Elise Keith 0:00 All right, everybody. So I know we'll be joined by more folks as they roll in. But let's go ahead and get started. Welcome. And thank you so much for joining us today in this discussion of soul cages, playgrounds and meeting spaces that work. If you have not been to one of our events before, this is this is one of 10, I'm going to drop some success tips for you into the chat. So you are invited to mute and unmute respectfully, we're not going to control you in that way. And keep your your camera on when it's appropriate for you chat away on topic if you would, and be prepared because we will ask you to interact with us. Today's session is planned for 90 minutes, we are going to talk about the space. So this is one of 10 talks we're doing in conjunction with the 10 science back to meeting rules for success. You can see more about the overall course in these rules in the chat in that link there. You can also learn more about today's guest presenter Mr. Matt chatter wave Matt, at the link there for his company instinct laboratory, and we will be recording. Yes, I will send you an email, give you a coupon on the course if you're interested in that later. And today, purpose wise, we really are going to be exploring that space both where we meet now where we meet later and the different ways in which that space impacts us. And I think this is such a perfect topic for right now. Because if 2020 has shown us anything it is that the space matters. So I live in work in Portland, Oregon, as a place where people live and work because not because it's the center of industry or a driving economy place. But because of the place, right, we're at the confluence of some rivers, we've got mountains on either side, so we can go to the beach, we can go to the forest, we can go to the desert. It's a wonderful, beautiful place to live. And then 2020 comes. And then Portland, Oregon becomes the center of protests, that then turned into the center of violence, that then turns into the area with the worst air quality in the country as we are blanketed by forest smoke. Now going forward, I know many of you, those of you who are joining from Texas, those of you who are joining from Spain are having very different experiences to people who are joining from the UK where the rules are getting intense again, or California. So in the pre work, we invited you to talk about meeting spaces that are beautiful, right places that inspire you. But today as we get started, I think we should connect with what our real spaces are. So the first thing I have for you is just just a quick poll. So right now, what is your meeting space? So our entire meeting space? Or some of you actually get to go back into the office? Are you at work? Are you in a in an actual home office? Do you not even have a home office? Or you just did not that funky corner that happens to not look so embarrassing? You know, what? What does that space look like for you Go ahead, and I got almost everybody's votes in and then I'll go ahead and show you what we've seen. All right. So I'm gonna close this in three to one. Unknown Speaker 3:53 And Elise Keith 3:55 while we're talking about shared spaces, it looks like the vast majority of us right now are in home offices. And some folks are back at work. And some places I love this anywhere. I'm a free spirit, hoo hoo hoo how many free spirits we have in the room, I would love to Unknown Speaker 4:15 see a raise of hands on that. Elise Keith 4:20 Nobody will admit to being the free spirit. All right. So with that setting, let's go ahead and take a second to just actually introduce yourselves and talk about that in slightly smaller, more intimate, safer space. So I'm going to give you a chance to go ahead and talk to each other about your experience of your current space. So we're going to break into groups of three and in your group. I'm going to give you just six minutes to say hello and she What is your current meeting space? What's one thing that you really like about that space? And what's something that you would love to see improved about that? All right, any questions about what's gonna happen there? Cool. I have you weigh two big groups, three seconds. All right. And On your mark, Elise Keith 5:32 get set. Elise Keith 5:37 I say this slowly, because I'm clicking all the buttons, and go. Elise Keith 5:43 Ace. So how was that? Did anybody find some commonalities, even though you're in some pretty different places or anybody here anything that surprised them? Nancy Settle-Murphy 5:54 I heard something that surprised me from Kim that I didn't realize. Microsoft Teams uses more bandwidth than zoom when using video so that's a good that's a good tip. I didn't know that. Unknown Speaker 6:07 All right. Elise Keith 6:10 Anybody find something different? Gotta tear up garden. You look like you're talking but your mouth but Gordon Mullan 6:20 it must be muting. Now. I wasn't I didn't deliberately. Yes, discover the Becky although she's only 15 miles outside Washington still struggles with broadband and, and sort of three megabit down and one megabit up. So I'm impressed. She's actually running video on that. Elise Keith 6:36 Alright, so it sounds like we've got an opportunity to talk about our virtual space together. Um, and this is this conversation will be, as you know, is it's in the virtual space, we're going to talk about the physical space. One of the things we're going to do in our virtual space, though, is we're going to interact with Mr. chatters. Amazing slides. And the way we're going to do that is we're going to use the Zoom annotation tool. So before we get so before I turn it over to Matt, I want to do a little quick practice. So I'm going to set up a whiteboard here. It's white. There you go. Now in front of you, the whiteboard has a annotation ability. So if you're in zoom, it's usually up towards the top. Yep, Gordon Mullins found it. You'll be looking for view controls annotate. And what I want you to practice is just putting on a stamp. So there's a there's a there's a happy stamp. There's a star. Excellent. Yep. Anybody? Anybody got a check mark? Wonderful. So is anybody having difficulty finding the stamp? Unknown Speaker 7:45 Yes. Excuse me. Elise Keith 7:48 All right. All right, somebody can somebody give clearer instructions than I gave on Gordon Mullan 7:52 the top of the whiteboard up at the top where it says your viewing Elise Keith screen, click on View Options, and then click on annotate and then it'll give you a menu of options and then click on stamp. Elise Keith 8:08 All right. And you'll get plenty more opportunities to practice stamping, the whose ease out of some of our our opportunities as we move through this. Okay, I'm going to go ahead and stop the stop the excellent whiteboards. Isn't that fun? And turn this over to Matt. chatter. Matt, thank you so much for joining us today. We are super looking forward to learning from you. Matt Chadder 8:36 Thank you. Thank you so much. Nice. Nice to meet you. Also. Yeah, I've got a few pictures and slides to share with you today. So plenty to look at. You don't have to look at each other's faces as much and and some few pictures that you can flick through. So let me just let me just bring these up. Yeah, super. Okay, so Elise Keith 8:59 yeah, I don't understand. Matt Chadder 9:02 Would you believe that Google trying to tell me what to do. Whilst I'm speaking. I don't know quite what I've settled with. But there you go. So yeah, I run a company here in the UK, which probably tell from the accent, but it's, it's a real pleasure to speak to you and and the building that I'm speaking to you from is this purpose built facility that we've got here in Nottingham, in the middle of England. So our company is about 15 years old. It's called instinctive oratory, and had this vision to try and create what I thought would be the Office of the future. And this is this is where we've been in the last two years. And actually, as COVID played out, this building's become more and more important in many senses. And I'm going to show you a few pictures inside momentarily. So just just a brief bit of background from my side. So just two slides of what we do here that effectively we're a behavioral sciences business and Firstly, on the on the left here, we we undertake research and we study human beings, particularly in meetings. bases, that's asking them questions and also watching what they do. So that mixture of observational research as well as questioning and interviews, secondly, then we try and understand why people do the things they do. And that's really connected to evolutionary psychology. Human beings always overestimate how smart they are. And then thirdly, we've got a creative business. So once we figured out what people are doing with the research, why they're doing it through the behavioral psychology, then we design environments that change the future. And to my mind environment is so critical, because it's the best way of nudging human beings, subconsciously, without having to ask them to change, immensely powerful. And everything we do here is linked to evolutionary psychology. So Darwin is our hero, if you like, and we love following work of Wallace and Darwin, because ultimately, human beings have this program inside of them. So to reflect upon that a little bit. It's the very reason why when you walk through a dark forest at night, you feel different. It's kind of spooky, it's it's difficult, because you can't see, of course, I'm speaking to you from Nottingham. And you'll know the legend of Robin Hood, where the sheriff's men wouldn't even go into the into the forest at night because they were dangerous, spooky, nasty places to be that make us feel different. And that feeling is really powerful in the way that we behave. It's also the reason why for some reason, you climb to the top of mountains, and you feel this peace and harmony. When you're at the top of a mountain, you feel free. And that's the same reason because our evolutionary psychology suggests that when we're at the top of a mountain, we have no threats, there's no worries. Luckily, there are no pterodactyls anymore, so we tend not to get whisked off into the air. But that's why we feel free. It's also the very reason why we like some of the colors that we do. So these this evolutionary guidance that sits within us, we call it the instinctive magnet is this invisible force that drives us to do certain things. And the color of a room can also affect the way you behave. So what we always like to say is how you feel in a meeting space alters the way you behave. And that's super critical if you think about it, because different meeting spaces drive different behaviors. So typically, a meeting space would look like this. For any of you that know me, you'll know how much I love meeting spaces like this. It's a typical hotel Hilton meeting space. And it's and it's really not necessarily the most effective way of driving those kind of emotions you want to promote. So you know, as alternative, you could sit in a meeting room that was like this, which is perhaps more stimulating, engaging, and it drives a different level of conversation. This is, I always love this picture. Because it says it says at the back on the TVs, as you might say, amazing space. So somebody somewhere decided that this is just an amazing space to have a meeting. This is everything that I find horrifying about meetings where you can't see the screen, and it's sort of to group together and the Purple's quite a violent color. So we got to tickle people and make sure they move in and behave in a good way right away through even to us looking at how interviews are undertaken within police, police stations. And here we've been looking at how you can get the most effective and quickest and most reliable confession of a criminal relative to the space. This is absolutely a mistake here because what you'll see is the prisoner has direct lighters line of sight to the solicitor that's helping and supporting and the solicitor should always sit behind the prisoner because it makes such a big difference in the quality and the speed of the confession. So just to throw it out, as Elise showed you how to put your your love marks, this is one slide for all of you guys, what I thought I chose four pictures here for meeting rooms. I'd love you to just put a heart on which one you would rather be in and which one you think you'd have the best meeting. So you can crack open that tool and start putting your love hearts all over them. Matt Chadder 14:04 It's also a great way to make sure that you're all still there. Matt Chadder 14:08 sees not doing too great. Matt Chadder 14:11 Thank you for who locked in want to see. Elise Keith 14:17 So are those two? Do we get to heart both like the ones we've read? Do you think the ones who'd rather meet it and the ones who'd rather be in? Matt Chadder 14:24 I just want to see your favorite one, the one you'd rather believe that was meeting. So you know this is whilst a couple of your guests are finishing off. This is really super curious to me because this just goes to show that different people think different ways about different places. And it seems as though the bottom left and the top left are the most popular and the ones on the right hand side are the least popular. But it's super curious to see that you can already share some kind of emotion to what meeting room you think might be the most productive to you. And that's exactly what we study. So we study the shape of the table. The shape The chairs, the lighting, the ambience, everything else. So that thank you for sharing that super interesting. I'm glad there's a last few minute entries to see there. But obviously the is the actually is my is my home. So I'm a little disappointed. Joking, I don't know how well what I want to do is put this into context. So we work with Nestle their head office in Switzerland here, and we designed a couple of meeting spaces for them. And I think you might find this funny. So they've got a standard meeting room, kind of like you'd see with C. But we did this for them. So we did two meeting rooms. For those of you that don't know Smarties, it's like a like a little chocolate snack, a bit like an m&m. So we created this colorful play sort of meeting room that people wanted to come in. And what we found was that their staff just felt energized when they came into these rooms because they weren't boring, but they bought the brand alive. And most particularly this one here, which was super interesting, which was the pet food. So Purina is the is the pet food brand. And we put a load not real cats just before you're worried, but actually, these were just like pretend cats, you know, toys. And we we sort of created this room where people could go in and they would play with it. And it just made it contextually relevant. Because people would actually take the cats out and put them on the table that stroke them, you know, just like the James Bond villain does. And it made a huge difference on the engagement to the staff. And it's so simple, quite playful, quite childish, but it drives you kind of behavioral change. So meeting rooms need to provoke the right human emotions. And it's super critical that we understand that. And here's just a bit of a reference. I mean, you've all been in different meetings, this is off the internet, this picture, but you know, different meeting rooms, provoke different kind of emotions. And if you get the right table, the right seats, the right space, the right lighting, you can truly affect the way that people behave. And this is my fear. You know, I fear these meetings more than any, and I'm sure you've all been in them. This is a typical boardroom meeting. And it's the chair kind of leans back leatherette really kind of difficult to stay away concern. This is my absolute fear, I find these the hardest to stay attentive in. Matt Chadder 17:17 So meaty environments need to be designed from the human soul outwards, not the building inwards. It's not how it looks. It's how it works. So this is actually the head office of Red Bull in Austria, it's super cool building called the volcano, it's charging balls coming out into the into the lake. And yes, there's a car park under the lake. Super Amazing building. However, it's very difficult to have a meeting in here because it heats up like a glass house, your footsteps echo everywhere. And it's quite complicated. So it's a super lovely building, but not necessarily easy. So to that point, it's not so much how it looks. But moreover, how it works. So we do a little bit of work here with the the military. And there's a guy that we work very closely with who is in charge of Ace Fighter Squadron, and they a display team as well. And I said to him, can you tell me what your favorite meeting spaces, and he showed me this picture. And I thought this is a great meeting room, there's no better place to have a conversation about flying a jet than on a wing of a jet. And it always made me smile so much because contextually this was the right place for that conversation. So again, it's what it does, not how it looks. When I got to be honest, I'd love to have a meeting here. So we did a bit of research this summer, on the future of work. And I can share this slide with you. So you can all see it. In particular, this was about how do people feel working at home. And I'm going to just zoom in on a little bit of data in the middle, which I'll identify here. So there's four spots of data really, that I wanted to sort of share with you. So we asked people all over the world 1300 respondents we have, how do you feel about your current office design, and about a quarter of people said that their current office design is good. 50% of people said it was okay. And 5050 23% of people said it was pretty poor. And you know, a third of them said that they should be better in the future. So this is really powerful to me, it just basically means that people are dissatisfied with their meeting spaces in the office. And the future of meeting spaces is going to be critical as we work from home or this is the place where people come together and collaborate. It's the fulcrum and the epicenter. Interestingly, just so you know, 81% of people said they should only ever be eight people or less. And that meetings for the most part should be one hour. And that's it. So fewer people small amount of time in a better meeting space. And that's what we need to achieve. So I wanted to show you some rules that we here use an instinct of arbitrary when we're designing office spaces for people and Elise said to me make sure there's clear rules that people can take away unpack and use. I wanted to have 10 rules but in the end, we just got four because we thought would make it easy. So there's sort of four rules that we think you should use. And those four rules are the amount of power this particular piece of design, geometry or kind of like design thinking has on the way a human behaves. So the most important thing you need to do is to pick the right building, then you've got to put the right furniture in it, then you've got to figure out how you capture attention. And then you've got to design make it look pretty and how it looks. The weird thing is, most architects tend to start on how it's pretty. And on the finishes, that's not the bit that makes the biggest impact to a human being. So we're going to go through these four in cascading order. So firstly, the building, the building itself is critical, you've got to make sure that the building and the room delivers the right kind of experience. And I wanted to show you our parliament building here in the UK, which is super interesting, for those of you that seen on TV, obviously a pre COVID picture, but you get the government and the opposition fighting. And Winston Churchill, at the end of the Second World War, when the parliament was bombed, said, Let's rebuild it with this confrontational geometry so that people have to face each other and shout. And this was part of the British democratic system to be aggressive and confrontational. Whereas the European Court is far more orderly, far more structured, and far more harmonious. And those two pieces of geometry, you should immediately be able to see, one creates a different human energy to the other. And this geometry is super important. So these little sketches, you don't have to worry too much by what they mean. But when we work in stores across the world, the actual shape of the tables and the fixtures, and the displays in a shop critically affect how much people see, on the left hand side, the shape of these tables mean that customers see about a third of the store. And on the right hand side, it means that people see well over two thirds of the store. So just by the way you put objects in a room affects the way that people walk around them and how much they see, feel and touch. So the geometry has the most effect. Regarding Elise Keith 22:12 Yes, can we go back to and just do a quick history note on meetings for the parliament, because this is meeting meeting focused? Matt Chadder 22:21 Yeah. Elise Keith 22:22 So Matt and I were talking about this just a little bit before. But before we move too far from this, because we are focused today on the geometry of meetings, if you notice this shape, this is the shape of most boardroom tables, right, take the green bit in the middle and make that your your typical conference room. So when the British Parliament built this space, they were modeling it after some of the first parliamentary community meetings that came out of the Dutch guilt. And then that pattern was replicated down into the Spanish parliament and other places. And one of the things that would happen as people would arrive, they would arrive earlier and earlier and earlier, because where you sit in this room determines who speaks first. And if you are in the position where you speak, first, you set the agenda for the entire rest of the Parliament. So if you say for example, that we are going to lock down on COVID, and we're going to close the buildings, and you speak first, and then it's everybody else's job to either look like they can support you or to refute you. And this positioning was so important that in Spain, they would actually had to put up bring up the militia, because they would have duels outside the parliament building to determine who got to go in and sit first. So that kind of shaping that sort of hierarchical where you are, where you are for line of sight. And all of these kinds of things not only impacts things like this, but it impacts every time you want to go into a room and influence the other people around you. line of sight and positional authority are huge in spaces like this. Unknown Speaker 24:07 Thank you. Matt Chadder 24:08 Absolutely, No, thank you. It's a great story. And there's some great quotes from Winston Churchill talking about how buildings shape character. And I think it's so powerful with be so careful that it's not how the building looks from the outside, but how it makes you behave from the inside. Okay, so the next one down, which affects about 30% of the design space. So So second in terms of importance is the furniture that then you put inside this building. And this is a great slide to show you some of the ways that we study what we call behavioral geometry. So you see at the top left a really formal service setting. Bottom Right, inefficient you'll notice there's too many people into that the bottom right is what pretty much every boardroom looks like around the world. And it gives you some ideas so you know if you're having a family dinner, the equal table The Round Table is really nice people feel that they collaborate and it works together. And we even know from studying in stores, if we change the shape of the cash desk, we can alter the speed in which the customer is served, and the conversion and the basket size. So these are immensely powerful tools to try to make people behave in different ways. Incidentally, before you ask the disinterested one was pretty much like every day that I had at high school. So but also, the seats make such a big difference. So we study the spine shape. And going a little bit back in history, what we also know is even the Egyptians change the pitch of the seat, so that they will get higher productivity of the guys building the pyramids. So what we try to do is to change the way that the seats work to make sure we get the right cooperation. And here in the room that I'm in, I'm going to show you like I have stalls here. And the reason for having stools is it's damn hard to fall asleep on them without falling off. So that generally means that people pay more attention to what we're talking about. But we can travel the speed of learning of kids in schools by changing the tables in the seats. It's phenomenal the impact it can have. So we studied 100 restaurants in London, and we asked these restaurant tours, what's the favorite seat? Where do people always want to sit in your restaurant. And this was the result of that study, 100% of restaurant owners said that there was a favorite table in their restaurant. And it just makes me think why not have a whole restaurant full of favorite tables. That means you get more customers coming more often spending more money. And this was the number one result. So it was a booth and it was a booth because it was a collaborative round table with your back against the wall, you could see out into the into the environment, just like we showed you the forest scene where you want to protect yourself because this is deep inside of you. And this will appeal more to the men than the women, although I'm sure the women will understand it. But this behavioral geometry is super, super critical. And this is a photograph of the bend stalls in Madison Square Garden, which we studied a little bit, which was a bit disturbing that I took a photograph to guys. So for that I apologize. But guys, you'll know, you know, if you've got five stalls, and the outer two are taken your go to the middle one, and then you've got a problem. Where do you go. So the men know that this is a game that you play where you never stand next to another guy. And that's that behavioral geometry constantly making you behave and doing the right things. The reason this is interesting is because the two guys are as far apart as they could possibly get. If you're in the middle and somebody stood next to you, it just wouldn't be comfortable. So we translated this, for example, into a this is a room at a hospital in in Washington DC. And this is where you would be asked to wait if your loved one had passed away during surgery or had complication. So very, very difficult room. And we design this room particularly around not whether it was beautiful, but the most important part of this room is the black chair. And the black chair is where the surgeon comes in and talks to the family. But the black chair gives the surgeon the opportunity to keep the table in between them and the family to protect themselves. Because if you're doing this on a daily basis, it's very difficult. And it gives them the opportunity to make sure they could manage the situation as they feel fit. So they could sit next to a patient's family on one sofa at Matt Chadder 28:31 an angle to them. Or they could take the chair and sort of somewhat give themselves some protection as well, because these spaces are very tough. But again, the geometry affects the nature of the behavior. And to go back to Nestle, this is an atrium space in Nestle's head office. And the the brief here was to make sure that the staff would have random collisions bump into each other was grabbing a cup of coffee in this atrium, and just feel like they could grab a table sit down and have a great conversation. And they're all designed the different conversations with different people in different ways. This worked within 20 minutes of opening it. And we could really adjust the way that people had informal sort of collisions of random thoughts, which is what drives great productivity and innovation. So space affects everything. And the final one here. And this is a this is an image from the defense military rehabilitation center. So this is the place in the UK where servicemen and women will go if they have significant trauma. And this furniture here with the hoops on it, which I'm sure you've never seen is something we worked on to allow new amputees to be able to transfer out of a wheelchair onto a seat to have a family discussion. So this is the place where they would first go meet their family. The hoops are significant important because when you're first in a wheelchair transitions really tough. So we found a way of making it fun to kind of translate And now the kids would play on them. Nobody thought anything different. But ultimately what we were doing was stopping family asking invasive questions to very sensitive servicemen and women. So number three human attention. So we've got the building, we've got the furniture, now we've got to make sure people are paying attention to what we're saying. Luckily, you all are so I'm fantastically happy about that. So that this is this is really interesting to me. How do we make sure we concentrate and get the most out of a meeting room so that people are really on point. And I love this picture. This this room, this building did incredible things, because this is where Roald Dahl sat and wrote things like Matilda, and what an incredible room where this guy sat there and managed to focus and write some of the greatest books on the planet. So it's not necessarily about the outer building them, what he could do was have a seat at the back of the building his filing cabinets, next room, his lamps next to him, he's got the right seat pushed up against the wall, and he can focus. So sometimes you just need to make sure your attention is managed in the right way. This picture, this picture makes me laugh, this is a design agency gone wrong, I think, because what you'll notice is all the white border at the back and all of the people are looking to the front. And that stuff always confuses me. Because if you want everybody to ignore you, this is what you should do. And it's kind of like the design effects the behavior, the whiteboard should have been at the front and people are looking at it. These are tough environments to sit in as well. And finally, I think on this part, for those of you that may or may not have met me, I've got an issue with post it notes, I think it's one of the things that I've come to dislike most in the world. And you'll go No, I love meeting post it notes. The problem with a post it note is it sometimes moves the attention away from what you should be discussing. And we kept the slide at least that I talked about that a little bit. But what's really important is that people are on point and focused about the benefit of the meeting. And posted like sometimes can be in this direction. So to say that there's another open slide here for you to put your love hearts on. And what I wanted to do is to ask you, what's your preferred method of managing people's attention in a meeting room? So top left, we've got a whiteboard, pot, right? See, we've got post it notes, the we've got flip chart, and B, we've got a pin board where you can stick anything on it you want. So my question to you is, and you can see, incidentally, the lady a is extremely happy and proud of herself, as is the lady and D. But what's your favorite method of gathering together the best inspiration from any meeting that you're in? Elise Keith 32:48 We are definitely going to have to have an opportunity to have the post it note showdown discussion at some point. Matt Chadder 32:58 Yeah, I know the guy who invented the post it note. I mean, it was a bit of an accident, really. But um, yeah, I just think we spend a lot of time writing on them, but not an awful lot of time figuring out what they made. Unknown Speaker 33:12 Well, yeah, no, absolutely. Matt Chadder 33:17 But it's just being provocative. I love them. Really? Elise Keith 33:20 No, you don't. Matt Chadder 33:25 I'd like to know who's put a heart right on the face of the lady and B. I don't know what you're trying to say there. But we might have to have some counseling. Unknown Speaker 33:40 Somebody put up Elise Keith 33:41 a sticky wall Are you talking about like the there's a there's a piece of fabric, it's kind of it's kind of amazing that one of the facilitator groups do and you just shake it out. And it's like a giant Velcro thing. Just stuff just sticks to Unknown Speaker 33:54 it. Sounds so this is great. Matt Chadder 33:57 Same thing applies like this is how you manage attention. So super, super critical. It's not just the building the room, the furniture, and then the way that you manage attention, but what how do you pull this stuff. So in this meeting room behind me what you might notice, actually, just to explain to you, there's a white board here beside me, then actually behind me, you'll see there's a bunch of bottles, which I'm going to explain. And then here's where we have materials. So this is a we call our emotions lab. And the emotions lab is this room that we talk about how we feel and the bottles have different emotions in them, the bottom, negative, neutral and then positive. And we ask people to talk about how they feel. So it's a really good way of kind of like getting people to express how they feel. And we use this wall here to put materials on when we're designing spaces, so that you can really feel and touch everything. And we use that as a really great way of kind of making driving collaboration. And the shape of this table is a sort of really weird teardrop shape. You can see it's kind of a strange shape. What we found is this strange shape means that people come together here and they collaborate and they cooperate and really unusual way. So last few slides. And the last thing that we we should consider is materials. So this is how it sort of finishes off. This is, you know, the finishes. This is where most people start. However, it's where we finish, because it doesn't only matter, it doesn't have the biggest impact, whether the rooms blue, green, or yellow, what has the biggest impact is all of the other things I've said. So again, I'm going to take you back to this meeting room. This is a cafeteria actually in a hospital. And we got to the end of this this project, there's different seats in here, the seats don't really matter. What does matter is the fact that we asked people, do you prefer this to be this green color, a yellow color, or a blue color? And what's super interesting is everybody has an opinion about these. And I think it's super interesting to figure out what that opinion might be. Because it's a really strange way of Matt Chadder 35:59 people assessing what's good and what's bad. Matt Chadder 36:03 And I forgive me, I just had to jump there because I got another monitor on and it's it's just turned itself off, I think. Unknown Speaker 36:10 So Matt Chadder 36:12 a building's responsible responsibility is to fuel human endeavor and not just look good. It's about what it does to people. So our building here, which I showed you from the outside, we've got our own auditorium, which looks like this. So you know, we wanted to this is a teaching business. So we get people in here, they're surprised that there's this wonderful auditory, and we watch movies in it, by the way. And then the meeting room that I'm talking to you from right now, it looks like this, you can see behind me, this is what's in front of me. And it's deliberately designed to provoke a different type of conversation. Incidentally, all of the flowers that you can see in this sort of middle part, that's where all the cables come out. So it's dead easy to plug in when you need some power. And then we've got a restaurant. And our restaurant is critical, because what you find is that restaurants are a perfect meeting place, they're often some of the best meeting rooms. And I've seen chief executive or valiant companies with 10,000 employees, pick up their lunch and just sit down next to some random staff and have a great conversation. And it's where the conversation would be free and natural, and you find all kinds of things. And then finally, our studio and design studio looks a little bit like this upstairs big, wobbly shades designed for collaboration, you can sit next to any member of staff and you're not at their desk, you're just sharing the experience. So the future is about creating meeting spaces that people want to spend time in. This is so personal. And right now, you know, his vision that we put actually for a Swiss meeting center up in the Alps, where you could actually have these amazing meeting rooms, and you could ski in and ski out and your family would be there. Like, I just think that the meeting room could be incredibly important the whole way that the future of business works out business, education, science, everything. So I think this is the next question. I never we break it into two rooms. But the question really here is what do you want your meetings to deliver? It's not how they look. But it's what they do. That's super critical. Elise Keith 38:19 All right. So we will in fact be exploring this topic together. Right. So before we came together, we put up a board to share some of our favorite meeting spaces. And if you hadn't seen haven't seen that recently, I'll go ahead and see if I can find it and put it back in the chat. And and then match shown us a whole bunch of really compelling spaces I would love to before we break into groups to like work with these ideas and bring them forward for ourselves on here any reflections or questions? I think there's some really strong commonalities between the spaces that we identified in the in the Padlet. And that match shown in his spaces. Does anybody else noticing some of those common themes? And what are you seeing? Gordon Mullan 39:13 Not so much more common things. One of the things I did notice when Matt was talking about the favorite seat in a restaurant, it struck me that that's also probably the easiest seating to protect, protect under COVID regulations, just with a simple vertical perspex screen around the perimeter of that booth. So actually designing for the favorite kinds of seats that people like and actually making a restaurant COVID safe actually could go hand in hand. Elise Keith 39:43 Nice interesting. What else are you noticing who's noticing something different? Well, Unknown Speaker 39:53 I what I've Nancy Settle-Murphy 39:54 noticed in in my research in were in office space over the years, the ability to Have those serendipitous ad hoc, quick collaborative conversations? That which which Matt showed us a lot of examples of that is one of the best ways, at least, as I understand it to have good collaborative discussions versus having just conference rooms with regular tables. So kudos to you for, for designing that in so that people can just extemporaneously get together. I think that's what's missing in so many office spaces. Matt Chadder 40:30 Absolutely. Yeah, I totally agree. Unknown Speaker 40:34 I noticed on some of them that there's not chairs and tables there as far as and there's areas to walk around. And the fact that you don't have to have a chair, the chair equals me or meeting equals chair, let's table doesn't necessarily have to be. Yeah, just to build on that. I really love the concept of movement and meetings, whether that be incorporating more outdoor spaces, or as Rosemary pointed out, kind of forcing participants to move because they don't have a chair to sit down in Unknown Speaker 41:12 color of the Unknown Speaker 41:15 of the furniture, and Unknown Speaker 41:18 just how inviting some of that can be for the eye, Unknown Speaker 41:23 and the plants and having nature and Unknown Speaker 41:27 so it's pretty cool. Elise Keith 41:32 The match shown is a whole bunch of spaces that are fancy, like beautiful, well designed, well funded spaces. The things I'm hearing from folks here are not necessarily high dollar changes, right? They're not necessarily high dollar changes of stool. Furniture shaped a different way the plant, high dollar changes are are highly recommended when available. But perhaps there are some things you found that you would bring back into your own space. Matt, do you have any other points. Matt Chadder 42:10 Thought, go back, I got to tell you at least the one thing about the budget is really interesting the spaces that I showed you in the hospitals, they were one third the price that they normally paid. So it's not just it's not about throwing money at this, it's about being smart. And what I find really interesting is that sometimes people give you advice, that means you've got to spend a lot of money. And that's not the point. Like in the restaurant, it should be about how much you how much people spend with you, not necessarily how many people you have. So meanings of the future. Just a couple more slides here. These are two things I'd love to share with you. Because we asked people what they want from their staff. This came out from LinkedIn last week talked about the skills that people need. And on the left hand side, it talks about creativity, collaboration. And that's really critical. So meeting spaces need to fuel these assets that people need. And this was from the World Economic Forum a couple of years ago, but I think some really relevant left hand side. And it talks about people wanting creativity, intuition, initiative, complex problem solving, and all of these kinds of values that businesses want. That's what meeting spaces should be, should be doing. So meeting spaces shouldn't get the best out of human beings. My last slide, Elise, and I don't know whether this is the right thing, but you know, I'm in Britain, so probably I'll never see you again. But this is my ideal meeting. I don't even need to explain this Unknown Speaker 43:52 is one of those moments earlier this week. Matt Chadder 43:54 One of those moments. Unknown Speaker 43:58 Last like that, that's nice. Elise Keith 44:01 All right. So um, so now we're gonna switch mindsets rather dramatically. And quickly, we're gonna talk about, let's say each and every one of you is going into a room with a VIP who is looking for your advice on how to modify the meeting spaces in which you work. And while in our groups here, you can just say exactly what comes to mind top of mind. First thing, no problem. We're all friends. When you go and present to that VIP, maybe you want to have your thoughts together in a slightly different way. So given what you've learned and your own experiences, we're going to invite you to go together, you can spend eight minutes and consider that scenario. You have an opportunity to influence the creation of a new meeting space for some of your favorite groups, given what you've learned, what advice Would you give that design group about building the meeting space of the future? open discussion? Eight minutes. Any questions? All right. Enjoy your chat. All right, Welcome back, everybody. Welcome back. So to, as we all come back, we would love to hear, um, if you were to summarize the discussion that you just had in your group in three words, what would those three words be? And I'm going to invite you to just go ahead and just type those into the chat. So three words that summarize your conversation. And Patti, the, the groups were discussing everything that we've learned, and if they had to then give advice to a VIP about how to apply that as they were designing the meeting space of the future, what would that what would they say? Higher mat ASAP? Success mat success, design for outcomes. outdoors, even in Canada? I love that. I love the outdoors. Don't do I hybrid? Yeah. So hybrid that some people are in the room and some people are online. Oh. Ask listen and be open. Fabulous. Cut flexible customization. Yeah. So hybrid in so I'm curious on this last one, Tom Flynn hybrid. What do you what do you mean by hybrid in that context? Or somebody who was in the group with Tom, because I don't? Oh, there he is. Tom Flynn 46:55 Yeah, sorry. I was on mute there. We were just talking. It was right. At the end, we were wrapping up and saying how you with people in different presences, sometimes you have a group of people that have returned to the workplace, while others are joining remote and independently. It just making sure that there's Unknown Speaker 47:13 an opportunity for everybody to participate equally in a hybridized meeting environment, both virtual and physically present. Unknown Speaker 47:22 Excellent, thank you. Elise Keith 47:25 Does anybody have something different that they'd like to highlight from their discussion? Elise Keith 47:36 I'm not sure what Matt's doing. Oh, it's a it's a Playmobil guy. Awesome. So that actually Matt Chadder 47:42 meetings because we have trouble sometimes. And he's called Hank. And you know, you talked about flexible and changing things we bring hang him because he's hard. And he sorts people out. So all the time we try and make things fun, and you're all laughing, but like he at the moment, he's got sanitizer in his hand. But that activates people. And it's all about bringing people to life and engaging them because then they're they're on point and they deliver more value. Elise Keith 48:10 So that that comment about people being in the office coming back into the office, whether they should be in the office is actually a really interesting comment. Because if you have been watching in the news, several high profile, companies have chosen to shut their offices down entirely. So Pinterest just paid like a 25,000,060 $5 million fee to shut down their office and go remote. Whereas, by contrast, other companies are using this period to double down on their investment. Amazon is investing 1.4 billion in new office space right now. And in the Pacific Northwest, worked with one of our local bankers and they said, you know, the midsize and larger groups are using their low interest government loans to invest in growth and expansion. One of the factors that makes that decision so interesting for folks who happen to be in charge is that the folks who are in charge and the folks who need the office space or maybe not the same, so here's another study, I'm going to drop in here. And then Matt, I would love for you to just share some of your ideas on this. So this study is recent look at millennials and where they live, and it turns out, most of them are now living with their dingdong moms and as the parent of two older teenage boys, this makes me scared. But man, we share Matt Chadder 49:41 with very senior business leaders about office space. And what we found is that people that are managing office space generally are in their 50s. They've done a lot of traveling for 30 years, they've got a lot of air miles, and they've missed an awful lot of being at home. And what we found is they For the most part, like working from home, then you talk to 20 year olds who've just come out of their university courses and schools and colleges, and they want to be in the office, they want to escape their parents home, they want to be in a place where they can collaborate, where there's culture, there's energy they can learn. And we found this really strange juxtaposition. For me, I think that it's really easy to think about it from a pragmatic financial point of view, if you're in your 50s, maybe you can save a lot of dollars by shutting an office. But if you want to have a business that's Fit for the Future, you need amazing spaces that young people want to be in, they want to be engaged, they want to be excited, they want to grow, they want to learn, because they're the future. And I just think that you've got to balance both. Elise Keith 50:49 So is anybody else Elise Keith 50:51 in weighing that decision with your group right now? But whether to stay all virtual, or go all virtual or go back into an office? And if so, feel free to unmute just contribute. Patty Brandemeir 51:07 My husband's business is, is in this discussion point right now. And what he found was that one of the offices, if they set it up more like a we work, you know, so they could do the social distancing, Matt, to your point, everybody who was 30, and under comes in, and others don't, but what they're missing, and this is when they're, you know, it gets right to the heart of meetings, is the multi generational learning that happened when people were in the office, and how that is impacting their business in some very interesting positive ways, in terms of business development, and these really rough time, but it's also impacting their ability to anticipate longer term business. so fascinating dynamics without being together in a space, but who's using space? Unknown Speaker 52:03 Thank you, Elise Keith 52:05 does anybody have anything different? Phil Cullen 52:08 So for us, it's been interesting, we are back in the office actually, since June. And we've labeled our staff and broken it up into essential non essential staff. But that's really to support our activities going on in our gym right now. But we've received a lot of different feedback. And we have areas of analytics that have guys that are really focused on Super tech type stuff, and very much intrinsically motivated, where we have others that are extremes. And one thing that's been a challenge is to make sure that we adapt to everybody's kind of needs and desires. But some are very much more comfortable in an open setting where some of the ones that you would perceive that were younger, but are more to themselves, they know I'm okay, I'm okay at home. And so it's really understanding the individual and understanding though that you're not going to have a one size fits all solution for everybody. And you have to have enough flexibility in the adaptivity to allow people to feel most comfortable in their environment, whether that's at home, and or work. So we're navigating that right now. The one thing that's been important for us is actually testing we're testing every other day. So having that peace of mind is a big influence. Unknown Speaker 53:27 Thank you. Elise Keith 53:29 I think that brings up some interesting opportunities. And I'm wondering, Matt, if you have any comments on the folks who choose basically because because we all have our preferences, right? And it's not just generational about whether we go into the office or not. I know my team I've had my team would rather never go into the office and the other half would absolutely just claw their way happily back into any space with real people. But as a business leader, and as somebody who's influencing the dynamics in my business, when I have to when I get an opportunity to bring people together? I don't know I no longer have an office. So how should how often should you call people together regardless? And how would you go about finding the right spaces for that? Matt Chadder 54:22 Different people need different things. And you also have to manage the fact that what people want isn't necessarily what's best for them. Like I said, to begin with human beings aren't necessarily the smartest creature on the planet. So what I think it is, is it's not all about home working and it's not all about office working, it's something in between, and you've got to encourage the people that need to be there to get the right stimulation. And, and you've got to give people the choice. And what I would say is like you know, if you think your own home, if you've got a favorite seat that you always sit in, when you're in your dining room, your great room, your kitchen, if you've got a favorite seat and you always sit in that seat, the challenge Is all your old. So mix it up, you've got to do things differently, you've got to swap around, and you've got to supply. And that's the best way of looking at it. And if you're that person that's got a favorite seat and you get upset when somebody sits in it, you're in trouble. Elise Keith 55:19 I didn't invest an awful lot in my favorite seat. I do love it. I can add Unknown Speaker 55:22 one more thing that we found in our just internal stuff is that when you do have some stuff that's in the building, and some staff is at home, one of the challenges was the fear of missing out what am I missing by not being in the office? And that was a real thing. And we had to talk through some of that, not saying that we have an answer. But what we had to do is really make sure that we stepped up the efforts to communicate, you know, properly to the group. Matt Chadder 55:47 I think that's such a great point, Phil. And actually, what I would say to that is like, if you've got a really great office space, people will just want to be there. So yesterday, we had an announcement here with the UK Government asking people if they could be at home to work from home, we asked all of our staff, everybody, but one said, we want to stay here, we want to come into this office, we like being here, we feel safe. And I'm you know, it was fantastic for me to hear that because they want to be in this building. Elise Keith 56:16 And the FOMO point that Phil raises is huge, right? So one of the number one calls we're getting that lucid meetings is from people who've gone remote. And they found Okay, yes, we can use the buttons, we can click that we can click, we understand how to make all of that go. But now we are meeting all of the time. So people are overcompensating for the lack of serendipity for the lack of presence and just environmental awareness by talking to each other all day. And many times they meet, meet, meet meet, and then they say, okay, no, wait, we're not going to meet any more. We're going to go on slack. And we'll just do an asynchronous typing meeting all day. Right. So it's it's an overwhelming attempt to compensate for what we get naturally when we were just in space together. Patti, I saw you nodding vigorously. You were seeing that too. Yeah. All right. So we are coming to the end of our time here. Does anybody have any any questions for Matt? Gordon Mullan 57:16 I have a question. So one of the things that I'm investigating, because that's what I teach about sort of working together models, it's about relationships. It's about those effective remote relationships, when you can't physically be in the same space. And what we're seeing with the development of VR and AR and virtual events, and virtual expositions and all of this sort of stuff, I just want you to if you've got any views on sort of good examples, bad examples, advice that you would give to people that are designing these virtual events, and how you design those virtual meeting spaces and those virtual buildings? Matt Chadder 57:58 I think actually, that's a fair question. I mean, we're a human agency. And we are motivated by understanding what people really need and human beings generally need physical contact, and they need, we're social creatures. However, what I have seen hands down is that it comes down to the host and the way the hostess manages the whole meeting. I mean, I think Elisa is a total expert of this. And, you know, she's not paying me to say that, but like, what we do know is that it really comes down to the person that's holding all together in projecting it with humor. And as best you can try and keep people to keep their cameras on. Sorry, Kim, because I feel like I've picked on you that you know, where they've got got my cameras on and they're engaged in the see people doing humor works, well bring as much emotion as passionate as possible. That's why Hank, is it? Yeah. Gordon Mullan 58:50 I was thinking more about some of the things I've seen where you can sort of, you've kind of got room builders have virtual room builders and things like that. Because the things obviously, you can do when you don't have the constraints of physics, essentially, whether there's any weather, I just wondered if you'd looked into any of this sort of designing those virtual spaces, I'm thinking more kind of the VR type environments. In what you've looked at, if you haven't, that's fine. It was just curiosity. Matt Chadder 59:17 You know, what we briefly looked at it, but we haven't found any particular evidence that suggests that you get a better outcome. Okay. It's, that said, it needs to be a tidy space. So you know, I think with the Lisa's masks behind her, there's always something that's curious. And I think that can make a difference, you know, but we've not seen any particular evidence that suggests that productivity is any better for those, you know, ar or VR rooms, as opposed to being engaged which is far more relevant. Gordon Mullan 59:49 Yeah, I agree. I mean, this is this is my complaint about a lot of them. You know, I want to talk to a living breathing human being and say, I absolutely support Lisa's stuff. I mean, it's On the first piece of advice I give people turn your damn camera on. But when you've got blocky avatars or floating little video thumbnails and things in VR spaces, it just, it just doesn't. I'd like to say we are social creatures. And I think until you can get effectively to the holodeck or something close to it. Yeah, I don't think it's gonna work. Okay. Elise Keith 1:00:22 So that said at, and and tying into closing up today, this is one of several sessions we're doing on this series in a couple, I think, October 22, or something, we're doing one on experimentation with Dr. Chris Lordy. And one of the things we know about meetings is that what is always going to be a little bit more engaging is novelty. So I do know some VR folks who are taking the opportunity to create meeting rooms, like for one of them, they had a terrible, terrible event happened, and they're going to do an after action review. And they created a virtual meeting space that looked like the Red Wedding from Game of Thrones, right? They were like, Well, that was they got some different results, right. So they had an opportunity to experiment and insert novelty I, I think that's a terrifying idea. But you never know what kinds of novelty might might spark a momentary change for you. And I know some folks like Tom, Glen here worked for worth a group that did some amazing training using VR. So there are there are things there. But like all things with meetings, it is back to the purpose, right? What are you trying to achieve? And how do you achieve it with the people that are with you. And one of the things that we love to achieve in these calls is make sure that while we have a great group here, there are many more people who were unable to make it because of the Sick Kids or who didn't know about it in time or anything. So let's go ahead and summarize what we've learned here for them. We're going to do something, what we call it basically inspired by the McChrystal group and others bottom line up front. So I'm going to invite you all to in one phrase or sentence share, what is your key takeaway from this event that you want to share with those who weren't present? And you can either type it in the chat or I would love to hear you unmute and and tell that story so that we can share that story with those who couldn't be here today. Elise Keith 1:02:40 one phrase or sentence, what's your bottom line up front? For those who could not attend? Elise Keith 1:02:52 Rona says, where we meet matters influencing how we meet? Elise Keith 1:03:02 Norman, do you have a Do you have a bottom line that you would speak for us? Norman Wolfe 1:03:08 I, I was just thinking about it. Because there was so much I took away I think, I think the bottom line is Unknown Speaker 1:03:19 this, the space influences the energy field in which we're operating. And the energy field influences the way we behave. And so you know, and the words that keep coming up, Unknown Speaker 1:03:37 fit for function. Unknown Speaker 1:03:40 You know, I was really moved by the, Unknown Speaker 1:03:44 the jet engine picture, not because it was a jet engine, but because of the natural organic way it emerged to meet the needs of the participants. And when I think about designing meeting rooms, or meeting spaces, I don't even like the word rooms, things to match. When we design meeting spaces. It's what is the intention of the group that wants to emerge out of that gathering? Unknown Speaker 1:04:14 Thank you. Gordon Mullan 1:04:17 I would say design your space for the outcomes, emotions and behaviors that you want. Norman Wolfe 1:04:24 So that's so much more succinctly than I did that. Gordon Mullan 1:04:28 One of my superpowers Elise Keith 1:04:32 and they know did Would you like to share? You can decline if you don't? Elena 1:04:38 Yeah, um, for me, I think and if I'm going to share with others, which I will, because this was amazing. But going back to the fundamental mentals of everything, you know, from the research that Matt talked about, but even just what is the purpose of the meeting, just you know, Fundamentally, and then have fun. Elise Keith 1:05:04 Have fun, what a wonderful takeaway I love. I'd love to have fun at being part of that. Judy, did you have a I typed one in? I think just, you know, design enhances the meeting purpose. So think about, you know, purpose and the rationale for why you're there and try to get the most out. I mean, I've been working remote for for many years. So I've been on the side where, like, I've been the only person who's been remoteness in a space full of a bunch of people. And just, you know, thinking about how that could work better thinking, you know, just about how you design that. And I agree with Matt that, Elise, you're, you're just fantastic at this. Unknown Speaker 1:05:49 Thank you. Unknown Speaker 1:05:52 Thank you, Claudia 1:05:54 Claudia. I saw you pop on the video. Does that mean you would like to share? Oh, thanks. Now I just I was talking to my son previously, so I had to leave. I know, I just want to thank you, Elise. And Matt, because this was this was such a great takeaway. I've been working from home since March, and I've been trying to find a good space and I, I keep moving around the house. And, and, you know, just sharing that with my colleagues, because many are so so exhausted with having the the poor technology, unfortunately. So the key takeaway from this meeting for me today is just a reminder that space matters so much, and how emotion really brings the best out of how people are feeling and sharing that in their own space. So thank you. Elise Keith 1:06:51 Thank you. And I guess that sounds like Claudia must not be that old if she's moving around the space and has not landed on that favorite chair. So like there Yes. And no litmus test? Do you have a final share for everybody? Or take away man, Matt Chadder 1:07:11 real privilege to speak to all and you know, thank you for your time and such like, and I love being able to share some of our thoughts here. And I think you just phrased it so brilliantly, they're like, you just have fun, you know, meeting should be fun. We always think like, you get the best out of a human being when they're comfortable. And they're in their happy space. You know, that's when that's when good stuff happens. And meeting rooms should should provide that you shouldn't feel like you're imprisoned. Yeah. Elise Keith 1:07:38 Yeah. All right. Thank you so much. So following up what you can expect from us, I will send a follow up email with a link to go ahead and give us some feedback. As I mentioned before, this is one of 10. So this is the third session, we've run this way. If you've been to the other two, you know, they're all entirely different, completely different presenters, completely different tech, different energy. The next line we are hosting will be with Dr. Allison wood, Brooke, she is a professor at Harvard, Graduate School of Business. And for those of you who know Allison, you know, she shoots rainbows out of her eyes and her being at all times, which is great, because we're going to be talking about a hard topic, which is diversity and inclusion. So diversity and inclusion in meetings plus Rainbows, is our next session. And you are all welcome and encouraged to join us for that the link is there. And then afterwards, probably tomorrow, I'll send you all an email with a link to the recording, the edited chat, all of that kind of information and the resources that I grabbed from Matt, and the Padlet. And if you are not yet enrolled in our course, where you can go and get access to all of these things, I'll send you a coupon for that too. This recording will be available for free for 10 days, and the other sessions are all free as well. So with that, Unknown Speaker 1:09:05 um, Elise Keith 1:09:06 thank you guys, thank you so very much for coming and making this a rich experience for us all. And thank you, Matt. Thank you. Nancy Settle-Murphy 1:09:14 Thank you, Elise and Matt and everyone else. Good to see ya. Unknown Speaker 1:09:19 Bye. Bye. Unknown Speaker 1:09:27 Ah, Elise Keith 1:09:28 all right. Excellent.