Embracing Transformation: Preparing for the Jobs of Tomorrow

[00:00:00] Welcome to the Gensler Design Podcast. The Gensler Design Podcast creates a dialogue between experts, creative trendsetters and thought leaders to discuss how we can shape the future of cities through the power of design.

[00:00:21] I'm your host David Coffin as the regional managing principal of Gensler's Asia-Pacific Middle East region. The future of work is being shaped by a variety of factors including the increasing prevalence of AI, the rise of the gig economy, and remote work.

[00:00:39] As these trends continue to gain momentum, it is increasingly important for both workers and employers to prepare for the changes that lie ahead. To help us understand these trends and their implications for the future of work,

[00:00:51] we are pleased to be joined by Dr. James Andrade, senior vice president of Capital Land and head of learning and innovation at Catapult, a senior executive learning center designed by Gensler to help develop the next generation of leaders.

[00:01:04] Dr. Andrade brings a wealth of experience and expertise to the table, and we look forward to hearing his insights on how AI and other emerging trends will shape the future of work and what we can do to prepare for these changes.

[00:01:16] So James, it's good to see you. Welcome to the podcast. We're both in Singapore today, and you're a great client of ours so we really appreciate that. We really look forward to hearing about the project and having your insights.

[00:01:28] But maybe before we get started on that, can you give us a little bit of your professional background and your position at Capital Land? Sure, David. And good morning to you and good to see you as well. It's been a little while.

[00:01:41] My career started, David, as a neuroscientist. I received my doctorate in neuroscience and spent the early part of that time working for the Department of Defense for the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research after sometime doing the postdoctoral studies at Walter Reed, I did a career pivot

[00:02:06] and went into private industry working for multinational companies, mainly in the food area. I spent about a 30-year career in the food industry, but over that time, I jumped around quite a bit. I did a stint in marketing, did some time in strategy,

[00:02:28] also in consumer insights and obviously in research and development. After completing my time in private industry, I left the food industry while here in Singapore and started more of an academic side of things. I was doing lecturing at SMU.

[00:02:53] I was an adjunct professor at Griffith University and had taken on a role with Roger Williams University as a trustee. I received a phone call about six years ago with an intriguing opportunity to consult on a project for, at the time, Ascendus Singbridge

[00:03:16] I developed a shared executive learning institute at the heart of Science Park area that turned into Catapult. Today, as you indicated, I serve as Senior Vice President within Capital Land and the head of the Catapult Shared Executive Leadership and Innovation Institute.

[00:03:38] So Catapult is really your baby, really your idea. You put that whole proposal together and then subsequently won the project. Can you tell us a little bit more about the campus that it sits in and the nature of Catapult itself?

[00:03:54] So starting off with the nature of Catapult, it was an EDB initiative that started many, many years ago. Singapore has had a legacy and a history of the capabilities of people across the board.

[00:04:11] And the idea around Catapult really started to coalesce around 2015, and this was a pivotal time for Singapore. It was the anniversary, 50th anniversary of Singapore. It was the year that Lee Kuan Yew passed away and the country became very introspective about its future.

[00:04:35] One of the questions that was asked is if we continue to do the same things that made us successful these past 50 years, for the next 50 years, will that sustain us? Will we see the same level of growth and development?

[00:04:50] And all credit to Singapore, both the business side and the government side, they came back with a very hard answer saying no. That we had to do things differently.

[00:05:04] And one of the areas that they wanted to focus in on was how could we step change our capabilities on the business side? And historically Singapore has been placing bets in terms of upskilling capabilities on the business side and other parts of the society.

[00:05:24] Human Capital Leadership is an organization that had previously kind of focused at the top of the pyramid with CEOs and C-suite individuals looking at best practices, publishing research in the areas of leadership.

[00:05:41] Further down on the pyramid, there was Skills Future that was putting together training programs to reskill people, put them into new areas. But there was a gap and one of the solutions was to build a facility in Science Park that would draw the diverse types of people

[00:06:04] in industries that comprise this area into a central location where there would be an exchange of ideas and there would be almost like a building equivalent of Silicon Valley.

[00:06:18] The idea of just building a facility was an interesting one, but the question came back was how would that facility run? And that's when I got involved to help pull together the strategy and the pedagogy of what catapult would ultimately become.

[00:06:35] And that's where the collaboration with Gensler and at the time Ascendus Singbridge developed this facility that's quite unique. It's based on having a capability to develop future-ready leaders and it's predicated really on what we call the three C's, campus, curriculum and community.

[00:07:01] On the campus side, we wanted to create a state of the art facility that was dedicated and purpose-built to learning and particularly for executives.

[00:07:13] The community side was to have within this facility a co-learning capability to be able to bring in knowledge providers from universities as well as boutique knowledge providers that would be able to create a training environment that was immersive and experiential.

[00:07:38] And the third was curriculum. That was to develop a curriculum curated from those knowledge providers that was purpose-built for developing the next generation of leadership. So campus, community and curriculum are the three C's that underlie the pedagogy of catapult.

[00:08:00] And the areas that we focus in on are leadership, innovation and what we call energy for peak performance. On the leadership side, leadership is a broad construct. And where we focus on leadership is managing through ambiguity and managing through paradox.

[00:08:22] Because we know that, you know, all the easy answers, the answers that are black and white, the answers that are true textbook answers, they become much more difficult as you move up your career development.

[00:08:36] As a matter of fact, the higher up you go, the less the answers are black and white, the more they're some shade of gray. And it's very often that your first answer may not be correct.

[00:08:48] So how do you course correct quickly in the face of this ambiguity and this paradox to come up with the right answers? On the innovation side, once again, a very, very broad construct. And where we focus in on is the back end of innovation.

[00:09:08] If you think of the front end of innovation as identifying new opportunities and kind of looking over the horizon where the future will lie. The back end of innovation is more of how do you commercialize? How do you turn those new ideas into wealth?

[00:09:26] That's the area that we focus in on from an innovation standpoint. The final area, which we call energy for peak performance, we had to fight a little bit to get that one in as a core area of focus.

[00:09:41] It was seen as something that was not exactly important to leadership and not important to innovation. But in this environment, David, where we're all connected to our mobile devices 24 seven, the concept of work life balance is somewhat of a misnomer.

[00:10:02] The reality is we don't work eight hours and get to play for eight hours. Most leaders today are working 10, 12, even 14 hours.

[00:10:14] And the time that they have left, it's really about how they balance their energy, how they mobilize their energy for their family, their friends and even for themselves.

[00:10:26] And so we developed this other area, which we call energy for peak performance, where we look at how do you better integrate your physical, your emotional, your mental,

[00:10:37] even your purpose and your values in such a way that you have the energy to not only do your work, but for your family, for your friends and for yourself. Well, what an amazing program and thank you for that incredible description of it.

[00:10:54] So the three pillars of leadership innovation and peak human performance. I'd like to ask you about how the physical features of the facility sort of support those. But before I do that, I just wanted to say thank you for inviting me to the opening.

[00:11:09] The official opening, which was an amazing experience. And along that line, that the opening of the opening really was a big group drumming session, which was so incredibly experiential. And I think I've read that adult learners really learn best sort of through experience settings.

[00:11:30] And it seems like that's really what is sort of one of the main focuses of your program to begin with. So maybe if you could talk about experience a little bit and then if you could talk about how the physical design of the facility supports the three pillars.

[00:11:45] Absolutely. When I first was brought in to take over this project, one of my conditions was that I want to design something both from a physical as well as from a curriculum standpoint based on neuroscience principles.

[00:12:03] And I was very, very fortunate that Cenda Singbridge was working with Gensler who immediately understood what we were trying to achieve and how we were trying to embed science into the design of what we envisioned for catapult.

[00:12:27] So in collaboration with Gensler, we were able to hit on designs that were able to leverage the neuroscience principles that underpin catapult. One is that people learn best when there's an emotional connection or content to the environment and to the learning materials.

[00:12:51] The second is that socialization is key to learning. People learn not only from a knowledge provider that's standing at the front of the room, but they learn from each other. So environments that actually foster interaction and socialization are key. The third neuroscience principle is that of information processing.

[00:13:15] How people learn is through experimentation. And so environments that promote experimentation are also key to the learning process. For one, the design is one where we make extremely good use of natural light as well as interior light. Our classrooms are extremely open to nature.

[00:13:40] Very often you get early fatigue amongst participants in the learning environment because there's not a lot of natural light. It's somewhat dark in the rooms and it just is not conducive to maintaining attention. In catapult, you don't see that.

[00:13:59] Actually, the rooms are quite open, quite a bit of natural light. And even on the interior light, we don't have a lot of straight lines in catapult. It's actually quite organic and curvilinear.

[00:14:14] That was a design feature that was purpose built to once again stimulate the brain to provide a level of exploration and newness as you move and transverse between your classes. We change color.

[00:14:34] We change texture all the while stimulating individuals as they're in this learning environment to prepare the brain and prepare them for learning and for the information that's to come. The other side, so that actually hits on the emotional component. It hits on the way that people process information.

[00:14:59] The other major neuroscience principle that is a part of the design feature is the social. Our classrooms, we don't really call them classrooms. We call them mission studios because they're extremely flexible. The whole idea of the mission studio is we place emphasis on the learners.

[00:15:22] So very often the knowledge provider or the professor, they're not at the front of the class. They may be in the center of the class. The tables are designed so sometimes it's a conventional seating arrangement. Other times it's more standing type of arrangement that actually works well.

[00:15:42] If we're doing a lot of innovation work, people can move from table to table. The spaces are extremely flexible. The other is that we have a number of social spaces around the classrooms because very often the learning doesn't only take place in the classroom.

[00:16:00] It takes place in the conversations to happen outside of the classroom. So we have seating areas that are outside of the classrooms that are more social in nature and more casual in nature. All of these come together to create an immersive type of experience for our learners.

[00:16:18] And then we have our environments that take advantage of the rooms and the technology. So we have two rooms in particular. One is a 180 degree room where we can project and students are immersed within the information and the content that they're being exposed to.

[00:16:42] The other is a 360 degree room. And that was one that we used particularly when we did a segment on the metaverse, some of our university professors, who can start with one aspect of something that they're training on

[00:17:00] and actually move 360 degrees around the room as they present and build on whatever the content is that they're showing to the class or that their students are experiencing. Well, great stuff.

[00:17:15] I mean, we so enjoyed working with you James and getting all your insights and bringing the real science approach to design. It was it was an amazing experience. But let's pivot now if we could and talk a little bit about the changing nature of work.

[00:17:32] You know, at almost a moment's notice, we've changed the way we all work for a couple of years. And now we're sort of coming back and really trying to figure out where things are headed. So as you're trying to train this future generation of leaders,

[00:17:46] talk a little bit about the work environment, you know, situation that they're going to be leading through. So the pandemic, like many companies caught us quite a bit off guard.

[00:17:57] We were in pretty much the middle stages of the design of Rochester Commons and which catapult is is located. And we were suddenly faced with a challenge that made us pivot from what we originally thought was going to be strictly in room training

[00:18:20] to have to think about what if people don't come back to traditional in classroom training? What does that look like? And it made us look at and tweak our model somewhat.

[00:18:36] And this is where I think having a very flexible space and a very open space actually played to our advantage because it allowed us to rethink and reconceive what the future of training and education would look like

[00:18:55] in an environment that may be a hybrid between conventional face-to-face training and remote training. So we found ourselves, like many companies, forced to develop remote capabilities and conceive of something that we hadn't thought of initially when we put pen to paper.

[00:19:20] We learned a lot. We talked a lot to potential clients. We talked to knowledge providers that would work with us. We also talked to potential students. And we learned that a number of things.

[00:19:35] Number one is that a lot of routine activities that people were doing in work, they were now going to be doing at home. The other is that remote meetings and training was something that was not going to go away. People liked the idea of working from home.

[00:19:55] They became very comfortable with the different tools that were available to do remote training. And that was something that no matter what, we knew was going to stay.

[00:20:06] But it wasn't too long into the pandemic and people working from home that we were already beginning to see the Zoom fatigue set in. We did find that particularly when we were trying to do online training and when we were conducting online meetings

[00:20:24] that engagement was dropping because people were just finding it difficult to interact in that very one-dimensional type of environment. So the pandemic kind of pointed up two things.

[00:20:37] Number one is that people can do work outside of work and they can do it quite effectively, whether it's at home or elsewhere. The other is that they like flexibility but that they also needed the social connection and the social interaction.

[00:20:55] And so particularly coming out of a real estate development company, we had to reinvent how we thought about offices. Re-invent it as an office not as a place that you get work done but as an option where work can be done.

[00:21:18] And that the office can become more of a social hub and that it can become a place where people can innovate because that's something that in a social environment is key to be able to have that interaction, that human interaction and to bounce and build ideas.

[00:21:39] So flexibility, capability of being able to do work remotely but having that environment that promotes the social interaction and connection from an innovation in a learning standpoint were the key ingredients that we found coming out of the pandemic and the need for remote work capabilities.

[00:22:05] So would you say that things are still playing out with respect to where our working style is going? So for instance, during the pandemic we were sort of coasting along drawing on the reserve of sort of social capital that we built up when we were face to face.

[00:22:24] And now we're working on really recharging the tank quite a bit. You mentioned that people really enjoy the flexibility to be able to work from home or work remotely not even from home when they have the opportunity or when they have the need to or the interest to.

[00:22:39] But there seems to be a tension between that and the companies now that are saying, gee, we really want you back in. We want you back in almost all the time.

[00:22:48] And maybe some of that is driven by reports of decreased efficiency and productivity and that sort of thing. So do you think we're still kind of in process here and we're not where we're going to be eventually?

[00:23:01] Yeah, you know as we work with different companies and we've worked with multinational companies as well as government agencies. We're also seeing that tension in terms of how does the work flexibility and the office of the future play out. And I think it's still a work in progress.

[00:23:24] There are some of the older legacy companies and agencies that are struggling with it. And you know, trying to understand how do you ensure performance if you're not seeing people in the office?

[00:23:41] It's an interesting dilemma and it's one where as we train on leadership, we challenge leaders to think about what is it that you're really looking for? Is it outcomes or is it time? That's what you need to look at. Is it what people are accountable for?

[00:24:03] Or is it accounting for the number of bodies in the room? Those are some of the things that as you know, you start digging down and you start doing the double click. Leaders say, you know what, you're posing some interesting questions to me.

[00:24:19] It's more the outcomes as opposed to the time. And then we start talking about what is it that you need to do to make the office environment more productive and more of a place, a destination for your employees to come to?

[00:24:37] And that opens up a whole other bunch of conversations about the office environment, the role of the office. But I do think it's still an evolving process and it particularly is a function of the different industries that you talk to.

[00:24:52] Well, it's a complex topic. There's no doubt about that. And I guess we'll stay tuned and we'll be part of the process. I wanted to pivot again a little bit and tell you that I had my first actual hands on AI experience this week.

[00:25:06] I just got on chat GPT and I typed in or list the qualities of a Gensler leader. And like as fast as I could blink practically, it came out with this really pretty well thought out list of 10 qualities that made sense to me.

[00:25:22] I'm not sure where they came from, but it was just amazing and typed in a couple of other things and it's remarkable what you can get back out again.

[00:25:31] And then I had done a little research and I don't know if you've heard about the lawyer, I think in New York that used, and he's a 35 year experience lawyer, but he used chat GPT to develop a legal brief that he filed with the court.

[00:25:46] But the only problem was there were six cases that were cited that didn't exist and including citations from those cases that chat GPT just made up. And so the judge now for the case is facing this unprecedented situation where he had never seen anything like that before.

[00:26:04] He's asked the lawyer to come in and explain himself. So right away we're seeing very interesting good and bad situations happening. How are you seeing AI and is it entering into what you're doing or your philosophy of catapult as we go forward?

[00:26:18] Yeah, you know, it's interesting David because some of the younger folks in our office were also talking about generative AI. And one of them introduced chat GPT to me as well early on and I played with it as well.

[00:26:37] And oh, I think I entered in something in the area of neuroscience of learning just to see how effective it would be and what the quality of the information would be. And I have to say the first response wasn't great, but it wasn't bad either.

[00:26:58] And I asked a follow up question and it got a little bit better.

[00:27:02] And by the time I asked my third or fourth question, I started to worry about whether I was going to have a job or not because it was getting much, much better as I asked different questions. So I think it's pretty exciting.

[00:27:19] And I've also been like many people beginning to immerse myself in it to understand it a little bit better.

[00:27:27] I'm not a computer expert, but given my background in neuroscience, I understand a little bit about it, you know, because it is based on how humans think and how humans learn.

[00:27:43] And I understand that it's a content creation tool and it relies on pattern recognition, which is something that's well known in cognitive psychology. And it uses algorithms that are trained to learn across various databases. But that's a very surface understanding of how AI works.

[00:28:05] I actually wrote a paper on this for LinkedIn because one of the things that I'm very, very interested in is the intersection of AI and how it will be used in a business context. And particularly what leaders are going to need to know.

[00:28:26] And I titled the paper, The Other AI, because we're spending a lot of time on generative AI. And I think there's a human element that we tend to forget. The output from AI is based on databases. It's quite fascinating what comes out of it.

[00:28:45] But to the point that you just raised, how do you know it's true? How do you know it's right? We're still in the very early stages of AI and it's doing some fascinating things.

[00:28:57] But to the point that you made, it's also producing some answers that are quite contradictory, sometimes flat out wrong, and certainly subject to the way the question is asked.

[00:29:10] So the other AI that I talk about are what are some of the things that I think as a human and particularly leaders in the business industry, we're going to need to have and know and do if we're going to take the most advantage of AI.

[00:29:30] And I came up with two. I don't think it's exhaustive by any means, but I think that they're important. And one is that I think that business leaders are going to have to really up their game in terms of agility.

[00:29:44] We talk about agility and we know there are business and leadership measures of agility like cultural agility, results agility, change agility. But there's going to be a new agility, a new muscle that we need to develop around generative AI.

[00:30:06] And that's the agility to understand the tech that's involved in AI. The agility to be able to ask questions in multiple ways because as you saw in the example that you read about,

[00:30:24] the way you ask the question can determine the output of what the generative AI will give you. So leaders are going to have to be agile in a way with this new technology that they may not have been in the past.

[00:30:41] The other skill, David, that I would add in there is continuing to build teams that are cognitively diverse and culturally diverse and making sure that there's an inclusive element to their inputs. Because once again, the output from AI are predicated on two things.

[00:31:05] Number one, the databases they access and number two, the way they're taught. And I'm brought back to an interesting bit of research that was done by the Bulimia Institute

[00:31:16] and was reported by the New York Post where the question was asked of an AI, what is the ideal body shape? And the AI produced something that was extremely unrealistic.

[00:31:30] I mean it was for both the men and the women, the proportions and dimensions were extremely out of proportion. Something that maybe a comic book superhero might have. The other is that all of them or the majority of them were Caucasian.

[00:31:47] Now that's because that's the database that was utilized. And if you had a room of people that were of a similar look, they might say, okay, yeah, that's the ideal body. Certainly the AI has given me that information.

[00:32:04] But if you had a more diverse group of people that were looking at that, they would say, hey listen, that's not the ideal appearance. That's a sub-segment of a database, a set of databases that's reflecting that. That doesn't reflect reality.

[00:32:22] So once again, you need the human element, particularly a diverse element that is inclusive from the standpoint of listening to different voices to be able to come up with the right answer or to double check and make sure that there's not only statistical validity,

[00:32:43] but some face validity behind what the AI is producing. Well I think that's one of the noted problems with AI at this point is that there is bias in the system and we're going to have to figure out how to take it away from that.

[00:32:57] James, I wanted to congratulate you for bringing Project Catapult from idea to reality. And we know you've been successful so far and will be very successful as the project goes forward. Also I wanted to thank you for being an awesome client. Our collaboration with you was just superior.

[00:33:16] So thank you for that. And we wish you all the success as you go forward. Any parting thoughts on any of the things that we've touched on? Well first off, David, thank you.

[00:33:27] Personally it's been great working with you and in the broader sense working with the Gensler team. I don't believe that we would have been able to produce the type of learning institute that we have here without the collaboration that we've had together.

[00:33:44] I'm very excited about the future of where Catapult is going as well as executive education. I look at the dual areas of design and technology and how that's going to influence our ability to upskill the future business leaders as something that it's exciting.

[00:34:08] I'm very optimistic about it and I'm glad that Catapult is playing a pivotal part in that in this part of the world. Well thank you for being a friend of Gensler and thank you for being my personal friend here in Singapore. I really appreciate that, your support.

[00:34:25] I know we'll be partnering together for years both on projects official and unofficial as we try and make the world a better place through our design. I've been talking with Dr. James Andrade. I'm David Calkins. Thank you for listening and we'll see you on the next podcast.