Michael Leckman, Principal, Diamond Schmitt Architects
Sam Horton, Learning & Development Consultant, Diamond Schmitt Architects

Talk Description
What does it take to consistently develop emerging professionals into great architects and designers? At Diamond Schmitt, that question has led to a deeper challenge: how to scale the judgment and expertise of principals across a growing, distributed team. Traditional approaches—redlines, one-on-one mentoring, in-the-moment feedback—are valuable, but are limited in reach and hard to scale. The firm began exploring a different model: one where knowledge could be captured, shared, and reused to support both learning and design excellence.

In this session, Principal Michael Leckman and Learning & Development Consultant Sam Horton share how Diamond Schmitt is evolving Diamond Schmitt University (DSU) and their Synthesis-powered platform (DSX) into what they describe as a knowledge amplification system. From a firmwide needs analysis that refocused learning on core competencies, to a dual-track model balancing foundational knowledge and creative exploration, to shorter, more targeted content designed for real-world application. Today, leaders can point teams to shared standards of excellence—videos, resources, and guides—and use their time for deeper design conversations, while AI-powered search and knowledge agents make that knowledge easier to access in the flow of work.

The result is a learning system that does more than inform—it extends the reach of expertise across the firm. By continuously evolving how knowledge is captured, delivered, and applied, Diamond Schmitt is building a model for scaling design excellence in an increasingly complex and fast-moving environment.

Speaker Bios
Michael Leckman is Principal with Diamond Schmitt Architects, Co-Chair of the City of Toronto Design Review Panel, past Chair of the Toronto Urban Design Awards, and a Fellow of the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada. Since 2017, he has been championing the KA platform as the core of the studio’s digital connective tissue, the heart of continuing education, and an instrument for positive organizational change.

Sam Horton is a Learning and Development Consultant who helped shape Diamond Schmitt University as a firmwide platform for developing technical skill, design acumen, and leadership capacity. Her work has focused on capturing and scaling expertise through DSX, mentorship, and targeted learning experiences. She holds a Certificate in Adult Learning and Development.

Timeline

00:00 Introduction
03:12 Three Challenges: Build, Embed, Adopt
08:10 Building the Infrastructure: DSX and DSU
10:50 From Adoption Failure to Needs Analysis
14:30 Embedded Learning: AI Search, LMS, and Knowledge Agents
19:01 Measuring Adoption: Surveys and the Miro Board
21:50 Higher Ed Parallels and Mentorship Models
27:04 Helping People Adapt

Q+A
32:20 Q: Change to new model all at once, or a few friendlies first?
34:02 Q: What did the adult learning program teach?
34:42 Q: How did you run the needs analysis?
36:31 Q: Did explorations reveal gaps in fundamentals?
38:11 Q: Why were you resistant to fundamentals?
39:43 Q: How do you bridge home base and other studios?
42:59 Q: Are top universities falling short?
44:31 Q: How did you coach instructors to teach?
49:55 Q: Is there a praise culture or credentials?
51:41 Q: What other metrics show programs are working?

Transcript

This transcript was lightly edited for clarity.

Introduction and the Diamond Schmitt Story

Michael: Good morning. As Chris said, we've been on this journey for a while, but it's great to be here. We were in San Francisco in 2018, and we've applied lessons from 2018, and we continue to apply them. We've learned quite a bit today and yesterday, so we're going to continue to do that.

This is our team: Jeanette Parker, our knowledge management director; Wendy Gomoll, knowledge management manager; and Rowan Davidson, Diamond Schmitt University coordinator; and Matthew, who's our eyes from Vancouver, and you'll learn a little bit about that in a minute. It does take a team to make this work, and we're very fortunate that we've had lots of engagement, but also lots of support from senior administration.

So who are we? We've been 45 years in practice, and as you can see from the top of the list, we've got 300 employees and a very strong senior management team. We started in Toronto around 1980, but we've grown, and now we're across Manhattan, Vancouver, Calgary, and Ottawa. That growth has been really interesting, and it's been within the last 15 years or so.

The firm has also had growth periods. We got to 44 people, and those of you who remember 1991, at least in Canada, know it was a great contraction — we shrunk to 12. Then we realized we needed a diverse portfolio, expertise in many different building types, but also continued design innovation across all of them. Over the next seven years, we grew to 100, then to 200, then we were approaching Dunbar's number — the 150 people who can meaningfully have relationships within your life. Then we grew to 300, right about 2009 — some of you remember 2008 and 2009 — and we didn't shrink, we grew. That was entirely the result of a learning culture, although not a KA Connect learning culture at the time, and a diversity of portfolio.

Management also changed over that period. We started with two founding partners, which got us through into the 90s. In the 90s there was an ownership transition, and we grew to 12 principals between '99 and 2003. The firm continued to grow, so did the ownership group — 20 principals by 2008, 2009, and now 300 people with 23 principals. So clearly we've had measured steps: significant, continuous growth, both of staff and of ownership.

So how do you do that?

Three Challenges: Build, Embed, Adopt

We've learned that scaling expertise isn't a single problem — it's really three different challenges. It's building the infrastructure, it's embedding it in the work, and it's helping people adopt it.

Through the process of developing this talk with Chris, there were a few instances where I said, "I had a dream," and the dream is what you see here. I should say that since 2017, the full gamut of staff, senior and junior, have been contributing remarkably well to DSX, so there's really not an issue with people contributing to it. What we're writing here is DSX, but I think what we really mean is the learning management system: explore it, contribute to it, converse — bring this material into your project talks — and then model the behavior of asking staff to check the learning management system, check the incredible resources you have, before you come and have a conversation about a particular topic, whatever it might be.

A reflection on some building types, because it'll apply in a minute: we've designed performing arts centers, including at Lincoln Center, and many, many higher education projects — that's been the majority of my portfolio. As you know, libraries have become learning centers, so there's a relation between higher education and libraries. I wish I could have updated this stat, but we're 30% more than 10 years in our office — 30% of 300, that's 90 people — and I'd say 15% are at or beyond 20 years. So a lot of retention in the firm.

One of the things we've been doing since I joined in 1988: every week we had a design meeting, an all-staff design meeting. At 44, or even at 100, that was interesting; as we got to 200 and 300, it became more interesting still, but it was part of our DNA to include everyone, to talk about design, and to make sure the least experienced person and the most experienced person could be in the same room at the same time. We also learned, more recently, to embody the principles of our higher ed projects in our own office.

So what were those principles? Places to collaborate, the ability to learn everywhere, to observe others at work, learning. That means glass-wall meeting rooms, engaging in group work, and making sure you have both analog and digital tools for that to happen. I'm sure most of you have made the transition, as we have, from projectors to rooms with multiple screens to assist these kinds of meetings. It echoes very closely what was going on in our higher ed projects.

And what's all of this in service of? Creating community. How do we create community? We make sure we encourage people — and for those of you with utilization-rate concerns, we don't — to engage with people outside their project. We know there's lots of great engagement within a project, but who are all those other people? We have so many great people. I'm on the recruitment team; I've seen every resume of every single person for the last 20 years. I know how interesting they are, and I want other people to know how interesting they are too. So this creation of community, and all the activities around it, is really for that. And then occasionally we all get together at our town hall — in this case, in one of the buildings where we designed a performing arts center in Toronto.

So what's the model, the mechanism, we're looking for? We know traditional mentorship works — it's been working very well for us — but in recognition of Ellen's talk yesterday, and all the other forces we're all experiencing, we want to accelerate mentorship. That model is that both project leads — and I'm trying not to say senior staff, because we have project leads who are quite young and very proficient, and some who are almost my age and proficient too — get a chance to dig into the great material we have: the AI search, the LMS. Both are aware they can refer to that, and then have better conversations about some of the highly technical stuff we're all having to learn very quickly in order to deliver the projects we're working on.

Building the Infrastructure: DSX and DSU

Just a bit of a timeline. We started DSX — that's our Diamond Schmitt Exchange — and in 2017 we started our internal education program, Diamond Schmitt University, in 2018, just after we were in San Francisco.

What did that look like? We had some themes back in 2017: knowledge sharing, knowledge capture, encouraging everyone, because we're dispersed — five floors in our Toronto office, five offices across Canada and the US. How do you make sure the research someone's doing in a Toronto office is being shared with someone somewhere else who may benefit, who probably needs to know it? So: concentrate and amplify our knowledge and capabilities. That was the theme of DSX. Some of you may remember the actual app, before it became a mobile-friendly site. Its purpose was ideas, insight, and resources — keeping a focus not just on technical material, but on ideas that make our projects better.

We learned so much from the intranet maturity model — thanks, Susan, Sarah, and Chris, for guiding us step by step and not hurrying us through it. We also learned that it wasn't just a way to find adoption in the early rounds of KA Connect, but a representation of how you go about cultural change.

One of the simplest, most successful things for us: filling out your bio so people could know who you were. It took us four years to get everyone to fill one out. Why so long? People were uncertain about what they'd be able to say, or were able to say, about themselves. So — vicarious learning. As a result of getting all of that going, we were able to bring in external speakers for Diamond Schmitt University, get people involved in some of our most interesting projects to talk about their inception and how they proceeded, and run different kinds of workshops and seminars — full-scale, one-to-one detail sessions about a particular important element in a building. At the beginning, they started with about half a dozen people attending at 8:30 in the morning, before office hours, and then they grew. Now there are dozens who attend, and we're seeing a hunger for these kinds of conversations in person — though of course they're also recorded.

From Failure to Needs Analysis

Sam: Thank you, Michael. So when COVID happened, it accelerated online learning, but it also created a new challenge. Our junior staff were at home — they weren't in the ambient learning environment of their bays — so we turned to Absorb LMS and custom-built a platform. We migrated our content over, purchased SCORM courses, and it looked great and functioned well, and nobody went there. When we asked them why, it was a common refrain: it's one too many clicks. And that one hurt. It was a hard-learned lesson, a lot of hours put in, but we learned more from that failure than from many of our successes — that at least in our case, knowledge has to be embedded in the work.

So we took a step back and wanted to be more intentional about our learning strategy. Quick show of hands: who here sometimes feels like you're making this up as you go? Good — it's not just me.

We wanted to look to external expertise to understand ourselves a bit better — we knew what was working, but we didn't really know why. So the firm invested in sending me to the University of Toronto to learn about adult learning principles, evaluation, measuring learning, and needs analysis.

In 2022 we conducted our first needs analysis, reviewing our historical data, interviewing our management team, running focus groups across disciplines and offices, and sending out many, many surveys. Some of it validated what we already knew, but there were surprises too. If you haven't conducted a needs analysis before, or haven't done one recently, and you're trying to figure out the next stage of your learning journey — I highly recommend it.

Coming out of that needs analysis, we heard something that really resonated with us: people loved the exploration series Michael was sharing. The design conversations and guest speakers are core to what we do, but they also wanted more access to our technical expertise. So the committees listed here — building science, contract admin, digital practice — consisting of subject-matter experts within our office, were already delivering training in pockets throughout the firm. What we were missing was a cohesive platform and strategy.

Coming out of that, we formed the fundamentals learning stream, where we could equip our team with skills and knowledge to excel in their role based on our best practices. In theory, we had to make those best practices first — so shortly after, we set to work codifying our BIM manual, our drawing standards, our sustainability policies, and having those committees be not just the authors but also the owners of that content once it went up onto DSX.

AI Search, Synthesis LMS, and Knowledge Agents

Then it was our turn, as the learning and development team, to put in some work. Coming out of that University of Toronto certificate program, understanding that traditional lecture-style learning has its place, but active learning is much more engaging, memorable, and worth the time investment as a firm — and it creates community, as Michael touched on — we explored just about every modality under the sun. We run workshops, detailing seminars, labs, tours, mentorship programs — very tactical, very hands-on. As we hosted these events, we were recording them and building a massive library of recorded, structured, live learning. That's the level-four content in the corner.

So when the AI search beta came along, we put our hands up. We were fortunate to participate, and we understood right away this would be a groundbreaking development for our learning library — synthesizing our content and bringing life to the library we'd amassed over time. Shortly after, we got access to the LMS beta, and we started creating our LMS, called MyDSU. I know we're throwing a lot of acronyms at you this morning — thank you for your patience.

We had a choice to make. We could spend the time and production value to create short-form, high-quality video content, but delay the LMS rollout — or we could use the library we'd already built, and perhaps sacrifice some viewer experience, while augmenting and amplifying the AI search. Pulling from those video transcripts, any team member could look up how to do specifications and jump to that chapter of the recorded, structured, live learning. Same for best practices on organizing a drawing set, and many other areas.

That was the trade-off we made at the time, but now that we have the LMS up and running, and we're hearing from all of you about how well that short-form, on-demand, level-five learning is succeeding, it's our turn to start building that out as well. At first it was intimidating — we wondered if we'd have to hire a production crew, camera people — but we took a step back and looked at our inventory: high-quality video embedded in our DSX posts, and our marketing team producing slick, short-form content for an external audience on our external website. It seemed obvious to bring that internally and find how it could fit into our learning paths, leaning on resources we already had. Where we're creating content direct to DSX, we're starting, like many of you, with onboarding and repetitive training like Newforma — thank you, Wendy, for being our first.

Over about a decade of building the knowledge infrastructure, what started as two distinct systems — our intranet, DSX, and our firm university program, DSU — have effectively merged into a singular knowledge ecosystem. That's set the stage for the next phase: knowledge agents.

We got access to the knowledge agent beta not more than a few weeks ago, and we've been having a lot of fun. So far we've created a DSX content checker that reviews the information we have, and a sample library knowledge agent to speed that process up. Perhaps most exciting — liberal with the graphics — is our DS Revit Assistant, built off the huge library of learning content our digital practice team has tirelessly put together from their codified manuals. Our hope is that in a few weeks, we'll be able to give access to this Revit agent to every new architectural staff member and every new student who joins, so that from day one they have access to all of our standards and best practices.

Perhaps the culmination of everything we've been working toward for the last decade is the Synthesis Revit plugin. I know some of you are architects and engineers; if not, you've probably seen someone working through a detail in Revit, stuck on a problem. Without ever leaving the Revit app, they can check our digital practice manual, read our graphic standards, search with our AI search, watch a clip of the exact video they need to answer their question in that moment, and soon they'll be able to query our knowledge agent directly within Revit. That hard-learned lesson from our failed LMS has now come to pass — being embedded into the work.

Measuring Adoption: Surveys and the Miro Board

So: if DSX, back in 2017, made knowledge visible, the AI search made it findable, and the knowledge agent makes it contextual. We were making good progress toward the modern, accelerated mentorship model, as we call it, and we wanted to survey how well it was actually being adopted.

In May of this year we surveyed 50 staff and asked two questions: do you check DSX before a project conversation to prepare, and have you used the AI search to find the answers you need? We were getting ready to roll up our sleeves and do the change-management thing, convince people to come along — and we didn't need to, with our junior and intermediate cohort. 94% indicated they check DSX before going into a project conversation, and 72% had used AI search that past week to find the answers they needed.

We were thrilled with those figures, but — thank you, Chris, for sharing this model with us — we understood, through the lens of crossing the chasm technology adoption, that while our junior and intermediate staff were in that early-adopter phase, our project leads were a little later along the curve, based on our day-to-day experience and the analytics: there wasn't as much visible integration into that seven-layer modern maturity learning model in their workflow.

So we took the questions to our project leads. Michael, in our management forum this May, asked two questions: what are the barriers to exploring and sharing your knowledge, and will you bring DSX and MyDSU into your project conversations? We expected to hear that they didn't have time, weren't thinking about it, weren't on DSX — but we didn't hear that at all. It was much more nuanced.

This is a screen grab from the Miro board from that management forum — I'll give you a second to read it. What surprised us was the care that goes into these responses. You'll see a few questions on how we teach: AI can't teach good judgment, so how do we intervene to challenge curiosity? Who's curating the quality of information inside DSX and DSU? Sure, you can search DSX, query AI, read references — that's all great, but you're not interacting with another person in their mind.

These aren't concerns about technology adoption. These are concerns for the care of the craft. We understood that the same things we're trying to preserve and accelerate — the mentorship culture, design reviews, conversation — are the same things they're trying to preserve. So our challenge now is to help our team understand that these tools, our knowledge infrastructure, can not only preserve but accelerate those things. To do that, we have to help our instructors — our project leads, as it were — adapt to a new learning environment.

Higher Ed Parallels and the Mentorship Models

Michael: We have a deep portfolio of academic projects, and we've been through many eras of curricula — let's call it that. It's not really a style; it's more of a title change. The era we're in now, in our academic projects, is active learning. You've probably all heard of it; some of you may have even experienced it. It's meant to ensure there's group work and collaboration throughout the entire term, not just at the beginning, and to prevent every course from being a sage on a stage, like me right now.

The result was that classrooms were designed for flexibility — different table arrangements, media on different walls, connections between laptops in the middle of the room, and projections on the sides. It was very technically intense, and in some cases it was just a question of making sure lessons were constructed to use the space. If you're an instructor who's had the same deck for 20 years, relying on it, adjusting it a little each time, and someone tells you that you have to completely change the way you're working — there's going to be resistance. One of our clients, for whom we'd just designed a facility with all of these features, realized their staff didn't know how to use the spaces. So they created a lab to instruct the instructors, so they knew how to use the spaces and could adapt their deck and their way of thinking to the new mode. Anyone in higher ed knows there's lots of data about how successful the new mode is — bringing people along was the challenge.

So we thought maybe there's a parallel between what we've observed in our clients' higher ed work and what we're trying to accomplish with the learning management system and the modern learning organization.

I presented this extraordinary, inspiring chart to our management group, and with what I knew at the time, we discovered that not everyone is as fluent in knowledge management language as we are. So we thought maybe we should do a translation for a non-KM audience. We went through every single step — you'll see them larger in a second — but we started by thinking mentorship models one through four, and we were happy to understand we were already there, close enough. What we didn't fully understand was the accelerated mentorship model in five, six, and seven. We also didn't communicate well to the management group that the amount of time spent on at-desk mentorship probably won't change much — what you get instead is the simultaneity of all those levels, not one at a time, not one being the apex, but all of them together. The advantage is that those who are wired the right way will take advantage of five, six, and seven, and the teams that do will accelerate.

Mentorship model one: project-focused design, drawing, and ongoing research, with senior oversight and guidance demonstrating critical thinking. That happens, continues to happen, and has been the success of all of our firms, I'm sure. Mentorship model two: learning within the team and the studio — something we all talk about, that being in the studio lets you hear the dynamic, the tone, and the strategies experienced people use to get through challenging moments. That will still continue. Mentorship model three: communicating the office ethos through drawing, manuals, templates, and narrative graphics — making sure you're codifying all of that. We've started that, as Sam was saying. And then live presentations, labs, workshops, seminars, in support of the office ethos — again, that's all happening. So there's a comfort in realizing a lot of good steps have already been taken. We're well on our way.

Now, representing it as the accelerated mentorship model — this is the content created specifically for MyDSU. We're taking baby steps, but we have a path forward. Accelerated mentorship model two: combining that with watch parties, or having it within team meetings — we've had watch parties for the KA Connect videos, so we know that can work, and we're hoping this will advance the same way. And finally, accelerated mentorship model three: the BIM tool you saw, together with just-in-time support, maybe at a person's desk — doing the research or the search with them and talking it through right there.

Helping People Adopt

Sam: And so our campaign to help people adopt is ongoing, and we've been trying, as Michael said, a few different avenues for that. Interpreting the maturity model was our first step. Following that, we're sharing our behind-the-scenes work. A lot of the concerns we heard from that management forum came from the validity of information, and I know many of you in the room work hard to do content reviews, check the AI feedback, make sure what's on your Synthesis platform is accurate. So Wendy has been sharing posts about that work, bringing it to the forefront to inspire confidence and show off what we do — you all work very hard, so I highly recommend it.

We also can't wait to have people come explore what's in DSX for themselves — we need to bring it to them. So in our weekly design meetings, over beer and popcorn, Wendy and Jeanette have been sharing little snippets of what's available in DSX, what new course is in MyDSU, to spark interest and get people to check it out once they're back at their desks.

They've also been pulling relevant examples from project teams — how they're using this accelerated mentorship model — because it's one thing to hear it from the learning and development team, or the knowledge management team, but quite another to hear it from a principal, an associate, a project lead who's using it successfully on their projects. And perhaps most impactfully, we've been getting project leads together for lunch, watching all of you — not too creepy — to show them they're not the only ones grappling with these challenges, that everyone in this room, to some degree, is working through the same things. So thank you all for sharing your challenges and your triumphs, because that's been helpful for us in moving this journey along.

Michael: So the last step was trying to find a way to encourage the reticent to dip a toe into the pool of all the information we had. I use a couple of tricks myself, having three or four examples ready when addressing the issue with senior project leads, or any project leads. For instance: many of you know that when you're reviewing drawings midway through a project, you've got BIM details — shadows of details, outlines of details — and as a reviewer, I don't always know where a given detail is going. If the person is new to the firm, I'll ask, "Is your expectation that this detail will look like page 17?" And I wait. Sometimes I hear, "What's page 17?" I'll say, "Great — do the search, find it, find the page, let's talk." More often than not I hear, "Yes, I'm headed that way," or "No, the drawings aren't there yet, they'll be closer in a week." But having that one solid reference for all the details that go through is really important for us.

When I give talks on other themes, I'll often ask a crowd whether they know the four metrics for starting a sustainable project — embodied carbon, embodied energy, greenhouse gas emissions, and so on — and ask for a show of hands. It's a very low percentage of people, at any skill level, who've been made aware of these details. So within a team or at a meeting I'll say, "Look it up online, on our server, and print it out — let's talk about it." Many of our projects have high sustainability goals, and I want those answers at someone's desk, and someone able to answer them. It's just a way in.

And lastly — or second to lastly — we've been building these videos for so long that sometimes people forget how good they are. Find a really good one that might turn up in a search and let it be a reference point. Whether it's the detail, the sustainability guidelines, or the video itself, give people a way in, so they're comfortable making these references.

And then there's the whole issue of judgment. This is a project that succeeded because the brief was challenged — a lab project we succeeded on because we didn't focus on it being a lab. Making sure you have those stories, associated with certain projects, ready to represent what good judgment looks like when the moment is right — not that you're doing it all the time, but there are high points of good judgment worth keeping ready.

So — how do you scale deep expertise across a growing, distributed team?

Michael + Sam: Build the infrastructure. Embed it in the work. And help people adopt it.

Michael: Thank you.

Sam: Thanks everyone.

Q+A

Chris: Nice job — that's great, thank you guys. Thank you for tackling the middle chunk we were talking about, which is the hardest to make change with — they've got 20 years of mentoring a certain way, and now you're asking them to do it another way. As you're trying to help them learn this new accelerated mentorship model, are you trying to teach them all at once, or are you trying to pick off some friendlies and have them change and show the way? What's your approach?

Michael: Pick off some friendlies.

Chris: Okay.

Michael: Yeah — started with a call-out to five or six project managers who I thought would probably agree with what we've been talking about, and might actually be ready to adopt it. We had a few sessions, meant to be 15 minutes: have you looked into the learning management system in the last week? That's question one. Have you found any content that really interests you, and have you tried to direct it to any of the staff? People are keen, and the answers you get back aren't always what you expect, but it's really meant to democratize the idea that it's there. People are really busy, so you have to keep it concentrated. But I know we have people very interested in mentorship and coaching. It's early days — just a few months — but I see a good future for it.

Chris: That's kind of the point, isn't it — they're very busy, they want to mentor, and these tools can help them mentor if they know they exist.

Michael: That's exactly the point.

Chris: Yeah. Sam, what's the biggest thing you learned from the adult learning education program that you didn't know going into it?

Sam: I think moving beyond just the basic Kirkpatrick models — and I'll talk about this till I'm blue in the face — is how to conduct a needs analysis. Understanding that you have to design learning around where you want to go as a business, how your teams need to show up to get you there, and then the skills and competencies your individuals need to perform at that level — that three-tiered needs analysis has stayed with me. I've used it a few times since, and it's been really helpful.

Chris: Can you do another minute or two on that? Take us through how you did the needs analysis at Diamond Schmitt, step by step.

Sam: Firstly, you start with the data. If you have a firm strategy, that's a good place to start, because it tells you where you want to go as a business in three years, five years. But also data from your management forums — that embedded knowledge from your different committees, areas where people in higher positions are finding the gaps themselves. You start there, then validate through focus groups — people throwing sticky notes on a board to lay out competencies — and then surveys, the classic. But I find those are more to validate what you found in the in-person segments. Sometimes new information comes out of it, but extensive interviewing and focus groups, based on data, are the way to go.

Michael: Can you talk about the fact that after the surveys came back, there was a bit of time to analyze them?

Sam: I can — please share.

Michael: No, I'm just remembering that any survey you do is a double-edged sword. You've asked people to spend the time to fill out the material, and then you've got to spend the time to properly understand it, and reflect it back to the people who participated.

Sam: That's a great point — to make sure it doesn't just become part of your plan, that you explicitly thank people and acknowledge the changes you're making as you go. So when we were rolling out that fundamentals learning stream, we made a real, conscious effort to communicate that early and often and bring people along. It secures buy-in, because they feel like they've had an impact on the process — which they have.

Chris: I'm assuming this tool served two purposes. One, you shared that you were doing really good work with what you call explorations —

Sam: Yes.

Chris: — but maybe you were missing the mark on some of the foundational skills for people.

Sam: Exactly.

Chris: Did it also serve the thing we talked about yesterday — you can't manage all the knowledge, you can't do all the learning you want to do in the organization? Did it help you point to something and say, this is why we're focused on these things and not these other things people wanted you to tackle?

Sam: I do think so. As a culture, we're pretty liberal with those other things, those deep dives — we can easily go off and explore, we love the creative-thinking elements of it. But yes, it created a more solid architecture for understanding what we need to focus on right now. Not that we're pushing those other things aside, but what do we really need to prioritize and put our resources behind. So, exactly.

Chris: Got it.

Michael: Maybe I should say, at the outset, Diamond Schmitt University was really meant to be a place where we could have design conversations and open up a topic much broader than you'd ever research for a project alone. There were people from all different fields — filmmakers, writers —

Sam: Surgeons.

Michael: Surgeons who were medical device inventors, talking about themselves as creatives and what their process was. We felt that was a really important complement to project work. I was part of a resistance, honestly, to switch over and acknowledge how deep the need was for the fundamentals.

Chris: Why were you resistant?

Michael: Why was I resistant? We're so design-focused — we wanted to keep elevating the design discussion. I felt there was a lot of good practice happening at the desktops, in the markups, and some small initiatives I thought were going very well. Sam's research and surveys told us we weren't nearly giving enough to the fundamentals. So I'm thrilled we found a new model that gave us clarity. Again, we're a design-focused firm, and we were trying to keep all the conversations as design-focused as possible.

Chris: Right, makes sense.

Michael: Assuming that you, as a practicing professional, were doing all that research very well on your own, on the technical side — we weren't. Right, we were wrong.

Chris: Yeah.

Michael: Yeah.

Chris: Well, great — glad we found out.

Michael: We are sure.

Attendee: Amazing talk, thank you so much for sharing. One question: we have seven different studios, as you have multiple offices. Do you ever deal with a disconnect between home base and the other studios, especially for experiential learning that maybe happens more at your home studio? How have you tackled that?

Michael: We're so grateful for the analytics we get from DSX, because we can get a sense, on a regular basis, of the engagement in those other studios — how many people are showing they're connected to all five, by virtue of the evidence in posts and engagement. When we see it drop off, that's an important signal that we need to bring in someone from New York, someone from Vancouver, and make sure they're contributing and can be champions within their studio. The Vancouver studio started small — just one person for several years — and it's grown to 44 people now, developing its own internal culture. At the moment it's been incredibly successful, and we wish we could see more into what's going on there. There's definitely a Toronto-centric basis to it, given the disparity in group sizes — 250 versus 44 — and we're mindful of that; we meet every two weeks to talk about what we see in the analytics, and we brought in someone from the Vancouver studio to help us maintain that perspective. So it's definitely leapt across the country — the enthusiasm, the energy, and the sharing are all there. It was more of an issue before the pandemic, and maybe for a little while after. Offices have their own great ways of doing things, and what we're supposed to do with DSU and DSX is not telling, but facilitating — encouraging them to use the tools and the time we have to help facilitate the initiatives they may have on their own.

Sam: I'll add to that quickly — the champion model, having a champion for active learning in each office, has been really helpful. I had the opportunity to fly to our Vancouver office and our New York office, meet those people, run a few events with them, and then not exactly hand it off, but empower them to run it on their own. So we now have a network of people where we can talk about our different active learning formats, because when you have 280 people in one place running all these labs and workshops with the resources to do it, you want to make sure the other offices have that same degree of opportunity, or at least strive for it.

Chris: So — like Michael, for example, you were doing those one-to-one detail sessions.

Michael: Yep.

Chris: Is the idea that you'll find someone there who'll do what Michael's doing, or do you just want to make sure they're doing something? How much do you help them figure out what those active learning experiences look like?

Michael: Find a way for them to do what's natural for them — and also fly me across, for me to do them there as well.

Chris: Okay.

Michael: Yeah.

Chris: Yeah, that's great.

Attendee: We've been talking a lot about our internal universities, which has me thinking about the actual top-notch universities we're hiring staff from. Your response to the fundamentals question was interesting to me, given your experience in the higher ed market. Are you observing that top-notch universities are falling short in some way? Is that what we're kind of implying here?

Michael: Oh, it's a big topic.

Chris: Can you just pause the recording for a second?

Michael: Thank you. Thank you. There's no question in my mind that a focus on theory and design expression has been more prominent, in most of the universities we draw students from, than technical proficiency. There's no question. A select few have found a balance, through co-op programs and particular individuals, but there's no question for me. So we've definitely found the need to step up and provide some of the basics. Of course, we have an interview process, we have validation that takes place. What are we really looking for? Probably the same thing everyone is: if we had to choose between someone completely technically proficient who couldn't design, and someone who's a brilliant early-career designer we could bring along — we'd definitely choose the second.

Chris: Sam, I'm curious — in working with instructors and helping them design programs, what were the things you worked on with them to help apply adult learning principles? What came up over and over again?

Sam: That's a great question. Kristina talked about this yesterday too — the shift away from the comfortable 60-minute lecture, because it's what you know, it's efficient, and introducing other ways of learning: the handouts Kristina was also talking about, getting people involved, showing them it's possible and in some cases easier than delivering a lecture — and being willing to put in the work yourself. We were lucky to have a learning and development team of two, a knowledge management team of two — but sometimes we'd create the slides for them to a first-draft level, create the exercise, and then they could edit and revise to make sure it's in line with their content. So introducing them to that active learning environment — I think of the Algonquin College example — is sometimes enough of a place to start, and giving them the time to put in the work, because they're, as we all know, very busy people. We're already asking a lot of them to share, so how can you use AI, use your own time, to make it easier for them?

Michael: We went further than that. Sam, you'll remember this — at the very beginning of DSX, so I guess 2018, 2019 — we weren't getting as much engagement from really interesting projects and project leads as we hoped, and they were saying, "I just don't have time to compose it." Sam can type conversations live, so we suggested she sit down with an interesting project lead who wanted to post something but couldn't, and just have them talk. She typed it all up.

Sam: I forgot about that.

Chris: Before video transcription.

Sam: It was before video transcription.

Michael: She was the early version of version one, and the result was four or five of the most extraordinary posts, which couldn't have happened without that assistance.

Sam: Yep.

Michael: So finding the way to intervene, to support, to bring those ideas to the posts and to the studio — that was an extraordinary thing we did.

Chris: I think that's such a — I wrote about this in the last newsletter — it's gotten so much easier to capture knowledge over the last few years than it's ever been, and I think this idea of surrounding people with interviewers, editors, and producers, to help busy folks produce, is where we're headed.

Michael: I think so.

Chris: I'm curious, Sam — when you interact with those folks now, is that the default, that you'll help them and they don't have to do the work, or do you only offer it if they seem too stretched?

Sam: I think it's the default, but it depends on the person — some people want that ownership over the process. I was actually curious to ask you about this, Kristina, about how you balance giving them creative license to do what they want, while also acknowledging that, for it to really stick and be valuable, it might need to look a little different. That's something I've had to keep in mind — but yes, it is the default.

Michael: We're also now eight, nine years in, and the people contributing now are much more comfortable with social media generally, and certainly with our own DSX. Building a post from the field — going to a construction site, and within a day having five or eight images and a good narrative — those posts, coming from all experience groups in the office, are some of the most engaging, because people want to know what's going on.

Chris: Sure.

Michael: And that's inspired people to become more capable at doing it themselves.

Chris: You guys had a series with GoPros on people's —

Michael: We did.

Chris: — helmets, going into the field.

Sam: Teaching in the field.

Chris: That's right.

Michael: I think that's right.

Chris: Was that somebody's idea, going into the field, or did you plant the seed? How did that program come about?

Michael: We have someone who spends a lot of energy making sure people have experience in the field — this is Dale McDowell. Every year we meet with her, and she talks about ideas for projects coming forward that could be the subject of great tours. If it's an hour's drive out of the office, you're there for two hours, everyone's got to have their PPE — it's quite an involved procedure. But the feedback from anyone who attends is extraordinarily good. She's the one who volunteered to have a student who was also a videographer organize the time we were there and use a GoPro on the helmet.

Chris: Fascinating. Okay.

Attendee: Hi, I'm Chris from RAMSA. I was curious if you could speak a little about the praise culture around the system, and also whether you track accomplishments within the system — like a university, do people earn degrees or other credentials?

Michael: Short answer, no. A lot of our programs, our lunchtime DSU sessions, are focused on continuing education credits for professional certification — there's a sign-in and then a certificate you submit. That's been an emerging strength in our lunchtime sessions, and those sessions are all recorded, so they're viewable after the fact. The quiz side is still evolving, but some require quizzes to qualify — that function is coming, and it'll further reinforce their use. But in terms of a praise culture —

Chris: I'm sorry, what is praise culture?

Michael: Well, I'm guessing that it is that you're being told that you did a great job — thanks for showing up, here's a gold star. Is that right — is that what you meant, Chris? Okay, thank you — learned something today.

Michael: Great job, Chris.

Sam: With the LMS, I don't know so much on the praise side, but on the earning of — not a certificate exactly, but as you complete learning paths, if we choose to make that visible on people's profiles — I think we're just on the cusp of that. We're not there yet, but I think it's somewhere we could take it.

Attendee: You've mentioned a couple of different points about the shift in learner engagement as you've implemented some of these more modernized approaches. I'm curious about other success metrics you've anchored your strategy to, to know whether things are landing or the programs are achieving what they're meant to achieve.

Sam: It's a great question — to be honest, still something we're working on. Going back to something I pulled from the University of Toronto, and touched on yesterday: ROI is a huge challenge in learning and development, especially depending on how you measure time, billable hours, utilization, and so on. So something I was introduced to is called return on expectations. You work with the stakeholders responsible for learning and development early, and talk about what success would look like to them, then assign an observable measure of success, track it, and come back to them at the end of the year or the semester and say, "Here's what we said the expectation was, here's how we measured it, here's how we did — is this a success in your eyes?" ROI versus ROE, if it's something you want to look up later. But to be honest, it's still something we're working on — good in theory.

Chris: Just to make sure I'm hearing you — so you've got Brent, who works for Julie. You go to Julie and say, "Brent's going to take this course, what would you hope would happen?" Brent takes the course, and you go back to Julie afterward and say, "Did it happen — did it move the measure I was expecting?"

Sam: It's more on a macro level than that. If we're going to deliver a series on Twinmotion, say — a couple of people have used it, it's coming up in the office — working with Michael and Martin, who look after the hours we log to DSU, we'd say, "We're going to put in X number of sessions with X number of people over the next few months. For that to be a success, what behaviors are you going to look for, what tasks or performance will you check that indicate the training was successful?" So it's more on a program level than an individual level, but we may get there.

Chris: Great. Thank you both so much — that was super illuminating. We appreciate you.

Michael: Thanks, Chris.