182: ‘Imagining Where We Want to Go’, with Dan Chuparkoff

TRXL 182: ‘Imagining Where We Want to Go’, with Dan Chuparkoff

Evan Troxel: [00:00:00] Welcome to the TRXL Podcast. I'm Evan Troxel, and in this episode I am joined by Dan Chuparkoff, who is one of the world's leading experts on AI innovation in the future of work as a technology leader at Google, McKinsey and others, Dan led transformations for teams in every industry as the world navigated three decades of technological change, he knows firsthand that the people who leverage the power of technology will outperform the people who don't.

Something I think that this audience probably knows a thing or two about, and today he shares about change. Creativity and how leaders can prepare their teams and organizations for a future powered by AI and innovation. He draws from decades of experience in software and product development and shares valuable insights into why traditional industries like architecture need to embrace reinvention. We also talked about how to practically foster [00:01:00] innovation in the face of resistance, the dual nature of technology innovation through separation, AI's true potential diversity as a catalyst for innovation.

Reframing learning the importance of cross pollinating ideas and talents from different industries to drive innovation and more. One of the main themes of this episode is about change agents. I'll put out a challenge to you, dear listener, and it is that change agents must lead their teams through technological change. Can you identify who the change agents are in your organization? Maybe it's you. Anyways, stick around to the end of the episode because I'll wrap things up and tell you why I think this theme is a really important takeaway from today's conversation.

Lastly, you can really help out the podcast by sharing these episodes with your colleagues and by commenting on and sharing my LinkedIn posts. And you can leave a comment over on YouTube to chat with the other [00:02:00] listeners. As usual, there's an extensive amount of additional information on the show notes, so be sure to check them out.

You can find them in your podcast app if you're a paid member and if you're a free member, you can find them at the website, which is TRXL.Co. So now without further ado, I bring you my conversation with Dan Chuparkoff.

​

Evan Troxel: Dan, welcome to the podcast. It's great to have you here. I.

Dan Chuparkoff: Thanks Evan. Uh, it's great to be here. I'm looking forward to the discussion today. Um, I, architecture goes deep back into my, uh, personal history and I'm looking forward to talking about how, you know, architects are seeing change, how non architects, other designers are seeing change and, and the technology progress in the world.

Uh, it's impacting us all. So I'm looking forward to the conversation and, uh, thanks for.

Evan Troxel: Yeah. You're, you're, I, I love that you're here and, and I've had your other brother half on this show before [00:03:00] and I love Tom's, uh, stance that architecture is his hobby and he shows up every day to his hobby. I think that's a really cool attitude to have. And his, you know, it's, it is pretty infectious.

His. he's a, he's just a great guy. And so I'll put a link to that episode in the show notes so people get the full familial effect here. But Dan, you're in a different industry and you, I mean, I know that there are obviously crossovers, but maybe you can tell us a bit of your backstory and, and so that we know kind of how you got to where you are today.

Dan Chuparkoff: Yeah, for sure. Um, so I've, I've been a technologist for 30 years, I guess professionally. Uh, I was a product manager for most of that and a software engineer for a tiny bit of it at the beginning. Um, but I sort of stumbled into technology accidentally. I actually had originally intended to be an architect.

And I got an internship my senior year of high school for the Hillsborough [00:04:00] County, uh, school board in Florida. We were designing schools all over the, all over the county. And, uh, as an intern, I, you know, pretty much all they would let me do was draw parking lots lines like they, they would draw this whole plan and I'd get the site plan and I'd try to figure out how many parking spaces would fit in the parking lot.

And, um, you know, so I spent a good chunk of a semester drawing parking lot lines, and I was filing plans away in, you know, those architecture plan cabinets, you know, the big long, flat files. Um, I'm, I'm like in a, in our storage room, like filing plans away one day and I meet this guy that I hadn't met before.

Uh, his name was Mr. Pock. Um, and I introduced myself. I told him I was getting to know all the people around and, and I'm like, how come I haven't seen you? And he said, that's 'cause my office is down here. We're like on another level, practically in the basement. And he shows me where he works. And, and the first thing I see is he's got a computer sitting on his desk.

He also has [00:05:00] one of those old style drafting boards on the slant. Uh, but he's got a computer and a plotter that was like plotting at the time. It's making all this noise. And that's why they shoved him in the basement. 'cause his plotter was making so much racket,

Evan Troxel: Yep.

Dan Chuparkoff: right? And I'm like, what does this, how do you, what does it do?

And he's like, oh, it's just for cad. And I had never heard the acronym CAD before. And, um, uh, he showed me what he's doing. And it was AutoCAD revision nine, which back then was the first one that let you spin the design around. You could, um, you could look at it in three dimensions and, uh. And he showed me how to work it.

I spent a week with him and then, you know, he showed me I could copy paste parking lot spaces. Um, and now we say the words copy paste all the time now, but like in 1986, that was like magic.

Evan Troxel: It still is if you actually think about it. Right? Yeah. We do take it for granted though.

Dan Chuparkoff: So I [00:06:00] go back upstairs to where my normal desk is and I finish my project in Ink and Mylar, if I make a mistake, I gotta tear the whole thing up and start over. And I'm looking around and all these architects are drawing on, on Mylar and Ink. I'm like, Hey, does anyone know about Mr. Pock in the basement?

Like, why, when are we getting more computers? And the architects at the time, they weren't ready for that. They didn't understand that the drawings that came outta that thing would get better. They didn't understand that like the ability to share digital designs, you know, across stakeholders and, and cities would, would be dramatically better.

And so they, they for the most part, rejected that thing and resisted it. I saw that that was gonna change the future of architecture, and I, I changed my major in, aligned with that. Like, I, I want, I wanna make software that can do that to all the other industries. Um, and so that became, you know, a, a 30 5-year-old, you know, love with, with technology way back then.

Evan Troxel: Wow. [00:07:00] That that's, uh, it's interesting. And then you even make me think of like. A basic tool that we have today, which is to, for me, not a basic tool, which is a clipboard manager even where you can copy of stuff and

Dan Chuparkoff: Yay.

Evan Troxel: here and then pick which one you want to paste and where, and like just the amount of like, how long did it even take us to get from a single paste to multiple copy paste and, and what a big jump that was.

There's still so many people that don't even use a basic tool like that, right? Because

Dan Chuparkoff: Yeah.

Evan Troxel: know it exists. But I, and I think that's part of it too, is right, you, you don't see the potential because you don't know it exists. But then once you know that it exists, you're also kind of up against this existential threat of who's gonna replace me with this?

Will it replace me? And there's all of those kinds of, and, and so a lot of things haven't changed in that regard,

Dan Chuparkoff: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's the same problem happening over and over again, regardless of what role you have or what industry you're in, like we're all facing that constant, um, uh, tool that helps us and threatens us at the same [00:08:00] time. Uh, and that's, that can be terrifying. I.

Evan Troxel: Well let, let's expand on your credibility. Where, where did you go from there?

Dan Chuparkoff: Yeah. So, uh, I started as a software engineer at a small, a small marketing services company that most people have never heard of. Uh, gradually, you know, I then tried some startups and then a digital agency. And then I worked at a company called Atlassian that makes software for developers. And then I ended up at McKinsey and Company, and then at Google, uh, finally at Google I worked on Android operating system things.

If you're, if you make mobile apps, you probably used a bunch of my tools, uh, Android Studio and Crash Lytics and Firebase and things like that. So that's, uh, the, the 32 year, uh, abbreviated version, but, um, ended up at Google actually wearing my Google vest right now, today for the video listeners. Um, but, uh, yeah, it was, it's, it was fun.

I saw some big companies and some old companies and some startups and some, you know, massive enterprises. And, uh, it was a, it was [00:09:00] an amazing journey. So,

Evan Troxel: And, and your brother's an architect. And so I'm sure you guys talk about kind of the, the pro, let's just say the contrast between what you've seen in the technology industry. Obviously your brother Tom is very technologically oriented in the

Dan Chuparkoff: right.

Evan Troxel: of architecture and leveraging those kinds of tools that we talk about on this show all the time.

But,

Dan Chuparkoff: Mm-hmm.

Evan Troxel: um, I'm curious, like from your perspective, when you're working at a company like Google, and

Dan Chuparkoff: Mm-hmm.

Evan Troxel: from my point of view, having never stepped foot in a Google office, I mean, I'm sure that there's some of the same issues that we're probably gonna talk about today, even. Call it plaguing, call it whatever you want.

But, but these, these large incumbent, you know, Google's been around for how long now? When did Google start? It's, it's got

Dan Chuparkoff: Yeah, it's, uh, yeah. Yeah, almost 30 at this point.

Evan Troxel: Right.

Dan Chuparkoff: So.

Evan Troxel: it's like this, this idea of disruption and, but also spend a lot of money on r and d, a lot of money on innovation and things like that. And they're constantly trying to come up with the next [00:10:00] best thing. they've had some big moonshots and they've also, you know, I'm sure just thrown a bunch of stuff away. Right. Um, but, but, so there's like this, it's all happening. It's, it's everything everywhere, all at once, right? All of

Dan Chuparkoff: right, right, right.

Evan Troxel: are going on in the soup pot. And then I, I think about like the contrast of, and I'm just gonna generalize and say most

Dan Chuparkoff: Yeah. Yeah.

Evan Troxel: are just kind of like, oh, how can we do what we do a little bit better,

Dan Chuparkoff: Mm-hmm.

Evan Troxel: how we do it?

Or, or.

Dan Chuparkoff: Right, right, right.

Evan Troxel: and, and I, I think that there's probably, you know, you probably share a lot of stories with, with him about that, and I'm sure that there's some of, you know, oh yeah, I see that. But then there's probably a lot of, you know, there are some differences in the way technology companies operate compared to especially really established architecture firms, even though they,

Dan Chuparkoff: Yeah.

Evan Troxel: have a lot of resources, and I could probably at the same time say that they're the ones spending the most money on the r and d when it comes

Dan Chuparkoff: Yeah.

Evan Troxel: you know, not disrupting themselves or, you know, being the ones who disrupt themselves instead of somebody else doing it to them.

Dan Chuparkoff: Right, right.

Evan Troxel: Google's point of view, and just being like this [00:11:00] technology company that has even put its toe in the water of a ECA few times,

Dan Chuparkoff: Yeah.

Evan Troxel: what do you, what's been your experience with just kind of seeing how this has played out over the last two decades?

Dan Chuparkoff: I think so the first thing I'll say to just try, try to, uh, uh, normalize what Google is like a little bit more for people. Some people look at Google and they're like, you know, they have a trillion dollars, they have hundreds of thousands of really smart people, like they can do things there that I can't do.

Um, but to, once you're on the inside, you see that they're, they're actually just a normal, big enterprise like many others inside, they have small teams that have like no budget to work with and they're scrounging for, you know, people and headcount, you know, then they have big legacy things that have been running for 20 years and they're afraid to touch anything.

'cause they don't want the, like, you know, the, the, the revenue to dip at all. 'cause that could be, you know, devastating for them. So first, Google has a lot of the same things [00:12:00] going on that many other small and medium and big enterprises have as well. Um, the second thing I'll say is fundamentally, as part of Google's life, I think because they sort of were born out of the internet, and also at that moment the way we searched for things on the internet shifted from the, the a OL Yahoo portal style thing to a consumer driven search, right?

It, it was, it was very guided before, like there were, you know, 15 categories and you could click on finance or you could click on travel and, and you would see the travel portal. Um, and, and suddenly users had control to go anywhere on the internet they wanted. And so Google saw that even brand new things.

Could get completely disrupted if you're not constantly making them better and better and better. Um, you know, at the time Alta Vista was the dominant search [00:13:00] engine and um, you know, it had only been around for four years and it, they just got left in the dust. And so the Google saw this sort of existential, um, de need for change that a lot of people don't see.

Or maybe in their industries it's not quite as fast as four years, right? Maybe of 20 years or maybe 40 years before you're just left in the dust. But at some point you will get left in the dust if you like, aim for. Stasis, right? If you just try to like, hold things where they are so that you don't take risks, minimize risks, minimize, you know, disruption and, and bad choices, then you'll probably be fine for a while in technology, that for a while is maybe only five years.

Um, and in, you know, in architecture maybe it's 25 years, I, I don't know what the, what the number is exactly, but it's, it's not forever.

Evan Troxel: Yeah.

Dan Chuparkoff: so, you know, people that try to hold the, [00:14:00] the line, uh, and keep things stable and risk free for too long will get left behind eventually.

Evan Troxel: Yeah, I mean, one of the main topics I wanted to discuss with you today is change, right? The, a

Dan Chuparkoff: Yeah. Yeah.

Evan Troxel: but, but just really how we deal with it as a, as an industry, as individuals,

Dan Chuparkoff: Mm-hmm.

Evan Troxel: then other, how other industries, like you're, you're talking about kind of a, just a different perspective completely, which is like, if we're not changing, we're gonna die, kind of a

Dan Chuparkoff: Right, right, right. Yeah.

Evan Troxel: industries like ours where, where it's maybe not as urgent of a, of like, I don't, we're not gonna die. We're gonna be fine. And, and then it kind of leads to like, oh, you kind of forget that you needed to look outside and, and you know, const continually kind of survey what's going on because you're busy, you're doing, you got deadlines, right?

You've got all these things that you've gotta do today. And, and so I mean. Well, I'm curious before we start really getting into the topic of change, um, because I think, you know, this goes way beyond [00:15:00] architecture. This, I mean, we're, look, we're seeing it

Dan Chuparkoff: Oh yeah.

Evan Troxel: We're seeing like there's people, like it was literally freaking out, but, but, but there's, there's also kind of this idea, like something actually can't get better until the one that's there is completely broken or dismantled or burned to the ground, right?

It's like, so, so there's all of this kind of floating around in my head too, but, but maybe you can kind of tell us your new focus since Google and, and so we can kind of frame the conversation around your expertise.

Dan Chuparkoff: Yeah. Yeah, that's, that sounds good. Um, what, what I started to notice about two years ago at Google is, first of all, I liked going to conferences and speaking on a stage to an audience about stuff that I thought about the world. Uh, and so I started doing that a little bit more. And, you know, meanwhile back at Google, I was helping my team.

I, I led a team that had about 150 people on it. Um, and so I was helping my team navigate, change and figure out what new stuff to do and, and figure out what bad stuff to stop doing. And I sort of realized, hey, the, the rest of the world [00:16:00] needs some of that leadership too. And so if I could combine my love for speaking at conferences with my desire to be a leader of teams in a world of constant change, um, then I could, I could do my most fun thing in the thing I was best at at the same time.

And so I quit Google a year and a half ago, and now I just helped teams all over the world to navigate new technology. Changes. And right now that means AI a lot of the time to a lot of the people. So we're talking a lot about ai, but you know, in six more years we'll be talking about how robots are helping to do stuff, take our trash out, or bring us our medicine or, or whatever they do.

And so that, you know, so that that, uh, constant technology, uh, revolving door of, of helpers assistance, uh, is never going away. And so I just do that now. I'm independent. I have a company called Re Reinvention Labs and we're just doing research on, you know, how change is happening in each [00:17:00] industry and what that's gonna mean for the people that are trying to be successful there.

And uh, so that's what I do. And uh, that's what we're kind of gonna talk about mostly today. 'cause that's what I do every day.

Evan Troxel: Yeah. I mean this, this idea of change and disruption, I mean, these are all kind of words that for a lot of people are super uncomfortable, and then there's others who are, are super comfortable with it

Dan Chuparkoff: Yeah. Yeah.

Evan Troxel: I mean, like you, your, your job is to help people get comfortable with it so that they can do something about it.

Right.

Dan Chuparkoff: You are right, right, right.

Evan Troxel: kind of the pace of innovation, and maybe you, maybe we can start here, is just what have you noticed with the pace of, of innovation and change just in the last couple years?

Dan Chuparkoff: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. So it, it definitely, there's on one side of the argument that the potential changes available to us is growing exponentially in that speeding up. But at the same time, the uh, amount of change [00:18:00] accepted into organizations is actually throttled because of leadership change out. Right. Like the, a person who is whatever, my, I'm 55, I'm, you know, my age.

I'm a leader at Google or any other organization. I have maybe eight or nine years of leadership left in me, and then I'm gonna retire. I don't need to change that much if I'm the leader. Right. So I'm just gonna ride it out.

Evan Troxel: you don't have to enable it either,

Dan Chuparkoff: Right, right, right. I can just, I'm just coasting on whatever, whatever laurels we like, you know, we built up in the meantime.

Then 10 years from now I retire, and then the person that I've been grooming to take my spot takes over and they're probably 15, 20 years younger than me. They're more comfortable with the digital age, they're more comfortable with risks. They have like 900 iPhone apps on their phone, so they don't care about new tool fatigue and stuff like that.

So they lead [00:19:00] my company in a completely different way. And so that generational flip in leadership actually is the thing that drives change more than the availability of new technology. And generational leadership is throttled by, you know, age and. Generation size and, and stuff like that. So, so what you'll probably see is in any 22 year span, most organizations aren't forced to change.

But then outside of that span, when they get to 25 or 30 years, they start to see that they're competing now against organizations that are led by people that have a different technology adoption attitude, mindset. And when you start competing against those people, you start drifting back unless you start making those changes too.

So that, that's kind of the, the due dual dichotomy of, um, of change, both speeding up and, [00:20:00] and stock at the 22 year, uh, point at the same time.

Evan Troxel: This, this idea of like being almost entitled to be in business is

Dan Chuparkoff: Hmm.

Evan Troxel: me, right? Because I mean, there's, you're competing in architecture where I'm coming from. You know, you're competing against other firms who are roughly doing the same things that you are,

Dan Chuparkoff: Mm-hmm.

Evan Troxel: it's like. We're hitting these revenue goals, we're hitting our, you know, our teams are, are, you know, trying to balance fees versus,

Dan Chuparkoff: Yeah. Yeah.

Evan Troxel: know, billable hours and all these

Dan Chuparkoff: Right.

Evan Troxel: And, and it's, it's difficult to actually, you gotta change everything if you wanna change. I mean, I actually, I'd be curious to hear what you, what you kind of advise people there because, because it's, it is really difficult to change it all, and it's hard to change little

Dan Chuparkoff: Yeah.

Evan Troxel: of it in the machine as it's moving and

Dan Chuparkoff: Right, right, right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I, I've been, I, I've been fortunate enough [00:21:00] to be part of, um, some sort of like dramatic shift in a, in a business's, uh, business model and. And technology adoption, uh, two times. Um, the first time I was part of a startup that got acquired, um, we had 35 people or so, and we were doing our thing and it was kind of new and cool, and then we got bought by this much larger organization.

And so naturally we got folded into that organization and we started to look for efficiencies and we took some of our things that had been working that enabled us to take risks and reinvent in the market. And we lost some of those things because now we are folded into this bigger machine. And now any risks that we took impacted the risks of the much bigger organization.

Right? And so that actually slowed us down a little bit. And the, the, the new cool stuff that we were doing when I first started there started to become harder and harder. On the other end of the spectrum, maybe 12 years later, I was working at a big [00:22:00] company that wanted to reinvent itself, but was struggling to because of the mothership and our legacy products and customers.

And so instead of just trying to do it anyway, in spite of all these risks and, and challenges, we created a little, a little team that was separate. We took about 20 of us and got a different office. We worked in a different building, not too far away, just down the street, but we had our own culture, our own mindset, like we were shielded both legally and and financially.

Like by creating this new entity that had better risk taking practices because, you know, we, we had legally separated. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And, and we knew that we weren't resting on the, the revenue of the, of the mothership, right? We, we had to make or break what we were trying to do there. And so, you know, we were hungry and we took more risks and we reinvented things and it, it was [00:23:00] actually dramatically successful.

Um, so, you know, thinking about that is like when you are trying to draft some dramatic change, first just create a pilot team. Give them a little more freedom than you're normally used to in your normal culture. And if it works, gradually grow that team, right? Send some more people over there, start doing a little bit more, start begging bigger customers.

Little by little that new team just becomes the organization, right? And that's a, that's a much better way to start. Try to just gradually create, uh, create change in a much bigger risk adverse organization.

Evan Troxel: When I was leading our digital practice team at the firm that I was at, you know, I, we, we talked a lot about digital practice,

Dan Chuparkoff: Yeah,

Evan Troxel: I always would reinforce, it's like someday we're just gonna call it practice again. Right? Like,

Dan Chuparkoff: yeah, yeah.

Evan Troxel: it's,

Dan Chuparkoff: Right,

Evan Troxel: at calling it something so that everybody knows what you're talking about, but you

Dan Chuparkoff: right,

Evan Troxel: be so influential and like you're saying like [00:24:00] the, the balance tips at some point where it becomes the bigger thing, because the way you used to do things is falling off the back, back of the conveyor

Dan Chuparkoff: right, right. Right. And, and it, and the both things coexisting is super normal and it shouldn't feel weird to people on either side. Right? Like the, the existing product still has customers that expect those existing things, and it, and those, those customers will want to be customers for a long time. It's okay that that starts shrinking as long as people have, you know, another, another place to go.

As you know, as the new world or the new digital world, the new AI powered world, you know, starts to become a bigger and bigger part of the business. Mm-hmm. Right, right, right.

Evan Troxel: were out there

Dan Chuparkoff: Yeah.

Evan Troxel: do the same thing that you, you said they had to move into a different building because there was, there's a lot of [00:25:00] naysayers in the existing organization and there's a lot of influence about, well, we're going this direction, why are you doing that over there?

And, and

Dan Chuparkoff: Yeah.

Evan Troxel: have to create that separation at some level that you're talking about. Or because it's unlikely that everybody's gonna be on the same page, that this is a good idea and there's no guarantee that it's gonna be successful anyway. Right. And

Dan Chuparkoff: right, right, right.

Evan Troxel: that separation, I think is a, is a key component of what you're talking about.

Dan Chuparkoff: Yeah. Co Completely agree. 'cause, 'cause yeah, there are no guarantees that it's gonna work. In fact, most of the time it does not work. Right. Like most new things that the organizations try aren't successful. And so, you know, it, that takes a different appetite for, for risk. Personally, a different, like family situation.

Like all those things can be different. So, you know, while you're in those intense moments of risk, let the people that are comfortable in that, in that world, like inhabit it by themselves for a little while, while they're trying to figure it out. Um,

Evan Troxel: and that fear [00:26:00] is so real that it keeps a lot of people from trying it. Right. And, and,

Dan Chuparkoff: yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Evan Troxel: you know, I just wanna reinforce here that it's like, either way you're gonna learn something.

Dan Chuparkoff: Right. Right, right, right, right.

Evan Troxel: it might not be, no matter what.

Dan Chuparkoff: Yeah.

Evan Troxel: will get made. It's not like, if it doesn't work, that is a complete failure.

We don't get anything out of it. Right.

Dan Chuparkoff: Right, right, right. Figuring out some things that don't work is an important thing that more organizations should do.

Evan Troxel: Yeah.

Let's take a quick break from the conversation to tell you about Avail. Is your team struggling to find the BIM assets they need? Avail's content management system simplifies access to all of your firm's content in one easy to use platform. No matter where your files live, or what type of files they are, you can easily search and access them from Avail.

Evan Troxel: Now, designers can consistently find and reuse all types of content. So what does that mean? Well, standards compliant models and drawings are easier to create. The documentation [00:27:00] process is less chaotic, new hires are easier to onboard, projects are delivered faster with fewer errors. You get the idea.

Visit getavail. com to try Avail for free and request a free demo. That's getavail. com, G E T A V A I L dot com. My thanks to Avail for supporting this episode of the TRXL podcast. And now let's get back to the conversation.

How would, how would an architecture firm, I mean, there, there definitely are examples of, and I've interviewed people on this show who've done this. Like I, I think of like, there's a structural engineering firm, a Thornton Thomasetti, who started what they call Core Studio, which grew out of their advanced modeling group.

And,

Dan Chuparkoff: Yep.

Evan Troxel: um, I mean, so it, it really was kind of like they incubated this thing, but, but kinds of. Advice would you say like helps get people in the mindset of, of okay, I think we've kind of established why that could be important, but then

Dan Chuparkoff: Right, right.

Evan Troxel: you, how do you do it? and architecture firms are not set up to be [00:28:00] incubators.

They're

Dan Chuparkoff: Yeah. Yeah. Right.

Evan Troxel: know, like some, some of them think like that. They think hackathons and they think incubate ideas and they think turn

Dan Chuparkoff: Hmm.

Evan Troxel: and they, you know, they, they think about it that way, maybe through experience, but a lot of them haven't. So I mean, is there anything that just comes out from you that when, when you talk to firms like this.

Dan Chuparkoff: Yeah. I think the first thing is, um, even before there's any kind of a formal practice, whether you have an incubator, whether you have like a, a a a next generation, you know, project team or, or anything that's, that's formal and getting resources just. Supporting the notion of learning some new things or trying some new experiments is the first thing culturally that's important before you can do it procedurally and, and, and formally with, with a whole new, you know, division of your company.

First you have to like, get people comfortable just trying new things for no reason, right? Like getting a [00:29:00] software subscription that you're not sure you need yet just to start kicking the tires and see like, if you had this new thing, what would you do with it? And, um, most people flip the, uh, flip the learning until after the decision was made.

They're like, okay, we're going to decide to get Revit, and nobody's used it yet, but we, we had this big committee and they decided that it's worth the $5 million or however much Revit costs. I don't know.

Evan Troxel: A lot

Dan Chuparkoff: Right. But, um, but like, they, they make this formal declaration first, and then they give everyone the new tool, and then everybody's thinking there, shit, now I have to learn it.

Now it's part of my job. Now I,

Evan Troxel: other job. Yeah.

Dan Chuparkoff: right, right, right. And so way before that, you need like a, a sandbox to play in, right? Like, like get some new tools for a week, just get the trial and say like, Hey, next week is playing around with new [00:30:00] tools week. And just let people explore a little bit or give them, you know, at, at the company Atlassian that I worked at.

We had, um, we had a $500 a year budget to just buy some software that we thought might be helpful, like we could get a new trial, single person account of whatever we wanted. There was no approval process as long as we were under that cap. And that allowed us to play around with new tools like HubSpot before they were big.

Um, the, just, just kick the tires and see like, could this help me do my job better? Um, and the people on the ground, they're the ones that usually know if it can actually do their jobs better. Um, and, and we sometimes pulled,

Evan Troxel: to them.

Dan Chuparkoff: yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Evan Troxel: I also think about like the Google example of 20%. I don't know that they still do still do this, right? But this idea of 20% of your time was used for side projects. Some of those really paid off for them, right? Gmail was an example of, of one of those projects that somebody was coding.

You know, what is it, one day a [00:31:00] week or whatever.

Dan Chuparkoff: Yeah, yeah, exactly. Um, there, there, uh, there that practice still exists. For those listeners that don't know, Google's 20% time is an informal, uh, project or process that, that just says one day a week, you're allowed to work on anything you want. It doesn't have to be your formal team. It doesn't have to be the product that you're assigned to.

What, what actually happens is sometimes a person will just take a training class and they're just gonna disappear every Wednesday afternoons for a while. Um, sometimes four or five people will get together every Friday and say like, Hey, we could maybe create a new project here. Do you want to try it?

And they'll do that for a while, and you can, you can spend some amount of your time. It's not always 20%, it's not universally applied, but what it is, is a, an awareness that learning new things is maybe not just as important as your day job, but more important. Than your [00:32:00] day job. And so it's not a distraction from the work your, your work is a distraction from the r and d

Evan Troxel: Interesting.

Dan Chuparkoff: um, 'cause the r and d stuff that you're doing, that's the next 25 years of your company's revenue.

Like, that's dramatically impactful time. And a, a lot of people think of that in the opposite way where it's, you know, it's getting in the way. We don't have time for that. We have customer deliverables and you have to keep your utilization up and, you know, all those things are hard.

Evan Troxel: That, that's the first time I've ever heard that being mentioned, so I'm really glad that you mentioned it. And, and I'm also curious if you could kind of expand on expectations around these side projects, because I think a lot of times it's like, well, if, if this, if every single person who partici participates doesn't bring something back to us that was quote unquote worth it,

Dan Chuparkoff: Mm-hmm.

Evan Troxel: they get cut off and somebody else ne needs to.

But I don't think it was like that. I mean, tell, tell me how,

Dan Chuparkoff: Yeah. Yeah, it's, it is certainly if you're, if you're [00:33:00] spending, um, like if you're spending money that isn't time at Google on a 20% project, for instance, you and me, we start a new startup and we have servers running now and we have users logging into some product that we're not even charging for. We're starting to consume organization money at that point.

And so that's fine as long as we have a monetization plan and as long as our user adoption is growing and those people are referring new people in and we have organic, um, adoption, and that demonstrates that the product that we built has value Outside of that, if it's just me and you spending some of our own time, that's just education and there's not a great way of measuring that.

Education made you smarter or didn't so. Yeah, right. Uh, but Google has a sort of, you know, empowering trust, uh, approach to measuring that. And if you're doing stuff that you feel like is making you better, and you always have to [00:34:00] explain it to your boss and, you know, talk to your boss about what you're doing and what you're getting out of it.

And so as long as you can confidently have that conversation, then you can, you can get a little autonomy to, to try and learn new things. Um, so that's, I, I think the two sides of that, if you're spending money, there has to be real, like demonstratable customer growth. If you're not, if it's just for educational purposes, then you, then you have a normal leadership conversation with your normal boss like you do about other, other things.

You try.

Evan Troxel: Yeah,

Dan Chuparkoff: Right,

Evan Troxel: it's, it's interesting to think about it also from the, the context of like, it could become a thing

Dan Chuparkoff: right.

Evan Troxel: the company gets the thing, they get the benefit of the thing,

Dan Chuparkoff: Yeah. Yeah.

Evan Troxel: not gonna get snatched up by somebody else outside.

Dan Chuparkoff: Right, right, right, right, right.

Evan Troxel: it's

Dan Chuparkoff: Yeah.

Evan Troxel: at that point, right? You've, you've basically

Dan Chuparkoff: Yeah.

Evan Troxel: r and d of it.

Dan Chuparkoff: Right, right, right. And, and now imagine, imagine your Google and, right, and Evan and Dan, we started to create this side project, and Google didn't actually believe in it, but we [00:35:00] did. And they wouldn't let us work on it anymore. So you and I quit and we start our own startup and we get, you know, $8 million of investment and then we build our own product.

And one day Google wakes up and we're competitors. Right. And so, you know, invest in your own people. 'cause um, you know, they'll, they'll invest in themselves.

Evan Troxel: if they, if

Dan Chuparkoff: Yeah.

Evan Troxel: chance. Yeah. Yeah. I, I just don't see that kind of idea is really taking hold in the architect or a EC industry. Right. And, and I, I, a lot of it comes from where we've come from and, and

Dan Chuparkoff: Mm-hmm.

Evan Troxel: operated, but also. it's just not like the way that we're taught to think about our companies as design problems or, or even, or

Dan Chuparkoff: Right, right. Right.

Evan Troxel: a, an employee about how you would think about contributing to, to your company and, and making that the argument to do that.

Dan Chuparkoff: Yeah, it's, it's, I think one of the things, we'll talk a little bit more about like creativity and, you know, [00:36:00] technology and the AI revolution and what that's gonna do. Uh, but like, one of the things that makes me optimistic about the problem that you just observed is as we start using technology to.

Propagate our design productivity to help us do more things, help us do things faster, help us make more complex designs, more, more levels of detail for those designs. Like we, we start using technology as a, as a dramatic productivity accelerator. Then we actually start becoming technology companies and the, and the things that you're doing that, that take, you know, new tool adoption and take, you know, experimentation and, and educational, uh, experiments.

Those things all start to look just like it looked inside of Google or inside of any other software startup I've worked. The more, the more we sort of technology empower the [00:37:00] world, the more. Companies that traditionally don't feel like they're technology companies are actually becoming technology companies, and they'll start to benefit from hackathons and, and software acquisitions just like all the others.

I think

Evan Troxel: So to get ahead of that curve, or if that's like of super interest to somebody, do you feel like they really need to hire people from outside of the architectural training and background and kind of typical structure of a firm get that expertise in, to help them get to that point faster?

Or, or is that something that can be done from, from inside?

Dan Chuparkoff: I, I think it, it should probably be done both ways, right? I think you should cross pollinate with technologists or scientists or mathematicians or, you know, artists from other. Other industries because those people will have done some experiments that you haven't done. Um, but you also shouldn't let them come in and take over completely because they don't know your [00:38:00] industry as well as you do.

So from the inside, you should also, you know, merge those two streams together so you get, you know, industry validated thinking and, and vision, right? Because you know where your architecture industry is trying to go. And then these other people will give you new tools and practices that maybe, uh, maybe unblock some things that are blocking, uh, the road to that place.

Evan Troxel: There's an example that came to my mind when you were saying that, which was there was like a healthcare studio. the healthcare studio really, really, really wanted to only hire healthcare. Architects

Dan Chuparkoff: Mm-hmm.

Evan Troxel: right? Like there's an efficiency there, um, there's experience there, and so therefore you can maybe get a better product than you're used to producing maybe faster. and at the same time, I think what, what you're actually talking about here is you're talking about the cross pollination of ideas and experiences. Because as a designer of architecture, I wanted my team to be extremely [00:39:00] diverse and not

Dan Chuparkoff: Right.

Evan Troxel: on one project typology because they're gonna bring something to the table that I would've never thought of.

And there's kind of a, a bit of a battle in those two different ways of thinking. And I think that, that, that's probably on all over the place.

Dan Chuparkoff: Yeah. I, I a hundred percent agree that it is, I think if, if you're doing, um, if you're doing work that's. Really close to the same every time, and you're trying to get it done faster and cheaper. Um, and maybe, maybe incrementally better than getting people that have done that thing over and over again is the best way to do that.

But if, if you're trying to do something brand new, some of your like legacy experience gets in the way of reinventing the way you do those things. Um, and so, you know, bringing somebody in that's only worked on, I don't know, schools instead of hospitals or the other ways either for me to imagine, right?

Somebody that's designed emergency rooms thinks about [00:40:00] efficiency of room movement and moving patients in and out and cleanliness in, in, in ways that like other architects don't know. And so, you know, you bring hospital architects into. Uh, um, auto mechanic architecture, right? They, they would, they would create a body shop that was magical, right?

And that, and that would be, that would be amazing. Um, and I don't think people are doing that enough. And, um, I think, uh, that, that cross pollinization can, can breed some new invention, some re rethinking of, of old ways of doing stuff.

Evan Troxel: I think it applies, you know, way beyond design and, I mean, I'm not, I'm not trying to con what you're saying at all. It's like, and um, I feel like an architect should be on the board of every different kind of community group there is out there because the way architects think is so different than the way everybody else got their training and the way

Dan Chuparkoff: Yeah, [00:41:00] yeah, yeah, yeah. Right.

Evan Troxel: me is a huge advantage that architects have. And it's a beautiful service to these other organizations. Like if there's somebody on, you know, it's not, it's not even just like city planning, which is still kind of in your wheelhouse, right. But it's like something else completely like the way your church operates, for example, or

Dan Chuparkoff: Yeah, yeah, yeah,

Evan Troxel: the Girl Scouts or anything like that.

It's like you would, you have just a different. Approach to problem solving. and I think we could, as architect could, could do the same. Right. We could

Dan Chuparkoff: yeah, yeah, yeah,

Evan Troxel: out of that as we could give to it in another context by bringing in the kinds of people that you're talking about who have just this very big difference in, in experience.

Dan Chuparkoff: yeah, yeah, yeah. To totally agree. I, you know, generally, uh, I. Diverse thinking. It often un unlocks new ideas that wouldn't have been there before. And that diversity can be, um, you know, the kind of d cross industry diversity. It can also sometimes just [00:42:00] be age diversity. Like bring a brand new person in, like letting an intern sit in your board meeting for a while and just talk, like, talk.

What do you think, right, as a person that's grew up with an iPhone in your pocket as a, you know, 22-year-old, what do you think about how you navigate spaces, how you solve problems that unlocks whole new ways of thinking sometimes. And so, um, you know, there's a lot of, you know, a lot of use of the word diversity a lot of the time right now.

But, um, most people don't think about it in the way of cross industry diversity or cross generational diversity. We're not, we're not doing that as much as I think we could.

Evan Troxel: The typical mindset is like that we're gonna, the young people are gonna learn from the old people, but it's

Dan Chuparkoff: Right.

Evan Troxel: that is bi-directional in this right? It's

Dan Chuparkoff: Yeah. Yeah.

Evan Troxel: I, I'm sure I've brought this up on the podcast before, but there's a thing I've heard of, and I, somebody can fact check me on this, but it's like this Japanese corporate meeting culture, which [00:43:00] is. The youngest people, so the interns, for example, get to do all the speaking in the meeting first,

Dan Chuparkoff: Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's,

Evan Troxel: then they're not, they're not going to go against what an somebody who's been

Dan Chuparkoff: hmm.

Evan Troxel: a long time is going to say, because they don't know what they're gonna say.

Dan Chuparkoff: Right, right,

Evan Troxel: there's, as long as they have the, they feel safe enough to share and, and not get stepped on by doing it.

Right. This is used as a tool by the older generations who run these companies to get new ideas and make it a safe place to do that. And, and so you kind of need all that for that to

Dan Chuparkoff: Yeah.

Evan Troxel: right? Because

Dan Chuparkoff: Right.

Evan Troxel: only gonna work the first time and then somebody's gonna get stepped on and they're like, I'm never gonna talk again in these meetings because Right.

Dan Chuparkoff: Yeah. That didn't, that didn't work out very well for me.

Evan Troxel: I thought that was a really interesting kind of strategy and how to

Dan Chuparkoff: Mm-hmm.

Evan Troxel: those kinds of interactions in those, in those meetings.

Dan Chuparkoff: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Completely agree. I hadn't actually heard that before, [00:44:00] but, uh, I, but I love that analogy. Uh, that,

Evan Troxel: again, but, but if it, if it isn't, they should, we should all do that.

Dan Chuparkoff: yeah. Yeah, yeah. I totally agree.

Let's take a short break from the conversation to invite you to join the most influential technology leaders in the AEC industry at Confluence. Composed of in person events and a podcast co hosted by yours truly, Confluence is designed to foster conversations between AEC firms and technology companies so they can learn, share, and engage with each other to support industry innovation.

Evan Troxel: Software company Avail, which creates content management solutions for the AEC industry, started hosting Confluence events in 2019 to understand what firms are needing, wanting, and thinking around technology. To learn more about Confluence, explore upcoming events, and listen to podcast episodes, go to confluence.

getavail. com. My thanks to Confluence for supporting this episode of the TRXL podcast. And now, [00:45:00] let's get back to the conversation.

one thing I wanted to talk about with you is just kind of the reason I wanted to go into kind of the pace of change was because, you know, I think that we're seeing that behaviors, workflows, skills that were relevant just a few years ago maybe aren't as relevant or just aren't as needed now. And I mean, you have a huge focus on what's going on with AI and you're really keeping your fingers on the pulse in that.

And that's where we're seeing a lot of this disruption. And I, I just think again, about this idea of entitlement to like our, our business is, should we be here in the future? Of course the answer is yes. Right?

Dan Chuparkoff: Yeah. Right, right, right,

Evan Troxel: Like, I don't think it's a guarantee people aren't. Participating in the act of change. And

Dan Chuparkoff: right,

Evan Troxel: from, from, from your point of view, like of forced adaptation, um, things that people might do to [00:46:00] disrupt themselves or not be disrupted right. In the future.

Dan Chuparkoff: right, right, right.

Evan Troxel: around for something's gradual and comfortable to happen. Um, and so just from, from your point of view and, and I mean maybe we start to transition really to talking about AI here.

Like what are,

Dan Chuparkoff: Yeah.

Evan Troxel: are you seeing with this kind of skills being uprooted and not needing people to do things and, and the way that it's radically changing industries.

Dan Chuparkoff: Right, right. Yeah. Yeah. So, so first I'll, I'll say I, I'm, I'm very optimistic that there are some things that AI is never going to be able to do. Um, a AI is very constrained by the training data that we feed it. And there are, um, that because of that, it, it kind of only knows the commodity kinds of things about the world, the things that lots and lots of people know and talk about publicly, or at least in places that have been scraped.

Um. [00:47:00] That's a small set of the stuff that we actually use to make decisions. Um, so I think that AI will always struggle to, to do real problem solving. Um, when you decide on the right solution to a problem, you're doing that with context in your head, what you saw yesterday, you know, the conversation that you have with your wife or your, your partner.

The, the, the, you know, all the things that you imagine about the world. Those things help you make decisions and AI won't ever know those things. And so problem solving and decision making, and even just pulling the world to a new place that we're imagining we want to go, those are things that AI can't see.

Um, and so the kinds of things that we do as people are first process stuff. We do things over and over again. We get tasks done, we communicate about that work, we look for issues. Those three [00:48:00] things AI is gonna be really good at. But the other three things, making decisions, solving problems, imagining a better world.

AI won't ever do those things. So if you can sort of take your work and, and tease apart those first three things, and the second three things you'll start to see that your job just becomes problem solving over time. Your job is to like look at the weird stuff that a, I can't figure out what to do and figure out what to do.

Right? That's what, that's what your job over time will become. And I think that will exist forever. I think we'll, we'll always have safe, secure places as people in any industry, as long as we like, adapt what we do and give away some of the commodity stuff that AI is better at than us. Does that make sense so far before.

Evan Troxel: Yep. Yep.

Dan Chuparkoff: Um, I think the, the second thing I will say about it is [00:49:00] in, in most cases when, when we look at some of the big technology things, we, we got it. Phones were, were mostly, were mostly mobile and app driven or, or mobile browsing. Uh, now in the world, it's only been really 10, 12 years since we started that transition and all of us became like mobile capable fairly quickly.

The internet right, completely changed the way we looked for and shared information. After 10 years or so, we all became great at internet stuff. Um, that will also happen with ai. We'll probably just gradually start embracing it and 10 years from now we will, we'll say, okay, well, yeah. Inter AI stuff is just, that's just how we get information Now, I don't read.

Long papers anymore. I just read the digest from my AI assistant. Um, so that that change will happen sort of slowly and gradually, so it shouldn't freak people [00:50:00] out because you will have some, you know, ramp toward, toward that happening. But now if you resist it, right, and you, you try to say, but yeah, but the, the, um, the CAD machine in the basement of Dan's first job, the drawings that come outta that are garbage.

I'm not gonna use CAD because the garbage designs that come out are not things that I would want to use. If you resist it completely and completely ignore it, and don't expect that it will constantly get better, then you will become one of those draftsmen that I worked with in 1986 that never learned cad, and that would've been, that would've been bad for them, right?

Evan Troxel: Yeah. Yeah. It, the, this idea though, I think is, is exacerbated by the constant fire hose of news, right? Of you've

Dan Chuparkoff: Mm.

Evan Troxel: this right now. And so I'm curious

Dan Chuparkoff: Right, right, right.

Evan Troxel: like do, how, how can you get by without having to really like, dive [00:51:00] in and, and become a deep, deep, deep committer to this

Dan Chuparkoff: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Evan Troxel: what do you

Dan Chuparkoff: there.

Evan Troxel: like is the best way to kind of that ramp that you're talking about?

Dan Chuparkoff: Well, so first there's a, there's a pretty hard line in time. November, 2022, that's when chat UPT first came out, right? And, um, if you were in school in November of 2022, all of a sudden everyone said, Hey, just put your homework in Chate. You'll be amazed,

Evan Troxel: Yeah, students

Dan Chuparkoff: everyone

Evan Troxel: are always looking for the shortcut too, right? Like

Dan Chuparkoff: right.

Evan Troxel: there's so much incentive to do, so, yeah.

Dan Chuparkoff: Right? Yes, exactly. So, so if you were, if you are, uh, what I, I don't know what age that may be, makes you 24 or younger. So you were in school on the chat, UPT day. All of a sudden you, you used chat UPT for everything. There's no going back. Like you put every [00:52:00] email in there, every social post, every, every article you write for the blog, every book you write, like you just, you just use it.

And so that, that age is, is, you know, entering the workforce. Those people are your coworkers, they're your competitors. And, and those people are AI powered already full stop. And so first you don't have to go all that all the way there. You don't have to put every, I don't know, design into, into some AI powered design assessment tool.

But start dabbling with it because one day you're gonna wake up and your customers will choose not to award you an RFP, and you're gonna find out it's because they went with this other team and that other team is using some AI thing that you're not using. Um, and so, you know, you don't really need to change until your customers are picking the other people.

Um, that's [00:53:00] when you have to,

Evan Troxel: Yeah.

Dan Chuparkoff: and so anticipate that that's coming and start dabbling, start playing around with it. Start figuring out, you know, what it could do for you, what you trust and what you don't trust. Uh, you know, start hiring some people that are 24 or younger and asking them what they think, what they do with it, and, and start the exploration.

Uh, the next five years is gonna, it's gonna be an interesting, uh, uh, flip. It'll be the fastest technology adoption, um, I think that we've ever seen.

Evan Troxel: Yeah, that, that's an interesting graph to track, right? Because it

Dan Chuparkoff: Hmm.

Evan Troxel: if you, I, I think that there was a graph that showed like the telephone, an adoption of the telephones in houses, right? Landline

Dan Chuparkoff: Right.

Evan Troxel: versus like the cell phone. And I think the cell phone was like a 10th of the time because it was like 50 years of adoption for landline. Telephony, and then you've got cell phones and I mean, this is before smartphones, quote unquote

Dan Chuparkoff: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right, right, right.

Evan Troxel: Nokia, right? Everybody had a [00:54:00] Nokia pretty fast. And, and so, and that was, that was 2000, I don't know. That was a long time ago. Right? Probably

Dan Chuparkoff: Right, right, right.

Evan Troxel: I, the Matrix 1999 had the cool slide out Nokia, you know, Neo had

Dan Chuparkoff: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Evan Troxel: cutting edge tech at that point.

Right. And,

Dan Chuparkoff: Right.

Evan Troxel: you think about how fast AI since you said 2022, right? November

Dan Chuparkoff: Mm-hmm.

Evan Troxel: 2022 is when Chachi PT rolled out. And now look at where it is. And it's the beginning of 2025, right?

Dan Chuparkoff: Right, right, right. Yeah. And, and you know, also I want, I want to, I want to be clear, what AI can do right now is mostly language processing. So if you're, if you're taking, if you're having a meeting with a bunch of people and you say a bunch of stuff, having an AI note taker in the room with you to log what was said in the meeting, what decisions were made, what action items were there, that's a great idea.

Um, it will transform the efficiency of communication [00:55:00] across your team. Um, if you're writing content and it's gonna be read by people that are maybe outside of the US maybe now you can publish content in five or 10 or 25 different languages, right? So you can reach your whole global audience instead of just the, the one you've speak to in English.

Those are things that already are working really, really great and global teams should be doing those things already, um, in a EC, you know, to, to have a, a structural engineering drawing and put it somewhere and say like, what are the flaws in this drawing? That technology is really in its infancy right now.

Like, we don't have the, that kind of stuff just isn't in the training data. And so when we say ai, I wanna make sure I, I distinguish between language processing stuff. And graphical image [00:56:00] processing stuff. 'cause uh, a lot of the design stuff that requires precision in images is still a long way off because that stuff wasn't enough in the training data.

Now companies like Autodesk and, and the others are going to make great things, but, but that, that road there is a little bit slower.

Evan Troxel: And, and just to kind of throw in some other ideas about what I've seen going on in this space is, is like, uh, very small teams developing. Language based interfaces to produce code, to build geometry in real time in your modeling application like

Dan Chuparkoff: Right, right, right.

Evan Troxel: right? But it's still language driven to code something that would

Dan Chuparkoff: Yep.

Evan Troxel: take somebody a lot of trial and error or a lot of experience, right? You gotta

Dan Chuparkoff: Yep.

Evan Troxel: for that time to create this stuff either way, versus, oh, I wanted to, you know, round off the corners on the 15 floors at the same time, and, and it creates the code [00:57:00] that lets you execute that and then you can use it again and again and again and again, and all of a sudden, like you have to find ways. To leverage the existing tools to do little things in the bigger

Dan Chuparkoff: Right, right, right.

Evan Troxel: It's not just

Dan Chuparkoff: Right.

Evan Troxel: it's not just for project managers and people processing a lot of email. It can be for designers too, or without going full on down the IP role of like it generating design ideas that that Then there's like questions over where that came from and ownership and all that kind of

Dan Chuparkoff: Yeah. Right, right, right,

Evan Troxel: Yeah.

Dan Chuparkoff: right. Yeah, exactly. Or even just the structural integrity of, of, of the shape that your

Evan Troxel: Right.

Dan Chuparkoff: journey, uh, design came from or whatever.

Evan Troxel: Yeah.

Dan Chuparkoff: Um, but yeah, that, that's a great example. And, and that's, I think another, another place where we could bring that cross pollenization of industry back.

Um, if, if you hired a random non-architect software engineer to come in and just like look over the shoulder,

Evan Troxel: Right. [00:58:00] Yeah,

Dan Chuparkoff: uh, they would find. Amazing efficiency things that you're gonna overlook. Uh, if you're not a software engineer. One of the things we always say about great, great software engineers are the laziest ones, right?

They wanna, they wanna do the least amount of work possible, and so they'll find ways of like automating some of that stuff. And that that will definitely help in the a, EC.

Evan Troxel: The question then is, how can a EC afford those people? Right. Because,

Dan Chuparkoff: Yeah.

Evan Troxel: but, but you, you get what you pay for on some level when,

Dan Chuparkoff: Yeah, yeah,

Evan Troxel: Yeah. Right.

Dan Chuparkoff: yeah.

Evan Troxel: let's talk more about creativity, because this idea you, you posted on LinkedIn and you talked about how ai, um, it what creativity is, and then what you thought.

You've already got into this a little bit, what, what CRE creativity will never do, when

Dan Chuparkoff: Yeah.

Evan Troxel: to. Caring like that. That's a big one, right? You, you talked about that AI won't care. Um,

Dan Chuparkoff: Mm-hmm.

Evan Troxel: and so the, the thing that [00:59:00] really interests me about this topic or this, this, this framework of, of what AI can do as a tool and where do humans fit into that process, especially as architects, which is, it's about, it's actually about the human experience.

And then there's all this other stuff we have to do to make it actually physically work in the real world as

Dan Chuparkoff: Right, right, right.

Evan Troxel: Midjourney doesn't do that, right? It's, it's images and okay, maybe it thought us, you know, it, it drew a picture that, oh, I'm going to pursue that, go down that road, and then we can actually reverse engineer and then, you know, so take it a few steps back. Interject some other client ideas and then move forward and actually come up with something. But then there's this whole like, okay, we have to produce these drawings. We have to produce these details, we have to get it through the permitting process. We have to go through the bidding pro, all these things that architects have to do.

And so there's like, there's not a lot of threat there, but, but this idea of

Dan Chuparkoff: Right.

Evan Troxel: the, what I like about this is that it actually brings us closer back to our true value as what architects can do, which is not just commodity stuff anymore, right? The,[01:00:00]

Dan Chuparkoff: right, right,

Evan Troxel: of design and tools, uh, uh, like it's, it's gross, right?

Like it's

Dan Chuparkoff: right, right.

Evan Troxel: we don't need more of that. We actually need architects to actually realize their true value and be able to apply their time and energy into that. And maybe this is a way to start doing that.

Dan Chuparkoff: I, I think it is, uh, right. I think the, um, there, there, because our, because some of our processes are so heavy, there's so much stuff we have to do just to get the thing to the point at which it's built. You know, there's, there's one day at the beginning of the project that's super fun where you're like, just sketching on a, on a napkin or a STA notebook and you're like, I can imagine this amazing building, this amazing space.

It's gonna be so cool. And then the fun ends for like, I. A year and a half, and you have to do all that other crap to get your napkin sketch to life. Um, you know, what should happen or what I'm optimistic that will happen is that the painful [01:01:00] stuff that, that shouldn't take as much human creativity and, and, um, and imagination and unique perspective and all that stuff, all the processing stuff should get automated so that you spend more time, you know, doing the fun part at the beginning.

And, um, I, that makes me really excited about the AI future, not just in a EC, but like that's, that I think will be true in, in medicine and in, in, uh, uh, software engineering and, and all the other industries too.

Evan Troxel: Yeah. Th this idea of like younger generations and change, right?

Dan Chuparkoff: Mm-hmm.

Evan Troxel: catalyst of change is the, when the bit flips and it's like, oh, there's some new

Dan Chuparkoff: Mm-hmm.

Evan Troxel: charge now. And because I think a lot of people think, okay, well yeah, you can spend more time on the project. And we'll, of course, we'll always that that's the, that's actually what BIM did, right?

It just allowed

Dan Chuparkoff: Right,

Evan Troxel: cram even more into the same. as we had before

Dan Chuparkoff: right, right, [01:02:00] right.

Evan Troxel: you know, more metadata, whatever it is, and, and all of the, that can be leveraged for good. Um, and at the same time, like, I like to think of it is like quality of life, right? Like you can

Dan Chuparkoff: Yeah.

Evan Troxel: wanna spend that time.

You

Dan Chuparkoff: Right.

Evan Troxel: it into the project, you could put it back into yourself. You could work less hours, you could go on that trip and get those experiences that then bring, you, bring back to your projects

Dan Chuparkoff: Mm-hmm.

Evan Troxel: can build better architecture because you've had those experiences. And like,

Dan Chuparkoff: Right, right.

Evan Troxel: actually feeds other, right?

It's, it's

Dan Chuparkoff: Right.

Evan Troxel: in, in a positive way. And I, my hope is that. We can actually use these tools as leverage so that we can have better experiences so that we can provide better experiences so that we can provide better products and not just work more or work longer.

Dan Chuparkoff: Yeah.

Evan Troxel: because

Dan Chuparkoff: right, right,

Evan Troxel: we've done that.

And I think that that's an interesting perspective from the younger generations as well. It's like, I'm not gonna do it like that. Like I, I see

Dan Chuparkoff: right.

Evan Troxel: do it, and I'm not interested in doing it like that. And a lot of [01:03:00] people are leaving or not going into the industry because of that. But I think I'm hopeful that the ones that do actually will have a, a different way of, of approaching the way

Dan Chuparkoff: Yeah. I. Yeah, I, I completely agree with that. I, I'm the parent of three sons. Uh, I have a 30-year-old and then 2 23 year olds. And they're, you know, as they come into the workforce now, they're, they have a completely different mindset, right? They're, they're not trying to work, you know, they're butt off for 50 years to get a gold watch and a pension.

Like, that's not, that's not their view of the world anymore. And, and they're, um, they're gonna approach work in a different way. They're gonna find efficiencies in their own work and then, and then split the dividend with their organization, right? Where they've got some efficiencies. So now I get a little bit more vacation time, and I can also do a little bit more work for your stakeholders.

Um, but then the, it's the, the, um, the dynamic has flipped for, for sure, for, [01:04:00] for some people younger in the workforce.

Evan Troxel: Yeah. I'm hopeful in that way for sure. I, I, I'm just curious, maybe wrapping up here, what you are most excited about or what you think maybe the biggest takeaways are. I'm sure even in the time in the year and a half, since you haven't been in Google, things have changed pretty radically so. What I'm, what I'm not looking for here is like, like you've even experienced this, right? With a year and a half of like how

Dan Chuparkoff: Mm-hmm.

Evan Troxel: are moving and so there's a lot of stuff that you probably even told people a year and a half ago that doesn't apply anymore. And so I'm trying to

Dan Chuparkoff: Yay.

Evan Troxel: a little bit of that, but like bigger picture, what do you, what do you think some of the takeaways are from this kind

Dan Chuparkoff: I think,

Evan Troxel: yeah.

Dan Chuparkoff: I think one of the things that excites me the most is, um, the ability for AI to help us communicate across language barriers more than we can right now.

Evan Troxel: Hmm.

Dan Chuparkoff: Um, you know, a lot of the global economy transacts in English right now because it's the one language that lots of people [01:05:00] know. And, um, and that's a little bit broken.

There are 6 billion people that don't speak English at all, and those people can't read. Most textbooks that were written, they can't watch most YouTube videos. They can't like, join most enterprises because they don't, they don't know how to understand, uh, the, the words that are being spoken. Um, I think AI translation is going to democratize access to information in the world in ways that are super interesting.

Evan Troxel: Kinda like

Dan Chuparkoff: enable. Yeah, yeah,

Evan Troxel: Yeah.

Dan Chuparkoff: yeah. Um, you know, we, we will probably in the next year have a toggle on our computer that lets us just flip the language that we hear and, and read when we get messages or we join meetings. You know, if, if we wanna speak Mandarin, we're gonna speak Mandarin and everyone else will get English or Spanish or German or whatever they like in real time.

Yeah. Like, those things already work in, in, um, in teams. That functionality is already there. It's not widely used. Um, but, but I [01:06:00] think that's the thing that excites me the most. 'cause I, I think this is a big world and lots of our organizations aspire to be global, but, um, our definition of global right now is, is a little bit broken.

Um, and it could be a lot more global than it actually is. And that, that's a, that's an exciting, like human, um, step change that makes me, um, makes me really, really ex excited about the next decade.

Evan Troxel: So do you think then, based on that alone, that corporations and teams should be thinking about business very differently and who their customers could be and what their footprint is and, and those kinds of things? Because it's, you kind of framed it in this idea of sharing information, but like. If you can speak Mandarin in real time and all you can actually speak is English in real time, actually changes things pretty structurally to what's possible with your business.

Dan Chuparkoff: I, yeah, I, I think that is, um, exactly, uh, my, my advice [01:07:00] for organizations, I think people are thinking about their, um, their customer market as a way narrower than it actually is. You know, there, there's a whole continent of Africa, you know, that's growing rapidly, like skipped over the non-digital ways of doing things right.

They jumped right to digital money. They, they jumped right to cell phones and never even installed, uh, telephone lines and cables and. Um, you know, there's a middle class in Africa that needs all the services that we all make every day here in the us. Um, there's a billion people over there, um, another billion people in, you know, India, uh, you know, billion and a half people in China.

That's just three of the countries, uh, Africa,

Evan Troxel: Yeah.

Dan Chuparkoff: uh, continent. But, um, you know, there's a, there's a lot of, uh, opportunity I think out, out there in the world that, um, that this new, new way of exchanging information, uh, will enable. And I think that could, you know, that will be opportunity on both sides for us [01:08:00] servicing them and for them joining, you know, the, the global economy.

Evan Troxel: You've played with that a little bit, and I'm just, my question, my guess, my final question is how, how much did you trust it not knowing the Mandarin that you've had it translate to?

Dan Chuparkoff: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So, so a, a couple things. Uh, all the translations that I've done so far with it, I've, I've given to a native speaker and they said there was one exception, uh, in Spanish. I said the word team and the word team that it changed was more like family then co coworkers. And so that one word is the only flaw that I've ever found.

It's, it's pretty close to accurate all the time, and it's certainly better than just not speaking to them in their language at all.

Evan Troxel: Interesting.

Dan Chuparkoff: Right? Yeah.

Evan Troxel: I mean, I think I, a final thought just thinking about like using multiple tools to check, like I, I know a lot of people use Chat g PT to check its own work, right? But,

Dan Chuparkoff: Yeah. Yeah.

Evan Troxel: ones too, and it's [01:09:00] like, okay, this tool did this, now let's have this tool check its work, and then maybe a third one.

And, and like between that and, and still the amount of time saved is just absolutely incredible.

Dan Chuparkoff: Yeah, I think it's, it's an exciting time. There's a lot of new stuff available to all of us. It can be scary 'cause that's sometimes overwhelming. Um, but also some of the things that it will drive will be amazingly empowering. It should give you more time in your own day for things like personal growth.

It should allow you to reach bigger customers with better services and, and products. And you know, I think these things have the ability to change the world if we let them. Um, so that's, uh, an ex, it's an exciting time.

Evan Troxel: Thanks, Dan. It's been a fun conversation. I've definitely learned a lot, and I'll put links to everywhere. People can get in touch with you, but if you wanna mention it here in the audio portion, still go for it.

Dan Chuparkoff: Yeah, I'm pretty easy to find on the internet. I have a unique last name. [01:10:00] It's Chu Park off, C-H-U-P-A-R-K-O-F-F. Uh, you can find me on LinkedIn. That's where I'm most active, but also all the other places, Instagram, uh, x or uh, or my own website, uh, dan chu park off.com. So, uh, here I am. I'd love to start a conversation with any of you.

Uh, it's fun stuff for me to talk about. So, uh, I, I appreciate you having me on Evan. It's been fun.

Evan Troxel: Thanks, Dan. Okay, so let's wrap this up before you take off. At the beginning of this episode, I said that change agents must lead their teams through technological change, and that was validated throughout our conversation. Dan emphasized that technological change is inevitable, accelerating, and can be deeply disruptive without proactive leadership.

So here are seven examples from the conversation that back this up.

Example, number one, change is constant and accelerating. He described how technological advancement, especially with AI, is progressing [01:11:00] faster than ever before. The tools available today weren't even possible just two years ago, and the pace of adoption is increasing.

He said the next five years is going to be an interesting flip. It'll be the fastest technology adoption that we've ever seen. Change agents must lead here or their organizations risk being left behind.

Example number two, resistance is common without leadership. Dan recalled his early experience in an architecture firm where CAD was initially rejected by architects despite its clear advantages without someone advocating for the long-term benefits of change, organizations tend to default to the status quo, even when it's less efficient.

Example number three, culture must ship before processes can. He emphasized that embracing new tools starts culturally, not procedurally, and that leadership has to create a safe, experimental environment.

Change agents cultivate a growth mindset and empower their team to [01:12:00] explore before formal adoption.

Example number four, legacy thinking stalls. Progress. Dan explained how older leaders nearing retirement often avoid change because they don't see the payoff within their timeline. In contrast change agents are essential because they bridge the generational gap and prepare the organization for a sustainable future.

Example number five, isolation enables innovation. He discussed how creating a separate innovation group, free from organizational inertia, can succeed under proper leadership. Dan said we created a little team that was separate. We had our own culture, our own mindset We reinvented things and it was dramatically successful.

Change agents lead by shielding innovation from internal resistance and giving it room to grow. I'll say that again. Change agents lead by shielding innovation from internal resistance and giving it room to grow.

Example number six, AI is already transforming workflows. Dan [01:13:00] highlighted how younger generations are already natively using AI tools. and if change agents don't lead adoption, they risk becoming obsolete as clients and competitors move forward.

And lastly, example number seven,

without leadership, fear wins, fear of the unknown or failure can paralyze teams. Dan and I both acknowledge that the fear is so real that it keeps a lot of people from trying new things, Change agents are the antidote to this fear, and they provide vision, permission, and momentum to move forward.

So in conclusion, change agents are not optional in this era. They are mission critical for navigating rapid technological shifts, fostering curiosity, overcoming fear, and ensuring their organizations thrive rather than stagnate. That's it. Thanks for listening, and I'll see you in the next episode.

​[01:14:00]