In this interview, Christopher Parsons talks with Lionakis leaders Laura (President) and Christina (Director of Design Technology, now part‑time Knowledge Manager) about the firm’s recent strategic shift toward formal learning and knowledge management. Laura explains that, three years ago, the practice side of the firm lagged behind the business side’s investments in growth, acquisitions, and back‑office systems, leading to inconsistent delivery across markets. Design technology had already provided a consistent framework through bootcamps, production standards, and toolkits, but that consistency had not been extended to overall practice delivery. Recognizing the need to scale quality and reputation as the firm expands, they partnered with Christina, who had been informally managing knowledge through design‑technology best‑practice documentation. Christina describes her transition from documenting design‑technology standards to formally leading knowledge management after attending KA Connect, seeing the parallels between technology standards and broader practice processes. Together they added a learning coordinator and integrated LMS‑based lessons, bootcamps, and systematic training to move beyond ad‑hoc apprenticeship models. The investment is positioned as essential for maintaining consistency, supporting growth, and meeting evolving client expectations driven by the pandemic and new technology trends.
Chapters
Let's talk about the team. So Christina, you have been design technology, director of design technology, but now you've taken on knowledge management halftime, something like that.
Mm-hmm.
And you've added a learning coordinator. And Laura, you're here as the president, deeply invested in learning and development. So gonna take me through what that could, but that wasn't the posture of Lionakis maybe even 2 years ago or a year and a half ago. So talk about that kind of investment and why you all are making it and, and how that connects to kind of long-term strategy.
I'll zoom out on the long-term and let Christine get into the details 'cause this is a lot of her vision. When I came in as Chief Practice Officer, this 3 years ago, generally I had recognition that our practice wasn't investing in the same way that our business was investing in what it took to scale it. What it took to be one firm but have multiple locations. And because I come from practice and I'm still in practice, recognized an inconsistency across the firm in the different markets and services to what we were putting out into the world. And I will say that one of the areas that we were being consistent and were seeing real buy-in to how we delivered work was in design technology.
Mm-hmm.
Because we had the bootcamp, we had production standards, we had the things that we needed and that people had grown to rely on, but we hadn't gotten out of the toolkit and into the delivery of what we do as practitioners. Mm-hmm. And so Christina and I, I would say, are good at finishing each other's sentences. So when I was talking to her about this, she started to bring some of the lessons from the LMS group and what she was doing in design technology. And our project delivery group was saying, we got to teach people to do this stuff better, you know, and, and I think, you It was a good convergence of a recognized need, as I mentioned, all these things that are happening in the industry, but just really a good time with our growth to be able to say, this is the time we have to make this investment if we're going to maintain the consistency of reputation that's really important to us as a firm.
So can I play that back in just what I think I heard? So by business investing, That means acquisitions, growth, adding markets.
Even our back of house systems.
Even the back of house systems, right.
So everything from our accounting software or our marketing software or things like that, but maybe not as much outside of design technology.
Got it.
On just how do we build practitioners other than the one-on-one apprenticeship model or those ad hoc trainings that we were doing. And was that going to be the most efficient and effective way to build future architects for this firm and for, for the world? And so I think taking Christina's lessons learned and the deep dive she's been doing in getting this right with the need that we identified on the practice side just was the right time to make that investment.
Got it. Yep. Yep.
Yeah.
And I think from a design technology perspective, I, I, I kind of laugh because A, it's just part of my nature and part of my job to make sure everybody knows our best practices when it comes to design technology. And I think through doing that, and like I mentioned earlier, this, the satisfaction of having things documented, I was doing knowledge management unbeknownst to me for quite a while until I—
Which is why she was a natural pick.
Which is the, which is the backstory of all the best knowledge managers that I know. Yeah.
So, and then when I learned about what it was and, you know, went to KA Connect and met the knowledge architecture team, it's like such a pivotal moment for me and, and how I viewed Lionakis. I all of a sudden came back to work after like a KA Connect and thought, wow, there's so many moving parts and ways to grow and in ways that I can connect what I'm doing here in other areas. And design technology also is naturally a, a support role for a lot of the practice initiatives. You know, like I sit on our production standards group and our detail library group, project delivery in a way to support what they need and how can we execute a new standard in Revit. And so I would, I would sit in a lot of those rooms and hear a lot of those struggles of how to document something, develop a best practice, deliver the message, train the habit of people following it. And it just was like, this sounds very familiar. I know there's a lot of differences. It's not just the, you know, it's not just technology and a software program, which is a lot easier in many ways. So yeah, a lot of that just carried through. And I think that's where, you know, when Laura became CEO and I was able to work with her more and she offered the opportunity to work more in a knowledge management role, that's where I feel like things really picked up and have started to take shape quickly.
It sounds like listening to the two of you, all these changes we've been talking about, stuff that's external to Lionakis, but stuff that's internal Lionakis, like growth or offices, You've got different markets. There was the pandemic. There's people's use of social media outside the office, their expectations of what technology can do. You've been consistently redesigning boot camp to keep up with all those changes. And I think what you're saying, Laura, is the way we did practice was not keeping up with all those changes. And so like you were able to look at Christina as kind of like, well, that's a, that's a way of thinking about doing learning and development that we could take across other parts of our company.
And I will say that, you know, a lot of things when Christina and I have been talking about my vision for learning and development and how we track it and why can't, why doesn't this plug into this in the right way? I'm that kind of person or a big picture person. And she's in how do we get it done in a way that is effective. And so she has the same vision, but has this kind of toolkit because of what she's been learning and doing to get us there and see, see the way forward. And I think that's been a good marriage of our skill sets, but also both of our passions, mine for building practice and hers for seeing how we implement and make it systematized, the things that we're trying to do that are going to make us more effective.
