#356 - That ‘New Me’ Glow - Archispeak

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Evan Troxel (00:09):
Reminds me.
I turn on my Do Not Disturb, Cormac.
I don't want any alarms going offwhile I'm talking to you here.
Full,
I'm with you.

Cormac Phalen (00:19):
Is that what you're looking for?

Full attention.
Thank you.

focus, full do not disturb mode.

Yes.
Yes, indeed.
So yeah, I've been through like allof this Redoing everything in the
office re Rearranging everything.
I'm I I still am at the pointnot to the point where I'm
gonna be doing the full purge

Uh,

stuff like I still am just rearranging but for like the last
year year and a half I've been youknow Letting my subconscious work on
what the space is going to look like.
And so I've been buying things as they'reon sale and stashing them in the garage.
And and then, it was like,finally, okay I had a few days off.
I didn't have any recordings.

(01:02):
We haven't talked happynew year, by the way.

Happy new year to you too.

And and so then I'm like, well, I just need to do this.
I need to get it.
I need to start off the yearwith a new, a new studio setup.
So.

New

as you can tell, it looks way different.
Right?

It does.
I mean,

Night and day.

looks blacker.

In true architect style.
Yeah.

Exactly.
I'm, used my, my, my spring colors.
Gray.

Did you get that for Christmas?
Did you get some charcoalin your stocking?

I, I got a couple of cans of charcoal paint that act funny enough.
My wife is downstairs getting ready to

For what?

the dining room.

Oh, really?
You're going to paint it black?
As the Rolling Stones say?

it's not gonna be, it's It's kind of, it's sort of along the
lines of this color of my sweater.
It's not, it's not atrue black or anything.
It's a, but it is, we decidedwe were going to go bold.

Okay.

Although I could not convince her to paint the ceiling as well.
And if, go like full bold, like a lot of,

Is that what it is?
Is black bold?
Is charcoal bold?

well, this is, I mean, it's, it's, it's a bold color.
Um,

that's why architects wear, wear black, right?
They're bold.

yeah.
And once they're done painting, Ican like, in the sweater that I'm
wearing right now, I can lean upagainst the thing and like, disappear.
It'll just be a head, sitting there

You're like, I've been like that a few times in here.
I'm wearing like a black shirt andall you can see is a floating head.

It's me, heaven.

you'll, you'll, you have a keen eye because you're an architect,
but my lighting is actually swapped.
So, My main light's over here now,the fill light's over there now,
so obviously you already knew thatthough, so big, big changes here.

I mean, the way that it, the way that, for me, screen wise,
your right side is glowing much more.
You're glowing, Evan.

That's my New Year's, that's just my new,
new me glow that you're seeing.

There you go.
Yeah.
Two years, I guess it's two and a halfyears in, we still have that big laundry
list of things of like, each room.
And, uh,

the side of our refrigerator and we had some people over and they just
started reading the things out loud andI'm just like, please stop, please stop.
It's too much.

yeah, I

So this is one of the things on the list is this office, which I'm,

I, I got for Christmas a 22 foot ladder.
So apparently that

geez.

have some things, I have some things to do up high.

Did it come with an insurance policy?

Yeah, well, no, like, it was one of those ones with like the, the
flared bottoms, flared tops and stuff.
So,

Well, you got your bell bottom ladder.

you remember that I'm not the fan of heights.

Yeah, that's true.
So somebody else bought a ladderfor you just to force you into it.
Like now that you've got theladder, you can't say no.

Well, I bought the latter.
Um, because I,

You bought it for yourself.

yes, yes.
Well,

Okay.

this, this year, I,
last year I borrowed the neighbor'sladder, the neighbor was out of town
this year, and so I couldn't borrow their

It's, it's great when you have a neighbor with stuff,
you don't need to buy it too.
Jeez.

couldn't put up all of the Christmas lights the way I wanted to.
And so I was just like, I justneed to go ahead and bite the
bullet and get the ladder.

Have you heard about these I mean, I'm sure you have these
Christmas light installation services.
These people

Yes.

And I heard on another podcast that they were.
Multiple thousands of dollars, at least inthe location where, where this person was.
And I was like, wow, that's, thatsounds like a pretty lucrative business.
Better than architecture

So we've got those services around here and
houses out overlooking the lake.
And they, you can clearly drive pastthem and see that those are the couple
of probably tens of thousands, in the,there's but there is this one tree

season, $10,000.
Could you imagine spendingthat to get lights applied

I honestly wish that I could show you this, this guy
on our, on the corner, not in ourdirect neighborhood, but, there's
a guy who his house is overlookingthe lake and he puts up lights.
And now we're, we're not talkingabout, this is no like, half measures.
This is full on full bore for 4thof July for, um, for Christmas.

(06:04):
And

Wow.
A different setup, adifferent setup each time.

and.
Not a small house, not a small display.
It is a massive display,and a lot of lights.
We're, we're talking, actually, mydaughter, as we were driving past
it see the Christmas extravaganzathat he had out, she had said that

(06:30):
that puts Clark Griswold to shame.
You know,

Nice.

like, that's the house that Clark Griswold wishes he had.

Oh man, and that your daughter knows who Clark Griswold is,
is pretty triumphant of, on your behalf.
That's pretty cool.

it
in a sentence that,

Correct context.

in the context.
Yes.

Man, there's so many good one liners from that movie that
we just can't say on this podcast.

yep.
Something's full and I'm prettysure everybody who's listening and
knows exactly what we just said.

What do you got there?
What's your beverage of choice today?

Water with

I got myself, I got myself some ice and, but I have fizzy
water and I have a lemon in there too.

Ooh,

Look at that, a little, little pop of color.
I

You're a

got, I got my fancy water.
I got my fancy water.

I do

It's like a party in your mouth, Cormac.
That's what, that's what's up.

in mine because I just want to keep scurvy away.

Cause yeah, it's a threat.
Eminent, eminent threat overthere at the Phalen household.

you never know.

So, so should I do the reveal?
Do you want to see my, theback, the new background?
It's not like, I've always felt a littlejealous of your, Fancy background.
You got, you got, you got,you got propaganda wall.
You've got fancy camerashanging back there.
They're hanging up becauseyou don't use them.
You got, got artwork.
Uh, what else you got?

(08:03):
What else?
What else you got back there?

awards.

Look at you.

You

Award winning architect.
Yet another award winning architect.

Yes.

Oh, oh, and you've got like your, your, Yeah, the crazy hair
and the, and the thick rim glassesand the, the really dark turtleneck.
And then you've got like a,don't, you have like all your
conference badges, which is justlike, you're definitely a hoarder

That

some level.

This one right here is, uh, um,

Can't hear you.
You gotta get your proper,proper mic technique there.
You gotta, you gotta aimthe, there, there you go.
There you go.
There you go.

and all of

Uhhuh.

for some reason, my autofocus is not working right now, but
all of these are all of my, my bling,my flair all of the multiple conferences
that you and I go to on a yearly basis.

Nice, nice, nice.
And then I've just got the.
Like you said, likearchitect black background.
This is a distraction free.
I'm about to change that though.
I'm going to change that.
I was going to go with like an off anglebackground but I just couldn't figure
out how to make it work in here yet.
Maybe it's just a yet thing.
I mean, maybe this'll gothrough another revision at

(09:20):
some point here, but all right.
All right.
You're gonna have to play the jeopardymusic while I, like I do the reveal.

beep!
There it goes.
Keep on going.
Nice.
And now, my jealousy ensues.

It looks pretty good.
Doesn't it?

Yeah, although,

That looks pretty good.
I don't, I got somesymmetry going on here.
I got to sit in just the right spot.
You know,

seat a little, or
Hmm.

Hey guys, I'm down here.

Well, I was gonna say, or, or if you go up just a hair.
Cause like right now.

But see, but see that I can't have my, my, I can't have the
top of my head hitting the frame.
There we go.
That's pretty good.
I can hide that guitar.

now if you go down just a little bit, then the,

Oh yeah.
There's my, my cat, my cat ears.
Look at that.
Thanks for pointing that out.
Now, now I'm very aware of that.
before this was, this was all just awhite wall and that's why that black
background has always been coveringit because it's, it's a hard surface.
So I put up this acousticslat wall paneling.

(10:49):
And put up some guitar hangers and

You've,

things up on the wall, put, put my art up on the wall.

nice.
Nice.
And, um, I see, is that a bass?
And,

So let's see here.
Yeah, I've got
This one, this is the bass I playedin System Kid, right, right here.
That's a Peavey Cirrusbass, five string bass.
On this side of me overhere is a Fender P bass.
That one is newer.

(11:24):
And then I've got my, my old89 Les Paul that I have had
since I was in high school, and

Nice.

one right here in the middle that I'm kind of blocking with my head.
I'll do, I'll do the, the Cormac Phelan.
That's a 1961 Gibson ES 330.
So

Nice.

hollow body guitar.
Then there's other stuff on the, there'sactually, there's a few more guitars on
this wall over here that you can't see,but my original plan was to go off into
this corner here that I'm flagging with myhand toward, but like I said, maybe, maybe
someday in the future I'll make that work.

Yeah.
I like, I like this.

Yeah.
It looks good.
Right?

also see over my shoulder, since that we're
talking about tools of the trade.
What is

Yeah.
What's, is that a T square back there?

It is a T square.

Nice.
We actually found a T squaresomewhere in the house.
It's in the garage now.

hiding behind my Eames lounger.

Fancy.
Right.
As good as it's going to get for now.
So yeah, I've been workingmy ass off in here.
So it's a good thing you didn't talk to melike a week ago, I guess, right at the end
of the year, because I was I was grumpy.
I was, I was grumpy.
And, and not because of this project.
This project actually helpedme work through my issues.

(12:41):
I was, I did a three day, mywife and I both, we did a three
day fast to finish the year off.
Have you ever done a fast?

Yeah.
Yeah.

Yeah, it's,

did you do one where it was three full days?
No, nothing?

yeah,

yeah,

just three days of water fast.

a detox.
So, I'm on, what is, oh, so,I'm on day three of no caffeine,

Oh, look at you.
How's your head?
You're,
Dude, my head hurt.

I'm

My head hurts so bad.
My head hurt so bad that second day.
I just had like a 15 hourlong headache and I was like,
Oh my God, this is terrible.

I had bass in my neck, it was just like, I mean, cause
yeah, it was, it was it wasn't fun.
So I, I had apologized in advanceand she's like, mate, I didn't
even realize you were doing this.
I'm like, yep.
Nope.
Like in my, I didn't fast likefull, I'm, now kind of back on

(13:46):
my, I won't eat till about 30, 11,and then I'll stop eating at 6.

doing like a, what are they called?
Intermittent fasting.

intermittent fasting.

Yeah.
I, I normally do intermittentfasting, but a 72 hours is
a, is a different beast, man.
Holy crap.

Yeah, have you, have you ever, have you ever
heard of this potato cleanse?

I have heard of, well, I've heard of like potato,
my, actually my wife did that.

I did it too.

She's done a potato one, she's done an apple one, and
then she's done, she did, she dida water fast for 20 days once when
we were in Southern California.

No, that's, see, 20 days of

Yeah,

water.

right.

Yeah, that's like,

It was 20 days of sadness is what it was.

I was gonna say, how would you even remotely?

It was, it was seriously bad.
I mean, just, she was justpathetic to be around.
I felt bad for her, for sure.

Obviously this isn't gonna be in the show.

She doesn't listen, but, but yeah, it was, it was rough.
It was rough for her, obviously rough forher, but so yeah, three days she wants
to do this three day thing every month.
And I'm like, I don't know aboutthat because it was pretty hard.
Like, and, and, and the hardestpart actually was the third.
Day that the second night third daywhere you're just your body's just

(15:20):
aching really bad because it you knowyou're detoxing that stuff's actually
getting out of the muscles and andit's it was that was probably the most
Discomforting part about it was justcomfortable uncomfortable part about it.
It was really bad

Did you feel kind of lethargic?
Yeah.

I, and I also did not feel hungry at all, like the whole time.
She was, she was really hungryand she's like, I'm starving.
And I, I was like, theheadache is killing me.
And, and I was busy working onthis, this space the whole time.
So, I wasn't working fast.
For sure.
I wasn't working at my normalpace, but it was like, it was fine.

(16:00):
I had the time and I didn'tneed to go fast anyway.
But so I was, I was, you know,operating power tools and such
and met playing with electrical.
But I have to say like the, theworst part was at night, that, that
second night going into the thirdday of just like the, the aches.
It was just, yeah.
So, I mean, I think the fast did his job.
It did a really good job.
I think it serves a purpose.

(16:21):
It's really good for on a numberof levels, but it's not easy.
We've conditioned ourselves, threemeals a day and all this stuff.
Mmm.

and mine was, going into the end of the year, just kind
of like the race for things, a lotof caffeine, it's getting kind of
of heartburn, a lot of like just,

Mm hmm.
Mm hmm.

And I'm like, you know what?
would like to

Jeez.

um, this.
And so I, I was just like, all right.
And I woke up and I'm like,it's gotta be cold turkey.

Interesting.

like the, coffee's gonna, like for now it's just
detoxing it out, also detoxing.
Like, I fell back on the wagon for soda.
It was, like for a longtime, I wasn't drinking soda.
And then, you

Mm hmm.

I gateway drugged that into like, you know, you know,
having a lot more soda and stuff.
And so I was just like, now I gotta, got

Mm hmm.

Get all this stuff out of here.
I mean, listen to people way too,like too many people, our age, my age,
since I am a little older than you.

You're my senior.
Yes.
Oh, wow.
Bummer.
Trying to do something right.
Dang.
Is she okay?
Oh, yeah.
I mean, caffeine is literally a drugthat was designed to quote unquote
make people more, I mean, it wasn'tdesigned for this, but it's been used
in the way of just making, corporateAmerica has instituted it as a

than me, you know, maybe two years older
than you, but younger than me.
And she she had like amassive heart attack.
She thankfully lived, but it was just oneof these things, it's just like, and she,
and it happened while she was at the gym.
So, you know, you just say, no, no.
Trying to do something right.

(18:09):
And body said, well, I've got other plans.
And so, uh, and this isn't the onlyperson that, you know of my age that
I've heard having massive heart attacks.
And I'm just like, Hmm.
I mean it it doesn't run in our family,but you know, here I am like pounding

(18:31):
caffeine, like it's nobody's business.
Freebasing it.
I'm more compliant.

as an IV to, for productivity, right?
I mean, it's like, it really changedthings in the fifties, right?
When it came on the scene in, in business.
Cause before that, it wasn'tlike there was a coffee pot
on all the time, everywhere,

yeah.
Think about like some of theperks that firms are actually,
and your old firm was one of them.
fact, actually it was one ofthe first ones that I saw.
And, and then you and I wentand visited, a firm in New
York city when we were there.
And,

right?

you know, they've got like, a coffee, like cold brew coffee
tap and all of these other things.
And looking for these perksfor, to, to keep us capping.
caffeinated to keep

Right.

We will work.
We will click faster.

Work, work harder, click more faster.
Right.

Yes.

So, so yeah, I don't, I don't blame you for wanting to
stay away from that for a while.
It's, it's good to reset and like youradrenals are just going to be completely
fried if you don't and, and then you're,you're setting yourself up for long
term pain, adverse effects for sure.

Yeah.
And you know that I, I don't Idon't drink coffee like you do.
Whereas you

How's that?

it black, I use the heavy cream, heavy sugar and stuff like that,

Mmm.

is not, which is, you know, not, not good in its own right.
you know, there's the, all of that justkind of like, detoxing of all of that too.

Yeah.
Right.

trying to get like, my, I don't know if I have a blood sugar
going on, but I can only imagine withas much coffee as I was drinking,
with as much sweetener in it as I wasdrinking, that, you know, it didn't help.

And a lot of those, those sweeteners are just infused
with crazy chemicals, like thoseCoffee Mate liquid, hazelnuts and
vanillas and, yeah, chemicals, exactly.
Oh, there's a lot of stuff in those.

yeah, having the conversation with my daughter that the,
the need for eating clean is, is real.
What we should be looking at, I mean, itdoesn't, it doesn't necessarily mean that
you have to like, overall change yourdiet other than the fact that if it looks
like a chemistry set on the back of thepackage, that is probably not something

(21:09):
that you should put in your body.

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And now back to the conversation.
Well, so what's going on architecturally?
I think you guys, I think you've had your,your final reviews and did your grading.
I'm sure that, Yashar, you had a lovelyholiday getting all your grading done.

(23:03):
And I always, I alwayshated that part of teaching.
It's just such a, like you alreadyhad a huge crunch time working in
the office at the end of the year.
And then you also decidedto teach last semester.
And I'm sure, there was a bit of a,Learning curve to that whole process.
Like can you talk about what you, whatyou had to go through at the end there?
Mm-hmm

Oh yeah, Total Learning Curve, because one of the
interesting things is, and I don'tknow if I took, came on the heels of
having to do a handful, I had to do ahandful of staff annual assessments,
and so I was already doing gradingon a professional level anyway.

(23:43):
So, then I also had to.
Do this for, for the students.
And what was really tough was thefact that, and I think I talked to
you about this, that it was a groupproject and there was a lot of students
who were overworking themselves.

(24:03):
And were some students thatweren't working as hard.
And so, you know, it's just like, how doyou give a balanced grade to the overall
group project, but also then recognizethat some people did work more than other
people did and trying to, you know, makeit fair to the people who a lot more work.

(24:26):
to try to do that.
And so it was kind of interestingto, to, to go through that, basically
had, a handful of notes that I tookduring, both throughout the semester,
but also throughout the presentationand observations that I made it to
try to work, almost, almost like in,in a way off of doing these annual

(24:50):
reviews for the, for the, the studentssort of actually helped me out
because here I am for professionals.
I was writing reviews and alot of them were, you know,
they're project architects.
And so I decided to do somethingcompletely different this year
in the way that I did the review.

(25:12):
what I did was I basically said, okay,here is like the published standards
of roles and responsibilities fora project architect at our firm.
And.
how I'm going to, review performancethroughout the year based off of that.
And, some people I told in advancethat this was how it was going
to happen and some I didn'tbecause I was assigned to them.

(25:34):
I was assigned them a little bit later.
But, was good about that was,is I could take, kind of like
this very published metrics.
This is, this is the minimum, I kindof called them, like this is the
code minimum of what you need todo for, to be a project architect.
And what I did was, I said, okay,here's where your strengths are,

(25:56):
here's where you need improvement.
And it wasn't strengths and weaknesses,kind of like, because we did have to do it
as a, have you ever done those SWOT tests?

Yes.
Mm-hmm

So,

Mm-hmm

it was, that was how I was supposed to do it.
But what I

Mm-hmm

to do was do it a little bit differently where don't
frame it as weaknesses, but frameit as areas of improvement basically
talk to them about how they canimprove what we as a team need to do.
Not just, you know, it's literally,here's what you're not doing.
and go ahead and try tofigure out how to do it.
Nope.
Nope.

(26:30):
wrong.
As I've been teaching, I've been learningthat if I'm not very clear on the
explanation of what I want somebody todo, if they've never done it before, how
do I expect them to succeed at doing it?
And so I was like, Ihave to be fair to them.
And this is a way

Mm-hmm

start over and say, Hey, Here's what your roles and
responsibilities are supposed to be.
Here's what you're doingreally, really well.
Here's what you're not.
But, it's not, you know, your fault.
It's ours.
We need to plan a little bit betteron how we give you more experience.
so that you can, workharder to master that.

(27:14):
Because ultimately what youwant to do is you want to grow.
Become a stronger architect to become aproject manager or a principal or whatever
it is that you have aspirations for.
But this is basically setting afoundations for, the basics of what
you really should know as an architect.
And so that was sort of how I came at it.
When I was looking at the team, Iwas like, overall the team project

(27:38):
strong, thinking about it as the waysdon't care how a project gets done.
They just want it done.
Right?
And so if there's some people on yourteam, and this even, like, I was even
trying to explain to them this happensin the professional world as much

Yeah.

in school.
Like, there may be people whoare not pulling their weight.
It doesn't matter to the client.
You still have to get that project done.
And so, there are people who, at theend of the year, will probably get
rewarded with, possibly a bonus or abetter raise or something like that.

Possibly asterisk

you know, or, a little pat on the back
attaboy, you know, whatever, but

gift card.

that Friday afternoon pizza party.
But, but what it, it helped me in lookingat students a little bit more critically.
Instead of just saying, Oh,well, you know, you're a student.
I don't really expect youto know all of this stuff.
I've looked at it as like, no, what Iexpect is that your active engagement

(28:43):
in class, know, you being an activeparticipant because it is a team and the
way that we broke it up with the, theteam chemistry was is that each student
had done some previous, and I explainedthis before, but they did previous
research and all of those essentiallybecame the subject matter experts,
whether it was, you know, constructionor code or accessibility or other things.

(29:09):
And so they became, and so then we mixthem up and put them together in a team.
And so, you know, you look at it as like,okay, how did that person contribute to
the success of this final project basedoff of what they had already learned, but
then how did they grow from other people?
And, and it was, it was aninteresting way to look at it in
a, for me, and I tried to, I tried.

(29:31):
And I don't know if, if it's, if it'ssunk in to everyone, but what I tried to
do is explain to them that this is howyou will be working for the rest of your
career is in a team, in a collaboration,whether it's, as a sole practitioner with
engineers and your clients, or as on alarger team where you've got other project

(29:53):
architects that you're working with,project managers, project, principals
in charge, you know, those kinds ofthings that you're always going to be
working in some form of collaboration.
the time to learn how to startcollaborating and working because
you're, know, they're, some people are,this is their senior year of their four

(30:16):
years, not of their, their five or sixyears, but this is their senior year.
so, this is and closer to that end goalof being able to graduate and go to
college, I mean, graduate and go to work.
This is the opportunityto learn how to work.

(30:37):
Because a lot of times, how manytimes have you had, fresh graduates
or something like that might'vebeen their very first job ever.
you know, they didn't, or they justworked on solo projects in school
and never really worked on groupprojects or learn how to collaborate.
And it was a struggle for, you know,I, there's, a handful of folks that I
can remember, that I've dealt with inthe past that they struggled to work

(31:01):
on a team or work together with otherpeople because they didn't think that
this is what architecture was about.
Seriously?

Or they hated it.
They hated it in school, right?
And so they're automaticallykind of opposed to that style
of work and asking questions.
And, they just go off andhole up in the corner.

And there was a student who made it very known to me specifically,
that absolutely hated group projects,didn't understand why we were doing
it, thought it was a waste of his time.
And, and because of how he feelslike he's going to be practicing
the future, was it necessary?

(31:41):
that was where I made the disclaimer.
I'm like, even if you decide tobecome a soul practitioner, you are
still going to be reliant on workingand collaborating with others.
If not, you're not really goingto be working much longer.
You're going

Yeah, that's interesting.
Well, I mean, there definitely is.
We don't know what thefuture of practice is like.
Um, I mean, you're very much talkingabout a now situation, right?
Working in teams,collaborating with people.
I mean, it doesn't seem like that'sgoing to change, but we don't know.
Right.
Um, and so like, even, but, but even ifthey're right, like maybe they are right.

(32:17):
It doesn't matter.
Like that, that's how it is now.
And you're, you're telling me you'rea year away from graduation and
you don't think that you're evergoing to be working like this?
Like that's pretty short sighted, I think.

Yeah.
Well, I mean, if you also think aboutit, I mean, one of the things that it's
just the very basics of working with aclient, how you work with a client, if.
you know, if you come into it withthis level of arrogance, they're not
going to be your client much longer.
You know, I can go and findsomebody else that's going to be

(32:47):
a little bit more stress free.
I mean, unless you're bringing somelike, amazing amount of talent that
they're just like, I've got to haveEvan as my, know, as my architect.
And, I'll, I'll deal with hisnonsense just because I'm, going
to have him designing my stuff.
But, but you see what I'msaying is like, you know, I

Yeah, totally.

Yeah, and I just, I, I know that he's a talented kid.
He's smart.
He's bright.
He's sharp.
did, he has not had anyone tell him no.
And I think that also hasn'tworked in a scenario where
the collaboration is a thing.

(33:30):
And, and once he does that, it's, it'seither gonna, bee killed kind of thing.
but I, and I, I think that he's sharpenough that, he'll get it, but I just,
I just think it's just one of thesethings that so it was so, so very
short sighted of him to just say,group projects don't make much sense.
And why are we doing this?
Because, I'm not going towork in a group in the future.

(33:50):
Like, whoa,

Well, the first part he might be totally right about, right?
I mean, in his experience, I mean, Ithink most of us have experienced group
projects where they're just absolutelyterrible and, and usually that's under
kind of this forced collaboration,

Yeah.
Yeah.

situation, right?
It's not like, you're not leveragingcollaboration for the best outcomes.
You're being forced to doit because that's, it's a
group project, quote unquote.

well, so let me ask you this question.
So in, in, I know our worlds are verysimilar in, when you were practicing at a
large firm that not all the time, did youhave the choice of who was on your team?
Not only, you know, notall the time, did you ever

Almost never.
Yeah.

of, what engineers that you were going to be dealing with and stuff.

Right.
Yeah.

as a project designer, project manager, architect or
project manager needed to learnhow to deal with all of them.
And he completely, very political,very kind of, here's how
we've got to figure this out.
We're all on this adventure togetherand we need to figure it out together.
No matter what your, no matter what thisdynamic between us is, we have to work

(34:57):
together because this is our charge.

Yeah, I mean, on some levels that also is still a forced collaboration.
Um,

absolutely.

and, uh, I mean, especially under the, the, with the
way that you're presenting it, whichI think is, is most is typical, right?
It's like you,

Yeah.

I, in my position, I didn't get to pick the consultants.
I definitely didn't pick the client.
Like, right.
Um, I probably didn't pickmy own team, team members.

Right.

But, but at the same time, like you, you have to be
able to rely on everybody to be aprofessional and actually do their part,

Yes.

you probably, like in a consultant's realm, like I can't
do their part for them or in a, ina, in an educational, I think a lot
of times in this, and, and I was, mydaughter in law is a grad student and
she has talked about nightmare groupprojects that she was even doing last
quarter and just grad student level.
not doing, not lifting afinger to help their teammates.

(35:58):
And it's absolutely mindboggling to me, but I've also
been in that situation, right?
Where I'm like, Oh crap.
Now I have to do two or three or fourpeople's worth of work because my
grade The professional setting is, Ican't do my structural engineer's work.
I can't do my HVAC engineer's work, right?

right,

certain things that you have, like, and they're getting paid,
which is maybe, maybe different thana grade, but maybe not, I don't know.
Um, it, it just seems kind of,kind of crazy though, right?
Where it's like, there, there definitelyare people who do not perform.
And, Like you're, you're talking aboutthis being just the way that it is,
like every project is a team sport and,and yet there are still people in the

(36:43):
professional workplace who don't performand, uh, and, and then what do you do?
You have to find somebody to fill theirshoes, you have to fire them, you have
to find a new consultant, uh, employeesleave, you got to fill those holes, all,
all of these speed bumps and roadblocksalong the way of project delivery.

I remember on.
Probably a couple of months ago, wewent on a an interview and one of the
things that the client had talked aboutwas that in the past they've fired
consultants, they've fired architectsbecause of lack of performance, black,

(37:23):
lack of understanding on how some of theprocess works and all of that other stuff.
So if a client is.
ready and willing to fire anarchitect at any given time for lack
of performance, then the architectthemselves should not expect less than
the, top performance for their project.

(37:45):
It just, that's just what you have to do.
And, and in a way, I mean, if you thinkabout it, like our, health, safety and
welfare kind of, charge that we haveto do, almost demands that you you
know, bring your A game regardless.
And, know, so, so it, yeah, I've beenhaving this conversation a lot with a

(38:09):
lot of people, just, talking about howwe, improve, get more improvement out
of people, uh, out of underperformers.
The biggest question is as well, did you,know, were you clear on your instructions
to what you wanted them to do?
Were you?
Are they new to the profession?
Are they new to the firm?

(38:29):
Things that you've heard me say about,how the responsibility fall on them
to a point, but the responsibilitydoes fall on the leadership as well.
Because if the leadership isn'tclear on from the jump, You're never
going to meet the expectations.
If you keep the expectations inyour head, you're like, Oh, Evan's

(38:51):
just not, performing the way that,I really hoped that he would.
And if I've never had a conversationwith you on, what that, what my
expectations of performance are,I'm going to get what I get.
And, you know, yeah, had thisconversation a lot, a lot.

Of course, yeah.
So I'm curious what the studentthought they were going to achieve
by telling you how much they Didn'tneed to, or disliked group projects.
Did they think they weregoing to get kind of a buy?

I, no, I

okay, you don't have to do it.

I think it, it was, to set the stage, it was some inner
group tensions that were going on.
And It was just coming to ahead and I didn't recognize
what was going on at the time.
I think I might've even kind offueled it a little bit by just
pressing them a little bit harder onwhat everybody's role was just kind

(39:51):
of, there was a lot of outbursts.
In fact, I actually, talked withour friend of the show, Kurt,
who I was co teaching with.
I said, I think you might need toclean up a mess that I just made.
And it wasn't, and I don't thinkit was, it was, it wasn't me.
It was just, I happened to be the, thebystander that kind of was pushing them

(40:11):
to kind of make decisions that I don'tthink that they were ready to make
only because they were so disorganized.
And, and so, I would, I kept kind of likestressing them out about the fact that
they have, so little time to get it done.

You're

yeah, my

kind of forced the situation to crack.
Yeah.

I think I just turned the heat up a little bit higher
and sort of freaked them all out.
And, he.
just cracked a little.
But, but what was interesting thoughis because of the way that this school
is structured as a technologicalschool there is certain expectations of
knowledge that they're supposed to haveabove and beyond kind of some of the

(40:58):
standard architecture schools because,you're almost creating practitioners.
of them, and giving them a level ofunderstanding on how the practice works.
And, and I, I hate to say it more so thanother, standard architecture schools.
But if you think about like, your schoolor my school where there was a lot of

(41:21):
theory, There isn't as much theory here.
There is theory.
Let me restate that.
There is plenty of theory.
But there is also this onus ofhaving to more in touch with like,
nuts and bolts of architecture.
You know, and so not saying that they'rejust creating like, the technical

(41:42):
architect, they are expecting somelevel of technical understanding.
And so there you have all of thatpressure too, because you hear their
final project, and I was blown awayby some of the, the amazing work
that they, that they pulled together.
Some of the models if I can, get somephotographs of some before we publish,
I will, put them in the show notes.

(42:03):
But some of the models that theycreated, it's just, I'm thinking to
myself, How much did you bleed on these?
I mean, they're like, Oh, Ijust, laser cut it and stuff.
And, but, it was just like someof the, the quality of the work
that they pulled together was,it was pretty, pretty amazing.
And, if they still were to do thingslike that, once they start gaining
more and more knowledge of likesystems and everything else, these

(42:25):
models are going to be even better ifthey continue to do things like that.
And they're going to be even moreinformative to the client as well.
I mean, they did these great,like, section, quarter scale
section models, where it basicallylooked like a wall section.
And so, they kind of cut through itand, a few of them took it kind of like
way above and beyond and, 3D printedbricks and, and, poured concrete and,

(42:50):
but when you looked at the section andyou, it looked like a wall section.
And it was amazing, the qualityof the work that they were doing.
And we, we did the same thing, but, ata much slower pace and, and probably
not, I don't know how well it looked,but I mean, it was just some, I mean,
they had, they used actual insulation.
They used, they, they did a lot of thingsthat, it was just, it looked amazing.

How do you go to Home Depot and just buy a little bit of insulation?
Like you gotta buy the wholegiant bundle and then you just
take a little piece out of it.

Yeah, I mean there there was a few that, it, you could tell by
the quality of the work that was producedwhich teams worked better as a team.
which teams did not, just based off ofwhat you actually got in the presentation.

(43:43):
That final presentation, there weresome that were lacking information,
they were lacking clarity, they werelacking, kind of like a full resolution.
And then there were some that you werejust like, yeah, I mean, this could,
Legitimately be built, and you'vethought through everything and it's a
well designed thing and in the way thatthey gave the Presentation and they were
talking, And each person had a role totalk through and you could clearly see how

(44:08):
their impact on the project was It justas a there's the teams that shine There's
I kind of put it in a bucket of three.
It's like the ones that worked,fantastically together ones
that we're going to do a goodproject in spite of themselves.
And then there's those that, sortof did not do, even though there

(44:34):
was people who are working hard onthe project didn't do very well.
And and, and it was kind of unfortunatethat, in cases like that, where,
teams, teammates suffered fromother people not pulling their
weight in the project and stuff.
And, and if you think about that, theway that we do ours is the same thing.

(44:55):
You will get that same type of thing.
If the, if the project, if theproject team is clicking, you're
going to have a great project.
Everybody's going tobe feel good about it.
I mean, I was talking to somebody todayand they were like, I, have struggled
with this project because, this or that.
And I was just, talking about like,I went back to the team makeup and

(45:15):
how is the team makeup and how'sthe communication with the team?
because that usually isthe root cause, right?
Like if people aren't talking,it's like, Hey, I, oh man, I really
expected Evan was going to do this.
Like, well, did you tell Evanthat he was going to do it?
No.
Well then how the hell doyou expect him to do it?
Those kind of things.

Wishful thinking.

Yes.

dynamics are difficult and you, it's interesting to me that like you
learn, you have to, You have to kind of, Ihate to say it this way, but pay your dues
to like gain the experience with thosepeople to learn strengths and weaknesses
and all of those things like that.
Those things are not.
They're not traits that people wearon a billboard that floats above them

(45:59):
and tells everybody around them sothat you can accomplish this thing.
It's like you have to, you haveto try different configurations.
You have to try it under differenttypes of pressure, under different
circumstances with different clients.
And like, all of these thingsare just constantly evolving.
And I mean, that's also kind of whatsucks about architectural projects too, is

(46:20):
like, like repeatability is not a thing.
Right?
Like, you don't have the same client,you don't have the same project,
you don't have the same team, youdon't have the same building code,
you don't have all of these things.
Like, every time, it's kind of a,a different version of a similar
thing, but it is different, right?
And so, um, I think part of that is, like,like, like, the students who were on a

(46:43):
really great team, and you could tell,like, the next time, like, they're gonna
wanna be on the team with those teammates,and, and, I, I hope they're not, right?
Because Because you have to gothrough all of the versions of this
to truly understand it so that youcan ultimately learn how to figure

(47:04):
out and leverage people's strengthsand avoid their weaknesses completely.
Because that, that's really whatmakes a team work is like where
somebody who loves to do what youhate to do can do that thing well.
And then you're both betteroff because of it, right?
Like that's, everybody's doingtheir, their part, their role.
Yeah.

exactly.
And that's the, where the evolutionof kind of like, the strength
and weaknesses comes from andunderstanding how to deal with them
and how to roll through and better.
And, you also like, I mean, sometimeswhen, projects fail, that's sort of,
when you learn how to manage projectsbetter, or this is You know, I would do

(47:44):
this a little bit differently, right?
You

Sure.

and when you get

Iterate.

it's just like, I remember, this was something that happened and

I hope so.

going to, you know, so yeah.

So, so at the end of this you, you mentioned something
about reviews and so I'm just curious,like, like, peer reviews, I think
you said that they had to do, right?
And, and, and we've, we have to do thesein, in corporate America as well, right?
It's like, uh, uh, And maybe atleast, maybe you don't review other
people, but you do review yourself.
And there's like a certain level of BSthat you see in these reviews, right?

(48:17):
So I'm curious if the studentsrepeated that same behavior that
we see in corporate America.

Yes.
Yeah.
Yes.

I don't know if you knew this, but, but I'm the best.

and what's interesting is that there were some.
Teams that they, uh, I kind of, likeI said, the, the three buckets, and
it was interesting as some of the mostvocal ones were the ones that struggled
with their team dynamic, their teamcommunication, that, that inner workings

(48:49):
and, and when the project showed personwent on the defensive of themselves.
Well, I did, my part, but,Evan didn't do his part.
And then Evan's like, well, Idid my part, but Cormac didn't

Throw him under the bus.

And it, it was, it was, there was some interestingly,
like, very kind of like, I don't know.

Inaccurate.

to say finish vicious, but there was some like
vicious attacks on each other.
And there were some interestinglyinaccuracies because I was thinking
to myself, wow, you think morehighly of yourself than what we
saw, what you were able to do.
And so, yeah, yeah,

On some level of this, it is a game, right?
I think it's curious that youguys chose, I don't know if it's a
requirement or not, or if this was achoice, actually, now that I say that,
but to do these kind of peer reviewsis kind of an interesting choice.
I mean, and in a team, It doesn'tnot make sense when you're
doing a team project, right?

(49:53):
Because you, you can't seeeverything, like it's not completely
transparent to you as a professor.
I'm sure a lot of crap went downthat people wish that you saw.
And then there's a lot ofstuff that people were really
hoping you wouldn't see, right?
So, so there's all of that.
So I just find it, it'skind of interesting.
And it, because, because.

(50:15):
You're always going to getthis level of playing the game,
which is like, man, I'm awesome.

But the one thing that I hope comes out of this, and this is
one thing that I sort of, unfortunately,because of the way that just, the end
of the year happened and everythingelse, we almost couldn't do an after
action review with them as, to say,here was the learning objective and
here's, how you either, successfullynavigated it or, kind of, faltered a
little in the, here's what you can dobetter, next time and just, try to.

(50:46):
Tell, whether they're the strong teamor the weak team, what they can do
better, not just as an individual,but as a team to be able to kind of
like lift each other up and actuallylike, know, work together and have
those kind of communication or clear,

Maybe, maybe at the beginning of next semester, you need to
like have this whole preamble, right?
It's like, it's like,here's how it's going to go.
Here's how it's going to go down.
And you read some anonymous.
Maybe you, maybe you even embellishthem a little bit or you, you, you
redact different pieces of, but, butit's like, here, here's what, here's
what, you're going to say about thisperson at the end, and you read it,

(51:24):
and then you say, and here's what thisperson can say about this, and then
you're going to say, and here I am, andI know, I, I got to witness the entire
number of weeks, and, and I know whathappened, but then I get this stuff, and
like, the goal is to do what you justsaid, Gormikwit, right, which is like,

right.

be the best version of, of what it can be and like, start with the
end in mind so that it's not like thisthing that you had to go through at the
very end, which sounds pretty terrible.

It, it was only because I, I would have loved to have had the
opportunity to explain to them, howkind of their own individual behaviors
affected the team, their lack ofcommunication or, communication, depending
on the team affected the outcome.
and, how this is going to be somethingthat the way that you carry yourself

(52:19):
as a person on a team, whether it's ateam of one or a team of 10, is going
to lead to the success of the project.
Because that ultimately, that's what we'relooking for is the success of the project.
We are trying to do good work.
And if you're going to be an a hole aboutit, you're not going to do good work, you

I mean, even where you kind of started this, this out, when you talk
about what they're getting graded on,it's, it's like, yeah, your performance
matters, and at the same time, what reallymatters is the, the level of completeness
that the project comes in at that meets,

Yeah.

on.
And, and, and I think it's reallyhard, especially I mean, it's
hard for professionals to do this,let alone students, but it's to
like remove themselves and their
traits from that equation, right?
Because it's like, like you said,the client wants the project done.
They don't care how it gets done, right?
I'm sure they do want, they do wanta lovely interaction with people

(53:21):
throughout the entire process.
Of course that would be,that would be better.
It's, it's not like you want the dictatorwho's just an a hole to everybody and
just forces this amazing project out.
Right?
Like that's still a crappy process.
So it's not all about that.
But at the same time, like it's, it's likethere is a level of separation between
the individuals who accomplished the taskand the actual task that was accomplished.

Yeah.
Yeah.
Yep.

So what did you learn through this whole process?
I mean, you're, you're, you all of asudden are in this situation where.
You've got to, like you said, you wishthat you got to deliver those messages
kind of maybe on a more personallevel to, to like complete the cycle.
Right.
But at the same time, like, I'm sureit was like a lot for you to take
on and go through this, like you'relearning this stuff for the first time.

(54:12):
Now.

So I know that there's a lot of things that I will do
differently the next time around next

Iterate and improve, right?

And iterate and improve.
the, the thing that interestingly,
I've learned that I can translate backto the profession making sure that you
have clear communication of expectations.
Um, Because, here is a bunch ofstudents who didn't really know

(54:44):
what we're asking them to do.
I mean, yes, they've been introducedto what a floor plan is and what
a, building elevation or a buildingsection or a wall section are.
But, when we're asking themto do all of this stuff as a
composite, as a, essentially adesign development, type exercise.
And it's an exercisethat's a team based thing.

(55:07):
Clarity communication, clarityof expectations is key.
And, I've learned that, I'mokay at it sometimes and I
could be improving other times.
And sometimes I'm even, reallygood at it, but I think that I.
You know, for me personally, I tookaway is like, I need to change my

(55:28):
consistency of how I communicateso that there is no questions, so
that, everybody understands and isclear in what they're actually doing.
and, and so, being able to do iton at a level where they don't
know what they don't know, becausetalk about that all the time.

(55:49):
And being able to like really explainto them what their expectations are.
If I can successfully do that atlike the student level, I should
be able to successfully do that.
And should do that at theprofessional level, right?
Know, because now you're, dealingwith trained professionals.

(56:10):
So it's a, it's something that,like, I've learned, how to
hopefully how to better communicate.
learned that I probably need to increasemy professionalism in front of students.
You know, I'm still you

You're a joker.

still trying to crack the jokes.
You

I mean, you want to, you want to have fun, you want to
have a fun environment for sure.
I mean, I, I think if, ifthis, if it's, wow, I mean, it
depends on the course, right?
But you're in a creative,you're in a creative situation.
You want to, You want people to, tobe at ease in that situation, right?
And, and so that they can bereceptive to what's going on.

(56:50):
And at the same time, the stakes are highand you expect a level of professional
output and all of these things.
So it's like this achieving thatbalance, but I know jokes aren't bad.
I mean, did, why, why, did youget bad, did you get feedback
that, that said that you,

I haven't, I haven't

you're, you were the class clown?

yeah, I have, I haven't yet.
I'm sure I will.
No, I just, me, I mean, I always tryto break the tension with, a little bit
of humor just because I don't, I mean,the profession is hard enough as it is.
And for us to try to justlike ease that tension.
I'm here for the jokes.

Yeah.

I'm here for the jokes.

I'm here for the joke.
Uh, well, so, so what's your, what'syour plan moving forward with this?
Are you going to be teaching moreor what, what's the, the next,

I'm hoping, at the very least I think I'm going to be
doing this same studio next fall.
I don't have anything coming up for thecurrent semester, only because I was
actually a late add to last fall theyhad already started to fill, all of
this, this, the teachers for this comingsemester, and so, I hadn't been there, I

(58:01):
hadn't been tested out, and all that otherstuff, so, as long as they want me back.
I think know, our palwants me back and, and

you were a good teammate, you were a good team member?

I, I

You

so.

pulled your weight?

feel like I was.

Nice.

I, I mean, I learned a lot from them.
I learned a lot from mymy fellow instructors.
They,

And the students, I bet.

and the students, they, all of them, are, like, uh, and Mark
both of my fellow instructors, they,they very much have done this before
and kind of, have gotten into a goodrhythm, and here I am, the new guy, just
kind of like fitting in I felt like Ibrought some good ideas of, of how to
kind of like it a little bit differentlythan they had done in the past.

(58:47):
and all I can say is that there's room forimprovement, but, I think that I feel like
I have earned that opportunity to do that.

I'm just smiling because you just gave yourself a review.

Yeah,
I had to give myself a, a, areview at the end of the year
and then I had to review others.
I, I did do, like, four peerreviews, um, God, those are hard.

Yeah,

They really are.
you know, it, it came at a goodtime when, you're reviewing
somebody, and you're also grading.
Cause now you're how tolike do that in a year.
You're almost like I said, you're, gradinga class or you're grading a, colleague.

(59:42):
Tough stuff, man.

you just got to put yourself in a completely different mindset.
It's like a mode of work.
It is,

Yeah.

it's a different, yeah, it's a different thing for sure.

it is, know, it's, all joking aside, let's talk about
like, your actual performance.
be clear about it.
I also wanted to make sure thatif this is that is new information
that may not have been discussed inthe past, where I'm coming from and
where we as a team can improve on it.

(01:00:12):
I don't want them to, like, come tothe end of the year and, like, have
never heard that, oh, know, Evan,wears black glasses, he should have,
as a team player, he should wearred glasses like everybody else.
And you're like, wait, this is thefirst time I've heard you say that I've

Evan Troxel (01:00:31):
I didn't get the uniform memo.

Cormac Phalen (01:00:33):
Exactly.
Uh, but, you know, it's interesting.

The adventure continues.
Well,

yep.

welcome to 2025.
I'm sure we all have a lot of work to do.
Here it is.

it's here, it's

I hear the world's ending, you know, in a couple of weeks.
So we'll see what happens.

Eh, we'll just keep our head up and duck.

be worse than, than what, what we've already been through.
So I say that, but it's also not true.
It totally could.
We'll see.
It's, it's kind of interestingto be on the sidelines as,
as the world is changing.
Right.
We're basically this iswhat, what did they say?

(01:01:18):
It's like, it's like, we'regoing to change the tablecloths
without taking the setting offthe table and see what happens.
Good luck.

that's, that's, that's where the magic happens, right?

Yeah, it very well could be magic.
All right, man.
I'll talk to you soon.

Yep.

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#356 - That ‘New Me’ Glow

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}#356 - That ‘New Me’ Glow