Inside Corporate Decisions for the Built Environment: LIVE from Chicago

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1:31Would you rather pay 20 % more for the ability to pause, pivot, and restart? Or would you rather save 20 % but be locked into a rigid timeline and process? So I'm an end user and often our projects are just gearing up to get to the next project. And we do have longer term goals than maybe just a single project. So if we can achieve those long term goals faster and stick to a timeline and stick to a process, it's very important to us. Rhonda, another end user here. I'm in between both. I want both.

2:08What you just heard is a clip from the opening segment of our first in a series of live events, where I spoke to a room of nearly 70 corporate end users, designers, GCs, manufacturers, and dealers in Chicago. Nearly 90 % of the room said that they would rather pay more for flexibility while only 10 % prioritized savings. And that tells us something really important about where we are today. It's time to rethink our industry's traditional norms. Most firms, especially in the corporate sector, aren't billed to pause, pivot, and restart. And yet, that's exactly what we heard the majority of our clients need today.

2:51Because today, as you'll find out, their decisions are more complex than ever before. Welcome to Season 9 of Design Nerds Anonymous. I'm your host, Amanda Schneider, founder and president at ThinkLab, and speaker now featured on TED.com. In this episode, we're going to take you live inside our Chicago Experiential Research event. We call it a hackathon, where leaders from across the design ecosystem come together to unpack how decisions for the built environment are evolving. As you listen in, remember, you can get a half CEU credit just by listening and taking a quick quiz from this episode. You'll find a link to take that quiz in the show notes.

3:41Now, here are the four learning objectives for this episode. Number one, why decision making for corporate projects feels slower than ever. Number two, what our end users actually need from their product and service partners. Number three, practical ideas generated from our cross-functional discussions at the tables at this event that help reduce friction in the process. Number four, simple shifts that you can bring back to your own teams to build more empathetic, clarity-first partnerships and really move those projects forward faster. All right, let's dive in and start learning.

4:24for this event 67 people rsvp'd and 61 showed up that shows that this wasn't just another industry event this is proof of how eager our industry is for real conversation that opening clip the would you rather game this is a warm-up that led to my keynote on the top five challenges and opportunities shaping the corporate sector today. Then we dove in with a panel of end users themselves. Following that was our nearly 70 participants brainstorming what they might do as a result of what they learned from the data and the empathy developed from the end user panel. Finally, we'll share with you our on-site podcast confessional.

5:11These are one-on-one reflections captured moments after the event. Real-time reactions to the research and the experience itself. So get ready to rethink how corporate spaces come to life today. I'm going to share a little bit about that keynote. Some of the top challenges we uncovered from our research with corporate end users. One of the most talked about topics was our challenge number five as we presented it. RTO's strategy is shifting from incentive-based to ROI. And for anyone that's not familiar with those terms, RTO is return to office, and ROI is return on investment. After years of investing in tools, policies, and amenities to encourage people to come back to the office, one of our private research participants said, we gave them everything we asked for, they still aren't coming in.

6:02It's no longer just about perks, It's about purpose. The second most talked about topic was the third one presented. Internal influence is the new bottleneck. One of our private research participants said, project teams have never been larger or more layered. Project teams got bigger again, but communication got worse. And that complexity is reshaping how these decisions for the built environment really get made. And the third challenge you'll hear in this episode referred to as challenge number three. Cost unpredictability is the enemy. Budgets are the battlefield. While cost control has always mattered, volatility is now the bigger pain point.

6:45As one leader told us, we used to budget 10%. Now it's 10 % per year. So five years out, that means a 50 % contingency. Credibility for these end users today within their own organizations, hinges on cost control. These were just three of the five we presented. You can find a link to download additional insights in the show notes. Now I'll turn it over to ThinkLab's very own research and content leader, Erica Weinberg. She led our live panel with Derek Miller, real estate design and construction senior manager at Spencer Stewart, and Rhonda Green, director of global workplace design and strategy at Oracle.

7:25You'll hear some clips from that 30-minute panel discussion. They'll share which of our five themes stood out most to them, as well as a few other gems. So here's Rhonda.

7:38So I'm in the workplace design team, right? But I've also done transactions and projects. So my manager just called me the utility player. So I still kind of have my toes in a little bit of everything, depending on what's going on. And so that's how I'm aware of all of these decision points along the way. And I think, I mean, if I could just sum it up in a really big idea is the change of pace in the world and in our business is happening so fast. But the process of getting things done is the same as it was 17 years ago, right? So the process, and we've always said in our team, it doesn't matter if it's a 2 ,000 square foot project or an 80 ,000 square foot project.

8:23It is the same vendors, the same partners, the same process. You got to get approval for everything. And then the same goes for a change. If something changes, you have to go through it all over again. I'm going to share an example real quick. We've got one example, a project that we've gone through the programming, the planning, finding a location, negotiating some terms, go to get approval for that funding. And it happened to be right after a really crappy stock day. Anybody out there work for a publicly traded company? It's a struggle, right? And so the business requirements changed on a dime.

9:05They rejected it. We had to go back to the board again. I had to go, not to the executive board, but we had to start all over again and everything changed. So we have to go through that whole process all over again. So that seems to be happening, you know, a couple times on a project that's, I don't know, a year long, how long, you know, it takes to start on the process. So what's the result there? Start earlier? No, right? Like change, it's going to change three times then if we start earlier. So how do we improve the process? Because change is just going to continue to happen. that's inevitable.

9:44I appreciate you extending that example and that might prompt some of you later. How might we create a more iterative macro milestone process that hopefully doesn't get you through that full, you know, several months worth of background work only to be sent back to the beginning? And for any of you in, you know, the architecture and design field, I know many of you, because I get to talk to thousands of you all the time, are also frustrated with the rework cycle of value engineering. So just know that you're not alone. Group therapy, your clients are feeling it too on the rework cycle as well.

10:21So Derek, what about you? How have things changed in your world? Well, it's interesting. I came on Spencer Stewart at a time where they were actually consciously changing themselves. They had a process in place that was largely, I would say, unilateral. spaces would be designed, turned over to the end users. It was theirs to use. And it was really, they wanted to start engaging the end users in the individual offices more, listening to what they had to say. And then on top of that, I was excited to see one of the topics that was brought up earlier about the voices at the table. So not only does that engagement bring more voices to the table, but internally in the business function side, IT, you're not kidding.

11:04We started to try to standardize things. But we found that as we standardize things, there's always going to be that exception somewhere in the world where they can't quite do that for whatever reason. I think time became our biggest friction point because we wanted to hear and respect all of these voices. And we also wanted to try to make sure we have a good solution that meets now InfoSec. Does it pass? Can we do that? Can we put that in the server room? I don't know. Security Ops. it's just all of these different teams suddenly have a say when there's the minutest change and you're now coordinating you know an effort it could be a 2 ,000 square foot space but to your point you have to go through the same hurdles every time to make sure that that all takes place as it should.

11:52I think that the most dangerous phrase is all you got to do is it's only 2 ,000 square feet. All you got to do is, because you're right, it's still every process procedure that goes into that. And in a world where we're trying to create standardized processes in a very unpredictable environment, the best laid plans can only get us so far. So it's interesting to hear, you know, that time as a constraint, that time due to internal rework is a constraint here. certainly big friction points. And, you know, that's why 86 % said that decision making is taking longer. It certainly is. Which of the five key themes struck a chord with each, either of you, you know, which stuck out as maybe particularly true in any sense?

12:44I'll let either of you volunteer for that one? I saw a little of us in each one. Yeah. Yeah. The first one was, remind me what the first one was again. Fragmented projects demand resilient partners. Yes. Yes. And I think that's where we're at right now. As I explained this, this project, you know, that we, that we went up with. And yeah, it was frustrating. And, and believe me, when we make that call to our vendors and the team and tell you what is going on, we have fought like heck to try to keep that situation from happening. And so then we're just admitting defeat of that change by the time we call you.

13:25So go easy on us because we don't do it to try to torture everyone. So yeah, by the time we talk to you, we realize it's not fun. For me, I think the first three really stood out. So fragmented projects, of course. In addition to that, the internal influence, and that goes back to engaging all of the end users and trying to make sure everyone has a seat at the table. And then the cost unpredictability is huge, especially when in the height of COVID, I remember running around doing research, trying to explain to the CFO why we had a 20 % increase in construction costs over eight months. Out of your court, is there anything that either of you would like your service partners, this ecosystem to understand, you know, to hopefully align better in that decision-making process on either side of the aisle?

14:21Having responded to a number of RFPs in my lifetime, I understand the desire for clarity and wanting to make sure that everything is pinned down. At least I was always encouraged to make sure that we understood, okay, we have this many hours for the project. We're going to communicate that to the client. That means we have this many meetings. We have this many iterations until it's time. We might have to go back to the well for some more funds and totally get that. And equally, now on the client side, I want to be aware of that because I want to tell our end users who are now engaging, hey guys, okay, we can do this three times.

14:57After that, it's going to start costing us more. But by the same token, And I don't know what the answer is to this because I've struggled thinking about it. If there was a way that we could somehow build an agreement that, hey, if we have to stop and set it aside, we can already start to plan in advance. Okay, it's going to cost us about X for each one of these additional things. Yeah. Clarity on what does reboot look like? Yeah. And I think also one of the things that's important from an end user is if we do have to stop what happens to that team, right? You don't want to have to retrain the team all over again.

15:39So just being transparent about the team makeup. I think also when you, I love your idea about the clarity at the beginning, that always makes those conversations a little bit easier when you have documentation that's clear to go back to. If you're asking for ad services, right, like you can be very clear about what the expectations were in the beginning. But just a simple request, just a little empathy in this situation. You know, when we come with these changes, I guess, hopefully the response isn't, well, that's going to be a change order or, well, that's going to be, you know, an ad service, right?

16:15We've all worked with those people. And we know those are conversations that are coming. But at the moment, empathize with us, say, you know, just to have a partner say, we're here for you. We're going to get through this. We're on your side. We're going to make this happen. You know, like there's just so much going on to know that we've got partners to help us along with that would come a long way. Absolutely. And to close out our portion of the discussion, I want to hopefully provide some inspiration. Have either of you had a moment, a spark in your process where you thought, my goodness, that just made this whole thing that much simpler?

16:59And it might be something very small. I talked to a client who had a project manager that called every Tuesday at 10 a.m. And she said, I can't tell you how nice it was just to know that I was going to get a call every Tuesday at 10 a.m. to check in and make sure I had everything that I needed to have done and that she was tracking everything else on the project that needed to be done. So it could be something very small. But is there anything that you've experienced in your role, knowing that you both are overseeing so many multitudes of projects that the ecosystem has provided for you that others could model after.

17:37A couple things come to mind. A lot of people are playing email ping pong back and forth, trying to get information and decision. So I really appreciate clear, concise email. Hey, Rhonda, this tile is not going to make it on time. Here's a clip of the original DD package that we approved, right? Here's the new one. I approve this. This meets with the schedule. This meets with the budget. We just need your approval to keep the schedule on time. Great. Oh, yes. I remember that rendering. That's going to look awesome. The new one. Dang it. Nobody else is going to notice besides us. Okay, yes, right?

18:17Approve. Otherwise, if we're trying to dig through that email to see the story and understand what's really going on, you squirrel three times, you know, and that email is two days sitting in your inbox. So quick, clear, concise email is great. And sometimes you just need to pick up the phone and, you know, hope that the other person answers, that they realize it's a real person and not a spam call. And just work through that for five minutes. So don't be afraid to pick up the phone. One thing that I find really helpful, and I think a lot of firms are pretty good about this, but I've discovered that not all are.

18:52So if you're one of those, maybe take some notes. I really like having a single point of contact that can make sure that all the communication that needs to happen on the other side is being distributed and information is being disseminated. Or even, for example, I'll just use this as an example. If you have an engineering firm, you've got mechanical, electrical, plumbing, lighting design. I've had instances in working that where it's almost like you're talking to four different companies for each of the different professions, right? Like, oh, that's a lighting question. You have to talk to them.

19:29Oh, you need us to document that? Well, talk to Electrical about us documenting that after we've selected the light fixtures. And it's like, okay, I just want to get this done. Who can coordinate all of this and make sure there's a coordinated response? Well, I think that beautifully summarizes kind of what we started with, which is some of the struggle is as simple as clarity is kind. Let's be clear in our communication. Let's be a singular, you know, true source of truth in the project. Who is that one point person? And, you know, nuance. Yes, you might be part of the electrical team and I'm asking you a question about, you know, the mechanicals.

20:11Maybe you could extend that grace and, you know, reach across the aisle for me to understand that you're doing the best that you can to be a single point of truth for them as well. I want to thank both of our panelists. So please give a round of applause to Rhonda and Derek. And that was the close of our end user panel. And a great reminder from Erica that clarity is kind, a simple phrase, but a good one for all of us to remember. Because behind everything LabDataPoint that I shared in that opening keynote are real people, champions inside the organizations trying to do the right thing. This panel was our chance to build empathy for them, what's happening in their world, to hear their reality in their own words before we shifted into problem-solving mode.

20:58From there, each table took one of the top challenges that we uncovered, from RTO strategy to cost unpredictability to this internal influence conversation. and we asked a single question. What do we do about it? It was fast, it was messy, and it was magic. The whole ecosystem, end users, designers, manufacturers, thinking out loud together to imagine a better way forward. What you'll hear next are highlights from just a few of the tables that shared back what they learned in their discussion. Each table starts by naming the challenge they tackled, Then the sparks of insight that their conversation ignited.

21:39As a reminder, what they refer to number two was internal influence is the new bottleneck. And what they refer to as challenge number five was RTO strategy is shifting from incentive-based to ROI. First up, you'll hear from one of our general contractors in the room. All right. We took number two because it seemed to have the most obvious simple solution. so how do you reduce the bottleneck with internal influence and the biggest thing is just get rid of procurement for construction and architecture I mean really it it does everybody's laughing because it's been so norm become so normal but 30 years ago we all would have laughed at the way that people are trying to commoditize architectural and design services in this long-tailed process that can have drastic negative or positive effects on your business outcomes.

22:34Same with construction. It's not a one-size-fits-all thing. We're not buying paperclips. It's sort of an extension to that. It's really like the third-party PMs. They're not adding value. They're just an extension of procurement, just trying to run numbers down. And everything we're talking about here has some sort of tie to that. So that was really it. All right. Thank you. Yes. So I'm Caroline Henricks. I'm with Geniant. We do user experience and architecture digital product design. But we chose the sticky number five. So, and we discussed a lovely design framing question. How might we enable better proof of ROI?

23:13We talked about what we all agreed at this table and hopefully in this room is that good design is table stakes and that users should be part of the design process. So essentially, we decided that we, in order to measure the ROI of workplace experiences and design, we were going to look at giving choice and creating sort of a dim sum, poo-poo platter of options. So we talked about some incentives, be it hitting the paycheck or possibly having the four-day work week. You get time back or free lunches, things like that. But also identifying up front, what is it that the users in the space value?

23:48Is it collaboration? Is it ways to improve their performance at work because the space is customized to their unique job persona? Is it something that's going to be tied back to the performance as a mandate? Or what is it that we're trying to achieve? And then having a lot of different data points, both at the beginning. I love someone said the old normal. So looking at not just the old normal, not just pre-COVID or not just preconceived ideas of what the executives think is best or opinions, but that we're looking at where are we starting and how are we measuring what we're doing is having an impact so that we can continue to change and customize based on what those employees and teams need.

24:26Thank you. And last but certainly not least, table eight. We also took number five. We determined that leaders need a clear vision of exactly what they want to get out of said solution before they begin. We need to determine exactly what the most valuable thing to each of the employees is, and it can be different for everybody. But we also, if you want people in, you have to invest in the space. And then one of our lovely end users gave us a example, which we all agree is probably a really interesting thing to try, creating some sort of like a club or membership, something that's elite to the people that you want to come back and only give said thing to those people.

25:11So for example, if you want someone to give up an office, Those who give up an office only get access to whatever it is that they are looking for. And that can potentially help you get to the solution you're looking for. All right. That concludes our audio on the shareback. But after the shareback, we wanted to capture what was still echoing in people's minds. So we set up our on-site podcast confessional, a place for real-time reactions to the ThinkLab research and the conversations that unfolded around each table. What you'll hear next are just a few of those reflections, real, raw, in the moment, from designers, end users, manufacturers alike.

25:53Some chose to stay anonymous, true to the design nerds anonymous name, but you'll hear their real thoughts. We asked what surprised you, what stuck with you, and what do you wish the industry would hear. Here are a few of their thoughts. And you are with an end user that's going to be anonymous for now. So we are just wrapping up our corporate end user hackathon where we shared some ThinkLab research. And I'd just love to start by saying like, what stuck out to you? What was maybe surprising to you or something that maybe you hadn't heard before or felt good to hear that other people were having a challenge like that?

26:31Yeah, exactly that, that we're not alone in it. The other end users have similar problems, which makes you feel a little less dysfunctional. And even to hear the providers, A &D, the contractors that, you know, they just want so badly to help us. And it was just really nice to have the conversation in that context, kind of outside of an actual project. And is there anything that you learned, a data point that you heard, a conversation that sparked something for you that you're going to take back to your team? I think understanding the just high level of burnout. That was an interesting data point I wasn't expecting just in the context of this conversation.

27:09We know the costs are going up. We know that there's a lot of fragmentation among teams. Just hearing how that burns people out is it kind of humanizes the whole situation, which I think is nice. And I think it's important to take back to my team to be better problem solvers. I am Jane McGlennan. I am with Lamar Johnson Collaborative. So we presented five different challenges that kind of are true across end users. Which of those do you feel like your clients are resonating with most or you're hearing the most about from your clients? All of us are kind of experiencing the same things. And I think the biggest thing that kind of congealed in my mind today was if the office is no longer about work and productivity, what is it for?