working with the same people in the airlines that are in charge of construction and facilities management and that sort of thing. So you build relationships with these people.

Yes, it is a small world, as I think most industries probably are. And you treat people poorly, you'll get a reputation.

That's right.

It's a, it's about advocating for your client, doing it respectfully and earning trust.

So when you're talking to a client about a new project, how do you scope it out?

And normally they have a pretty good idea of what they want. They might just know how it needs to get executed. So what we try and do is we have a programming phase, which is like the initial kind of kick-off, right? And we poke and prod a little bit and ask questions to try to understand what daily life looks like for the person utilizing that space. And then that allows us to ask more and more informed questions, and that'll help better the design so that we can provide all the things necessary for them to function well.

That, that's all the space work. How about the aesthetics? How do you, how does that get developed?

So that is much more emotional, right? Uh-huh. Absolutely. I think people have visceral reactions to certain things and maybe they can't even pin why they don't like something the way that it is. We, it is a delicate road to walk. You have to show them things that they're probably not going to like in order to understand what they're not going to like.

And then what they are going to like. Yes.

And it is iterative. We as a company do rely pretty heavily on, on AR technologies and AI technologies. We utilize artificial intelligence to help generate images that we want to create bespoke for them, which is a lot easier than trying to go out and find it. We can dictate what we want the image to look like and then show them something to elicit a specific response. And then with AR, we were able to overlay things and give them a sense that maybe the drawings or a rendering couldn't. So they can see the space in a way that would not be normally achievable.

They can put on AR, virtual reality goggles and walk through the space, huh? Yeah, we can do VR.

And then when we get to the site and everything is demolished, we put the headset on with AR and they can literally walk through it. The, the physical space and see all of the things that we've designed.

Wow, that is amazing.

Technology can be really helpful. I don't think that it ends the architectural profession. I think—

no, not at all. I hadn't thought about that. And I imagine also that the airlines want their designs to reflect their brands, so you've got standard brand colors, brand logos, brand themes that you've got to follow as you're working with each airline.

Yeah, they a lot of the airlines have their, what they call a brand book. And so that'll have things having to do with marketing or imagery that they might associate as well as things they might use in the lounge in terms of materials and adjacencies that are, might be important. Because familiarity is important to the travelers too, right? When they go to a lounge, they want to see that it's the same thing too.

Yeah.

Oh, I was in that other one. It's, yeah, I get it.

I know the bathroom's over here and the conference room is over there and there's the bar and there's where I get the food and this is where I can sit and Exactly. Yeah.

And those things become broad, especially for travelers that are going around frequently. Right. So I think, I think our job in a lot of those situations is we've got to look at what the intention of each of those elements is and figure out how to apply them to a new shaped box, which is the site that's been selected. So whatever that is, we've got to figure out how to get those component pieces to function at their peak and still deliver the aesthetic and experiential qualities that every other airline lounge would have.

Right. So that's the challenge. That's the challenge. Yeah. And wow. So how long do these projects usually take from start to finish?

I guess if we're gonna talk about just design, that normally takes about, we'll call it 6 to 8 months, just depending on the size. And that'll get us—

and that, that gets you construction drawings. Yeah.

And then from there it's typically 8 months to a year. Depending on the size of the lounge for the buildout and the complexity of what's going on around you in the city.

So it's almost a 2-year project. Yeah, it could be. Wow. Crazy. You get really excited about it. I can see you smiling. I do. Yeah. You get really charged up about it. I got one more question before we go. This has been really a fascinating conversation. What's one thing about yourself, John, that we would never know about unless you revealed it to us? I'm a spreadsheet nerd. You're a spreadsheet nerd? Yeah.

Every single thing I put into a spreadsheet and organize. Yeah.

Yeah, you're an architect, same thing, almost an engineer. Almost. Oh, just a lot of detail work and you love that detail work. Yes, I do. So thank God for that. Who, and, but I sense it sounds like you're able to pay attention to the big picture too.

Yeah, I certainly try to. I think that there's expanded vision associated with projects. And like I said, when you deal with teammates and other people, it's important to reveal as much of the big picture as you understand to others. And maybe ask questions about where you think there might be blind spots. And those things always come back and enrich the project.

But you love getting into the details. Absolutely. Thank you so much, John. It's been great talking with you.

You as well, Doug. Thank you.

Doug Noll here. Thank you so much for listening to Listening with Leaders. If you are a successful executive leader who would like to be on this program, please visit podcast.dougnull.com/podcast. If you got something out of this interview, would you please share this episode on social media? Just do a quick screenshot with your phone and text it to a friend or post it on the socials. If you know someone that would be a great guest, tag them on the social media to let them know about the show and include the hashtag #ListeningWithLeaders. I love seeing your posts and guest suggestions. We are regularly putting out new episodes and content. To make sure you don't miss any episodes, go ahead and subscribe. Your thumbs up ratings and reviews go a long way to help promote the show and mean a lot to me and my team. Want to know more? Go to my website, DougNoll.com, or follow me on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram. That's @DouglasEnoll. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you on the next show.