Scaling Design Excellence: How Diamond Schmitt Amplifies Knowledge Through Learning and AI

Good morning. As Chris said, we've been on this journey for a while, but it's great to be here. And we were in San Francisco in 2018, and we've applied lessons from 2018, and we continue to apply them. And we've learned quite a bit today and yesterday, so we're going to continue to do that. So, Michael.

Sam.

And this is our team. This is Jeanette Parker, who's our Knowledge Management Director, Wendy Gamal, Knowledge Management Manager, and Rowan Davidson, Diamond Schmidt University Coordinator, and Matthew, who's our eyes from Vancouver, and you'll learn a little bit about that in a minute. It does take a team to make this work, and we're, we're very fortunate that we've had lots of engagement but also lots of support from, from senior administration. So who are we? Well, we've been 45 years in practice, and as you can see from the top of the list, we've got 300 employees and we've got a very strong senior management team. We started in Toronto, and that was in about 1980, but we've grown and now we're across in Manhattan, Vancouver, Calgary, and Ottawa. And That growth has been really, really interesting, and it's been within the last, I'll say, 15 years. The firm has also had growth periods. So, we've got 44 people, and those of you who remember 1991, at least in Canada, it was a great contraction there. We shrunk to 12, and then we realized that we needed to have a diverse portfolio, have expertise in many different building types, but also continue to bring the design innovation to all of those. So over the space of the next 7 years, we grew to 100. And then we grew to 200. And then we were approaching Dunbar's number. And I know we've talked a little bit about that, Dunbar's number, the 150 people that you could meaningfully have relationships with in your life. And then we grew to 300. And so right about that point, right just after 2009, and maybe some of you remember 2008 and 2009, and you'll notice that we didn't shrink, we grew. And that was entirely as a result of a learning culture, although not a KA Connect learning culture, but a learning culture and diversity of portfolio. Management also changed over that period of time. We started as a found— with 2 founding partners, and that got us through into the '90s. In the '90s, there was an ownership transition that took place, and we grew to 12 principals. In between '99 and 2003, the firm continued to grow. So did the ownership group. We grew to 20 in that period at 2008, 2009. Just remember where you were in that time. And then now to 300 with 23 principals. So clearly we've had measured steps of significant continuous growth, both of staff and of ownership. So how do you do that? Well, we've learned that scaling expertise isn't a single problem. It's really 3 different challenges. It's building the infrastructure, it's embedding it in the work, and it's helping people adopt it. Through the process of developing the talk with Chris, there were a few instances where I said, I had a dream. And the dream is what you see here. And I should say that since 2017, the full gamut of staff and senior and junior staff have been contributing remarkably well to DSX. So there's really not an issue with people contributing to DSX. And what we're writing here is DSX, but I think what we really mean is the learning management system. So Explore the learning management system, contribute to the learning management system, converse, bring your— this material into your project talks, and then model the behavior of asking staff to check the learning management, check the incredible resources that you have before you come and have a conversation about a particular topic, whatever it might be. A reflection on some building types, because it'll apply in just a minute. So we're, we design performing arts centers, including at Lincoln Center, many, many higher education projects. That's been the majority of my portfolio. And as you know, libraries have become learning centers. So there's a relation between higher education and libraries. And I'm wishing I could have updated this stat. So we're 30% more than 10 years in our office. So 30% of 300, that's 90. people, I'm going to say 15% are at or beyond 20 years. So a lot of retention in the firm. One of the things that we've been doing since the beginning of the firm, since I joined— I'm going to take a deep breath here— I joined in 1988, which is that there were— Every week we had a design meeting, an all-staff design meeting. So an all-staff design meeting at 44, or even at 100 was interesting. As we got to 200 and 300, became more interesting. But it was part of our DNA to include everyone, to talk about design, and to make sure that the least experienced person and the most experienced person could be in the same room at the same time. We also learned over time, and this is actually quite recent, to embody these, the principles of our higher ed projects in our own office. So what were those principles? Places to collaborate, ability to learn everywhere, to observe others at work learning. And what does that mean? That means glass-walled meeting rooms. Engage in group work. Well, that means making sure that you have both analog and digital tools for that to happen. And I'm sure most of you have made the transition, as we have, from projectors to rooms with multiple screens in order to assist these kinds of meetings. But it echoes very closely what was going on in our higher ed projects. And what's all this in the service of? It's in the service of creating community. And how do we create community? We make sure that we encourage people— and for those of you who have utilization rate concerns, we don't— we encourage people to engage with people outside your project. We know there's lots of great engagement in the project, but who are all those other people? And we have so many great people. I'm on the recruitment team. I've seen every one of the resumes of every single person for the last 20 years. I know how interesting they are. I want other people to know how interesting they are. And so this creating of community and all the activities that take place really are for that. And then occasionally we all get together at our town hall, in this case in one of the buildings we designed, a performing arts center in Toronto. So, what's the model? What's the mechanism we're looking for? We know that traditional mentorship works. It's been working very well for us. But we want to, in recognition of Ellen's talk yesterday and all the other forces all of us are experiencing, we want to accelerate mentorship. And that model is that both project leads— and I'm trying not to say senior staff because we have project leads who are quite young, and experienced and very proficient. And we have some project leads who are almost my age and, and, and proficient too. Um, so, um, we want to make sure that everyone is getting a chance to dig into the great material we have, the AI search, the LMS, and that both are aware that you can refer to that and then have better conversations about some of the highly technical stuff That we're having to learn very quickly in order to be able to deliver the projects they're working on. Just a bit of a timeline. So we started DSX, that's our Diamond Schmidt Exchange, in 2017. We started our internal education program, Diamond Schmidt University, in 2018. And just after that, we were in San Francisco. And what did that look like? We had some themes back in 2017: knowledge sharing, knowledge capture. encouraging everyone because we were, as I mentioned, we're dispersed. 5 floors in our Toronto office, 5 offices across Canada and in the US. How do you make sure that the research that someone's doing in a Toronto office is being shared with someone somewhere else that they may benefit? They probably need to know it. So concentrate and amplify our knowledge and capabilities. That was the theme of DSX. And of course, you all remember, maybe some of you remember the actual app before it became a mobile-friendly site. But, and what was the purpose of it? Ideas, insight, and resources. Keeping a focus on not just technical, but ideas that make our projects better. We learned so much from the Intranet Maturity Model. Thanks, Susan and Sarah and Chris, for guiding us step by step along the way and not hurrying through the Intranet Maturity Model. We also learned that it was not just a way to find adoption of the early rounds of KA Connect, but also it was a representation of how you go about cultural change. It was successful for us. One of the simplest things you could imagine, filling out your bio so that people could know who you were, I think it took us 4 years to get everyone to fill out a bio.

Really?

Why did it take so long? People were just uncertain about what they were going to be able to say or what they were able to say about themselves. So vicarious learning. So as a result of getting all that going, we were able to bring in external speakers for our Diamond Schmidt University. We were able to get people who are involved in some of our most interesting projects to talk about the inception of those projects and how they proceeded. And then we were able to have different kinds of workshops and seminars, in this case full-scale one-to-one details about a particular important element in a building. And at the beginning, they started with about half a dozen people attending these sessions at 8:30 in the morning, 8:30 to 9 before office hours. And then they grew, and now there are dozens who attend the same sessions. And we're seeing a hunger for these kinds of conversations in person, but But of course, they're also recorded.

Thank you, Michael. So when COVID happened, it accelerated online learning, but it also created a new challenge. Our junior staff were at home, they weren't in the ambient learning environment in their bays. So we turned to Absorb LMS and custom-built a platform. So we migrated our content over, we purchased SCORM courses, and it looked great and it functioned well. And nobody went there. And when we asked them why, it was a common refrain, it's one too many clicks. And that one hurt. That was a hard-learned lesson, a lot of hours put in. But we learned more from that failure than we did from many of our successes. And that is that, at least in our case, knowledge has to be embedded in the work. And so, we took a step back, and we wanted to be more intentional about our learning strategy. Quick show of hands, who here sometimes feels like you're making this up as you go? Oh good, it's not just me. Great. So, we wanted to look to external expertise to understand ourselves a bit better. Understand— we knew what was working, but we didn't really know why. And so, the firm invested in sending me to the University of Toronto to learn about adult learning principles, evaluation, measuring learning, and new So in 2022, we conducted our first needs analysis by reviewing our historical data, interviewing our management team, running focus groups across disciplines, across offices, and many, many surveys. And some of that validated what we already knew, but there were some surprises as well. And if you haven't conducted a needs analysis before, or you haven't conducted one recently, and you're trying to figure out that next stage of your learning journey, I highly recommend it. And coming out of that needs analysis, we heard something that really resonated with us. People loved the exploration series that Michael was sharing. The design conversations and the guest speakers are core to what we do, but they also wanted more access to our technical expertise. And so the committees listed up here— building science, contract admin, digital practice— consisting of subject matter experts within our office, they were already delivering training just in pockets throughout the firm. And what we were missing was a cohesive platform and strategy. And so, coming out of that, we formed the Fundamentals Learning Stream, where we could equip our team with skills and knowledge to excel in their role based off of our best practices. In theory, we did have to make those best practices first. So, shortly after, we set to work codifying our BIM manual, our drawing standards, our sustainability policies, and having those committees not just be the authors but also the owners of that content when it went up onto DSX. And then it was our turn to put in some work as the learning and development team, coming out of that University of Toronto certificate program, understanding that traditional lecture-style learning has its place, but active learning is much more engaging, memorable, and worth your time investment as a firm. And it creates community, as Michael touched on. So, we explored just about every single modality under the sun. We run workshops, we have detailing seminars, labs, tours, mentorship programs, very tactical, very involved, very hands-on. And as we were going along and hosting these events, we were recording them and building a massive library of recorded structured live learning. So, that's that level 4. And so when the AI Search Beta came along, we put our hands up. We were fortunate to participate, and we understood right away that this was going to be a groundbreaking development in our learning library, synthesizing our content and bringing life to this, this library that we had amassed over time. And shortly thereafter, we got access to the LMS Beta. And so we were creating our LMS called OpenClassrooms. MyDSU. I know we're throwing a lot of acronyms at you this morning. Thank you for your patience. And we had a choice to make. We could, on the one hand, spend time, at least this was the choice that we perceived, we could spend the time and production value and create these short-form, high-quality video content, but delay the rollout of the LMS. Or we could use that library that we had built and Perhaps sacrifice the viewer experience while augmenting and amplifying the AI search. So pulling from those video transcripts, any one of our team members could look up how to do specifications and jump to that chapter of that recorded structured live learning. Same for best practices for organizing their drawing set and many, many other areas. And that was a trade-off that we took at the time. But now that we've got the LMS up and running and hearing from all of you about how that short-form, on-demand Level 5 learning is succeeding, now it's our turn to start building that out as well. And at first, it was intimidating. We had wondered if we had to hire a production crew, camera people, but we took a step back and looked at our inventory and what we already had. So embedded in our DSX posts, high-quality videos. Our marketing team as well, producing slick, high-quality, short-form content for an external audience hosted on our external website. It seemed obvious to bring that internally and find how it can fit into our learning paths. And so leaning on the resources that you already have as well. And where we are creating direct-to-DFX, we are starting, like many of you, with our onboarding, with Repetitive training like Nuforma. So, thank you, Wendy, for being our first. And so now, over about a decade of building the knowledge infrastructure, what started as 2 distinct systems, our intranet DSX and our firm university program DSU, have effectively merged into a singular knowledge ecosystem. And that has set the stage for the next phase, knowledge agents. So we got access to the Knowledge Agent beta not more than a few weeks ago, and we've been having a lot of fun. So far, we've created a DSX content checker that reviews the information that we have. We have a sample library Knowledge Agent to speed that process up as well. And perhaps most exciting is our DSA Revit assistant— liberal with the graphics— who is built off of that huge library of learning content that our digital practice team has tirelessly put together off of their codified manuals. And our hope is that in a few weeks' time, we will be able to give access to this Revit agent to every new architectural staff member and every new student that joins, so that from day one, they have access to all of our standards and best practices. And perhaps the culmination of everything we've been working towards for the last decade is the Synthesis Revit plugin. So, I know some of you in the room are architects and engineers. If you're not, I'm sure you've seen someone working through a detail in Revit, They're stuck on a problem without ever having to leave the Revit app. They can check our digital practice manual, read our graphic standards. They can search with our AI search, watch a clip of a video that they need to answer their question in that moment. And soon they will be able to query our knowledge agent directly within Revit. So that hard-learned lesson that we carried through from our failed LMS has now come to pass in this and being embedded into the work. So if DSX way back in 2017 made knowledge visible, the AI search made it findable, knowledge agent make it contextual. So we were making good progress towards the modern accelerated mentorship model, as we call it, and we wanted to survey and see how well this was actually being adopted. And so in May of this year, we surveyed 50 staff and asked them 2 questions. Firstly, do you check DSX before you have a project conversation to prepare? And secondly, have you used the AI search to find the answers that you need? And we were getting ready to roll up our sleeves and, you know, do the change management thing and convince people to come along. And we did not need to with our junior and intermediate cohort because 94% of them indicated that they check DSX before they go into a project conversation to be prepared. And 72% had used AI search that past week to find the answers that they needed. And we were thrilled with those figures, but we understood that— and thank you, Chris, for sharing this model with us— crossing the chasm of technology adoption. While our junior and intermediate staff were in that early adopter phase, We understood that our project leads were a little later along the curve through our day-to-day experience and the analytics, that there wasn't as much visible integration into that 7-layer Modern Maturity Learning Model, MALOM, workflow. And so then we took the questions to our project leads, and Michael, in our management forum this May, asked 2 questions. What are the barriers to exploring and sharing your knowledge, and will you bring DSX and MyDSU into your project conversations? And we expected to hear that they didn't have time, that they just weren't thinking about it, they're not on DSX, but we didn't hear that at all. It was much more nuanced. So this is a screen grab from the Miro board from that management forum, and I'll give you a second to read it. But what we were surprised by was the care that goes into these responses. So you'll see a few questions there on how do we Teach— AI can't teach good judgment. So how do we intervene to challenge curiosity? Who's curating that quality of information inside of DSX and DSU? Sure, you can search DSX, you can query AI, read references. That's all great, but you're not interacting with another person in their minds. And these are not concerns about technology adoption. These are concerns for the care of the craft. And so, we understood that the same things that we're trying to preserve and accelerate, the mentorship culture, design reviews, conversation, are the same things that they're trying to preserve. And so, our challenge now is to help our team understand that these tools, our knowledge infrastructure, can not only preserve, but accelerate those top-line items. And so to do that, we have to help our instructors, as it were, our project leads adapt to a new learning environment.

We have a deep portfolio of academic projects, and we have been in many eras of curricula, let's call it that. They change. It's not a style really, it's kind of a title change. The era that we are in now in our academic projects is active learning, and you probably have all heard that. Some of you may have even experienced it, and it is meant to ensure that there's group work and collaboration that happens at the beginning of— throughout the entire term, and it's meant to prevent the assumption that you've— that every course is a sage on a stage like me now. The results of that were that all classrooms were designed to permit flexibility, different table arrangements, media on different walls, connections between laptops in the middle of the room and projections on the sides of the room. It was very technically intense. And in some cases, it was just a question of making sure that the lessons were constructed to use the space. If you're an instructor and you've had that deck you've used for 20 years and you've been relying on it and you adjust it a little bit each time, and then someone tells you, you've got to completely change the way you're working, there's going to be resistance. So this, uh, one of our clients, um, uh, who— for whom we had just designed a facility with all of these features, um, realized that the staff didn't know how to use the spaces. So they created a lab to instruct the instructors so that they knew how to use the spaces so that they could adapt their deck and adapt their way of thinking to this new mode. And if those of any of you who are in higher ed, you'll know that there's lots of data about how the new mode is, is, is successful. Bringing people along, that was the challenge. So we thought maybe there's a parallel here between what we've observed in our clients and in their higher ed and what we are trying to accomplish with the learning management system. And the modern learning organization. So, I presented this extraordinary chart, inspiring chart, to our management group. And with what I knew about it at that time, we discovered that not everyone is as fluent in knowledge management language as maybe we are. So, we thought maybe we should do a translation for a non-KM audience. So we tried, and I'm just going to click through these very quickly. We went through every single one of the steps. You'll see them larger in just a second. But we started by thinking that there was mentorship models 1 through 4, and we were happy to understand that we were already there in 1 through 4, close enough. But we didn't really fully understand the accelerated mentorship model in 5, 6, and 7. And we also didn't really communicate well to the management group that the amount of time you spent at desk mentorship will probably not change that much. What you're going to get is the simultaneity of all those levels, not just one at a time or not one being an apex, but all of them. And the advantage will be that those who are wired the right way will take advantage of 5, 6, and 7. The teams that will do that will take advantage of 5, 6, and 7, and they will accelerate. Mentorship Model 1, project-focused design, drawing, and ongoing research with senior oversight and guidance demonstrating critical thinking. That happens, continues to happen, has been the success of all of our firms, I'm sure. The next model, Mentorship Model 2, learning within the team in the studio, something that we all talk about, which is that being in the studio allows you to hear the dynamic, the tone, And the strategies that some more experienced people are using to get through challenging moments. That will still continue. Mentorship Model 3, communicating the Office Ethos through drawing— through manuals, templates, and narrative graphics. So, making sure that you're codifying all that. Well, we've started that, as Sam was saying. And then live presentations, labs, workshops, seminars in support of the Office Ethos. Again, as you saw, That's all happening. So there's a comfort level of realizing that there's a lot of, a lot of good steps have already been taken. We're well on our way. So now representing it as the Accelerated Mentorship Model, this is the content created specifically for myDSU. And as you saw, we're taking baby steps in that regard, but we realize that we have a path forward. Accelerated Mentorship Model 2, combining that and having watch parties or having it within team meetings. We've had watch parties with regard to watching the KA Connect videos, so we know that that can work. We're hoping that this will advance as well. And then finally, Accelerated Mentorship Model 3, the BIM tool that you saw together with just-in-time, maybe at a person's desk doing the research or the search with them, And talking to them at their desk.

And so our campaign to help people adopt is ongoing, and we've been trying, as Michael said, a few different avenues for that. So interpreting the maturity model is our first step, and following that, we are sharing our behind-the-scenes work. A lot of the concerns that we heard from that management forum came from the validity of information, and I know many of you in the room work hard to do content reviews, check the AI feedback, make sure that what's up on your synthesis platform is, is accurate. And so Wendy has been sharing posts about that work and bringing that behind-the-scenes work to the forefront to inspire confidence and to show off what we do. You guys all work very hard, so I highly recommend it. And we also can't wait to have people come and explore what is in DSX for themselves. We need to bring it to them. So in our weekly design meetings over beer and popcorn, Wendy and Jeanette have been sharing little snippets of what's available in DSX, what new course is in MyDSU to spark that interest and, and get them to, to check it out once they're back at their desks. They've also been pulling relevant examples from project teams, how they're using this accelerated mentorship model in their teams, because it's one thing to hear it from the learning and development team, to hear it from the knowledge management team, but it's quite another to hear it from A principal, an associate, a project lead who's using it successfully on their projects. And perhaps most impactfully, we have been getting project leads together, having some lunch, and watching all of you. Not too creepy. To show them that we are not the only ones that are grappling with these challenges, that everyone in this room to some degree is also working through these. So thank you all for sharing your challenges and your triumphs, because that has been helpful for us. moving this journey along and helping people adapt.

So then, in the— I guess the last step was trying to see whether there was a way to encourage the reticent to dip a toe into the pool of all of the information that we had. And so, using a couple of tricks that I use myself, which is to have 3 or 4 examples that when addressing the issues with senior project leads or any project leads. This one, for instance. So, many of you will know that when you're reviewing drawings midway through a project, you've got BIM details, there are shadows of details, there are outlines of details, and as a reviewer, I don't know where this— I don't always know where this detail is going. If this person is new to the firm, I need to ask them, Is your expectation that this detail will look like page 17? And I wait. And sometimes I hear, what's page 17? I'll say, great, do the search, find it, find the page, let's talk. I've more often than not heard, yes, I'm headed that way. No, the drawings aren't there yet. They'll be closer in a week, right? But having that solid reference, that one reference for all the details that go through, really important for us. When I'm giving talks on other themes, I'll often ask a crowd, do you know the 4 metrics for being able to start a sustainable project? Embodied carbon, embodied energy, greenhouse gas emissions, and so on. And I asked them to put up their hands and it's a very low percentage. of people of any skill level who have been made aware of these details. So, I'll say, if it's within a team or at a meeting, I'll say, look it up online and on our project, on our server, and then print them out and let's talk about them. And often on a team, many of our projects have high sustainability goals. I want those to be at someone's desk and I want someone to be able to answer them. So, it's just a way in. And lastly, there are— or second to lastly, we've been building these videos for so long, sometimes people have forgotten how good they are. Find a really good one that might turn up in a search and have it be a reference point. Whether it's the detail or the sustainability guidelines or this video, have them— give them a way in so that they can be comfortable making these references. And then— The whole issue of judgment. This is a project which succeeded because the brief was challenged, and it was a lab project where we succeeded because we didn't focus on it being a lab. And so, making sure that you can have those stories associated with certain projects to represent, when the moment is right, represent what good judgment looks like. Not— you're doing it all the time, but there are some high points of good judgment. Have those ready. So, how do you scale deep expertise across a growing distributed team? Build the infrastructure embedded in the work and help people adopt it. Thank you.

Thanks, everyone.

That's great. Thank you, guys. Look, if any of you— thank you for tackling the kind of middle chunk that we were talking about that's the hardest, you know, to make change with. They've got 20 years of mentoring a certain way, and now we're asking you to do it another way. As you're trying to help them learn this new accelerated mentorship model, are you trying to teach them all at once? Are you trying to pick off some friendlies and have them change and then show the rest? Like, what's your approach?

Pick off some friendlies.

Okay.

Yeah, started with a call-out to 5 or 6 project managers who I thought would probably agree with all that we've been talking about and might actually be ready to adopt it. And so, had a few sessions where they were meant to be 15-minute sessions, and the question was, have you used— have you looked into the learning management system in the last week? That's question number one. Have you found any content that really interests you, and have you tried to direct it to any of the staff? We've had a few of those sessions, and people are keen, and the answers that you get back are not always what you expect, but it's really meant to democratize, popularize the idea that it's there. People are really busy.

Yeah.

They're very busy, and you have to keep it in a very concentrated form, but I know that we have People who are very interested in the mentorship and coaching. And so it's early days. It's been really just a few months, but I see a good future for it.

That's kind of the point, isn't it? Right? That they are very busy. They want to mentor and these tools can help them mentor if they know they exist.

That's exactly the point.

Yeah. Sam, what's your biggest thing that you learned from the adult learning kind of education program that you did that you didn't know going into it?

Ooh, I think moving beyond just the basic Kirkpatrick models and, you know, the references that you get, I do think how to conduct a needs analysis. And I'll talk about it till I'm blue in the face, but understanding that you have to design learning around where you want to go as a business, how your teams need to show up to get you there, and then the skills and competencies that your individuals need to perform at that level. So that 3-tiered needs analysis has stayed with me. I've used it a few times over now, and it's been really helpful.

Can you maybe just do another minute or 2 on that? Like, take us through how you did the needs analysis at Diamond Schmidt. Like, how did you start? Like, how did you work? Like, to kind of step by step, how do you do it?

Okay. So firstly, you start with the data. So if you have a firm strategy, that's obviously a good place to move from because that's telling you where you want to go as a business in 3 years, 5 years, but also data from your management forums, for example, sort of that embedded knowledge from your different committees, areas where people in those higher positions are finding the gaps themselves. So, you start there and then you sort of validate those through, in our case, we had focus groups, we had people throwing sticky notes up on the board to lay out our competencies, and then surveys, a classic. But I do find Those are more to validate what you found out in the in-person segments. Sometimes there's some new information that comes out of there, but I do think that extensive interviewing focus groups are the way to go based on data.

Can you talk about the fact that after we got the surveys back, there was a bit of time to analyze them? I'm gonna call it.

Uh, I can't— please share.

No, I'm just remembering that, that any survey that you do It's got— is a double-edged sword, right? You've got— you've asked people to spend the time to fill out all the material, and then you've got to spend the time to properly understand it and then actually reflect it back to those people who participated.

That's a great point, to make sure that it doesn't just become part of your plan, that you explicitly thank people and acknowledge as you go the changes that you're making. So, when we were rolling out that fundamentals learning stream, we made a real conscious effort to communicate that early and often and bring people along. And then, you know, sort of secures buy-in from them as well because they feel like they have impacted this process, which they have.

I'm assuming this was a tool for kind of 2 purposes. Like one, you shared that you were doing really good work with, I think you call it explorations.

Yes.

But then maybe you were missing the mark on some of the kind of foundational skills for people.

Exactly.

Did it also serve as a way to, the thing we talked about yesterday, you can't manage all the knowledge, you can't do all the learning that you want to do in the organization. Did it help you have something to point to and say, this is why we're focused these things and not these other things that people wanted you to tackle?

I do think so. And I think, you know, as a culture, we're pretty liberal with those other things, with those deep dives. We can pretty easily go off and explore. We love those, you know, the creative thinking elements of it. But yes, it created a more solid architecture for us to understand, okay, what do we need to focus on right now? Not to say that we're pushing those other things off to the side, but what do we really need to prioritize and throw our resources behind? So, exactly.

And maybe to say that at the outset, the Diamond Schmidt University was really meant to be a place where we could have design conversations and really open up a topic much broader than you would ever possibly research for the project alone. And there were people from all different fields, filmmakers, writers, Surgeons. Surgeons who were medical device inventors talking about themselves as creatives and what their process was. So we felt that was a really important thing to complement project work. We were, I would say, and I was part of it, resistant to switch over and acknowledge how deep the need was for the fundamentals.

Why were you resistant?

Why was I resistant? We're so design-focused. We wanted to make sure that we kept— wanted to keep elevating the design discussion. And I felt that there was a lot of good practice taking place at the desktops, in the markups.

Right.

And there were some small initiatives that were, I thought, were were going very well. Sam's research and surveys told us that we were not nearly giving enough to the fundamentals. So, I'm thrilled that we found a new model that gave us clarity. And again, we're a design-focused firm and we were trying to keep all the conversations as design-focused as possible, right?

Makes sense.

Assuming that you as a, as a practicing professional were doing all that research very well on your own on, on the other stuff, on the technical stuff. We weren't right.

We were wrong.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, great.

Glad we found out.

Yeah, sure.

Cool. Chad and Jordan, I think have, or Brian maybe have boxes if you guys have questions. See one, a couple up here on the front.

Nice.

Nice. Amazing talk. Thank you so much for sharing. One question that came up with me was, we have 7 different studios as you have multiple offices. Do you ever deal with like a disconnect from like home base and the other studios, especially for like this experiential learning that maybe you do more of at your home studio?

And how have you tackled We're so grateful for the analytics we get from DSX. We're so grateful because we can get a sense on a regular basis what's the engagement in those other studios, how many people are showing that they're connected to the— to all 5 by virtue of the evidence that's showing up in posts and the engagement in those posts. And when we see it drop off, that's again a really important way for us to say, Really, we need to bring in someone from New York, bring in someone from Vancouver, and make sure that they're contributing and they can be champions within their studio. Without a doubt, the Vancouver studio has started small. It was just one person for several years. It's grown to 44 people now, and it's developing its own internal culture. And I would say at the moment, it's been incredibly successful, and we are wishing we could see more into what's going on in that studio. It's definitely because of the disparity in the group sizes, 250 versus 45 or 44. There's definitely a sort of Toronto-centric basis for it, and we're trying to be mindful because we meet every 2 weeks to talk about what we see in the analytics. And we, as I mentioned at the beginning of the talk, we brought in someone from the Vancouver studio to help us maintain that perspective. So it has definitely leapt across the country. There's the enthusiasm is there, the energy is there, and the sharing is also there. So it is, it was an issue for sure. I would say probably more greatly just before pandemic and maybe for a little while after. They have their own great ways of doing things. And we find that what we think we're supposed to be doing, with DSU and DSX is not telling but facilitating. And so just encouraging them to use the, the tools we have and the time we have to help facilitate the initiatives that they may have on their own.

And I'm going to add to that really quickly with that champion model. Having a champion for active learning in each office has been really helpful. So I had the opportunity to fly to our Vancouver office, to our New York office, meet with those people, run a few events with them, And then sort of not hand it off, but empower them to run that on their own. And so then we kind of have this network of people where we can talk about our different active learning formats. Because you're right, when you have 280 people in one place running all these labs and workshops and have the resources, you want to make sure that the other offices have that same degree of opportunity as well, or at least strive for it, right?

So I'm curious about that. So like Michael, for example, you were doing those one-to-one detail Yep. Interact. Is the idea that you'll try and find someone there who will do what Michael's doing, or do you just wanna make sure they're doing something? Like how much do you help them figure out what those active learning experiences look like?

Find, find a way for them to do what's natural for them.

Okay.

And also fly me across and for me to do them there as well.

Okay. Yeah. Yeah. That's great. Yeah. Cool. Colin's got a question.

So we've been talking a lot about our internal university. So that's been making me think a lot about the actual top-notch universities that we're hiring staff from. And so your response to the fundamentals question was interesting to me and your experience within the higher ed market. Are you observing that the actual top-notch universities are falling short in some way? Is that what we're kind of implying by all the things that we're discussing here?

Oh, Can you just pause the recording for a second?

Thank you. Thank you. There's no question in my mind that the focus on theory and design expression has been more prominent in most of the universities from which we draw students than technical proficiency. There's no question. There are a select few who found a balance. through their co-op programs and to particular individuals, but there's no question for me. So we have definitely found the need to step up and provide some of the basics. Of course, we have an interview process, we have validation that takes place, and what are we really looking for? We're probably doing the same thing. We have to err on the side of something— someone who is completely technically proficient and couldn't design and someone who is a brilliant early career designer and we thought, well, we'll bring them along. We'll definitely choose the second.

Sam, I'm kind of curious in terms of working with instructors and helping them design programs. What are the things that you were working with your instructors to help them apply adult learning principles? Like how did you help make their courses better? Like, what are the things that kind of came up over and over again?

Ooh, that is a great question. I think the— and Christina talked about this yesterday— the shift away, guiding them away from the comfortable 60-minute lecture because it's what you know, it's efficient. And in introducing them to other ways of learning, the handouts that Christina was also talking about, getting people involved. First of all, showing them that it's possible and in some cases easier. Than delivering a lecture. Also being willing to put in the work yourself, and that does, it is, we were lucky to have a learning and development team of 2, a knowledge management team of 2, but maybe creating the slides for them in some cases where you sort of get it to that first draft level, create that exercise, and then they can edit and revise and make sure that it's in line with their content. So I think introducing them to To that active learning environment, all I can picture is that Algonquin College example, is sometimes enough, a good place to start, and having the time to put in the work because they're, as we all know, very busy people. We're already asking a lot for them to share. So how can you use AI, use your own time to make it easier for them?

We went further than that. And Sam, you'll remember this. At the very beginning of DSX, I guess we're now 2019, 2018, We weren't getting as much engagement from really interesting projects and project leads as we hoped. And they were saying, I just don't have time to compose it. So Sam can type conversations live. And so we suggested that she sit down with an interesting project lead who wanted to post something but couldn't and just have them talk. So she just typed it all up.

I forgot about that.

Before video transcription.

It was before video transcription.

She was the early version of that. Version 1. And the result was that we got, I think it was maybe 4 or 5 most extraordinary posts that couldn't have happened without our assistance.

Yep.

So finding the way to intervene, to support bringing those ideas to the post and to the studio. It was an extraordinary thing that we did.

I think that's such a— like, I wrote about this in the last newsletter that I wrote about, like, that it's gotten so much easier to capture knowledge over the last few years than it's ever been. And I think this idea of surrounding people with interviewers and editors and producers to help those busy folks produce is like, I think that's where we're headed.

I think so.

I'm curious, Sam, like, when you interact with those folks now, Is that the kind of default? Is like, we're gonna help you, you don't have to do the work? Or do you kind of offer it only if they feel like they're too stretched?

I, I think it's the default, but it, it depends on the person. Some people do, do want that, that ownership over the process. Um, and I, I was actually curious to ask you about this, Christina, um, about how you sort of balance, you know, giving, uh, you know, they're the ones who are producing this information, giving them the creative license to do what they want while also acknowledging that, you know, our team, for it to really stick and be valuable, might need to look a little bit different. So, I think that's been something that, yeah, I've had to keep in mind. But it is the default, yes.

But also, we're now 8, 9 years in, and the people who are contributing now are much more comfortable with all the social media. Uh, but certainly on, on, on our own DSX, uh, building a post, uh, from the field, right? Um, uh, going to a construction site and within a day having 5 images or 8 images, a good narrative. And those posts that come from, uh, all, um, um, experience groups in the, in the office are some of the most engaging, uh, because people want to know what's going on.

Sure.

And so, that has inspired people to become more capable in doing it themselves.

Well, I mean, you guys had a series where you had GoPros on people's helmets going into the field and kind of teaching in the field.

That's right.

That's right.

Yeah.

Was that somebody's idea that was going in the field, or did you kind of plant the seed? Like, how did that program come?

So, we have someone who really spends a lot of energy making sure that people have experience in the in the field.

Yep.

And she, uh, this is Dale McDowell, and every year she, she, uh, we meet with her and she talks about ideas she has about projects that seem to be coming forward that could be the subject of great tours. And, you know, if you're going, uh, for— it's an hour drive out of the office, you're going to be there for 2 hours, everyone's got to have their PPE, it's quite, it's quite an, uh, um, an involved procedure. However, we know that the feedback we get from anyone who attends is extraordinarily good. So she was the one who actually volunteered to have a student who is also a videographer organize the time that they were with us and use the GoPro on the helmet.

Yeah, fascinating. Okay, yep. Hi, I'm Chris from Ramza. I was curious if you could speak a little bit about, uh, sort of the praise culture around the system? And also, if you track accomplishments within the system, like in the university, do people earn degrees or other, uh, laudatives?

Good question. Short answer, no. What we do is a lot of our programs, our lunchtime DSU sessions, are very focused on continuing education credits for professional certification. So there's a sign-in, and then there's a certificate that you get that then you submit. So that has been an emerging strength in our lunchtime sessions. And then all those sessions are recorded, so they're viewable after the fact. And I think the quiz side of it is still evolving, but some of them require quizzes in order to qualify.

Mm-hmm.

So the quiz function is coming and that will further reinforce the use of those. But in terms of praise culture, no, not the way that I think happens in other institutions.

I'm sorry, what is praise culture?

Well, I'm guessing that it is that you're being told that you did a great job. Thanks for showing up. Here's a gold star.

Is that right? Is that what you meant, Chris? Okay. Thank you. Learned something today.

I think with—

Great job, Chris.

With the LMS, I do think— I don't know so much on the praise side, but on the earning of a— not a certificate or whatever— as you complete those learning paths. And if we choose to have that visible on people's profile, I think we're just on the cusp of that. I don't think we're there yet, but I think that that is somewhere that we could take it.

Yeah.

You've mentioned at a couple of different points this shift in learner engagement as you've implemented some of your more modernized approaches. I'm curious about other success metrics in which you've anchored your strategy to know whether things are landing or whether the programs are achieving what they're meant to achieve.

It's a great question. Uh, to be honest, still something that we're working on. Actually, going back to your first question about something that I pulled from the University of Toronto, um, we touched on it yesterday. ROI is a huge challenge in learning and development, especially depending on how you measure time and billable hours, utilization, etc. So something that I was introduced to is called return on expectations. So you work with the stakeholders who are responsible for learning and development in the firm early and talk about, okay, what would success look like to you? And then you assign that an observable measure of success, whether that's a whatever it may be. And then you sort of track it, come along, and then you come back to them, you know, at the end of the year, at the end of the semester, whatever it is, and say, okay, here's what we said the expectation was, here's how we were going to measure it, here's how we did. Did this, you know, is this a success in your eyes? So yeah, ROI versus ROE, if it's something you want to look up later. But to be honest, it is still something that we're working on, but it's good in theory.

Just to make sure I'm hearing what you're saying, so you've got Um, you know, Brent, who works for Julie, you go to Julie and say like, if Brent were to, you know, we're gonna have Brent take X course, like what would you hope would happen? Brent takes a course, you go back to Julie afterwards and say, did it happen? Did it move the, the measure that I was expecting it to?

It's more on a macro level than that, I would say.

Okay.

So if we are going to be delivering a series on Twinmotion, on a, a software that only, you know, a couple people have used, it's coming up in the office. Working with, you know, Michael, Martin, the people who are looking after the hours that we log to DSU and say, okay, we're gonna put in over the next, you know, few months X number of sessions with X number of people. In order for that to be a success at the end, what are you— what behaviors are you gonna look for? What kind of, you know, tasks, performance, whatever, are you going to check? And that will indicate that this training was successful. So it's more on a program level rather than an individual level.

Yep.

But we may get there.

Yeah, great. Okay, I don't think we have any more questions, so we're gonna be on break. Um, thank you both so much. That was super illuminating. We appreciate you.

Thanks, babe.