In this panel discussion, Nicole, COO and founder of Greenprint, explains how rapid growth from a 10‑person startup to a 38‑person multidisciplinary AEC firm created a crisis of information overload. Their previous ad‑hoc learning methods—lunch‑and‑learns, monthly staff meetings, and a sprawling Google Drive of policies—failed to deliver the right knowledge at the right time, leaving employees unable to find or retain needed information. Nicole describes the strain of acting as a personal "air‑traffic controller" for learning, constantly matching people with content. To solve this, Greenprint adopted Synthesis, a purpose‑built learning management system (LMS) and knowledge base, moving critical HR policies and procedures from the Google Drive into the LMS during a focused effort over a Christmas break. This transition was both therapeutic and strategic, providing a centralized, searchable repository that supports just‑in‑time learning across disciplines (urban planning, civil engineering, landscape architecture) and fosters a culture of interdisciplinary knowledge sharing. Christopher Parsons reflects on the balance between broadcasting information and personalized delivery, emphasizing the need for a systematic approach that scales with the firm’s growth. The conversation highlights the importance of institutionalizing learning processes as AEC firms expand beyond 20‑30 employees.
Chapters
Yeah, so we're small. We're 38 people, and we're just starting to dip our toes into learning management. Our world has very much been what Chris talked about, where it was just sort of serendipitous opportunities, lunch and learns, a monthly staff meeting where you hope you can get some information out that everyone can absorb, and then a lot of content sitting out on drives that no one ever really read. And one of the messages that I've been hearing from our team this year has been one of information overload. There is just— there's so much information, whether it's trying to get them up to speed on HR practices new project management processes, new skills they're supposed to be developing to grow, and it's too much information. They don't know how to get when they actually need it. It comes to them when they're not in the space to really take it in, and then when they actually need it, they don't remember what it was. And I've been feeling a little bit paralyzed about like, how do I address this for my team other than just keep trying to get information to them constantly? And so one, just Seeing that this is a problem for everybody, but then two, seeing that there's actually conversations happening and a path forward to try to address that was just really exciting for me. How can I create a learning management system that can help make that information available to them when they need it so that there's paths ready for them to go? And I don't need to be the one kind of hovering over them. Oh, are you, do you need this information now? Are you ready for it? How can I get it for you? And, and I can focus more on building amazing content and having it be at their fingertips. And then the other thing that's, I think, a little bit unique to us is we're very multidisciplinary. So we have urban planners, civil engineers, and landscape architects. And we also very much have a learning culture. It's something we screen for. We look for all of our team members to be intellectually curious. And they love to learn from each other. So we not only need them to learn their own discipline, their own skills, but they benefit from learning— the engineers benefit from learning how planners think and how landscape architects think. And it makes them better engineers. And they are just crying out for ways to learn from each other. And it also is just, it's happening on projects where they're working together, or maybe they get to see it on a staff meeting, but to have more opportunities and for everybody to get to learn together is also something that people really, really want. And so seeing this learning management system as a way to try to actually better curate that and capture that and have it accessible at any time for everybody, I can just really see elevating our ability to truly be a learning organization.
It seems like Nicole, I'm playing back what, what I think I heard you say. Like on one hand you have a strategy, which I wouldn't even call it a strategy. You have an approach, which is we're just gonna broadcast. So we have this new thing, we're gonna tell everybody all at the same time because that's efficient. Or you do the thing, I like the word you use, hovering, where you're constantly having to figure out, well, I'm not gonna broadcast it, I'm just gonna hold onto this thing and I'm gonna move this thing to that person and this thing to that person. And we've been using this metaphor of air traffic control. What have we been talking about? Learning and development is trying to land the right plane at the right time and get people safely to their gate. We don't have to torture the metaphor too much, but I feel like that seems like the middle ground is really the alternative, the great one, right? Like not the crazy labor that you have to do hovering as a learning person, but then the broadcasting thing's not great for your people. So the sweet spot is just getting people what they need at the right time. Is that kind of where you're going with it?
Exactly right. And I think a lot of it has been overly reliant on me to be in the right room to hear the need and make the connection. Oh, I hear you're wanting to learn about this. Let me connect you to so-and-so. And that is not a sustainable path. I need to take my brain, you know, as a founder and the COO and help get that out there so people can make those connections themselves. And I can remove myself from being that air traffic control and I can focus on building the content.
Yeah.
Which is something I'm really excited to kind of shift to.
So you are the LMS right now and you don't want to be the LMS anymore.
That's so true. Yes.
Yeah. Right. I mean, I think actually one of the reasons I wanted to bring the two of you together, besides the reason of what Susan said about you both being in Chicago at PSMJ, is that you're both very senior in your organizations who led and drove the implementation of Synthesis as a knowledge base. And now, you know, your organizations are doing the learning management stuff. Ellen has a great story of them building something like 700 wiki pages in 6 months or whatever you guys did during implementation. And Nicole, similarly, over Christmas break, you basically built your intranet while watching TV. Like, do I have that? Is that kind of what happened?
That's, that's right. Very talented.
I'm kind of curious, and maybe we can start with Nicole, why now in this journey for Greenprint, going back to maybe intranet knowledge management, but as you look forward to learning and development, like why did that become an important thing for you to invest in at this point in your journey as a company?
Yeah, so we grew a lot in the last couple years. You know, we were like 10 people in 2020, and then it started in 2020, business really started booming. We grew to 20. Last year we acquired a landscape architecture firm, so we added a whole new discipline to our business, and then we hired 7 more people this year. So with that growth came a lot more people who needed to get up to speed, more processes I needed to institutionalize a bit to take us to the next level. You know, when you start hitting that 20, 30, 40, you really have to get a little bit more institutional in how you run the business. And my little system of an employee resources Google Drive that had all our policies and procedures was starting to falter. And I was, I was getting into that air traffic control, trying to connect older employees with new people. Catch older employees up to what we've been doing. And that's when the stress really started to build and I was like, this is not working. And then I just saw it was Susan, you did a webinar on something and presented Synthesis. And I was just like, this is, this exists. I didn't know this was an option. I thought I was gonna have to keep building things myself. This is made for me, for my industry. And I would like to just hire the people who know what they're doing instead of try to build things myself. I'm trying to make that my mantra. Hire people who know what they're doing and stop trying to build things myself so I can, you know, elevate. So I was like, this is it. This is what I've been looking for. And I was so eager because it solved such a huge problem of mine of maintaining this awful Google Drive and feeling like nobody knew where to get information that we signed up. When you are the decision maker, you can make a decision immediately. I had the problem, I had the budget, so sold. And then I was so eager to get the team on it that we decided to focus on getting our HR policies and procedures as what would help make it live. and I just spent Christmas break, I was just home with my parents watching TV. We'd put the kids to bed and we would just watch TV and I would just sit on the couch and I would just copy paste everything from that Google Drive into our LMS. It just felt like it, one, it was very therapeutic, but it just, I could just feel that burden lifting.
You're getting out of debt. Every, everything you move off, you're paying down a credit card. Yeah. Yeah.
And yeah, it was therapeutic. It helped me move things forward and it got us off to just a really great start this year with. Really centralizing that information and then gave us a foundation to build on from there.
I think you signed in like December and Sarah Davies on our client success team is running your project. I think post we got back from the holiday break, she goes, oh my gosh, y'all, Nicole built her internet over the holidays and it's like done. So yeah, it was funny. It's funny.
