Eli Hoisington, Co-CEO, HOK

This transcription was made in part by an automated service. In some cases it may contain errors. 

Eli: [00:00:00] I mean, imagine looking at a physical model on the table that might be eight or 10 feet long and something people can get their hands into, but then you flip a switch and you've got a headset that then layers data. How much square footage, what's the cost? What's the future? That's my optimism. I think we'll get there.

Bobby: Welcome to Barriers to Entry, a Design Innovation podcast on the Surround podcast network. This is the show where we obsess. Over the not too distant future of the architecture, design, and creative industries and the ideas, tools, technologies, and talent that will take us there. I'm Bobby Bonnet, chief Marketing and Revenue Officer at Sand Out Design Group.

And as always, I'm joined by digby co-founder Andrew Lane. And Andrew, I wanna start today off with a little quiz for you. Oh wow. So Think Lab just released its 2025 Benchmark Report. I'm aware. Think lab research division of standout design group. You know, they go company to company, designer to designer to identify what's the haps, uh, in the world of architecture and design.

And so, and and that [00:01:00] saying didn't make the survey, I'm assuming Right? We didn't include that tagline this year. Yeah. But who knows? Who knows In the future. Okay. Um, and as I was reviewing. The benchmark report and as Amanda gave us a preview of it before it was um, released to the general public, I was excited to see that there is an AI track now in the benchmark report.

And so I just wanted to ask you, Andrew, if you had to take a guess, what percentage of commercially focused a and d professionals use AI for work today? I'm

Andrew: gonna go

Bobby: big in small firms too, right? Yes. I, I go 30%. Wow. 31% are, yes. Nicely done. 38% say not yet, but it's coming. Yeah. And 31% say no. So we're about a third.

A third, a third.

Andrew: I, the not yet, but it's coming. Group is the really interesting group, and hopefully all 38% of them are listening to this episode. See how I do this segue? Um, because our guest in the chair today is a leader at one of the industry's most prolific firms, Eli [00:02:00] Hoisington, co. CEO, at. HOK is a trained architect starting his career as a designer and project captain at Payette Associates and as an architect at Perkins and Will before arriving at HOK back in 20 Augh five.

Uh, over the ensuing 20 years, Eli's had a major impact on the organization. He was elevated to senior principal in 2014, ultimately, co CEO in 2023. In his position, Eli brings the institutional experience of a designer with the business savvy of A CEO. He's also a measured forward-looking approach when it comes to technology and design, which is a great reason to have him on the show today, Bobby, and I'm sure we're gonna learn all about that as we have Eli, uh, on the pod.

Welcome, Eli.

Eli: Yeah. Thanks guys. Really, uh, fun to be here today and, uh, talk about all those topics. I, you know, just as it were, Andrew, I was thinking exactly those stats. I was like probably 30%. Yeah. Uh, would be the commitment rate. I was interested in the other two breakdowns, the 38 of not yet, but coming.

So, uh, yeah. Interesting.

Bobby: Yeah, and I don't know if this is surprising to either of you, [00:03:00]Eli and Andrew, but, uh, the numbers are about the same for residentially focused firms as well. Mm-hmm. Um, so third, a third, a third. That surprises

Andrew: me. I would've thought, I would've thought resi, um, actually would've had a bit of a different split.

I would've thought there would've been a few more doing it and a few more afraid, like higher numbers on either end. But I'm glad I nailed my prediction there just for everyone. Any thoughts on that? 38%. I think that's just the most interesting number is who's about to, and kind of how they're taking those, those first steps.

I mean, that's actually is why we started this podcast, but I mean, it might even be way to lead in Eli to what we're gonna talk about at h but like, how are you guys thinking about. The people who are just about ready and getting them there.

Eli: If you want me to chime in right off the bat? Sure, I can do that.

'cause I think HOK was interesting in that we've been both in the 38 and the 30, so, so we're definitely squarely in the first 30 right now where we're, we're actively rolling out different platforms and you know, there was this pressure to run right, to be part of the 30. Get, get out, be a first adopter.

And that's, that's been OK's history, right? [00:04:00] We've always run towards new technology and, and, and a couple times we've been creators of our own versions of technology before it came out. You know, we had a crazy, if you go back to the transition from hand drawing to to cad, which now feels like ancient history, right?

But it's really. It's, you know, decades now. HOK had invented its own software before we rolled into the AutoCAD world. Fascinating. Right. Um, which we know still was sort of, I heard vestiges of it when I got here and then explored loss of options and BIM as Revit was rolling out. So we've always wanted to live in that world, right.

We were very technology forward and wanted to take advantage of its benefits. So there was that pressure too with AI as it came out. From a lot of our practitioners around the firm to say, Hey, like, let's just go do it. Right? Uh, we'll figure it out as we go. And I think as we started to explore it, we very quickly then fell back into the, okay, it's coming.

'cause what we realized is there were so many things that came out of how it actually worked. And so we very quickly, as a firm who, um, we have 70 years worth of data and we have a [00:05:00] bunch of our clients that we work with on that side that do data, we realized, oh, wait, wait, wait, wait. We need to make sure that we're controlling this dialogue before we jump into it.

Because you think about it, the, the interesting thing is, is in an AI world, you are only getting as much back as what you can go scrape. That's what some of we talked about, right? You're, you're collecting data to then generate something interesting and the AI's really more powerful with the more data accesses, but often what you were being asked to do is then open the door to your data.

And we said, okay, well we need to, we need to tap the brakes on that for a hundred reasons before we jumped in. So we spent a year. Right. We were, we were ready two years ago and then we spent a year going, working through all the nuts and bolts before we then started to roll stuff out. 'cause we, we realized we didn't want to open that Pandora's box without understanding what was inside.

Andrew: I've never heard it called a dialogue, I don't think before. And I really love that term 'cause it's so, so accurate. I often talk about it. In the context of edit [00:06:00] culture, this idea that everything needs to be constantly kind of remixed. Mm-hmm. Um, and readjusted. But, uh, like it's true that, that, especially with the natural language technology getting so strong dialogue is such a great word to describe kind of the experience of getting the most out of these kinds of tools.

Bobby, I think I jumped a little bit too forward though, right? We wanted to kind. Step a little bit back in history. When you throw stats at me, I just get so excited.

Bobby: A curve ball by the way, you know that 38%, it's a bit of a black box to me in terms of how serious is that 38% about taking the approach Eli just mentioned, which is actually putting pen to paper on embracing the technologies and using data and using platforms in order to, to use AI as an enablement tool for your organization.

Because I think. Part of the problem, and you and I have talked about this a lot, Andrew, is that some folks might use the 38% as an excuse to avoid the conversation or ignore the conversation about AI for a minute. Maybe because the barrier to entry is too [00:07:00] high. Maybe because it's just intimidating from a technology set, maybe because you don't have the right mm-hmm.

Talent and skillset in-house. But, um, really with that 38% needs to be doing is not saying, let's. Dedicate the round table in the corner and have them talk about it once a month and, and in three years maybe we'll figure something out. It's really like, how, how am I challenging my organization? Start to get serious here.

Um, anyway, as you had let in Andrew Eli say you've, you've been at HOK, Andrew mentioned it in the intro for two decades. Just wanna know what drove you to the firm in the first place and, and how has, you know, the firm continued to keep you in such a, a vested place up, up and including to the point in which you became co CEOA couple years ago.

Eli: Uh, 20 years ago, what drove me to the firm is, is the same thing that drove me to sort of those, my first two firms, which was a project, uh, you know, diversity of work that, that HOK had done was doing. You know, I'm, I was young. I still feel young, even though somehow I'm now been here 20 years. I sort of always blink when someone says that, but I was really interested in getting a, a range of experiences, right.

I didn't [00:08:00] wanna do, uh. Project type. I didn't want to do a project scale, something singular. I was super fascinated in, you know, looking at an airport one day, looking at a hospital the next day, looking at something, uh, international one day and something domestic the next. And so HOK was like the perfect platform for that, for me to be curious and.

Easily distracted. Mm-hmm. Uh, I love to be challenged, so that's what drove me there. But I'll tell you what, what sealed the deal was the, the culture. Um, it is, it is a culture of a place that really welcomed, um, someone like me who was young, hugely ambitious and driven to, um, to really advance my career that gave space for that.

And we talked a lot about that. Um, I can remember my first interview, you know, really saying, is there room for that, this great question asked in. Okay, well, what do you wanna do when you get here? Right? Do you wanna be a technical architect? Do you wanna focus on management? Do you wanna be a designer? And I said, well, yeah.

And

Eli: I said, what do you mean? Yeah, which one of those do you wanna do? And I said, well, I want, I wanna do those things. And I was able to hold onto [00:09:00] that all the way up until really my c EShip. And I've, I've had to hone down a couple of those. But, uh, yeah, I mean, I was able for 20 years to kind of be all over the map.

And so the culture right here really, uh, embraces that. So it's, and that's what's kept me here.

Andrew: So you said you, you, you know, really embraced all of the different aspects of being a designer up until you took this role. Has it been challenging or, or what do you bring maybe is a better way to ask the question more optimistically from that deep experience to a very business focused role of CEO, uh, in, in your current seat.

Eli: Yeah. Uh, I think, I think the C EShip is interesting in that you can. Well, it's my belief, uh, maybe others would disagree with me. Uh, but I believe part of your job is to set the definition of your job right, that there's not a preset definition for how you be a Chief Executive officer. I think part of the thing I had to do when the opportunity was presented to me was go home and ask myself a hard, well, what am I gonna do?[00:10:00]

What, what is the, what is the mission that I'm gonna embrace to try and help this company, um, in that role? And so my mission was to really look at how to take this company from where we, where we were. The, the history of a K is intriguing and I think a lot of large firms. In fact, I bet you know, all firms are this way.

There are chapters of a firm's history. So each leader sort of defines a moment, usually around a set of challenges. And so the challenge in front of me was we had become a very, very good firm, uh, right, uh, you know, through the course of the CEOs before me, but I really needed to look at how does coming on seven years, how do I get ready for the next 70?

It was interesting question to ask myself, which is just not look at me as this job, as sort of the, the end for my career, but really to look at my job to steward the company to the next chapter. So why did that matter to me as a designer? Well, that's super fascinating, right? Because all every students saying, how do I design [00:11:00] the firm?

That will be the firm we need to be in 10 years Now that was really interesting to me, right? 'cause I was like, well, keeping it kind of running. That's a job redesigning the firm to be ready for the next 10 years to take on ai, to take on a changing age demographic, to take on new geographies, to take on the international geopolitical situations we're dealing with on a day-to-day basis.

Like that's really interesting, right? Because that's a different company than the company we were 10 years ago. So that really kind of resonated with me as a designer. Like any problem, you look at it and you go, well, we, we haven't even asked all the right questions yet. So that was, uh, that was kind of my perspective on the C EShip.

That's kind of how I view it. Um, and I think that's why having a design mentality really helps with the way I tackled this particular part of my career.

Andrew: Can you talk about, like, I love the way you laid out some of the macro, um, issues that you're looking at, and obviously you're a global firm and that's why those issues hit so strongly.

But design is a deeply local thing. You have little [00:12:00] small to medium to large satellite offices kind of all over the world who are trying to infuse design and the spirit of that into their local culture. So how do you think about kind of the tension between all those different points of running local in the moment?

Uh, boutiques. Organizations effectively that need to then also be a part of this ship. That's looking 10 years out and navigating macro problems on a global scale.

Eli: Yeah, I think my career arc really helped me with that. So I started in a very small town, very quickly, chased my dreams. Ended up in New York City, so went, kind of went from the smallest of smallest to the biggest of bigs in a relatively short amount of time, and then landed out here in the Midwest, uh, in between, and had the benefit of working internationally, building projects in Asia, traveling to Europe.

As well as doing work all over the country. And what I learned from that is, you know, there were, we sort of drifted, God, I would say in the nineties and two thousands sort of into a bit more of a, you could do it from anywhere mentality, right? A [00:13:00] globalization kind of attitude. And what I saw as I started to move around the country and do other work was this drift back towards the importance of local.

You can see it in all sorts of different industries. People wanna, you know, you wanna know your farmer, that you buy your eggs from, you, like the farmer's market. You like the little thing, you like the little shop that's downtown. And knowing the people who are making those goods. And I think design is much the same.

They, I, I saw this trend towards, I. People wanna know the kind of people that they work with, uh, and they wanna understand that those people are invested in their community. So what we did, and one of the first things actually was kind of crazy to be honest with you. Um, got the C EShip. My partner Susan and I got together and one of the first things we did is we opened four new offices in Covid.

Right. And I think people would be like, you are outta your mind. You are doing what? Mm-hmm. Um, but we had a really interesting synergy of things that happened. We didn't open offices because we said we wanna open new offices. We said there, there are markets that are really important. And what happened in Covid is everybody moved to new locations.

So [00:14:00] we kind of had this beautiful Venn diagram that happened that was like an overlap of talent in really important locations tied to their place. Those happened to work with a business model we were trying to build around, which was more geographic diversity, which has kind of always been our story for 70 years.

So yeah, if you'd come to any other leadership and said, Hey, here's what's gonna happen. You're gonna have a global pandemic. Everybody's gonna be retracting, you're gonna lose 30% of your market share in 90 days, and then you're gonna open for new offices. They'd say You're nuts. But we looked at it and said, look at it this way.

Frame the design problem a different way. You have. 15 to 20 amazing leaders who have moved to new locations. They happen to know their place better than anybody. Let's design the firm around them to get ready for what happens after the pandemic. Then you'd go, of course you'd open those offices. Mm-hmm.

Makes perfect sense. So it's like, how do you frame it? Right. So that really, uh, we had some pretty wild success out of that, which was fantastic. Um. We, uh, certainly anticipate [00:15:00] continuing that trend. So we build our organization. Coming back to your first question around wanting to be deeply local, identifying leadership in those local places, and then kind of giving them the autonomy to do what they need to do.

So the, the big company is the big firms like us. What we, what, what I believe in. We're there to be the support mechanism so that, you know, you give those leaders autonomy and permission to fail. The big company's there to prop 'em up in case they do, it's not rocket science like, you know. Um, and that tends to work pretty well.

Bobby: When I hear your perspective there, Eli, it sounds as though you've got, there's an angle of optimism in terms of how you lead the firm in terms of how you think of development the firm. If we're to put optimism on one side of the spectrum and realism on the other side of the spectrum.

Mm-hmm. [00:16:00]

Bobby: How about with technology?

Are you a technology optimist? How do you approach this big, broad word that we'll start to dive into a little bit more?

Eli: Hugely optimistic and I think technology has been incredible all along through my 25 plus years now. And, um, I used to, I, I still love, you know, I still occasionally will spend long nights rolling up sleeves and get into the model and playing around and, and my teams usually hate me for it because I'm kind of sloppy.

'cause I just like to kind of get in and make stuff, um, which is fun. So they kind of me about it. No, I think, I think te how do you not be optimistic about technology when you've gone through the arc of where we've gone to, to where we've been? So, um, I'm optimistic about the way it's gonna influence how we build things.

Um, continuing to upsize the scale of what we can do offsite, how we can modularize, how we can adapt to a lot of the pressures we're seeing in terms of construction, cost, timeline, um, those issues. I think technology and how we draw and build is fantastic. Um. I, I mean, I'm really interested in ar as much as I am with ai.[00:17:00]

Um, I really think the augmented reality is gonna be something that could be, you know, in my mind I've dreamt of the ability to walk into a design presentation, you know, traditional, which still resonates, right? Drawings, models to kind of craft of what we do. But then to be able to interact with a client and augment all of that with live and, and variable data.

I mean, imagine looking at a physical model on the table that might be eight or 10 feet long and something people can get their hands into. But then you flip a switch and you've got a headset that then layers data. How much square footage, what's the cost? What's the future? Imagine phasing showing up on top of that.

I mean, I. That's my optimism. I think we'll get there. Uh, the construction firm's already doing it. You can walk around site and see stuff that's not there layered on top of the built world. Why aren't we doing it in our every day? Right. It's scale list data is just data. So yeah, I, I mean, I could geek out on this forever.

I'm super optimistic about it. Um, I, I love that we don't know what's coming.

Bobby: I'm wondering, you know, in your [00:18:00] role

Eli: mm-hmm.

Bobby: Do the possibilities, does the pace of change from a technology standpoint. The hardware, the software, the, the data. Does that keep you up at night? I'm sure it keeps folks in the firm up at night in terms of like their, the way in which they're developing.

But for you, where you're setting the tone, where you're setting the expectations, the pace when you're dictating, Hey, we need to be measured in our approach in terms of how we're leveraging ai. Can it keep you up at night? Can we crushing from like a, what do we do next? Or are you just in a place where you're like, let's just go, let's just try, try stuff out and see what happens, see what breaks, and then we're, we're a little bit better tomorrow.

Eli: I have to be both. Um, my, my default is a ladder, right? My default condition is run at it and don't be afraid to fail.

Mm-hmm.

Eli: It's design, right? I mean, think about when you're doing a design process, how many bad ideas do you come up with before you share the three good ones with the clients? Like a lot, right?

And that's kind of fun 'cause you're testing and throwing stuff out. And I think we should approach technology much the same way. We shouldn't be afraid if it fails. Right? We shouldn't wait for perfect. On the flip though, I do gotta run a company, right? And I have an obligation, I have a [00:19:00] fiduciary obligation to run this company well.

So what I've been working with my team and my CFO and my, my legal team and everybody else is to build a piece of the company that is research focused. That can be a higher risk part of the company. And in that is where we're funding. We have funding for software exploration and AI exploration and other things like that so that that can live independent of the day-to-day operations of the business.

Um, obviously there's synergistic, but um, you know, again, it's a design problem, right? If, if that was embedded in everything we do, if that was embedded in your projects, you would've a hard time justifying it.

Mm-hmm.

Eli: Because your projects would say, well, I only have a fixed amount of fee that I can spend on research.

But if you. Think about it as a different part of your company. It has a different set of metrics. So that's kind of what we've done here.

Andrew: So you used the word synergy, which I think is a great buzzword, but also, uh, really accurate in terms of, uh. Uh, kind of this bigger conversation. So I've said a number of times that I think design and creative professionals are, are sort of [00:20:00] uniquely positioned in the world of technology because of the points you just made that you're really used to spitballing a bunch of ideas, throwing things out, trying things, iterating until you get to the right result.

That's very much the process of building and integrating great technology. But to your other point. They can't be burdening themselves with these things. On the scope of a standard project, you've actually created a separate division for it. So these things are running in parallel in spite of the fact that there is a synergy there.

So how do you think about driving that technology piece into the firm? How do you. Decide where to make a play. How do you decide when to, you know, uh, open a Pandora's box or let a cat out of a bag? I dunno if we have any other unleashing metaphors that we can. Those are all good cliches. Yeah. But how do you think about that from a macro standpoint and, and try like you have to test these things at some point.

Um, how do you think about how that comes to life?

Eli: Um, small test groups. Uh, I would tell you that the first year, that year I was talking about at the intro where we kind of [00:21:00] like ran ahead and then pulled back. Uh, we learned a lot 'cause we kind of got it wrong to be quite honest. And I don't mind telling everybody that because I don't think, I don't think anyone had it all figured out.

We initially thought. Our first round of exploring with that little, the subset, the, the initiative that I was talking about, we kind of imagined that we would be able to build our own and frankly, we, we started trying to build our own language models and our own ais to sort of be the control, right?

'cause we were very, as the more we learned about how much they were trying to have that dialogue and how much of our data was going out, we were like, well, mm, we wanna control it. And then you very quickly understand why the world is doing what it's doing, why data centers are growing, why every why this is such a big thing.

Because you actually need a lot more data than even we have with 70 years of data here that we can control. So we ran at it and then we kind of, I. Failed, frankly. Right? But we learned a super valuable set of lessons. So it's like, what is success, right? Is success being able to roll out technology after the beta team goes and does it, or is success learning so you can [00:22:00] adapt what you're doing to the next round, which is all we did.

So what did we do? To your point, Andrew, is we said, okay, well. We need smaller teams. We need to understand by type. We need to understand what can be released, what can't be released. And we realized we also needed practitioner led groups. Like it couldn't just be, you know, our tech guys and, and the people who were sort of living the technology.

We needed practitioners involved day to day. So we adapted. Um, we really decided that's how we're gonna move forward, and now we're seeing more success. So what we're doing is we're testing smaller bits. I'm not trying to do the whole thing all at once. So, you know, we're rolling out the large language models, we're rolling out little bits that help with the day-to-day meeting stuff that's embedded into some of our operations.

And then we're doing, like a lot of people, a lot of image generation, um, that we're cautiously kind of exploring about how we use that. There's a different subset where I'm really interested in how AI can help us with data. Um, particularly when you think about large, complicated projects, how it could actually start to inform and, and essentially become a commentary on some of what we're doing when we're planning, [00:23:00] but we're not there yet.

I'll just be quite transparent with that. That's, that's still in development, but the other ones have been great. Some of those other early models,

Andrew: how much of what you're experimenting with is kind of inside the house? Things that are tools to enable your teams versus where you're trying to change the client experience.

Eli: God, I would say probably se I best guess 70 30. A lot of it's still in house. Only about, only a little bit of it's still is now outta house. We've had some fun successes doing the outta house with the client interaction. Um, and what we've, you know. What we have taken away is that when done well, and this is the sort of language models as well as the image generation models, it can really help you create a, um, for us it was a much faster front end.

You know, that kind of exploration, visioning some of those early processes, some of that is where we've seen it really, really powerful. We've been able to bridge the gap between. Arbitrary. So going out and finding a bunch of different images and sort of sorting, trying to create a direction [00:24:00] for a client early on actually.

Then building off of our own work and having AI then generate variations and sort of come to them and say, this is a bespoke version of the session we just normally would do with you. That was abstract. Does that make sense? Like. You used to kind of dream about stuff and, and it would be like your Pinterest boards and all this other stuff.

Now it's like, no, no, we're, we're gonna pull thematics based off of our conversations with you and really narrow it in very, very quickly. And we've seen pretty cool results in that. Uh, which then saves time and money.

Andrew: One of the more comical ironies about just that trepidation around AI from the stats that Bobby quoted off the top, is that people are nervous about where to start with ai, but the thing that AI is maybe best at is starting.

Eli: It's a great way to put it.

Andrew: It's such a great tool to get you going when you've got nothing or where you've got very little. It's a real accelerator in those early stages, and I think that that's, you know, one of the humps that that 38 and 31 percents are gonna. Hopefully figure out how to get over quickly.

Eli: Yeah. Yeah. That's a really interesting way to [00:25:00] put it. It, it's, and, and that speed to the front end was fascinating. Um, so yeah, pretty cool stuff. Personally, the, some of the places the language models have been so helpful for me, like my schedule's jammed. It's, you know, there, there are days when. You know, I get in before everybody else and over coffee.

I'm, I'm declining half my day because I'm double, triple booked because people are trying to, trying to figure out, you know, where to fit in something.

Andrew: Thanks again for being on the pod. Yeah, no worries.

Eli: Friday's always usually really good First real, real time experience. I was coming onto a teams meeting and we've embedded one of our A models into a meeting and I was a little late 'cause I was double, you know, double booked and it caught me up.

So as an exec, you know, somebody was like, you gotta be present. You gotta understand when you walk into any situation. So it captured for me, okay, here's the, here's the summary of what you missed. Here's the key topics, here's the thread. So while I'm getting online, I'm getting the briefing of the last half an hour I missed and I'm up to speed in five minutes.

That was a while ago now, but I, I remember that was my first experience with that side of it. And I was like, that's amazing. Uh. [00:26:00] Time and speed, right?

Bobby: If I'm to put myself in the seat of the client and I just have a really exciting, creative discussion with your team, and then the next day I'm getting, or you know, figuratively the next day, I'm getting a look at some sort of real world applications in terms of what we discussed.

I mean, that, that's gotta be incredibly exciting as a client. I'm wondering, you're designing technologies, you're designing tools, you're designing processes, you're designing the client experience within HOK, from the client perspective, how do you reconcile with the fact that a client might need to learn a different technology language with HOK versus another similar firm of a similar size that they're RF Ping and and are you designing for technologies?

How do you kind of like think about. Industry standards, if you will.

Eli: Yeah. So there's two questions, Jess there. One is, is how do you deal with the client base? And two is how do you deal with your industry partners? So I'll, I'll take them one at a time. So clients, my advice, be brutally honest. Be really open to ask the [00:27:00] questions and don't presume that they understand what they're looking at.

Right? We get seduced in the, in the a, e, c industry, architecture, design, and construction, because we do this all the time. So we see images, we know what they mean. We see drawings, we know what they mean. Um, we know what an ai, we know what that generation starts to be, right? We're starting to see the little gremlins where you're like, yeah, I know, I know how you got that done.

Um, you, we have to communicate that. And so I like to story tell a little bit, so forgive me, but there was a moment I extremely, one of my most sophisticated clients that I've been working with for a long time, and we've been through all these different meetings and all these different scenarios and I really, you know, in my mind I thought that they had understood what we were doing.

And then I, I kind of, my gut was saying, I, I don't know that we've, I don't wanna trust that, I believe that. So I approached them and I said, I think we need to make sure that you're, you understand this project, it was a huge project, multiple acres. So we went traditional. We just built a model. Models don't lie, they're the oldest [00:28:00] technology, right?

They've been around forever. And I remember the, the client walked in and they went, oh, when they saw it? And I went, what do you mean? Oh, they hadn't conveyed it, right? So the other part of it is, yes, these are amazing tools. Yes, you have to talk to your client about it, but you also need to have the conversation did, was it the right tool to explain what was going on?

And sometimes going back to the tried. It's still the best thing to do. These technologies are great, but they don't always win industry partners the same way.

Andrew: Going back to the at scale and the localization of the business. Yeah. Piece. How do you teach a lesson like that at scale, right? Because that's, that's a really important creative and business decision that has happening with a ton of moving pieces in every, in individual instance where that decision could be made.

How, how do you teach people to think about that?

Eli: I just think you need to tell those stories and translate that as much as you can. It was a great book, uh, which I read a a while back. It's pretty old now. I wanna say it's at least a decade old by Malcolm Gladwell called Blink, where he, he talks about in the [00:29:00] whole book, and it's a quick read.

You know, you could probably do it over a layover. It's a short story, uh, set of stories, but really the under, you know, the overlap of experience and your gut. And, and my gut was what was yelling at me in that moment. Right? And I didn't, couldn't put my finger on it, but I was like, something in the last 20 meetings has told me that I'm missing a part of the communication.

Um. It happens that it overlaps with what we're talking about, which is technology and just knowing that you have to sometimes, um, all the tools, use all the tools at your disposal. How do you teach seeing that moment? Uh, no idea. Uh, that is a really, really good question, but that's the, that's the kind of art I think, of being in a design profession is knowing, matching the, the client to the tool, to the idea is where you'll get to in a fantastic.

Um, and if, if that were easy, Andrew, you'd see a lot better architecture and interiors out in the world. And we don't, yeah. I mean, just to be honest, it's

Andrew: like, to keep the analogy train rolling, it's [00:30:00] right. Like when you, sometimes, when you have a hammer, everything's a nail. Yeah. So now, now that we have these hammers like.

We still need to be smart about where and when to use them too, which I think is the, sort of the next, it's for the, for the 30%, uh, you know, uh, to understand where and when is really important. In

Eli: 2007 or oh eight, I wanna say, you know, Revit was sort of coming out of its, uh, infancy and into its heyday and I remember we had a, a project we were doing overseas.

The, the geometry I could do. And, um, forms these solid works, some of those early, really robust, solid modeling programs. I remember going to the Revit, which is more of a database, you know, and it was built off of a different platform. It wasn't designed for, uh, the early versions of Revit for that complexity.

And I remember talking to the tech guy at the time and they said, and I said, well, I can build this, like, I can physically make this geometry and Revit won't make it because of its rule set. This is the hammer, right? Oh

Andrew: yeah.

Eli: Everything's a nail. And, and the comment was, we'll change your design. And I said, I said, [00:31:00] no.

Right? Absolutely not. And then that's where we then figured out how to get Rhino to overlay into it and sort of build those other parametric tools so that we could script it and then have outputs that then fed in that were, you know, dumb. At the time, 'cause Revit really wants, wanted to be smart. It wanted be a data collection tool that we could tag and all that stuff.

I was like, well, you know, I'm not gonna change the design. So yes, just 'cause everything looks like a nail. Don't hammer away. Put the hammer down. Uh, and that's a, that's a lesson learned for a lot of folks. I think

Bobby: you were chatting about, um. Leveraging AI to, to capitalize on data, if you will, or, or appropriate data.

Mm-hmm. And then leveraging AI as a design tool as well. Is there tension within the firm in terms of, uh, the power of AI to be generative from an image standpoint, from a design standpoint? And how, how do you navigate that? 'cause I'm sure you're able to attack these challenges with your designer hat on as well.

So what, what's the approach you take to drive adoption or to even manage, uh, rules around how AI is used within the firm?

Eli: I rely my team a lot. We're so blessed here at [00:32:00] HOK and others in a love, a large firm is, um, you know, wave in-house legal, wave in-house consulting. And honestly, that's where there's some stickiness right now.

Um, when you think about where is your IP going, is it self generated? Is is the, is the data that's being scraped? I love this analogy and it came from a conversation with one of the engineers at Google, which is describing AI as this kind of massive scraper that just goes out there, right? That, that's where all the energy is going is powering all this data scraping that happens to, to create the good image.

What are you scraping? Is it under an NDA? Is it not? Is it a good IP that you can go grab or not? Is somebody gonna say, Hey, can you, and and you see this with the discussions with artists and other things about how is that, uh, information, um, you know, really getting accessed. I mean, I foresee a future where you could see this kind of huge pendulum swing back the other way.

Everyone locks all that down. They say, I don't want you coming and collecting those images to create your own. So, um, we debate it. I mean, we have good conversations with our legal team is can we do this, can [00:33:00] we not? Um, our enterprise systems folks have good conversations, you know, making sure that, you know, we, we have controls and firewalls between.

Data we want people to scrape even in house and not, so yeah, there's total tension. It's a brave new world. Right? When was, when did we start talking about AI as a, as in the business?

Bobby: Not long ago. Yeah.

Eli: You could probably count it in months. Right? So, um, yeah, we're still figuring it out, to be honest with you.

I mean, and so we're, we're cautious. By, um, which is why we're in that 30% and we're not sort of like fully adopted, and I think caution is good.

Bobby: It sounds to me like there's been so much evolution in the way in which design happens at HOK just in the last two years. Mm-hmm. Facilitated by tools, dictated by expectations in the [00:34:00] client side, probably pushed forward by the early adopters and the trendsetters within the organization, and then under your stewardship as well as somebody who wants to embrace these technologies.

So if all of that change has happened in the last two years and you, you know, with your mindset joining the firm, we're thinking, well, HOK was a lot different 10 years ago. I have to make sure I'm thinking about the next 10, the next 70 years. Are there ways in principle that you imagine HOK is going to design dramatically differently five years from now?

Do you have that roadmap in front of you where you're like, this is where I want to get to ultimately, and some of what we're developing, some what we're focused on will allow us to get there.

Eli: Do I have that figured out? Um. I think I, and I don't, I would love to continue to integrate, uh, the various parts of our firm into one comprehensive package.

I have lots of trains of thoughts. Uh, love to kind of be all over the map. Uh, it's the way my brain works. Um, I also hate surprises, like I really, really do like with every fiber of my being. So, um, you know, I don't wanna walk meeting and be surprised by. You know, how does it, [00:35:00] you know, a schedule change or, or we didn't understand a, an impact of a procurement or a system didn't work out or anything like that.

So I think that's where you build the bigger your team is and the broader it gets, the more information you have in there. So I would love more data. I. Bobby to, to layer into. I kind of hinted at with the AR discussion. I would love to see that become commonplace, that kind of beautiful live updating as you're iterating on what those ripples that happen through a design project are.

When you start doing design changes that would, because the faster you can get to that, the faster you can make informed decisions, right? The faster you can sort of create options, um, would be really interesting. So, um, and I'd love for it be not just. Construction data, but you know, other data that we could really look at that is tied to time.

You know, if there's an operational change that happens because you've moved a piece of one piece of the building from here to there, I mean, to have that really live update, travel distance just changed. That means this [00:36:00] person's hours are gonna change. That means this is, think about that kind of stuff that we all think about.

When we draw on design, but we don't have a way to capture it. So what have we done in the short term to get that? Well, you just build a more innovative scenario firm. So you have structural line engineers in house, you have mechanical engineers in house, you have lighting engineers in house, you have policymakers in house, and then those people become accessible to your team.

I like to build on that. I don't know who else needs to be a part of it, by the way, but that's what I like to build on.

Bobby: One of my knee-jerk reactions is that's a lot of folks to be involved in decision making and, and yeah, in your, in your chair, you can decide, oh, I'm gonna make a decision. Yep. Okay. You guys gotta listen to me.

But on a project basis, how do you guard against that going forward where you don't have too many variables or too many folks with skin in the game who can ultimately make a decision or say, whoa, wait a sec, that's not okay. We actually gotta go in that direction.

Eli: It's like any collaboration, right? I mean, it's super easy to not collaborate.

The best way to do, uh, anything is just to be unilateral. Uh, not ask anyone's opinion. Uh, so then it's a scale, Bobby, right? Do you ask two [00:37:00]people? Do you ask five people? That's what good leadership is, is deciding who you engage and how much of those inputs to take into effect. I mean, that's kind of it.

Andrew: The one thing that I think is fascinating that you've spoken about multiple times now is this idea of this like real time data feed that can be visualized, that can be adapted, that can to your point, allow people to make decisions more quickly. Mm-hmm. This is an industry of intermediaries, right?

There's designers, there's construction, there's contractors, there's, you know, there's architects, there's clients, there's the people who sell you all of the materials to do those things. Um, the people who resell all of the materials to do those. Things. Um, so there's just a lot of different parties that, that live data has the potential to be flowing through.

So you also spoke earlier about the idea of making sure that you have the right proprietary walls around certain systems and whatnot. Mm-hmm. So how do you kind of balance the thinking around making sure that you're controlling the things that you need to control, but also setting the. The [00:38:00] course for a future where the amount of different players who are bringing data to the table can actually be interoperable.

So I'm really talking about open versus closed design philosophy. Curious where, where you're thinking on that respect.

Eli: I think this is at, at its. Core, kind of like the job, right? So the, my job is to think about what you know and explore ideas of things that might be like, and think about how that could affect how we structure the company, the kind of sub companies we have, the kind of expansion we look at, uh, the kind of reinvestment dollars, how do we research, et cetera.

The other side of my job is then to say. It was a failure or it's not ready to go because there was too much risk, Andrew. Right. Because we couldn't change it enough. So, um, I think it's okay to dream and set the vision, but then it's also okay to say it's not ready to roll it out. And there's a lot of that still going on.

I mean, at the end of the day, you know, we're still doing drawing sets. You know, we're still for good reason. We're still waiting for, you know, our partners to run through their [00:39:00] estimation and schedule updates. Um, that full integration hasn't happened. I'm optimistic it will continue to, uh, so yeah, I don't know if that answered your question.

I think, I think I kind of dodged it actually. You're like, how do you balance that? I'm like, well, I don't.

Andrew: Yeah. You also mentioned Revit before, and Revit was maybe the last tech that kind of like ate the world. Yeah, and I think that there's a lot of people in the like early stage. Tech world right now who are trying to eat the next iteration of the world.

But that's a really hard thing to do. Like if you were to actually study why Revit caught fire and did what it did. There's a lot of things that had to go right for them and a lot of sort of moments that needed to break correctly. And now I think we're just dealing with an even more complex space where there's more potential and more players who are being funded to try and come in and be the next.

I think that that path is gonna be one of the more interesting. 'cause you know, we talk about the 30, 38 and 31 that's like, do you wake up in the morning and talk to chat GPT? But when we start talking about this on like a. Fundamental. How do we change the way in which [00:40:00] decisions are made across this industry using data, AI and ar?

There's a there, there, there either needs to be a world beating player or a level of interoperability and collaboration that we're not currently in a position to be able to achieve. So. That's sort of my really interesting macro thought around where we're at. So I don't know if you need to answer that question, but I think that that's, and a seat like yours, a really interesting conversation Yeah.

To be a part of.

Eli: It's a great conversation. I think you're spot on at the end of the day. Doesn't, I mean, you still, I. You still boil down to, I forget it was whether Bobby, Andrew asked me. It was sort of like, how do you make a decision with all those different players? You still need talented human beings making a decision.

Uh, great conversation we had with one of the, the big tech guys who, when we were really exploring, okay, what is ai? And, and they said, well, it's not, you know, it's not really. Truly, I, it's not truly self-aware yet. And, and I was a little put off by the word yet, but, um, you know, right. I was intrigued by the fact that it, it, you know, it's [00:41:00] not thinking we still need intelligence, right?

You can, the, these kind of great moments of decision making and sometimes a decision a design team makes, which is so cool and so much fun is realizing the question that's been posed is totally the wrong question, right? We're analyzing all this and this has happened in HK with we, how do you get the best output on this particular piece of land?

And AI can run iterations for you. You can generate different options. You can have parametric models, it can drive it, you can do all that. But the, the, the idea that somebody, a peer, the human being would ask, is it even the right piece of land? And then have the foresight to then pose a question of saying, well, what if we propose to a client a different real estate strategy?

We're, we're not, that's not under threat yet. There's still space for that. The tool just didn't, didn't allow you to analyze your question, the new question you've asked better. Now, if it becomes self-aware and it can ask that question, then I'm gonna go open a bar in Mexico and make my ties and [00:42:00] get, I think that'll be the end if it becomes self-aware.

Andrew: Everybody needs a backup plan, right? Yeah, man. Exactly.

Bobby: Um, it's an Iron Man suit at the end of the day. That's how, that's how we've been thinking about using data. Uh, back when it was at Sirius xm, we, we built a data model for content recommendation, but we had a team of curators who knew how to contextualize that, that audio that we were cutting.

So, you know, that's how we think about it. Bobby, it's, it's your time. Yeah. At the end of each show, Eli, we like to give our guests the opportunity to talk about what's happening, whether it's, you know, at the firm, whether it's a project y'all are, are wrapping up, or if you do have that bar opening in Mexico where folks can find it.

Andrew: Yeah.

Bobby: When's happy

Andrew: hour?

Eli: Uh, I think it's a few years out still. It's a few years out still. Yeah. Um. A 2K is gonna continue doing what we've done for the past. We've been super fortunate these past few years. We've gambled, as I mentioned a few times on some strategy ideas about new locations and new investments at a time when I think a lot of people were hunkering down and, um, it's paid huge dividends.

Um, we're gonna keep doing that. I don't have aspirations to grow for growth sakes. I have operation aspirations to grow for a very specific reason, [00:43:00]which is I'm deeply worried about the next 10 to 20 to 30 years of. Talent. Somebody asked me a really interesting question. You said sort of like, what's up?

My focus is talent people. I really want to hire great people and give them opportunities to be successful at h ok. Somebody asked me a question like, what keeps you up at night? Is it ai? And this wasn't you guys, it was a different conversation I was having. You know, you worried about losing market share, having to cut staff because AI is gonna take the job.

I said, oh God no. I said, what keeps you up? I said, 2008. So what do you mean 2008 keeps you up? I said we lost so much talent in oh eight pre all of this, my peer group, the folks that I graduated with, the top 10% of my class, of which I was fortunate to be a part of, 80% of them have left the industry.

They've moved on to other because they had to, because oh eight decimated my peer group. You've got an aging generation that's gonna eventually just do physics, find its way out of the industry, and you've got a young generation who is orate [00:44:00] talented and you've got this gap. So, um, I'm hopeful that all this stuff helps us mind the gap.

So what's happening right now? Yeah, we're, we're busy. Um, I anticipate us continuing to grow. I think a lot of firms are gonna continue to grow. I think it's gonna be an awesome time, uh, for people to really, uh, expand their careers and, uh, and take on really interesting things that they haven't had a chance to.

So that's my sense. We'll see what the next couple years have in store, uh, in terms of certainty versus uncertainty, but I'm really excited and optimistic. So that's kind of like, that's what's happening with us is we're getting ready for that, and I think everything's getting bigger, bigger, harder, and more complicated.

We used to joke, you know, that, that we, we've made a joke about my executive team. A billion dollars doesn't buy you what it used to. I mean, that is now not uncommon where we might have had one of those in the firm, uh, a decade ago. It's, you know, you have one in every office now. Um, and that changes the calculus completely on how you deliver a project that [00:45:00] scale.

They're just bigger, harder, more complicated, more challenging. So what do I see more of that? I see more opportunities for young people coming in and uh, for leadership opportunities. I see more and more challenges ahead as we try and build buildings that can withstand change. I just think that's gonna be a huge, a huge challenge, and I don't think anyone knows what that really looks like.

We can just sort of look at our day-to-day,

Andrew: always interested. If there's any advice or any resources or anything that you're using to kind of keep on top of your learning curve, anything that you'd share with someone who's just interested in how to build their innovation muscle, explore new technology, try something new.

Where, where would you point people?

Eli: I think my, my basic advice to any leader or aspiring leader is make sure you realize how much you don't know. I see a lot of leaders fail because they start to rush to an answer, right? They wanna be like, I know it, I'm gonna make an executive decision. Right? Because I know, and it's like, actually, you know, you probably don't.

Mm-hmm. So be curious and have trust in [00:46:00] the people that are around you. I mean, trust to question them, but also trust to have lots of conversations. Um, I'd say, Andrew, the way I keep fresh. Whether I like it or not, most of my day is spent talking to people. Mm-hmm. And I spent a lot of time just setting up phone calls and, and getting opinions.

And sometimes I'll get 10 opinions that are all the same and I'll still make a different decision. Right. But being curious and being willing, really willing to reach out to a lot of different perspectives before making a decision is how I stay informed. The further I've gone in my career, the more I realize I don't know yet.

Um, and so, um, that's become key to me is just surround myself with super talented people and people who aren't willing to tell me no, or that they think I'm outta line, um, or that think that I should be going a different direction. I might thank 'em for that opinion and still do it, but you know, you need, you need that, I think, to be successful.

So. That's my advice. Love that.

Andrew: Eli, thank you so much for joining us today. This was a great, uh, great conversation. Uh, a really great exploration [00:47:00] of everything that's going on both at HOK and I think in the industry at large. We just appreciate the time and you know, whoever, the other three meetings that you canceled to be here today, we, we.

Appreciate your AI helping you make those choices for us. It was, uh, it was so great to have you.

Eli: That's true. I have yet to ask it to do that as organized my calendar for me, but I think maybe that's the next step is be like, yeah, take a pass at it. Now. I've had fun chatting with you guys. I hope it's been helpful.

Again, it's a, you know, I can only talk through my perspective, which is. At times feels all consuming, keeping this place, keeping my job. But um, I hope it was interesting.

Bobby: Yeah, it was. It was. Eli, that was a great job. And, and as always, we'd like to extend a big thank you to the Barriers to Entry Production team, our producer, Rob Schulte and everyone else back at the studio by standout podcast.

Barriers to Entry is part of the surround podcast network. Make sure you go to surround podcasts.com, that's podcasts with an S, smash the follow button. And join us next time as we continue to break down. The barriers to entry.[00:48:00]

Eli: I do hope you take full advantage of the blue behind me to some lasers or something. Or something interesting. You know, it's an easy one for you to swap out.

Bobby: I can already hear Rob taking notes.