Leading a Learning Organization: Lessons from Angela Watson | Shepley Bulfinch

Hello and welcome to the Smarter by Design podcast. I'm your host, Christopher Parsons, founder and CEO of Knowledge Architecture. And in today's episode, we talk with Angela Watson, president and CEO of Shepley Bulfinch, about her lessons in leading a learning organization. Angela is someone who spent a lot of time thinking about how people actually learn, and she traces that back to her days teaching at MIT, where she came to believe that real learning happens through doing, through struggle, having the room to fail safely, not only through lecture. And that belief stayed with her as she increasingly took on leadership positions in Shepley Bulfinch. And as now president and CEO, it has become the foundation of how she leads the firm. And what's so fun about this conversation is we really talk through that journey, and Angela is super transparent about what worked, what didn't work, what it actually takes to build a learning organization inside a growing national practice. The breakdown of traditional mentorship or apprenticeship, why it's so hard for experts to teach what they know, and what Shepley learned from building their own internal peer-to-peer learning platform called Birdfeeder. Angela talks about something they call back to the future, which is their reframe on lessons learned that's designed to make it safe to share when things went wrong. And she comes back to this theme quite a bit of of psychological safety, of vulnerability, and she gets really direct about what it takes and why it's so important for her as the CEO to model that vulnerability herself. It's a really honest conversation about what's worked, what hasn't, how people learn, what's being figured out, what makes for a great teacher. And if you lead a firm or manage a team, or just care about how people grow in our industry, I think you're gonna wanna stick around for this one. Okay. So Angela Watson, president and CEO of Shepley Bullfinch, about leading a learning organization. Here we go. Angela, you are the president and CEO of Shepley Bulfinch. You have been to K Connect last year. You're coming again this year. You joined our executive workshop on leveling up as learning organizations, and you're keynoting at TalentMax. So you're clearly leaning into learning and development and knowledge management at Shepley Bulfinch in a major way. And I just want to start with why now? Why you? What's going on?

Ah, you know, I, I realize teaching and learning is something that is at the core of who I am as a leader, just as a person. Curiosity has been part of my life forever, and I've learned by being in the deep end of the pool a lot. And I think without curiosity and learning, that just doesn't happen. But I really started to understand how people are different and how you can energize people through learning that people are excited about when I was teaching at MIT. So that, that's a piece of the puzzle. And then in 2020, when we rolled out our strategic plan trajectory, we put down a, a goal basically and said, we are going to actually be a learning organization. We like the pieces about ourselves that are. About learning, and we want to find a way to not formalize that, but really strengthen that, and started to try and understand what does that mean. And in a lot of ways, you know, there was innovation going on, there's learning going on in different pockets, but the hard part in an organization is if it's only in pockets, it's not really a learning organization. You got an organization with learning pockets. And so This idea of sharing learnings, knowledge, and folding them into how we do things better is this hurdle that I think defines what a learning organization is. And that's what we've been working on for the last 10 years.

When you were teaching at MIT— actually, let me go— how did you learn how to teach? Had you taught before MIT? Did you come cold? What was hard for you? What did you learn about teaching? Through that.

Oh, wow. Oh, that's a great question. When I was in school, I was a teaching assistant. So, you know, a little bit rubbed off on me, but I was so young and I've, you know, I've, I gained wisdom and I, you know, pay for it with age, but I hope. I was approached by a former professor of mine to teach a design class or design studio that was a mandatory studio within the progression of undergraduate design education at MIT. And he gave me an idea of what he wanted to accomplish and said, okay, go do something with that. And so I built this little mini curriculum, and I'd never really done it before. And this is very true to Angela fashion. I didn't go and read a whole bunch of books about how do you teach. I just tried to think about what are the things that you really need to learn, how— what are the complicated things you need to learn. And I ended up with Actually, I think a lesson plan or structure that I'm still actually kind of proud of today, that was very much about minimal instruction and maximum exploration and learning, and also setting it up in a way— and I didn't realize until, you know, sometimes when I reflect on this, I didn't realize how this shaped again the things I do now. It was basically a structure of 4 really short projects, and when I mean short, like 2-week projects, and then one final one at the end. And each one of the 4 focused on a couple of things. One was a very much skill tools kind of thing, and the other one was more thematic around a design problem. So designing, in addition to the Philip Johnson House he did for himself as his thesis in Cambridge, and at the same time learning how to actually draw plans, sections, and elevations. And so those two things you had to learn in those two weeks. So quick intro, and then just a lot of one-on-one critique. And invariably, every student would do really well on one of these at least, and not so great on one of them at least. But what they got to do with the final piece was to do it again in a different setting and put the pieces together. So it was sort of about practicing the pieces in a, in a safe way where you could fail. And we expected people to not be perfect, but then be able to take those learnings and actually fold them into this bigger thing that then weighed much more than everything else. And a lot of ways, looking today at how I think about learning and learning by doing, is very much about that. It's the experience of experiencing what it feels like when it's not going well, experiencing that thing you're bumping up against that you have to find a way around. When you do that in theory, you have a very different way of absorbing and then being able to redeploy that kind of knowledge than if you're absorbing it in a lecture format. And so that was pretty formative for me.

Yeah, I've come across the phrase desirable difficulty a bunch of times when learning about— so you have— somebody has to reach or stretch. It's like weight training almost. You have to lift something heavier than you've lifted before in order to grow. Yeah, right.

Exactly. It has to be hard. Did you—

how many times did you teach this?

Oh, I taught that 4 years in a row. Um, the other really interesting thing that I learned was delegating. So they asked me to teach this class in the fall and then asked me to teach the same thing in January in one month, basically for same number of credits, because they were trying to create this flow of students being able to take these classes. Well, I was working full-time as I was doing this, and I could— I was like, well, I have to do something different about this January thing. And so what I ended up doing was really working closely with two teaching assistants that I had during the fall where I was there every time at class. And they went through the whole, you know, the whole process. We went through it together. And then in January, I let them drive more and I would still come twice a week. And they were there 5 times a week.

You would do the kind of quick intro, luxury piece, and they would oversee the learning by doing. Is that how you broke it up?

That's exactly how it worked. And it was great because they learned, they learned to teach as well. And it was sort of my first really successful way of actually letting go of responsibility. So it was very much about learning how to delegate, you know, if we have to use that word. And actually, one of my teaching assistants I worked with back then is actually our managing principal today.

Interesting.

Yeah.

Interesting.

Yeah, it's fascinating.

So that's what happens when you say yes to things.

Yes, it does. It's scary though. It's scary. It's very scary.

So Shepley does learning by doing. You have to. You wouldn't be in business if you didn't do learning by doing. You have these kind of pockets of other learning happening, maybe vicariously learning through others or sharing project critiques or site tours and all those kind of pockets. What was it that convinced you that kind of learning by doing plus pockets of learning wasn't enough? What did you see not happening as a kind of a risk or a challenge, or what was the opportunity that you perceived?

Well, it's what was not happening is some of these great ideas weren't making their way into all the teams. So some teams were struggling with things, and other teams were trying out new things. And doing really well. And I mean, the same thing is true about sharing of, of new insights, not just processes, but just new insights. And just putting them somewhere wasn't enough. It's that learning by doing again, because unless people were really engaging with it, they wouldn't necessarily absorb it, and they do it the way they'd done it the last time. So there was a little bit of that. It was both an opportunity, but also trying to just make us better at pushing forward and being a bit more innovative too in how we were approaching our clients and our project work. We were just starting to, at that point, get into more data-driven design, both in master planning as well as around, you know, some of our areas of expertise in healthcare. So there was, there was really a challenge of trying to figure out how to help people see what was even available and what others were doing in order to be better. So it was kind of both.

What do you think the cost was of having, I've heard you use the word silos a lot, so having learning or knowledge trapped in silos. What was that? What was it costing Shepley Fullfincher? How was it holding you back? What were the signs that you could tell this was happening?

Well, people aren't developing as quickly as you might want them to because they don't necessarily have access to the same kind of things. And I mean, this is, this is the silo question, right? If you had these things in one place, they don't get the kind of exposure to other things that will help them get better. That's true for teams. That's true for people.

So their development is kind of constrained by whoever their project manager or their team is versus what Shepley's learning.

Exactly, exactly. And then there's just plain information sharing. So at the time we had people keep doing programming in completely different tools. So somebody was doing it in a database, somebody was doing it in an Excel spreadsheet. I'm not gonna lie and say that it's absolutely all standardized today. It's not because we have people and, and people have just different ways of engaging with the tools, but there was no place, not even there was no place, there were some places, but the systems were different. And people were pretty, you know, felt pretty strongly about this thing that they had been working with for some time. And that in itself is a silo, right? When somebody is committed to a tool or one way of working, and there are people that are learning how to do that, that now follow that path. And then you've got another path going on on the other side. I think it's not necessarily a bad thing to have parallel paths, but you have to have the ability to experience both so that you can either choose which one's the best one for the right situation, or you could even be somewhere in the middle and take pieces of each. And that, you know, to my mind, is also a way of learning and actually evolving. So that's also, I think, part of what a learning organization does. It doesn't just sit on its tools, it actually tries to better them all the time. And I think that feeling of being stuck in certain places is probably something that generally we were experiencing at the time, which I think why, why people generally really embrace this idea of investing in learning.

One of the— there's a guy I follow on LinkedIn named Nick Haim who wrote a really good piece this week. He wrote about being a young engineer early in his career and 3 different— told the story of working on 3 different projects where each project manager had a completely different system for how to organize drawings, how to do client communications. And so he's constantly context switching between which part of the organization he's learning their different systems. And just take that across all of the employees having to learn all these different systems. On one hand, you want to have intellectual freedom to kind of figure out a localized tool that works for you. On the other hand, is the cost that all these other people that can't move between projects efficiently, and does that kind of demoralize them to have to start over every single time?

Right, exactly. Well, and with that also comes sort of the expectations that people have, right? So The expectation that, well, in order to forge a path here, you have to specialize, or you have to commit to this thing or the other thing. It's that sort of the choice, the perception of having to make these choices, that these things are mutually exclusive as opposed to meldable, mashable. Yeah, combinable. And, you know, that you can evolve them, right? So yeah, it's a balance. It is a true balance because I think if you, if you just stick to one thing and you don't change it, the world around you is going to change because nothing stands still. So we have to change with it and how that change happens and where we go with it actually becomes vital to how we progress both as individuals and as organizations. And so what are the right conditions to make that happen, right? And I would say that the right conditions aren't to do it always the standard way, but the right conditions are also not to work in complete chaos where there's no way that we can actually harness some of these resources and learn from each other and be better together, right? Because that's the whole point. Our—

Right. Why else would you have an organization? If you're not going to learn from each other, then why are you a company? Why aren't you just individuals working on projects?

Yes, exactly, exactly. That's exactly it. And for us, I mean, our, our, our mission vision is the first word in it is together, that together we design places or design a better future. And basically it is about that interdependency and collaboration and the fact that you're not doing any of this by yourself. And that's, And that's where I think learning— that there's a learning piece in that too that is really about how people have to learn how to actually work with each other in an effective way and learn that they're not always competing with each other. And my world is a pretty competitive world out there.

Yeah, it's interesting. I think two things. One that I'd like to talk about is Shepley kind of becoming— it has been a national practice for a while, but becoming more and more of a national practice. Over time, and I'm wondering how much of an impact that has had on placing a premium on learning from going across silos and learning from the best of what Shepley's doing to help synthesize that and try and make that as much of the standard Shepley way as is responsible. Do you feel like that's true? Do you feel like the kind of work sharing and national practice was part of that, or is that unrelated?

I think it's related. I don't know that we were that clear-eyed about it or that deliberate about it. But, and actually it's sometimes hard to sort of figure out which one's the chicken and the egg. But the fact that we are working across all states or most states and we're 200 people.

Right, meaning you only have 5 offices, I think it is, right? Yeah, there's 5. So you're work sharing also and combining, making hybrid project teams across offices.

Yeah, we have to stretch. And in order to stretch, you have to share and accelerate the learning. Because if you're only doing it on one project at a time, a project cycle is at best 3 years.

Yep, the feedback loop is pretty slow.

It's pretty slow. And the bigger the project gets, the slower it is. And they're getting bigger. Out there. So I, I think the two are very much related. I don't know which one came first, but I think the realization is that they are absolutely connected. And the only way that we can stay flexible and be the kind of culture we want to be and perform at that level, that connection and that learning and that sharing and that collaboration has to happen.

Yeah, it's interesting. There's this very invisible through line that I think is pretty subtle, but once you see it, it's kind of hard to unsee it. Meaning if you start, every firm is doing, there's a maturity model to it, right? Every firm is doing learning by doing. And I think every AEC firm I know does a level above that where they vicariously learn through others. They talk about their projects. Hopefully this was useful. And then you kind of another, but then that next step to this is the Shepley way. We're gonna codify what we've learned across all of these different healthcare projects or higher education process. That's a step towards now we can actually teach it. We have to codify it first before we can scale that learning across the organization. Otherwise, what are we teaching? Just whoever randomly happens to show up and teach project management is just gonna teach it the way that they do project management or the way that they do programming and whatever tool they use. And I'm wondering if that has been— because I've watched Shepley kind of on that trajectory towards a little bit more of the Shepley way. Is that— has that been difficult culturally with a bunch of— yeah, okay.

Yeah, I mean, it's difficult because it's— I, I, you listen to it, it is really difficult when you're really good at something to codify it. That process is hard. Because we've learned it through doing, so we know how to do it, but we don't necessarily know how to explain it.

Yeah, it's all tacit knowledge and intuitive and yeah.

It's really difficult. And so we have this learning platform called BirdFeeder and we've been, you know, encouraging people to teach. It's a peer-to-peer learning and learning and teaching. And well, teaching first of all is hard. Because it's a little bit scary, but it also involves that codification barrier. So how do I describe this thing that I do without saying, well, you do— and some people will say, well, you do this and you do this and you do this, or I do this, or you should do this. And that's sort of mandating a process, right?

Those are two different things, right? It's hard enough to think about how I work, and then I'm going to tell you not only is that how I work, but it's how we should all work.

Yes, right, exactly. And not everybody works the same, and not all our clients are the same, and not all our projects are the same, right? So there is this translation that has to happen that takes it from the very specific experiences that I have to a sort of systematic approach that you can now overlay onto different situations. And then teaching how to overlay that onto different situations is a whole other element of all of this, right? So it's this nested thing that happens, and it's— it can be really daunting. And so I think it takes time for people to put together a class on library design. What's important? How— where do I start? What are the basic things? What are the things I don't even think about because they're like breathing? Or putting one foot in front of the other when I'm walking. I don't have to think about that. But somebody who's never done it before has to think about it. So there are pockets of things that are very much procedural, and then there are things that are very much situational.

Right.

Yeah. It's just like anything.

How are you helping? Are you helping? I said, how are you helping? I'm presuming, I'm presuming the answer. I was going to go to law school and didn't go. I would have been trained out of that by the time I got through it. Are you, are you helping, let's say I'm that library designer and I'm nervous about it. I don't know how to tell people what I do. How do you, can you help them? Is that something you are trying to do? How do you help somebody figure out how to teach library design? Or are they thrown into the fire like you were at MIT and just figure it out?

There's a lot of swimming in the deep end of the pool that's going on. I think it's really an opportunity for us to actually focus on that. I'm really glad you asked that question. Because it's something I've been struggling with and we've been struggling with. How do you teach to teach? Because it's a whole other skill and something we been trying to invest in, but it's been difficult because it doesn't really sit squarely in our area of expertise. So it sits a little bit beyond that. And we're not a huge firm. So we don't necessarily have, we're not so big that we could have a full-time teacher or somebody who would manage this whole system.

Instructional designer, kind of like somebody that, yeah.

Yeah, exactly. And the other thing we've been trying to avoid is to make it such a structured sort of curriculum that then can't shift and you can't just go say, hey, I wanna teach this class on mid-century modern library renovations.

Mm-hmm.

Right? And then there has to be this review process and we don't know if you can do that. And so it, it, there's a nimbleness that I also don't want to lose, but I think it's, it's how do we help people do that is something that, you know, came up during our, our symposium, our, our Level Up workshop. And there was a really great conversation about that, that I took away with me to think about. And you're, you're bringing that back to the surface again. I think it's helping people have empathy. And I'm just literally thinking about this a little bit off the top of my head. Because in order to teach, you sort of have to have empathy. You have to be able to think about what the position is somebody else is in and what their viewpoint is and what they need in order to take the next step, right? Which also fundamentally is a major building block of leadership in general. It's not about what you need anymore, it's what others need.

Right, so I think an implication of if people can, you said that kind of that skill set is outside a little bit of the core expertise, but if people can learn it, it might make them better project leaders, client-facing business developers, whatever the things are.

Exactly, yeah.

Do you think that the hard part, we kind of talked about at least two things, there's probably more, but like one is, codifying what I actually know versus, okay, I know what it is that I know, I know kind of the structure, how do I actually communicate in a meaningful way? Where do you think is harder for your team to— what do you think the bigger barrier is? Or are they the same?

Knowing what I know or codifying what I know?

No, codifying what— I'm kind of putting codifying what I know and knowing what I know together.

Okay.

But then how do I actually teach it in a meaningful, engaging way that kind of sticks and people will learn from?

Definitely the latter. I think it's harder. I think it's harder. Because how do you put people into a mindset that is a learning mindset?

Right?

Because they need to want to learn. They need to want to learn from that person. They need to want to learn that thing, right? So if they choose to learn or engage with the subject, rather, I'm just going to call it that.

Yeah.

Then you've already overcome a barrier because they're already open to absorbing.

You're getting a learner motivation kind of thing.

Exactly.

Right. And then how do you, and do they want to learn it today? If you're teaching them about programming, but they're deep in construction administration, why am I learning about programming? Programming today, right? Come back in 6 months when I'm on my next project, right?

And then there's the just-in-time too. Well, I have this problem right now, how do I find a solution? How do I figure this out, right? And this is where being able to just go and asking somebody is, is an incredible thing, which is I think what a lot of people miss actually about being in person, right? They can't turn to that person anymore. But the flip side of that is that person that you may need may not actually be in your geographic location. They may be somewhere else, so you're still going to have to get to them in a different way. So I think our world's become really, really complicated with all of those aspects of it.

I think this is where, I mean, from my perspective, having worked in knowledge management for 25 years, this is where AI is making a huge impact, right? Is just-in-time knowledge. Because Angela's busy, because Angela's on PTO, because Angela's on a client site, because Angela's whatever the thing is, I don't want a disruptor. Can I find it self-serve? Not saying we don't want people talking to each other. That's not what I'm saying, but it feels like there's another variable in the mix now that hasn't been in the mix before.

Yeah, it's another dimension in a lot of ways, right?

I'm interested in the, the, I want to click back to the thing you said around, let's imagine you've asked this person to teach this course called Library Design Fundamentals. So that's one thing. You do a lot of library design, so that makes sense. But then someone else wants to, I can't remember the exact example, I actually want to teach a thing on mid-century modern learning design in the Southwest, something, something, something, which to me it's like there's a core curriculum versus an extracurricular/enrichment thing. And it's like, how do we do— I think how do we do both is what you're saying. And my observation, I don't know if you feel like this is true at Shepley, has been firms are really good at the latter actually. It's like Denise is super excited to teach us mid-century library, whatever. So who's gonna stop her from doing a lunch and learn in two Thursdays from now? But then putting together the actual library design foundations, that's a different level of impact, but then also work, but then also weight that somebody's carrying, cuz this is gonna be impactful. And so a lot of times that thing doesn't happen. And is that, is that ringing true for you?

Yeah, it takes much, much longer, A, to convince somebody to do it and B, to actually put it together. And I think it's also sometimes what really helps is to not have one person do it. To have 2 people do it together or 3 people do it together because it makes the lift easier. There's, there's just more, you're in it together, right? You're exploring something new together, trying to teach this thing. So we've got one of, we've got several of these classes that are part of Birdfeeder that are the 101s or the introduction into, and whether it's library design or something else. And they, they took more time and they often exist in installments. And we record all of it. So they're given live and then they're recorded and transcribed and are available. So their content is available and people will listen to the recordings, but it makes me also think about needing to redo those at certain intervals because things, A, things change, although the fundamentals of library design probably don't change as quickly as some of the more, not idiosyncratic, but more specific things. But sure, it's also an opportunity for people who are becoming experts in that area to teach a version of that course and to become TAs, like, like you're, like, you're right. Yeah, exactly. So that reminds me, we probably need to do that again, but those then form the core of things that you need to know if you want to be in library design, or probably the core of something you should know if you're just in higher education design, because libraries in higher education are sort of a core of what higher education is too, right? So it's, it's a multifaceted thing, and defining that— we try to define that with what we call the bullseye.

Okay.

Which has the, the, the things that absolutely the really, really basic things that everybody needs to know. And these things are as basic as, well, how do I do my expenses? How do I keep my expenses?

So across markets, across all that, everybody.

Yeah. And things that seem like really, but when you're starting fresh, when you're brand new and there's, yes, there's onboarding, but there's things that you need to know. Right. So it's from the very tiny little mundane thing to maybe some more important things. And then getting to the core that actually has to do with doing the work, with working with others. And that can include things like specifics on, say, library design or specifics on even how do I plan a project?

Mm-hmm.

How do I manage a project? Right. And some of that stuff we can teach in-house.

Mm-hmm.

But there are also resources sometimes you need to bring from outside. In order to do that, because we're not experts at everything. I think architects, designers are— we are really good at a lot of stuff. We are really good at putting pieces together, connecting the dots, solving problems. I don't think there's anything architects and designers love more than solving a really amazing problem. But there's some things that challenges to your point, like teaching, that people have been thinking about for a long, long time. There are resources out there, and I think it's just as important to reach out there, find those resources, and then bring them back in. And that's something, frankly, that we have not done as much of as, as I would like us to. And we're working on getting better at that and being a little bit more focused and structured around this.

Partnering for education.

But there's partnering, yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, I'm curi— I wrote a piece this week about apprenticeship, and I've been hearing so much over the last 2 years that apprenticeship is dead and COVID killed it, and now there's no more time to look over everybody's shoulders like we used to and all this kind of thing. The point of view I took is that it's evolving, and one of the ways that I think I'm seeing it evolve is those kind of things, not necessarily the expense report, but the next layer out in what you described, which is how do we do programming? How do we do a schedule, door schedule? How do we do a budget? How do we do library design? A lot of that was pushed out to the apprenticeship model. Really like all of the how we work and we work with others was kind of pushed down to project teams in the past. And what I feel like I'm seeing firms want to do is take some of that burden off of the project teams to do the foundational, here's how we work, both from a relieving the burden perspective, but then also from a standardization and quality and consistency perspective. Do you feel like that was kind of, am I onto something with this?

Yeah, I mean, it's something that we want to do because we're also finding that people are really stretched and there it's harder for people to find time for some of those in-between things. There seems to be more and more in people's plates. Plates, and so they're looking to the firm to help with that, right?

Right.

To, to take some of the stress of having to manage some of those things off of people's plates.

Meaning, so Angela, just so as an example, let's say I'm managing a project. I just get Sarah assigned to me. Sarah's never done a door schedule. In an optimal world, I'd slow down. I'd explain why they're important. I'd take her through some different examples. I, you know, give her an exercise, she tries it, I kind of like mark it up, but that's the part where it's like, meh, just do that thing. Just go and try something and then show me what you did and I kind of correct. People are so fast, they don't have the time to slow down and really give people the big picture. Is that what you're experiencing?

It's harder for them. I think they still want to and they still explain, but I think it puts so much stress on them because now all this other stuff that they committed to doing. They're going to have to do after instead of maybe reading to their kids. It's, it's the kind of things that you give up because I think people are so committed to the work that they're doing and they're so committed to the people around them that those things are happening. Um, but the plate's getting fuller and fuller and it's becoming harder and harder to balance it.

And things aren't coming off of it.

They are— things are not coming off of the plate.

Yeah.

And I mean, that's, that's a whole other thing we should be learning how to do, right? Is to not let our plate overflow, which is also a really hard part. It's one of the early learnings that I think we don't do that well in our industry or have not historically done that well because we've sort of lived— many of us grew up with a myth of the overworked always working, we live architecture, we live design, we live our job. When in fact, yes, we do, because we think about all those things even when we're doing other things. But we need to make room to have a space to mentally zoom out in order to be able to actually focus on others.

I really love that you brought that up. That's an interesting— I hadn't connected that. I hadn't connected that dot because I think this is a Shepley movement, but I think this is across the industry. I think there's this— God, in our first episode of the podcast, Dan Hottinger said this thing. He was at dinner with his son, he's like a teenager, and he was saying like, because he was kind of— he was getting a little complaining, which isn't very much like Dan, but he was like letting it out a little bit. And he's like, These kids, like, they're gone, they're doing 40 hours. They think they're going to learn how to become an architect. When I was their age, I was staying nights, I was doing weekends. And his son said to him, just because your life sucked, theirs has to too. And I'm like, perfect. But I think, I think that that kind of idea to try and design better jobs and better relationship with work is happening. And so it's an interesting if you can kind of visualize the model, if that's a constraint that firms are trying to design in to not burn people out and overwork them, then what gets cut? Something has to give. It's simple. And so we don't want it to be mentorship and learning and development, but that's a very pragmatic thing for me, the project manager, to cut, even though I don't want to, but I'm not gonna not deliver my client their project. Yeah, right. I have to do that. So, and if I'm not going to burn the midnight oil, is that what gets shortchanged is the development of the next generation? And so maybe this is partly why firms are picking up that mantle a little bit, saying, oh no, no, no, no, that is not a good thing. That is not a thing we want cut. But maybe it's not true that you should also have it on your plate, if that makes sense.

Yes. And it, you know, the thing that kept going through my head as you were speaking And we have these conversations a lot about like, there's so much on our plate. What are we going to stop doing? If we're going to, we're going to start this other thing, what are we going to stop? And then the question I always ask is, well, is it stop or is it slow? Because, because there's, you know, there, there, there's, there's a range, there's a spectrum that you can work within. And I still remember a colleague years ago saying to me that she was, she was just doing too much and working herself into the ground, literally. And got sick. And she told me what her husband said to her. And she says, "Well, I have to do these things." And he goes, "Yeah, those things are still gonna get done. They're just gonna get done differently." And that stuck with me. This is more than 20 years ago. That statement stuck with me because if we can't do it one way and the plate is growing, what if we do it differently? Can we think about different ways of defining what I have to do to be involved with, you know, we, I think we find this and we're working, you know, I think we're constantly working through this, but people, and I love the fact that our, our whole team is so incredibly responsible. I couldn't, I couldn't do what I do without them because things happen. No matter what happens, things get done, which is incredible. And I think with that also comes a sense of incredible responsibility of getting it really right. And I know I have some of that too, that sort of perfectionism of if I can make it better and better, better, I'm going to keep messing around with it and making it better and better and better. Right.

The project's done when the budget runs out or the timeline. Yeah.

Yeah. And, you know, are there other ways of doing that? Not to do it not as good. That's not what I'm saying at all.

Not to lower your standards.

Right. But, but, and this is where it starts to get a little scary. Like, how can we delegate differently? Can we share responsibility differently? Do I have to do all the one-on-one conversations with my whole team? Do I have to have that many quote-unquote direct reports? Or can we find a different way without inducing too much hierarchy, which is true in teaching and working and all of those things, a way that we put responsibility for leading and guiding and teaching on the folks in the earliest part of their career.

Right. I mean, you get at something that's so important to how I've seen firms attack. Again, let's say that Sarah is the kind of subject matter expert in library design, and we've asked her, maybe like you said, we partnered with two other people. But still, if those three are the subject matter experts, they, they have a hard time remembering what it was like to not know what they know. And so partnering them with more emerging professionals to help them— wait, wait, I don't understand. You just used this acronym. I don't know what it is. Someone that can really kind of pull it out and slow them down and have a conversation around the work and then figure out again that you can try and imagine, have the empathy, or you can have somebody that's actually in that position right now, kind of as part of that learning design team.

Yes, exactly.

And what I've also said, there's this kind of— I like when you said Shepley doesn't have to know everything, we can partner. But then even within that, the subject matter expert can partner either with an emerging professional or— and I've seen Shepley do this well— the knowledge and learning management team, whatever that means. That might not be like FTEs or fully named people, but like Jess Purcell and your team, your director of design technology, shared some amazing work at K Connect last year.

Yeah.

Around partnering with subject matter experts on a variety of topics and taking what used to take them 100 hours to write down a process doc and shrinking their commitment to 2 to 4 hours. Because they would interview them over video and they would handle a lot of the production, the sequencing. How do we actually make this a learning thing? We could take some of that, the codification piece and the delivery piece. We can take some of that delivery piece maybe off their plate and lighten their burden, but still have them involved in shaping what the thing is.

Yes, that's so true. And, you know, that has been an incredible thing that I think has really charged up the ability to do more things. And I think you brought up AI earlier. I wonder if codification is something that we can get some help with on that front too.

Oh, for sure.

You know, so that it isn't that we don't have to, again, the one person doesn't have to know it all. And I think it gets at exactly, and what Jess is doing is getting at exactly this idea of how do we do it differently.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, totally. I mean, I do this all the time and I hadn't really thought about it in the way that you just framed it, but AI is great if I've got something that's like deep in my brain that's tacit that I want to communicate. I'll have 45-minute, hour-long conversations in voice mode with AI, and I'll ask it to help me. It will help me stumble my way through what it is that I'm actually thinking, and I can have it ask me questions. Even for our podcast today, I had it help me prepare. It's like, what do I think Angela is going to answer? What's some stuff that I haven't— there's so many opportunities to have it be a partner and to not have to do it alone.

Exactly.

That, yeah, I think that will change Again, it's like if we don't want to relax our standard of quality and we want to educate people now, well, we say we like design problems. That's a design problem, right? That's a business design problem, not a, not a building design problem.

Yes, exactly.

Or an org design problem, right?

Exactly. And you know, one thing that, that, that I was thinking about last week was design problems are not ones you can solve immediately. Often they require a bit of distance or, you know, running through a whole bunch of extraneous things and then being able to examine those things and learning from them. So in a lot of ways, design is actually a learning process.

Oh yeah, totally. Yeah.

Yeah.

100%.

You know, what seems like a perfectly obvious solution at the end, right? 20/20 hindsight is something that takes some time because you couldn't see that solution earlier. And what you just described that you're doing with AI, and that we do with people, and which was what happens in Design Dialogue, right? Yeah, is exactly that process of discovery, right? It's, it's the discovery of things that we, we have all the pieces for. We just can't look at it from the right perspective in order to see the picture that all the pieces make. Without walking around it a bit, and that walking around part actually takes time.

Yeah, and then letting your subconscious work on it a little bit and then come back to it with an insight because you stopped thinking about it.

Yeah.

When you and the— I don't know who was involved in writing your strategic plan. I'll just say board, but you can correct me. And you decided to put learning organization as a goal there. What, what did that mean? What were you going to do differently? How would you know if you were becoming a learning organization? What was the thought process there?

So it was the board. It was actually a lot of the firm too.

I want—

the majority of the firm participated in it. The hard part, just as hard as codifying, is figuring out how to measure. Like, how do we know what we're doing well? Yeah, it's— oh, it's something I struggle with. And I mean, the first thing we did is we actually said, look, we're going to build this learning this learning platform. And we created a timeline and we, we had some pretty lofty goals for how this, what this was going to look like and put a budget to it. And I would say we, over the last 5 years, we probably got 40% there. We got pieces of it and it's still alive and it's still working, but we didn't quite get to some of the pieces that we thought we might need, and we're taking another run at it now. So I think the, what we realized we needed to do is we needed to name it. We needed to put a budget to it. We needed to put people quote unquote in charge of it or make them responsible for it. And that worked because again, we have really responsible people.

What were they trying to do? So they have a budget, it's a brand, they've got people, but what was the North Star? How would they know? Is it that someone from Houston can work on a project with someone in Boston and they can on-ramp faster? Is it that people are saying that they— you do employee engagement surveys and they're like, well, I actually do have the tools I need to do my job. I feel like I can get access to—

how do—

what does good look like?

Yes. Yes. Feeling like you can, you have, you can find the resources to learn that. People can develop expertise faster. They can find questions in the moment. They can find them both synchronously and asynchronously. That we had a growing catalog, or rather repository, of these learning tools. And whether they're lectures and even things like somebody going out and presenting at a conference, bringing that back and do it for the firm. Why wouldn't we do it for the firm when we do it for the outside world?

Yeah.

So it was about resources, having those available in a place on Finch. And it's gotten so much better because of the way Finch, our internet, which, thank you, which we, I don't know what we would do without it, it's become so much easier to find information. And so what we were trying to build, so we cobbled together in a lot of ways our own, our own learning platform.

I figured you had it before we started building ours. Yeah.

Well, we, like I said, we were, we were bootstrapping it. Yes, exactly. And because we didn't like a lot of the things that were out there, they were either too big or too cumbersome and needed too much management, but also weren't as flexible, I think. And I think what we're finding now is that the flexibility of being able to access that information without having to keyword it quite in the same way, right, right, is, is just opening up a huge— what is this huge world of, of getting access to things that you would have had to know how to look for before. It's sort of the equivalent of browsing the library as opposed to needing to go through the catalog and finding that thing, right? And being able to look at that book. But the fact that, you know, we used to do this in person, you'd go to the shelf or to the section and then you'd find all these other things. I don't know how many times I used to go to the library, look at one book of, well, that's not really what I wanted. Oh, but this one over here, that looks really interesting. And without, you know, the physical environment, we don't have that anymore. And so I think going back to your original question, that wasn't something we intended, right? But it's something that we— I think was part of the story that we were trying to achieve, which was the story of having people teaching each other, sharing information, that that information and that learning, that wisdom was available for others. And that this was a key component which we never quite figured out how to get off the ground, but I'm just, I think still really important. And that's the learning system as an individualized system. So not something where one size fits all, but it's about finding even different ways of learning the same thing for different people because everybody has a different learning style.

Right.

And connecting it to the things somebody wants to learn. So, correct, this, this is the whole library thing again. I keep thinking back at, you know, college advising days of somebody who actually understands what the offering is and then has a conversation ideally with a student or this person that talks about what they're trying to achieve and then can help them find the resources that are available to take advantage of. And that was the dream, which I realize now was a lot. And I think it was too much at the time.

To create kind of that mass— was the dream too ambitious in terms of the surface area of the number of kind of topics or domains of knowledge that you wanted to capture? Is it, was it too, was it in scope or was it like an impact? Where was it too ambitious?

I think it was in scope, although people were willing to do it. We had a whole system of pairing people. It was that. I think it was also, it was really unfamiliar. It's not something that sort of exists within the traditional firm corporate culture. I mean, you have the mentor-mentee relationship, which is a whole other topic. So it's related to that, but we also were starting off with a teeny little course catalog. So we didn't really have this huge thing. I think we, I underestimated just how much it would take for somebody to understand what all the pieces are.

Meaning the learner.

How many times to—

Or are you talking about the learner or are you talking about like the people like running the program?

The people who are, who were these learning advisors.

The learning advisors. Okay.

That, that would. Have these conversations with folks, I think there's so much we put on them to both understand how to help somebody on a path. That's a whole skill all in it in and of itself, to understand the resources that are available and to even be able to connect. And this was the big one, I think, that we're working on now, how somebody's desire for learning connects to what their desire for their career is.

Right.

And those are really connected in the professional world. And even at the very beginning, we were asking ourselves that question and we didn't have an answer to it. So we said, let's try, let's, let's just see how far we get and see if we can make this, this work. But it's popped up again. And I think it is an integral part to how people think about their progress and what, how they wanna grow and evolve. So learning isn't something for learning's sake. Learning is really about this thing that I need to do and want to do because I'm trying to go somewhere.

I want to acquire a skill or a capability, you know, that will allow me to then move to the next level or be more effective or yeah.

Right. And what is that next level and what is that somewhere? And I think what we underestimated that that conversation is fundamental to even figuring out what somebody wants to invest in with the time that they have.

Did you underestimate— that's interesting, that I could take it two ways. One is you have kind of career pathing and the kind of competencies that you need to kind of move along a career path well articulated, but matching people to those paths is hard. Or did you actually realize we need to actually figure out what it means to be a project manager and kind of map out the competencies? Was that the kind of blocking piece or—

That was a piece of it. And that's actually also really difficult because again, one size does not fit all because you've got, you know, a range of things that you need to know or could know at different levels of that.

So little fast burning projects versus a 5-year healthcare project. Project manager is a different job in some ways.

It's a completely different job depending on what kind of team you have, who you're teaming with, whether you're doing it by yourself, you know, It's geography, geopolitical context, you name it, right? It is, it is completely different. So we, we started doing that as well. And I think people actually gravitated towards that, but it was also, again, it's, it's that codification of what do you need to know in order to do this job is difficult. Because you can come up with some things and then you can come up with about 10 other exceptions.

Right. And then, I mean, just to make it more fun, how do we know that you actually know it? Taking a course doesn't mean you know it.

Exactly.

So how do we measure kind of competency at these tasks that we, or any, yeah.

Right. And how do you do it without it feeling like, well, if I do this, then this happens. Right.

And, and, and for some people, meaning if I take Project Management 101, within the next 6 weeks, I should be able to project manage a project, that kind of thing.

Exactly. Yes. So it's, it is, it is, it is a nested problem. And I think what we found is when we poked at it, we found a whole bunch of these things and didn't have solutions to them, but we're I think knowing more about it now, we're trying to, or working on building a framework that takes some of these things into consideration. And the trick to it is, is to keep it a flexible framework. And those are the hardest ones to build because you gotta have movable joints and it can't be entirely black and white because if it's too brittle, it'll break. And I think that's what we found when our entire world of working changed in 2020. Yeah, that we, we had to be nimble. And I think the same thing is true for this whole conversation and for this whole challenge, because the kind of work that, as you said earlier when we were talking about the apprentice model, right, the apprentice model of being able to look over someone's shoulder or look at all the drawings and mark them up at the end of the day and leave little notes on things. The technology has changed, the way people physically work together has changed, and so How we inhabit this profession has changed and it's going to change even faster. I mean, that's the thing. We look back and we can see all the change. We have a much harder time looking forward and seeing the change, but it's coming. So how do we build a flexible system that allows us to get at the key components of what humans need to learn about other humans? In order to be able to work within whatever system is out there, which for me always comes down to communication. That to me is the most— if I could teach anything perfectly, it would be for somebody to— for people to become incredibly strong communicators.

I think you're— I mean, I think it's interesting what you said because there's about the looking forward, because I think, well, it's true, we don't know what the next 3, 5 years will bring. I think even if you do kind of scenario planning, I don't think there's a scenario you can imagine where becoming a better communicator and communications won't be more important in 3 or 5 years than it is today. I don't think there's a world where Shepley being able to learn faster and adapt more quickly isn't more important in 3 to 5 years than it is today. So you don't know exactly what it's going to look like, but that skill of being able to learn quickly and communicate seem like durable investments to make as an organization.

Yeah, I think they're foundational in a lot of ways. They're foundational in also, you know, a lot of the changes that we're experiencing with how different generations work with each other and go back to the silos, right? People have different priorities. And I mean, we experience this every day working with our clients, working with consultants, right? So we're working with people who aren't doing exactly the same thing we are. The better we can be at really communicating clearly— and that doesn't mean clearly like I say it very clearly so you can understand—

my diction is perfect.

No, but it's me saying it in a context that makes sense to the person who's listening so that they can actually engage on this subject that we need to talk about as opposed to talking past each other.

And I think— We had a speaker at K Connect. I wanna say it was 2012. It was Jim Kent, who was the chief marketing officer at Thornton Tomasetti at the time. And he said, look, my job is communications and I define it very simply. There's something that's in my head that I want you to know. And the degree to which what was in my head you understand and have, have received, that's communication, right? It's like it doesn't matter how clearly I wrote it, the brand, the font, whatever that is. Did I move my idea or feeling or emotion, whatever, from me to you? Did it transmit?

Yes. Yes.

And it gets trickier knowing that people receive information differently and all the things, right?

Yeah, exactly. Because otherwise you're talking about different things. You're not talking about the same things. And that, again, fundamental to teaching, fundamental to advising, fundamental to leading teams, fundamental to setting direction.

Mm-hmm. So as you come to kind of— how long are you— what's the, what's the, the kind of scope of your, your strategic plans? Is it a 5-year, 10-year? How long, how far ahead does it look?

It started as a, as a 10-year. And in fact, we've rolled it out in 2020, which was a little wild at the time. We worked on it in '19 and then this 2020 thing happened. We're like, well, okay, let's, let's wait a couple of months and see if this totally blows everything out of the water. And it actually didn't. So there was a lot of that flexibility that really worked, which was great. So that was an amazing learning experience. It's a 10-year total. So we just did an update to just kind of look at, well, where are we? So let's not— and that's another thing is like, not, not don't revamp the whole thing, but tweak it and figure out, do we need to redirect a little bit? So we're due for another one in 2030.

So in the kind of— we're in '26, so there's 4 years left. And as you think about the learning organization piece of that, and you haven't said it, but I think you're kind of saying we're gonna reboot it or try Birdfeeder 2.0, or there's something else coming. As you're thinking about that, it feels like you learned some things in Birdfeeder 1.0, you're coming to, so I'm kind of curious to talk about what you're coming to Birdfeeder 2.0 with, and I'm picking up something, I'm wondering if one of the things you do is be less ambitious in scope, understanding how deep these things are, or do you stay in the scope and add more resources and more advisors? Yeah, like, what is— what are you going to do differently this, this, this with this swing?

I think, yeah, it's, it's— I don't think throwing more at it is going to solve what it is we need to solve. I don't think making it more rigid is going to solve what we need to solve. I think it's actually getting simpler. In some ways and getting at the root of the thing that is going to be that, that spark that is going to be the catalyst basically. And I think it's this, this framework that we're trying to figure out that connects to how people move through their professional career, what that, how that connects to their personal learning and how it connects to not only the teaching and learning part, but also to leadership and communication. Because I'm, I think they're all connected.

Where do you think you made it kind of more complicated or over-invested in Birdfeeder 1.0 that you would change? How do you make it simpler? What, what, what needs to go?

I think that the learning advisors, that was too complicated.

What were they asked to do?

They were asked to meet with individuals, talk to them about their, what they wanted to learn, and then help them find the right thing.

So they were helping them navigate the system, essentially.

Yes.

Okay.

In a lot of ways, I think the system navigation is something that is going to be possible to be solved with technology.

Yeah. Well, I mean, I think I say that very quickly. I feel like there's two— I think it will be helped by technology. I do think there is a role, and it's interesting to see where this sits. A guy named Michael Leckman, he's speaking at the conference this year from Diamond Schmitt. He kind of started Diamond Schmitt's university program. He's a principal, design principal in the firm. And his vision is he wants every principal and design lead and project manager to understand the catalog very, very well. So that when they have someone on their team who hasn't done wall sections or curtain wall or CA or whatever the thing is, they know the learning resource and they can connect it to them in the flow of work. And what I'm inferring from a learning advisor is they're kind of looking out for Denise overall for her career trajectory and trying to mix and match learning opportunities, which maybe is also a good role for someone to look at the arc of your career. But to— because So the apprenticeship piece can actually get better. It's like instead of me having to teach you Kurt Walling in the moment, because you're going to start doing this thing, we have a learning resource. Do it and then we'll talk about what you learned and how to apply it to this project, or you do an exercise. And so I wonder if there's like a way to have that project teams be more of that navigator role too, if that makes any sense.

Yeah. Yes, I think so. I mean, I think there's going to be the whole human component, which is the people that, that's, you know, the peer network or the network of the project. And I think there are different kind of networks that exist. Exist in a firm. There's the network of people that are learning the stuff you're learning. They're the people that you connect with informally that are mentors that you pick. And then there is, you know, the project team, which changes constantly, and maybe, you know, maybe more, more than others. I also think there is going to be a way that you can pretty much ask the question of whatever technology, AI evolution there's going to be to say, I need to figure out how to do this. I do best with this kind of a resource. You know, what do we have available? And it would be able to find that. So I think there is the sort of the understanding the catalog, which is something that we were talking about, is something that I believe is going to be an easier thing to solve. The harder thing to solve, I think that we need to concentrate on, and that's that more pointed, you know, putting our resources there. Is the conversation of where do I want to go? Because the self-identification—

Where do I want to go as like in my career?

Yes.

Yeah.

The self-identification of I need to figure out how to be able to do that curtain wall right now. People do that based on the problem or the challenge that they're facing. But the conversation of do I want to go out there and be responsible for bringing in work? Or do I— am I incredibly fulfilled by working on the most complicated details and creating these really advanced, innovative ways of thinking about energy efficiency and modularity and whatever else it is on these exterior facades for these incredibly big buildings? That's something that gives me joy and that I find my emotional capacity to invest in, to be really strong. So how do I make that distinction? And it sometimes has something to do with shining a light underneath that thing that we thought we wanted because that's what we learned in school or that's what our friend did or that's what we're watching in the movies or whatever it is.

Pays more. I don't know.

Paid more.

Yes.

Well, that's the— I had my law school bout at some point too where I was like, well, I should really, because that's what I'm doing. And then I'm like, no, done.

I mean, I was a history major. What was I going to do? I mean, like, luckily, luckily technology took off and saved me from—

Yeah. So I think it's—

I apologize to all the lawyers listening.

Yeah. Well, exactly. Well, and hopefully the lawyers that are listening are happy doing what they're doing.

That's hopefully. Yes.

But it's not— it's probably not my cup of tea.

It shouldn't do it by default or because you want to make more money. I think that's the point we're making, right? Is that shouldn't be the reason that you get into law or become a principal or do business development or whatever it is.

Yes, because work-life balance, I mean, I know there's so much talk about that, right? And how it is or isn't a balance. But if you're enjoying what you're doing, you have to balance it less or you have to counteract, counterbalance it less. I mean, yes, there's just plain time commitment with, you know, whatever it is, soccer games and pageants and time with family. But there's also the emotional commitment that comes with that. And if I love what I'm doing and I'm fulfilled in it, makes me happy, then that's something less to counterbalance, right, with other things. And so I think this conversation that's fundamental to the, the learning conversation and making the learning organization successful is also figuring out, helping people figure out why they need to learn things. And for what they need to learn things.

I don't know, 20, 30 minutes ago we talked about this kind of learner motivation thing, and there's the micro motivation, which is we have a deadline and I got to deliver versus the macro motivation of a more long-term motivation is who do I want to become as a person and what do I want to do with my life here on Earth and my time and my energy? And how do I— how much of that is on me to figure that out versus how much can an organization help me have a dialogue about figuring that out and maybe try some different things? And if it doesn't work, can I back out and try another thing and kind of figure out what my path is?

Yeah, yeah, exactly. I think that's where if we can help, if we can find a way to help with that, Mm-hmm. That's probably the biggest service that we can bring to somebody, right? And that, that's motivational. And it's also the hardest thing to figure out.

It's the hardest thing for Shepley to figure out how to describe that, or it's the hardest for the—

okay, it's the hardest thing to describe, figure out what the scope is, figure out how to prepare people to do that. Because again, you might have one or two people. I mean, we heard from somebody recently that, you know, at our latest event that was doing a leadership development engagement that was pretty intense and concentrated and really required a person who was really good at it to lead it. So it's, you know, when you have one person like that, that's not enough for a firm of 200 people. So it's finding and, and developing the ability to do that, to have those conversations, which luckily though, I think again overlaps with some of the things that we try to teach everybody, which is the ability to talk with people about what they're facing. Put yourself in other people's shoes. Because when you really think about what's fundamental about what we do as designers, we don't design places for ourselves. We design places for other people. And understanding what is going to be good for other people and not just beautiful to photograph and win an award on or do the thing that the code says, which you have to do. But really good design is going to be about creating places for people, other people, not us designer people, but other people, you know. And in order to do that, you have to be able to ask those questions and have those conversations to understand what somebody else needs. So I think fundamentally that ability to then have the conversation with somebody about what their career needs is related. Yes, it's slightly different, but they're both rooted in the same kind of skills.

Well, also managing expectations in terms of how quickly this can or can't happen and You know, it's a complicated matrixed organization that's project-based and trying to— there's only so many slots to do so many roles.

And exactly. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. It's, it is complicated. It's very human. And very human is very complicated because I think humans are not particularly straightforward.

I wonder how this combines the also the what people want to learn and what they need to learn. A little bit. And there's parts of everyone's job, I think, that isn't their most exciting thing that they get up for in the morning, but you still have to learn the skill.

Yes. Yes. For me, that's meeting notes. But yes, you're absolutely right. That's such a, that's such a good point, Chris, because sometimes we don't, often we don't know what or we may even know it and we don't want to do it because it's hard. And again, back to the point about when something is really hard, you're probably learning something pretty fundamental or, or something pretty important because you're working through it. So it, it's less about, um, I want to say tools And it's less about predictable processes and more about situational awareness and response in some ways, which can be really difficult and difficult to learn. And so I think it's, yeah, it's a human struggle.

I mean, you brought up in our workshop psychological safety, which I think is a great topic. My kind of go-to, and I'm sure you've read Amy Edmondson's work on this, but she's my go-to. Find books by Amy Edmondson. Oh my gosh, amazing. And I'm, what I'm kind of think you're hinting at, and maybe I'm off base, is yes, the knowledge and learning piece of it, understanding what it means to become a project manager. Here are the things you need to learn whether you want to or not, delivering them at a time when people can absorb it, want to absorb it. There's a whole art to developing people. And it's changing with apprenticeship model. All of this stuff is changing in AI. But there's this kind of— you're circling around, I think, how can I let people understand that Shepley Bulfinch has my back and is thinking about me in the long term, even if I don't have— I do some things I don't want to do in the short term, or I have to— maybe it takes a little longer than I wanted to to get there. Maybe I'm surprised. Maybe I'm thrown into something faster than I'm ready for it. But that there is this kind of environment built on trust and communication and transparency that I think is foundational to a learning organization that, you know, the only way you learn as an organization is that you mess up sometimes. And so that's true for the company and that's true for teams and that's true for individuals.

Yeah, completely agree.

And I'm curious as you think of, because I, I've heard you talk about relationship between a culture of learning and psychological safety. What is it specifically at Shepley that you've tried to do to increase psychological safety or shape an environment that's conducive to learning?

Yeah, you know, and it's hard because people don't like to mess up. They don't like to mess up in front of themselves. They don't like to mess up in front of other people, right? We hold ourselves accountable. We, I mean, there are a couple of things that we've implemented. I mean, we have one that I think I've mentioned at some point is we call it back to the future, which is a way of talking about things that happened or a project, looking back at a project and instead of saying—

So it's lessons learned without calling it lessons learned.

Yeah.

Right.

It's like, yes. It's kind of, if I could go back, how, how, what things would we do again and what things might we do differently and what could the outcome be?

What do I wish I'd known when I was getting started? That kind of thing.

Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And I think it's, Also reinforcing when people talk about things that where something went wrong and they figured out a way to solve that problem, to celebrate that, to, to not, to actually celebrate the fact that something didn't go the way they had expected, something didn't go perfectly. It's celebrating.

You had the opportunity to learn. Right?

Yes.

Is that what you're saying?

It's celebrating the imperfect. So, celebrating the fact that somebody actually learned from it and is sharing again that learning. So, you know, I, I, we try to, and this is hard actually to encourage, you know, project spotlights that we share with the whole firm, not to just talk about the things that were amazing on this project and that it did incredibly well, but also talk about the struggles. What were the things that we were struggling with? Whatever that was, could be small things, big things. And it's also really up to leadership to constantly reinforce that we want people to share questions that come from things going wrong on our intranet, on our learning platform, on Finch.

Right. And that starts by having leaders do the same, do what?

Do the same thing.

Model that behavior, right?

Yes. And sometimes even, and when they don't and they maybe not don't understand the importance of it is having that conversation and helping people understand, right? That's why it's important. It's not about saving face. It is about sharing a learning and actually being perceived as much stronger as a result and much more resilient as a result.

You're kind of hinting at like, yes, sharing that specific lesson. Hopefully we absorb that and we find a way to not make that same mistake again. But it sounds like the fact that they are sharing it is actually even more important than the specific technical issue or issue that happened on the project. It's because it's building a culture that, that does that.

Yes. Yes. And, you know, we still have more work to do on that. We're by no means 100% there. But yeah, that's the— and then, you know, it's also, I think, and, you know, this goes against some of the more traditional beliefs of leaders have to be perfect. Leaders have to know everything. Leaders have to be strong. They don't get to have problems. They don't get to be sick. They don't get to do any of those things. They don't get to make mistakes.

No off days.

Yeah. None of these things, right? I mean, I still remember one town hall, I think I I completely couldn't, I can't remember if I couldn't remember a person's name or used the totally wrong name repeatedly for them, thanking them for something and totally used the wrong name. And then the next morning I woke up thinking, oh my God, I just did that. Yeah. And so I went on the team's chat. This was a town hall. So this was the whole firm. I'm like, and went on the team's chat and did the whoever the person was and say, hey, I'm so sorry. I totally realized I got your name completely wrong. I don't know why I did that. I am so sorry. And got a really nice, hey, it's fine back. But I think it was hard because I'm like, well, I'm not only going to admit that I was like messed up totally, but I'm also going to call attention to the fact that I messed up. To people who didn't even notice.

Right, right.

So I'm like, not only am I admitting, hey guys, look, look what I did, right? And so, but it's funny, I'm— once you do it, yeah, it gets easier. It's the first time you have to do it, it's like, yeah, and you made it easy for the next person.

They saw you do it, and the person that wasn't there also saw you do it, and so now they know that that's Yes. Some in a positive way, right? Yes.

They're like, oh. I hope so. I hope so. And that's a little thing, right? It's a tiny little thing, but I think it doesn't matter if it's a big thing or a little thing. The emotional context is very similar.

I wrote down while we were just talking that culture is the soil for the learning organization.

Yeah.

And I feel like that's, to me, it's what makes it possible for it to flourish and grow. And like, you can, it can grow in bad soil, but only so far and so well. Right. You know, plants are very resilient. We see them growing in all kinds of crazy places, but it feels like leadership is tending that, right? That is like one of the core roles for the learning organization.

They have to.

And I mean, take the garden metaphor and also weeding out the things that don't matter so that things have enough room and space to be able to grow. And yeah.

Yeah. And just because you thought something was a weed doesn't mean it's actually a weed.

Oh, well, fair. A weed is just what we call a weed.

Yeah. This is a real rabbit hole for me, so careful.

Okay. That's good. Somehow we managed to make it all the way through this conversation without getting into the bird metaphor thing again. We've kind of steered clear of that. Yeah, I've done it. Now, Angela, this has been great. I really appreciate you setting aside time to talk through all of this, and I'm very excited to see where Birdfeeder 2.0 and learning organization goes over the next years at Shepley.

Thank you. I learned a lot actually during our conversation, and I really appreciate your insights pointing out some things I'll definitely take away and be able to add to the things I'm thinking about. So really appreciate that. It was really fun. Thank you.

Awesome. Thank you so much, Angela.

Thanks.

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