211 Designing a Better Future of Work with Bob Fox, Fox Architects Founder & Work Design Magazine Publisher| Greater Washington DC DMV Changemaker

 Mahan Tavakoli: Welcome to Partnering Leadership. I'm really excited This week to be welcoming Bob Fox. Bob is the founder of Fox Architects and Publisher of Work Design Magazine. I really enjoy this conversation because Bob has given a lot of thought about how we can collaborate more effectively, whether it is through use of space or otherwise.

I'm sure you will also gain a lot of insights about the potential future of work from the conversation. I also love hearing from you. Keep your comments coming, mahan@mahantavakoli.com there's a microphone icon on partneringleadership.com. You can leave voice messages for me there.

Don't forget to follow the podcast, Tuesday, conversations with magnificent change makers from the Greater Washington DC DMV region like Bob, and Thursday, Conversations with brilliant global thought leaders. Now, here is my conversation with Bob Fox.

Bob Fox, welcome to Partnering Leadership. I'm thrilled to have you in this conversation with me.

[00:01:02] Bob Fox: Thanks, Mahan, and I'm excited to be here. This should be fun.

[00:01:06] Mahan Tavakoli: Bob, can't wait to get some of your thoughts and insights on the future of work. But would love to first get to know you a little bit better and your background. Whereabouts did you grew up, and how did your upbringing impact the kind of person you've become Bob?

[00:01:23] Bob Fox: Mahan. First let me start out and say I am really excited about this period of time that we're in, never before in history have we really kicked everybody out of the office and have had the opportunity to rethink how we work. So I'm really looking forward to that part of the conversation.

As for me, I grew up in Philadelphia and it's a little community called Chestnut Hill. There's a lot of great architecture there. Frank Fairness, Luke Conn, Robert Venturi, all had houses that were there. And so I was fascinated with those.

My father was an architect, so he had a big influence on my life. He would take me into the office on weekends and I'd be the kid that was like busting the copy machine all the time. I feel lucky cuz they had some model shops in there and he would just be working and I'd be running around the office and they had band saws and table saws and belt sanders and I feel lucky I've got all my digits cuz I was like 10 years old and was playing with these machines.

So I think that helped with my creativity and I was always fascinated with art and drawing, and I think had a talent there for that kind of expression.

[00:02:29] Mahan Tavakoli: As you saw your dad as an architect and had a chance to go to his office, did you aspire to grow up and become an architect?

[00:02:38] Bob Fox: No I was actually his worst critic. Because I'd say that we lived a very middle class lifestyle and I had friends who had all these great toys, and I wasn't able to have those toys. So I think that inspired me to work hard. But I was like, always pressing my dad to aspire to bigger and better things.

[00:03:00] Mahan Tavakoli: You wanted bigger toys.

[00:03:02] Bob Fox: Yes.

[00:03:04] Mahan Tavakoli: So You were also very athletic. You were the 1975 Pennsylvania State Champion in road track and time trial for bicycle racing. That is incredible.

[00:03:17] Bob Fox: Mahan. I think that is the one thing that really kept me out of trouble as a young kid. I guess I bought a bike early on and I was really inspired. The guy that owned the bike shop took me under his wing and I just wanted to go out and ride and go touring and he says, have you ever thought about racing? And I was like, No. He puts me on this training program, and I wind up winning the first race that I ever entered. So I think that really gave me something to focus on, aspire to, and really put all my energy and effort into. And I never got into drugs or drinking or any of those other nefarious kinds of activities.

[00:03:57] Mahan Tavakoli: I imagine it must take intense amount of training for you to be able to do well, let alone win. So you must have spent a lot of time training.

[00:04:07] Bob Fox: Oh, it was a lot of time on the bike. Yeah. We would do rides that were anywhere from, probably 40 to 60 miles a day in many cases, the beginning of the year we'd go down south where it was a lot warmer. And we'd be doing a hundred mile days. So that part of the season was always the roughest cuz it was like getting your body reacclimated to the riding the bike and back into shape.

But it required a discipline and a focus and, there was a lot of camaraderie that came out of that as well.

[00:04:34] Mahan Tavakoli: Well now I know Bob, couple of months ago, we were sitting at an economic club luncheon and talking about biking, and I was thinking it would be nice to go out biking with Bob. I am not going to go out biking with a former state champion in biking,

[00:04:50] Bob Fox: All of that muscle is worn away. I think you could probably keep up with me now.

[00:04:57] Mahan Tavakoli: So you built that muscle and that strength, but eventually you went to architectural school. Why did you pursue architecture to study at Temple?

[00:05:08] Bob Fox: I think there's an interesting story there too cuz I continued racing. I was studying radio, television and film initially, and I couldn't figure out what I was gonna do, in that industry. There came a point in my life where I felt like, Oh my God, I gotta get serious. What am I gonna do when I get older? And I just felt this natural attraction to architecture. I felt like I knew it, I was comfortable in it, I had the skills. So that was really the inspiration. I think I shocked the hell outta my dad , and actually one of the things I was interested in was designing bridges.

I've always been fascinated with long span structures but he did not want me to become an engineer. I think he recognized my creative talent and really pushed me into the more creative part of the industry, which I appreciated.

[00:05:52] Mahan Tavakoli: So you got that degree and one of the interesting things, Bob, is that you have founded three design firms. Before we get to you founding FOX Architects, there must be something in addition to your love for design and architecture, a certain business ability or drive that gets you to look for opportunities and be able to found successful design firms.

What has it been in you that has gotten you to be as much of an entrepreneur as you are an architect?

[00:06:31] Bob Fox: That's a good question. Early on, I had a cousin who was in the investment business and I had asked him who were the wealthy clients that he worked for, and the answer that I got back was they were people that owned their own business. Obviously that's a very general look, but I think that sort of got the wheels turning in my mind that okay, you know, if I'm gonna succeed and do well, then I really should be aspiring to own my own business.

[00:06:58] Mahan Tavakoli: What caused you to found different ones?

[00:07:04] Bob Fox: I think they were the result of various opportunities. Design is very unique because there's certainly a passion to it and there's also a style and an approach to it, and I feel like all of those things need to align in order to do it successfully.

And there are relationships that you develop with certain people and it's how those people all work together that really help to put that organization to function at the level they can function at. So if you look at it more from an organizational standpoint, it's really about aligning the right people and the right tools in order to build a successful practice.

[00:07:41] Mahan Tavakoli: And in what way were you able to do that with Fox Architects Bob? In 2003 you founded Fox, how is it different than any other architectural firm out there?

[00:07:52] Bob Fox: Mahan, I think what motivated me, and this was something that I had seen in all the firms that I had been a part of was that there were incredibly talented people. Architecture is not something that people go into for the money. I think there's a passion there. There are people who are really dedicated to the creative the technical and the engineering aspects of putting buildings and designing spaces together.

And what I saw where these people I felt like they were essentially being held back. And what I wanted to do was try to create an organization that was essentially flat in hierarchy. Allowed people to grow as quickly as they could grow, and allow people to find the areas that they enjoyed and were passionate about and could spend their time and energy being creative in.

And another interesting side was that, most places I had a title on my business card and even Fox Architects, we wound up with titles on our business card, but I always felt like the title was a very limiting thing. It was something that defined a position that I had or a role that I had to fulfill and it was harder to jump out of that role or to grow out of that role as long as I had that title on my business card. So I felt I didn't wanna have titles on business cards, but as the organization gets bigger, then you have to define the lanes that people aren't bumping into each other and, crossing or tripping over each other.

[00:09:15] Mahan Tavakoli: Some of those challenges Bob are ones that you address both internally in the organization and externally with your clients, thinking about how do people collaborate? How do they bring their best to the work environment? You also started Work Design magazine. I love that title, work design. As you said with your excitement at the beginning of conversation, this is a real reset opportunity for us to redesign the way we collaborate and work.

Would love to know some of your thoughts about how we should think about work and collaboration differently now that we have this reset opportunity.

[00:09:57] Bob Fox: Mahan, if you look at commercial office, and that's really my area of specialization. Looking at how people work inside these buildings. A lot of times it's treated as a piece of real estate, so most office space leases are all done as a real estate deal. And they're measured as a real estate deal. So the numbers or the metrics that really drove what we did was always about square footage per person or cost or some efficiency metric.

And I think what the pandemic did was essentially say, Hey, wait a minute, time out. Do we really need office space? And I think there is a very valid reason to have office space, but now if you look at how everybody's working, it really exploded the number of choices that we have for where and how we get our work done.

So what I think is gonna evolve out of this is to say, Okay, wait a minute, if we're gonna lever this physical environment that we have to maximize the value, then it really should be about a work metric, not a real estate metric. So it should be about some productivity measure that somebody has whether it's a number of units that they're producing or number of interactions that they have or, types of meetings that they have or, some other strategic or business related goal that they're aspiring to.

And how do we design these work environments now? So I think of it more as a leadership tool, where leaders can say, Okay, how do we create this space that's gonna help our organization to thrive? To attract the best people and to perform at their best, ability and be healthy about it now, because that's a major requirement as people are coming back into the workplace.

So all of those things, are creating this shift in the way that we think. We're still looking at space utilization, and that's a driving metric just because of the cost and the way that we continue to look at it. But that's because the people that are all making decisions are still in that real estate mindset, and once we begin to go beyond to say, Okay what are the real objectives that we have here as part of this business? Then those metrics should be the ones that actually drive the physical environment as a tool for organizations to really get the value that they should out of that space.

[00:12:13] Mahan Tavakoli: I couldn't agree with you more, Bob. That said, it is a struggle for a lot of leaders . So when you are having conversations with some of your clients how do you counsel them to be able to shift to more of that outcome focus first and foremost?

[00:12:32] Bob Fox: If you think of the culture of the organization is probably one of the primary reasons for bringing people together. You're looking to align certain types of behavior, you're looking to have people support each other. And there's a set of values that usually are driven through the organization by the leadership that everyone's expected to uphold.

The real way to do that is through the social interactions within the organization. But the physical environment I think really has a lot to do with that. So if a leader is talking about, creating a much more collaborative atmosphere, that leader needs to create the space that's gonna support that kind of activity, and needs to really walk the talk.

 So I think that, when we look at these spaces, what we have to look at is, what's the leadership? What's the strategy that they have? What's the culture of the organization? What's the desired behavior? And then build an environment that's gonna support all of that. And there's a variety of ways that we can do that, the branding aspect, you can use graphics, the colors, if there's related to the brand, the types of spaces, the openness of those spaces the variety in the way those spaces go together or the workflow. All of those things can help contribute to that.

[00:13:42] Mahan Tavakoli: Space, as you said, plays a big role. It can help facilitate some of the collaboration at a conversation with Rob Cross and he talks about collaboration overload. The fact that in attempts to collaborate, we've been overloading people where they can't get anything done.

So as you think about that future of work and collaboration, where there is value for people being in person, however employees have also gotten a certain level of freedom. They have enjoyed not having to commute to work every single day, being able to balance their personal lives a little bit more.

How do you guide leaders in thinking through how to most effectively use the office for the elements that bring value through in-person interactions and minimize the elements where people can just as easily do away from the office.

[00:14:42] Bob Fox: Yeah, That's a good question and each organization may have a different answer to that. But I think that what you're looking at is how do you support those people as best you can, what are the tools that they have in order to get their jobs done? And to me the office is a centralized hub, where people would essentially come in.

The tools in that hub should be better than any tools than anybody has in their own individual work environment. And the teams of people there should be better than what anybody's gonna get in their own individual work environment. So that office is essentially becomes a supercharged work environment where people can find access to the tools they need, they have the support that they have the interactions with the people or the teams that they need to, so the office environment really needs to be set up to support the work that organization is doing.

And that's the piece that I was trying to describe earlier. That's different from just being a real estate deal where we're warehousing people. Because I think we've tried to create these spaces and we've tried to, make them as comfortable as we can. They could be anywhere and you really have to underpin that organization with an environment that's gonna support the type of work that needs to be done.

[00:15:54] Mahan Tavakoli: One of the things you were mentioning, Bob, which to me is brilliant, is I mentioned to you my conversation with Ron Adner on winning the right game and ecosystems. And you were mentioning that even the office can be looked at as an ecosystem, so looking at offices differently, can you explain your thoughts with how we can view an office as an ecosystem.

[00:16:22] Bob Fox: I think there are multiple layers to that question. One, if you look holistically at the ecosystem, work from home is a critical component of that ecosystem. As we think about office, we also need to think about where these people are working that are outside of the office and it could be the office, it could be a cafe, it could be co-working, it could be some other place, it could be a park, so all of those functions still contribute to the goals and the objectives of the organization. But it's how you create that office, that's that central hub that people are gonna be coming into, and we've gone to this hybrid, work environment now, but the definition of that hybrid work environment is different for each organization.

Each organization has to determine who's gonna be there, when they're gonna be there. If it's certain days, if it's certain times. I think it's gonna be tough for people to get back to, five days a week and 40 hours a week. The 40 hour week is really a terroristic management tool

it doesn't really aligned with the way that we work now, because we all spend probably more than 40 hours a week doing what we do. The pandemic really afforded people the opportunity to do the things that they needed to do for their personal lives, and still get their work done.

 So that gave them a tremendous amount of flexibility, and that's the piece that's gonna be hard to take away from people.

[00:17:38] Mahan Tavakoli: It is gonna be really hard. And as you said, I didn't know this until a couple of months ago when I had a conversation with Sophie Wage. He's also a future of work author podcaster, that the whole 40 hour work week was started by Robert Owen talking about the balance of eight hours of sleep, eight hours of personal life and eight hours of work back in the early 18 hundreds.

 Then by late 18 hundreds, the US. labor movement took that up because people were working more hours, but meaning there is nothing magical about that and many of us in many organizations work more hours anyway, so the way that work flows has to be rethought.

The structures that we carried from the tailorism that you talk about or from Robert Owen's view of 8-8-8 has to be rethought.

[00:18:37] Bob Fox: That's part of the disruptive change that we're going through. People are realizing, Hey, I can still get my work done, but I don't need to be in the office all day. And I think leaders are struggling with, how do we manage that?

And there is this tendency to just do things the way we've always done 'em, and there's a lot of anxiety and uncertainty as we go through that kind of change. I feel like as a leader, you have to trust people before they trust you. So you've gotta give them that chance to prove that they can get their work done and it doesn't really matter where they are.

[00:19:12] Mahan Tavakoli: You mentioned it early on, Bob, it's a leadership challenge more than anything else, and back in 2008, 2009, you started Work Design magazine, having conversations around how to design work. So as leaders come to you and want guidance in rethinking that future of work, what are some key elements that you tell them they need to think about as they design that future of. work,

[00:19:45] Bob Fox: I think for a leader it's about what do you want those people to experience? There's obviously a strategy and objectives and goals that the organization has, and those need to be communicated. There's values, the expectations of people doing their jobs. The ways that people interact with others, those things need to be communicated.

And all of that's really hard to do. But I think if you build an environment you can set examples of that, whether it's showing images of the type of work that an organization does or images of the type of services or products that the organization produces, or an environment where the leader is able to interact with people on a frequent basis or where the goals of the organization are spelled out and, the vision for the organization is set. Think of the space almost like a museum where those things are all on display or experienced.

It could be a variety of different ways that is conveyed, and now we have the use of digital technology where you're seeing that we have to integrate into these environments and that they're used for either collecting information, displaying information, or collaborating with people.

So we can leverage all of those things. As the technology really grows, that's really as much a piece of the toolkit that the leader has as the physical environment is if not more so today.

[00:21:02] Mahan Tavakoli: Now, you started Fox Architects back in 2003, so in what ways have the way you collaborate and work changed over these almost 20 years and In what ways do you think they will change moving into the future?

[00:21:23] Bob Fox: I think We've always been a very people focused group. That's just deep in the culture. We've always tried to delegate as much responsibility to people as we can. And we've always tried to have the support and the backup systems there to protect and help people as much as we can.

It's a very collaborative process that we employ. Somebody starts out putting ideas for a project together, but they usually get pinned up on a wall, those ideas would get criticized, constructive criticism will help to shape what that project looks like.

So there's a lot of interaction and exchange of ideas that goes through that process and that's part of the value of the problem solving process. Because we're getting diverse ideas. And that's one thing that we've tried hard to do is tried to maintain a diversity of backgrounds of people to bring a variety of different types of ideas.

Cuz somebody's gonna look at a problem very differently than I might look at it. And, I can't be stuck on my solution. I've gotta listen to the way that other people present solutions because that might be better or might contribute to something that we're struggling to solve for a particular project.

So it's that very open, very collaborative, very dynamic process that we go through. We're also a multidisciplinary firm, so we have people that are specialized in the aspects of office buildings, and then we have people that are specialized in furniture. And people that are specialized in interior spaces, and people that understand the landlord needs, and people that understand tenant needs.

So all of those various disciplines, really need to interact and share ideas, otherwise we're not really providing the value and the service that we can.

[00:23:01] Mahan Tavakoli: Are those interactions primarily over the past couple of years, must have been remote through use of technology. But moving forward, do you see those interactions and that collaboration happening primarily in an in-person modality or a digital modality?

[00:23:23] Bob Fox: Honestly, I think it's gonna be both. Cuz I think that in person collaboration is vital. It's critical. It's the highest level of exchange that we can get. The next level down, we're probably in Zoom or conversations like this where we're able to exchange information and ideas, but it's not as rich as if we're sitting there in person, having this conversation.

Now, the one thing I'm curious about is the whole concept of the metaverse. And we're starting to see organizations play with that. We could be avatars interacting. Personally, I haven't really experienced that yet, but I can see the potential for it. And I'm hearing stories about organizations where there is a richer experience, above and beyond the zoom type of interaction, but it's still not at the level of the personal interaction.

So I think you're gonna see these grade aided levels of interaction that people need to partake in. And if you're doing work by yourself or trying to find a place to concentrate you can find any quiet place to do that. Or if you're doing work by yourself, but you wanna be accessible to people and there where you can, exchange ideas and build the capital, there's a place where you can go for that. I think these places that we're gonna create now are all gonna have, various levels of interaction and, value that they can bring.

[00:24:35] Mahan Tavakoli: Thinking about what type of work fits, what modality best the in person is the richest and has real value to it, at a conversation with Vanessa Bonds, she's a professor at Cornell and has written a book, "You have more influence than you think", and they've done lots of studies, including studies where when people taste chocolate without even seeing the face of the other person reacting to the chocolate. The sensations they feel are magnified when they know another human being in that same space is experiencing the same sensation, is tasting the chocolate at the same time.

So there are things that we don't fully understand about the value of being in person and it making for a rich experience being in that room. However, we don't always need to be in the room together to collaborate. So the challenge becomes what types of interactions lend themselves and deserve the higher investment of being together, and what types of collaborations lend themselves to whether it's digital interaction at this point, or individual one.

[00:25:50] Bob Fox: There's a book that I really enjoyed. It's called Stealing Fire. Probably more about mind altering drugs and experiences than it is about personal interactions but it reinforces the value of those personal interactions. And the one that I really loved was the example that they gave about the Navy Seals, where they had to go on a 30 mile hike, but they would all essentially be able to communicate with minimal interactions.

So if one looks right, one looks left, they all can anticipate you know what the other guy's gonna do, and they're all there backing each other up and protecting each other, but that only comes from being together with that group of people and really immersing yourself in that environment. I could give you a good sailing analogy we're 10 or 12 guys on a boat and the guy up on the front of the boat can't do his job unless the guy in the middle of the boat is doing his job and the guy in the back of the boat is steering, and he's enabling everybody to do their job. And a lot of that is done with very little communication.

[00:26:50] Mahan Tavakoli: Yeah, That's , both a great analogy great way to think about it Bob, but the challenge that a lot of leaders that I speak with have is that there's a certain level of uncertainty and a certain level of lack of clarity. Two, three years ago, they felt like they knew exactly how work was getting done with people coming to the office and working.

But now there is lack of clarity and all of us as humans have a tendency to wanna go back to the good old days, the way things work before. So that uncertainty, then that fear plays a role too.

[00:27:31] Bob Fox: Definitely. That anxiety that you just described is probably the biggest inhibitor to us jumping to the next level. Because I do think that people are very comfortable but we can take all of those great things that we had from the past and begin to say, Okay, hey, we can apply this a little bit differently.

Cause I do think the type of work that we're doing is evolving at the same time that we're going through all of this. Our organizations all depend on our ability to innovate, and come up with new ideas and so where do those ideas germinate from? And how do we create an environment that's gonna spark more new ideas?

And if you're in the same environment day in, day out, your senses are gonna get dult to that. So, you have to have other experiences that are gonna help bring those new experiences and new ideas.

[00:28:21] Mahan Tavakoli: One of the things I love Bob, is that you are an architect with a business person's mind, with a designer's mind, with a futurist mind. As you are pulling all of these things together, what is next for Bob Fox? What is the contribution you are looking to make as organizations and leaders are struggling with and trying to reinvent and reimagine that future of work?

[00:28:49] Bob Fox: Mahan, We are in this incredibly exciting period of time right now, and I'm just fascinated watching things change and evolve. If you look at what's happening in the real estate industry right now there is a lot of hesitation, a lot of uncertainty and people are sort of questioning how do we use this office environment, as we move into the future.

And, what's the purpose of the office environment? So one of the things that I'm excited about that I'm in the process of working on right now is really to try to develop I don't know if it's a video or a podcast yet, but where I'm talking to experts in the industry and asking them about their ideas.

So it's what have we learned through the pandemic, and what's different now that from the way that we did things pre pandemic and where are the opportunities that you see, as we grow and as we move into the future. So I wanna try to capture as many of those ideas as we can and I'm gonna aspire to be like Mahan and share those with the rest of the world.

[00:29:54] Mahan Tavakoli: Well, you know, I aspire to be like Bob so that's a great compliment coming from you Bob, and as you have those conversations, I'm sure they're going to be with insightful people. One of the things that I have found fascinating and I crack up every time I see something like this, when Jamie Diamond two, three months ago said, we are coming back to the office five days a week, remote work doesn't work. All the commercial real estate people I knew were trumpeting Jamie Diamond's state of future. And then Jamie Diamond had to eat his words a couple of months later, including in his letter to shareholders, as a lot of his senior executives said they would quit. And now Malcolm Gladwell has talked about the value of in person, which I totally agree with.

However, many people in commercial real estate are trumpeting that as the need for everyone to go back to the office five days a week, which is probably not going to happen. So I think in creating that future, we have to divest ourselves from the interests that we have held, whether in having as many officess as in the past or working the way things worked in the past, moving to reinvent rather than try to go back.

[00:31:14] Bob Fox: And that's one of the things that I think, I feel challenged by in this whole thing, is that I want to try to present those perspectives without any bias. There's gonna be bias in there all over the place, But if there is someone that's heavily biased towards the office, then I feel like I'm gonna have to find somebody that's heavily biased to saying we don't need the office.

But just to present those counterpoints to each other. There's gonna be a lot of people in the middle and I think this is where most people will wind up, is that we need the office. Okay, but we don't need the office five days a week. We need the office for the specific functions and tasks that we need to interact with other people in a certain way. So that is gonna continue. And I think we're still gonna have office space. You're gonna see every organization reevaluate their need for office space. So that's where they're gonna have to set the priorities for how do we move forward? How do we think about this as a tool for us to get our job done and not a piece of real estate that we're trying to maximize the efficiency of.

[00:32:10] Mahan Tavakoli: And to think through it Bob, one of the abilities that I believe we need to continually develop in an uncertain world is to think through complexity and get away from the binary thinking. A lot of conversations about the future of work is you've got the camp that says you can get everything done remotely. We did it two years, we can continue this way. And there are examples of fully remote organizations that do well. I grant them that. And then there is the other camp that says, No, there is nothing like being in person. We have to go back to the way it was. Rather than there is no need to be in one of the polls, the complexity and uncertainty requires experimentation and there are different levels of what makes sense for different types of collaboration and work. No need to be in one camp or the other.

[00:33:04] Bob Fox: Yeah. One of the examples I like to use is, look at the clothes that people wear. Nobody wears the same clothes, so think of your office space in the same way. The office space is essentially the clothes for the organization, so you've gotta put on what's appropriate and then the space needs to be appropriate to support that organization.

 So that's one of the things that, we'll spend a lot more time talking about as we move into the future.

[00:33:28] Mahan Tavakoli: So as you've done all of these great things Bob, I know your wife has been fully supportive of you in all respects. What is the role that she's played, and I would love to know how the two of you met and why she chose to marry you.

[00:33:46] Bob Fox: We met playing volleyball. She actually blocked one of my spikes at the volleyball net and I'm like, Where did you come from? And then we tried to play doubles on the beach and we had a lot of fun, but I think we were the two that were probably fighting the most at the same time cause we were both very competitive. But she's the planner and I'm the dreamer. So that's where we actually get along very well.

 So she's the one that's meticulous about taking care of all of the dotting the i's and crossing the T's and I'm thinking of the big picture where are we going, what are we gonna do, kinds of things.

[00:34:23] Mahan Tavakoli: You are a dreamer and a planner too. You mentioned the yacht racing and in 2016 you won your class racing to Bermuda, beautiful island and I love it there, but I've never sailed there. And then 2018, you were first to finish, although you said that does not mean I won. So you mentioned yacht racing as a great leadership development tool. In what way does yacht racing serve as a leadership development tool in your view Bob?

[00:35:00] Bob Fox: If you think about it, I've got a 44 foot boat. I need 10 or 12 guys to essentially race that boat effectively. There's a tremendous amount of communication that's involved with changing sails or trimming sails. The boat has a relatively narrow groove that, once you're in that groove, the performance of the boat increases exponentially.

If we're not in that groove, we're essentially going slow. But, trimming one sails, trimming another sail, making an adjustment to the mast adjusting the weight on the boat, whether we're moving it further, try to get out or move weight forward or back, or adjusting to the wind, or adjusting to the water, to the current.

There's a constant chatter about what people are seeing. So you can see puffs of wind coming, you can see waves coming. All of that needs to be communicated and the helmsman needs to respond to that, the sail trimmer needs to respond to that. So you don't want anybody to not be communicating, what they see.

But the boat is also long enough that I can't hear what the guy at the front of the boat is saying so we also have to be able to communicate nonverbally, in those situations. And I have to be able to anticipate a lot of what is gonna be happening with that crew. On a long voyage, the requirements really go up exponentially. There's safety, there's first aid, there's food, there's, watch schedules. There's all of the equipment and maintaining the boat in good order. All of that stuff has to be paid attention to, we can be three or 400 miles offshore and I can't call 9-1-1 if I need help.

There's a bonding of the crew because we're all essentially looking out for each other. If somebody's didn't get enough sleep or, if somebody's not, paying attention to what's going on, you need to give them the support. To say, Hey, everything okay? Or, Hey, can I help you for a little bit? Or, all of that stuff has to work flawlessly if the boat's gonna perform well. Everybody has to essentially take care of everybody else, and I think that's where the real leadership skill comes in and operating it or racing a yacht. A funny story I'll share is that, the race that we won in 2018, we were first to finish, but we corrected to fourth place.

But I had bought that boat 28 days before the race and I thought, okay, I have a high level of confidence in the boat cuz I knew the boat they had won the race two years ago. It was set up by professionals, it had everything on it that I could need for an offshore race. I knew my crew, we'd sailed together for years.

I had a very high level of confidence in the crew. It was 12: 30 at night where it's pitch black, it's pouring rain, it's blowing 40 knots. I got bolts of lightning coming down all around me. You couldn't see a thing. All I can see is the red glow of the instruments and the crew were all huddled back in the cockpit, and I'm sitting there thinking we don't have a clue how to sail this boat. So that was a real eye opening experience because it was like I had confidence in both the boat and the crew, but it's the crew's ability to sail that boat.

[00:37:57] Mahan Tavakoli: That is also a great analogy for some of what we have ahead and leaders have ahead in the uncertainty as they are charting waters that they haven't charted before. The need to rely on their crew, actively engage them in this process to rethink and redesign the future of work. As leaders are reflecting on how to lead their teams effectively, are there any resources or practices you typically find yourself recommending to them to be able to design a better future of work?

[00:38:33] Bob Fox: Most organizations have the answers. They may not know where to find them, and that's part of the questioning process that we go through. But how your people work the values that the organization holds processes that the organization uses.

Those are the things and it's really more about the priorities. We're really concerned about the environment these days, and we're trying to design, spaces that are as energy efficient, carbon neutral, and sustainable as we can.

Organizations really have to understand what their priorities are, and then design an environment that's gonna support those priorities.

 You're not gonna be able to get everything that's available into a project. You're just not gonna be able to do it. So it's pick your priorities and focus on that. And, the organization probably already has a good understanding of what those priorities are, they just have to be communicated.

[00:39:21] Mahan Tavakoli: And they need good advisors to welcome through it Bob, one of the challenges that I see in all aspects of organizational decision making is that there is a hurt mentality, whether it is with the way offices were designed the move to cubicles, the move to everyone now open offices where people had earbuds in and weren't even talking to the person sitting next to them.

 People are looking for" what's everyone doing so I can do it." Part of what I hear from you and I couldn't agree with you more is that is not the right way of doing it. The right way is dependent on your priorities and engaging your team members and what makes sense to you can be very different than what makes sense to the office right next to yours, or the building right next to yours.

[00:40:17] Bob Fox: That's a great way to summarize it. And there's a style component to it too. This is where, you know, a good architect should be able to interpret that and bring that style to that organization. I may like the clothes that you wear, Mahan, but I'm not gonna wear your clothes. So I have to wear clothes that I'm gonna be comfortable in that meet the priorities that I need for the type of work that I do, or the type of activity that I'm playing. And the workspace is very analogous to that.

[00:40:42] Mahan Tavakoli: That's a beautifully visual way of describing it, and I appreciate that, Bob, as well as I appreciate finding out a little bit more about you and some of your thoughts with respect to the future of work as we look to redesign and use this opportunity. I love your positivity and I agree with you.

This is an opportunity for us to redesign work. We were stuck pre pandemic. Many organizations with the industrial age tailors view of work done by knowledge workers. Everything now is evened out. This is the chance to redesign how we want the work done in a way that meets our team and organization's objectives.

So I really appreciate your insights. We will link in the show notes to Work Design Magazine to Fox Architects, and I look forward to many more conversations with you both in person, which I really appreciate and online. Thank you so much Bob Fox.

[00:41:49] Bob Fox: Mahan, this has been a lot of fun. Thanks. I appreciate the invitation to share these ideas.