Episode Transcript
Tim Carroll (00:00)
Welcome to Culture at Work, the podcast that explores how to maintain a strong corporate culture in a rapidly changing world. I'm your host, Tim Carroll, inviting you to learn from industry leaders on how to build an exciting culture to bring people back to the office and inspire them like never before.
Tim Carroll (00:21)
On today's podcast, we have Kaelynn Reid Kaelynn believes furniture is more than just functional. It's the emotional layer of space that shapes how we feel, connect, and perform. With over a decade of experience across interior design, sales, research, and foresight, she brings a future-focused lens to workplace strategy and product innovation.
As a certified futurist, she leads foresight workshops, authors trend reports, and creates tools that help organizations turn emerging insights into meaningful direction. She's also the creator and host of the Alternative Design Podcast, a show that helps designers see what's ahead and explore how we design the built environment for a better human experience tomorrow. Welcome to season three. Let's get to it.
Tim Carroll (01:17)
Kaelynn, thank you so much for being with us today. Hey, first and foremost, I want to start with how much I love your podcast, Alternative Design. It's fantastic. And given the opportunity to even talk to you, I want to let you know I could listen to you read the dictionary. It's if you haven't listened to Alternative Design podcast, run, don't walk. It's the best. So thank you for joining us today.
Kaelynn Reid (01:40)
Well, thank you so much for having me, Tim. What a great compliment. Thank you so much. it's been a fun, fun five years, honestly. It's been a really good run.
Tim Carroll (01:48)
It went by fast, I'm sure for you as well. It seems like yesterday is when the first episode came out, but we'll get to more of that in a But I would love start off like we always do, and this season three, episode one. So we're gonna kick this thing off and we're gonna do it the same way, which is How do you define culture?
Kaelynn Reid (02:08)
Mm-hmm. Good question. I think that culture is the energy of an organization. So we're talking about the way people interact, it's how work behaviors are getting shaped. It's really the humanity behind the corporate mission or the corporate agenda, right? So I mean, it's all those human-centric elements that are underneath that.
Tim Carroll (02:28)
Energy, that's a word that I have yet to hear in a description of culture. I love it. It evokes this idea that there's something bubbling and there's something palpable happening within an organization. And I think that that really does speak to what it is. I mean, it is the personality of an organization,
Kaelynn Reid (02:46)
Yes.
Definitely.
Tim Carroll (02:48)
So you are a design futurist.
Kaelynn Reid (02:51)
Yes. Certified futurist, yes. Yeah. Okay. So I essentially have a magic eight ball and it sits on the corner of my desk and every, so I wish I had that. Yeah, it'd be really cool. So a certified futurist is basically someone who is certified in something called strategic foresight. It's a really fancy word, right? I know, very fancy.
Tim Carroll (02:53)
Sounds awesome. What is it?
Yes, that's what it sounds like.
Yeah,
Kaelynn Reid (03:15)
So, but strategic foresight
Tim Carroll (03:15)
I love it.
Kaelynn Reid (03:16)
is data informed, it's evidence based. And I say that because I always get the jokes about the crystal ball and the magic eight ball and all the things, but I really just want to underline that it's very much a research methodology. basically it's helping us to look at the future more systematically. And so when I mean systematically, I mean more holistically.
I think for our industry, know, foresight is going to really be a way that designers are going to start to differentiate themselves, particularly as we look at things like AI and, different technologies that are kind of on the rise that there's been a lot of conversation within the design profession about, how do we stay relevant? How do we make sure that we stay ahead? Right. I think that foresight and being able to look at the future and offer our customers and our clients ⁓
really something that's like a look around the bend, I think is going to really help us to continue to differentiate ourselves from, you know, the HGTV DIYers that, know what I mean, that everyone was freaked out about, you know, 10 years ago and the AI, you know, push a button, whole floor plans get designed kind of a thing. So we know that designers are already tasked with creating spaces for the present and, you know, making sure that they stand the test of time. But imagine if we could actually offer more certainty to our clients about,
the evolution of the future in terms of how are the spaces that they're investing in going to change? That's something that I'm very interested in as a futurist. And what I look at is how does politics and the economy and technology and public health all influence the way that perhaps an office or a hospital or a university classroom, how does that change the behavior in that room? And therefore, how does that change the products that help shape that human experience?
Tim Carroll (05:04)
I have to say for my designer friends out there, HGTV was the worst thing to ever happen to them. The unreasonable expectations that have been created because of that channel, with the design community, I'm sure. So you mentioned data enforced. So where do you go to either get your data or create your data?
Kaelynn Reid (05:10)
So.
It's true.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, so I am often looking at news articles. So we call signals of change something that's concrete, something that's happened in the world. So it's not something where you and I are sitting at the dinner table and having an opinion conversation about something that's going on. In order for to be a signal of change that is one of the many data points that I've used, it has to be concrete. It has to have happened. You would have had to have seen it on the news.
⁓ you know, something that you read with your coffee that morning in the Wall Street Journal or something, right? So additionally, I'm looking at things like white papers. I'm looking at patents. I'm looking at, you know, search engine history. I'm looking at surveys and statistical data. It's both, again, fancy words, but qualitative and quantitative research. So I try to balance as much as I can the numbers with, you know, there's a lot of things even happening just within our culture, like
quiet cracking that kind of came to bear this year that, you know, is a different phenomenon that we're seeing trending that that is happening. Yeah. So, you know, if you recall a few years ago, it was quiet quitting, you know, so we have employees that were basically being disengaged. And so now we have this quiet cracking, which has been defined a couple of different ways, but
Tim Carroll (06:24)
What is quiet cracking?
Kaelynn Reid (06:40)
I really see it, Tim, as this deep fracturing that almost hits at a trauma level, where you have employees that are feeling trapped in their position, whether it's due to cost of living or financial means, that they're feeling really strapped and really just trapped in their job. And so what that does is it actually creates a trauma response. And so we're seeing people showing up to work with these deeply embedded trauma responses.
And it's something that I think we'll have to not just design for, but I think address as we continue to move forward.
Tim Carroll (07:14)
Okay, so not to go down a tangent, but we tend to do that sometimes. So how would you recognize quiet cracking and what would an employer do to change the direction of that quiet cracking?
Kaelynn Reid (07:26)
⁓
So it's a great question. I don't think there's a one size fits all. If we're learning anything post pandemic, it's that nothing is a one size fits all solution, right Tim? But what I would say is that some of the signals of quiet cracking that you will see is the disengagement. It is the, you know, just feeling really beaten down. This person, you know, might feel like they are just getting the bare minimum done at work and they're not.
inspired to go above and beyond. They're not inspired to come into the office. It could be a real struggle to get them to come in and socialize with their coworkers or with their teammates, right? So the interesting thing about that disengagement layer and sort of the pieces that are all, you know, laddering up into this like discontentment, dissatisfaction, disengagement, is that it's actually translating into bottom line numbers. So
What we're seeing, think, for the first time is that corporate leaders are going, hey, this is a problem that's not just Sally's issue. Like, this is actually translating to a productivity issue for me, which is therefore a bottom line cost problem for the organization, right? So it's actually impacting efficiency, productivity, innovation, all things that, of course, our corporate leaders are wanting to see flourish in organizations. And so I do think that in order to address it,
I think it requires a more holistic approach. I've seen a lot of folks in the news that are like, throw a wellness program at them. Just get them to do yoga, do free lunches. It'll be fine. We're not talking about that, right? So, I mean, we're talking about truly needing greater levels of resources. know, some employers are actually offering financial counseling, you know, in the midst of kind of what's going on in the economy and sort of the shifts that we're seeing there.
Some employers are really offering just again, more resource centric environments for the workplace. So what I mean by that is that when you step into the office, you're getting more from the office from a resource standpoint than you would even at home. That's how you start to attract flies with honey and you get people to like want to be there, right? Because if I can do the same thing from my sit to stand desk at home that I can in the workplace, then
it's really not a compelling argument for me to want to go in, right? And so employers are recognizing that and they're really looking at what is in my tool belt moving forward that I can offer as a place of, know, some people are really drilling into wellness. There's wellness resources on site. There's healthcare on site, the proximity to food and amenities and all sorts of things. And like this experiential component is really what we're seeing people want to prioritize.
Tim Carroll (10:08)
Great topic and it feeds well into the fact that your podcast goes through a bunch of different categories and agendas and it's really vast. I mean, even the last episode that you had was about creating senior care or senior living at universities. Sign me up.
Kaelynn Reid (10:15)
Yeah.
Tim Carroll (10:31)
Talked to my wife, I was like, that sounds perfect. When it comes time, that sounds like something I'd like to do. I think that's awesome, continued learning and all that. you have a wide range of topics. so tell me about the podcast and who is your target audience that you are wanting to attract?
Kaelynn Reid (10:32)
it's fine.
We are mainly for designers and for creatives. Anyone who has influence in the built environment, I would say, could find something in our podcast. So we started in 2021, ⁓ right during the height of the pandemic. There frankly just wasn't a lot of inspiration to be found in the design industry at that time. It was a very low point for everyone. And so we wanted to create something that offered a little bit of hope.
and perhaps a different perspective for the design community. So we started really looking at out of the box ideas, right? So that's kind of where the alternative nature of the show kind of comes into play, where we wanted to look at different things that were happening outside of our industry and really just crazy wacky ideas that you wouldn't think have any relevance to design or to the built environment or the way that we design these spaces. But really,
when you start to look underneath the obvious layers, there's actually some continuity, there's some parallels and things that you can start to connect the dots. And so really, we would take things like probiotics for buildings. And we would essentially turn that into a valuable insight for the design industry on how we might challenge perhaps some of our cleanability standards, maybe in healthcare. That was kind of at a moment where everyone was trying to reckon with
you know, how do you not over sterilize a hospital? How do you not over sterilize in the midst of COVID? And, you know, we're kind of seeing even now post pandemic, I think there's been a real shift in what we believe in terms of bleach cleanability and sort of people sort of challenging that traditional notion. And so we love challenging the status quo. We love challenging the way things have always been done just because of the way things have always been done and seeing if there's something better.
Tim Carroll (12:35)
Okay, we're gonna break away for just a quick message and we'll be right back after this.
Let's get back to culture at work.
Tim Carroll (13:26)
the one thing I love about doing a podcast is that I get to learn things that I had no idea that were out there. I mean, had a brain coach on, what in the world's a brain coach? We have a futurist on today. I mean, what's a futurist? What have you learned in five seasons of doing this that you had no idea about when you started this journey?
Kaelynn Reid (13:49)
I think from five seasons of looking at all sorts of different topics, I think that what I have learned is that The future isn't something that just happens to us. It's something that we shape actively. And I think that by looking at things that are outside of our industry, when we can connect the unexpected dots that no one is connecting, I think there's real magic there in terms of
know, design then stops being about furniture and finishes and materials, and it becomes much more about creating experiences that matter. And so I think that having that empowerment to look at these different topics that again may on the surface may not make sense, like why putting senior living in a university setting? But when you dig underneath that and you look at, you know, the similarity in the generations and what they need and, you know, the loneliest of it, and you look at
all these different things that as a futurist, I'm supposed to look at to connect the dots, it really starts to make sense. And you can really start to make fantastic experiences. And that's really what the built environment, that's what placemaking and design is all about. So again, I would say that it's something that the future is something that we can shape by looking at these ideas and saying, I'm to put one foot in front of the other. And even just by being inspired by this and seeing if there's a way that I can implement it into my project.
⁓ I have a lot more hope for the future knowing that I am, you know, as a designer and that we as a design profession are change agents and actually have a say in it. It's not something that we have to be passive in and just watch the world roll by and, you know, we don't get to shape it at all.
Tim Carroll (15:26)
you seen the design role change over the past, I mean my gosh I would just say even five years, but five to ten years, how have you seen that role change?
Kaelynn Reid (15:33)
Yeah.
So it's a really interesting question because it's something I've been thinking a lot about. And it goes back to, again, the conversation around AI. so what are we saying that design can do, and what can it not do, and what should it do? I think the biggest change that I have seen in the role of a designer is all about experience at the end of the day. So we're moving away from space as being these.
rigid, static containers of activities. Think of the office as just the container of desks where people go to work from nine to five. And really seeing it as designers have a key role in choreographing experiences in the built environment. And that's so much at a different scale than your traditional space planning, or again, FF &E, things that we traditionally touch.
I have designers that have talked to me about going to place making summits where they're talking about the future of cities and understanding how, what an office is in proximity to, whether it's a grocery store or a movie theater, is actually part of their purview. When I was practicing, that was never part of my purview in terms of my lens and my scope of things that I was responsible for. And so I do think that
we're seeing the role of designer expand into almost this UX type of role where it's like you are supposed to understand what the experiences are of the people and the users in the space and you're choreographing them. You're making the built environment responsive to their needs. And increasingly, Tim, I think, just my crystal ball.
I think in the next five to 10 years, we're going to be moving into spaces that really know you. Like the building knows who you are and you walk in and you do your handprint and ergonomically the desk shifts up to your, you know, exact preferences and the room temperature changes and the lighting in your particular area switches based on whether you're doing creative work or collaboration or heads down. So I do think that it's about this orchestration far more than it was about
pick blue or green and make sure that the blue or green color in the office, you know, makes sense. And, you know, you have the right desks and the space types are all ratioed out. And so I do think it's very different now.
Tim Carroll (17:58)
You know, I agree and I do think that where we're heading is more for the office being a collaborative and social hub, really some, like a living breathing thing every day, week, month, year that changes. I want to get more into that in a little bit of what you just said, but I really do believe that that's where we're heading, if not there already.
Kaelynn Reid (18:23)
Yes.
Tim Carroll (18:23)
Getting back to culture a little bit, how do you think having a design futurist approach can affect the culture of an organization?
Kaelynn Reid (18:32)
think that when you look at foresight and you look at all the different ways in which you're collecting data and you're analyzing, know, again, whether you want to say it's an alternative design approach or you want to say that it's a futurist approach, again, looking at different sources of information that you wouldn't traditionally look at inside of your own echo chamber or within your own newsfeed, I think it gets us beyond checking the box, right?
It's different than, you know, does the space have collaboration rooms to asking far deeper questions about what actually inspires people here? What's actually going to create, you know, serendipitous conversation? What's going to get, you know, Margot and Tim to, you know, to have a conversation, you know, over coffee? Do they feel like they belong here? Are they proud of where they work? So I just, I feel like when design pulls from these unexpected places,
We just were able to create more authentic environments and authentic spaces to the people inside of them. And if we look at culture, what we said earlier about it's the energy, it's the personality, it's that it has to be about authenticity at the end of the day. And so it moves from it not being about ping pong tables and the mural on the wall. And it actually goes to how do people connect in these spaces? How do they trust each other? How do they have a shared sense of purpose? It's just much
deeper when we can start looking at the why, the underlining why behind human behavior. And that's what I think foresight and really alternative design is taking that approach of really looking deeper.
Tim Carroll (20:08)
I want to make sure that I underscore something you said there, because it's really, feel very, very important. And that is something I think we all are struggling with these days. You mentioned Echo Chamber of our own newsfeed, and that is a curated newsfeed for you based off of what you, and so you're getting a lot of info. We all are getting a lot of information directed at us to just
kind of confirmation biased ourselves into whatever we're thinking. And then we have such a disjointed country in where we all think and that if you don't think like I do, we can't connect. And I agree with you. I think good design can help create spaces for connection.
Kaelynn Reid (20:39)
Bye. Bye.
Tim Carroll (20:58)
and that we can get out of that echo chamber and actually spend time together getting to know each other aside from political views or social views and just really have a connection. And that's somewhere we've gotten away from. And I do agree with you. I think good design can help facilitate that. I also believe that happens in the office. So, you know, the office matters. We need to get
Kaelynn Reid (21:19)
Yes.
Yes, agreed.
Tim Carroll (21:24)
back into the office where we can have those connections, separating ourselves only makes us build up more walls. And so I agree with you. And I just want to make sure that that's underscored because I think what you said is really, really powerful.
Kaelynn Reid (21:31)
Right?
Yeah, and I think
to your point, it's more critical than ever. If we look at some of the statistics, we see that people are less likely or less inclined to connect with someone who doesn't have the same belief system as them, even at work. And we see that there is almost a social skills gap that certain, some older generations are saying that Gen Z due to the pandemic or
or having this bit of a gap in social connections and just how to of do some of that work. And so I do think that we're at a time and place where it's never been more important for the built environment to be creating an atmosphere where people can connect. Because I mean, to your point, we're more divided than ever before. And I think that in order to get past that hurdle,
⁓ it really is about, you know, understanding that design can be that first vibe, that first energy, that first feeling that you have that you feel safe to have a conversation with someone. And I mean, there's so much data that's behind it, Tim. And we talk about trauma informed design, talk about neuro-inclusive design, we talk about sensory design. All of those things designers have so much data now than we've ever had before to be able to use that to create a groundwork.
for people again to step into a space and feel welcome and feel like they can actually put their guard down and have a conversation and be their authentic self and feel like they belong. No, I'm not going to sit here and like, you know, sugarcoat this and say it's all about the design. It has nothing to do with HR or the culture of the organization. I think we're past that binary conversation of, you know, for a long time it was folks really believed it was about HR and for a long time people really believed it was all about the design.
I think you would agree, Tim, that this has to be a hand-in-hand approach. But there is such a big responsibility on the built environment to deliver that first feeling when you step into the door.
Tim Carroll (23:26)
100%.
Totally agree, totally agree. People make up their mind within five seconds, whether they wanna work for or work with a company, and it's storytelling, right? We gotta tell that story. I have one more question, and I feel as if you have touched on this a lot throughout, but I'm gonna ask it anyway just to maybe wrap a bow around this thing. As a futurist,
Kaelynn Reid (23:40)
Yes.
Mm-hmm.
Tim Carroll (23:59)
I would be remiss if I didn't ask you what's the future of the office and what is it going to look like?
Kaelynn Reid (24:05)
So I think it goes back to something that we said earlier, and I can expound upon that a little bit. So I think it really is about spaces not being rigid. They're not containers anymore. They are responsive. And that will be a combination of people and technology in terms of how the built environment is expected to adapt. And so what do I mean by that? I mean that.
designers are going to be conductors of experience that are orchestrating things like light and sound and movement and interaction opportunities in the built environment in the way that it feels alive. You said earlier that it was a living, breathing thing. And I can't agree more. think that even space types, I hate to say this and I'll probably get hand slapped for it, but I think that we probably are going to see space types have to change.
⁓ We've seen that there's been a lot of, know, if we can just find the right amount of space types on a floor plan and the right rooms, you know, that are calculated and are based on occupancy and they're based on numbers. I low key think that's about to go out the window, Tim, because I mean, we need spaces that are doing double and triple, sometimes quadruple duty. And so I think that instead of having, you know, we have two conference rooms and we have a break room
and they're all these separated experience, or excuse me, separated rooms, I think that we'd have to start thinking about how we can create these micro-experiences within the same room, in the same environment. And so therefore, when you think about space types, just as a check the box and you you've got it on the floor plan, it's great. I just think that we're missing the opportunity for something that's more fluid and something that can adapt to
what I think corporate leaders are actually asking for, which is how do you have an office that can flex with how many people are coming to the office that day? What are the needs of the teams that are showing up? What are the needs of the humans that underlie those teams? And I think that requires a level of flexibility that's like beyond casters. You know I mean? Like we shouldn't be talking about casters as like a
level of adaptability anymore. Like I really think we need to be talking about how do we create the built environment in a modular form that can truly change based on the needs of the moment and that truly responsive design.
Tim Carroll (26:29)
personalized workplace experience. And I love that idea. know, we in this industry are dealing with very similar things than say, oddly enough, like the NFL. The NFL is desperately trying to get people off their couches and into the stadium. And how are they doing that? They're creating personalized experiences for those individuals. And the more personalized it can be.
things connected to your phone that change and adapt as you move into a space, it's going to be, I agree, where this thing is at and how we're going to really take the workplace to the future. Haley, thank you so much. I really, really appreciate it. Been looking forward to this conversation for a long time. So thank you again. And if you haven't listened to Alternative Design Podcast, run, don't walk. It is fantastic.
Kaelynn Reid (26:57)
expected.
Agreed. Agreed.
Tim Carroll (27:17)
whether you're in the design community or not, you'll get a lot out of it. Hey, maybe you'll end up deciding where you're gonna retire when you already retire, you'll end up going to Arizona State and living there on campus. Caitlin, thank you so much.
Kaelynn Reid (27:27)
There you go. Thank you. Yeah.
Thank you, Tim, so much for having me. Really appreciate it.
