198: ‘Unlocking Sustainability with AI-Powered Knowledge Management’, with Corey Squire and Christopher Parsons

198: ‘Unlocking Sustainability with AI-Powered Knowledge Management`’, with Corey Squire and Christopher Parsons

Evan Troxel: Welcome to the TRXL podcast. I'm Evan Troxel, and in this episode I welcome Corey Squire and Christopher Parsons in the third installment of our limited series on Knowledge Management 3.0. Check out the previous episodes that I've linked in the show notes to hear more about Chris and the other topics in this series.

This time I'm gonna focus on Corey in this introduction. Corey is the Director of Sustainability at Bora Architecture and Interiors in Portland, Oregon. He's one of the most thoughtful and forward-thinking voices in sustainable design today, and someone who sees knowledge management not as a support function, but as the engine that drives real impact.

Before joining Bora, Corey served as the sustainability director at Lake|Flato and worked as a sustainability consultant. Along the way, he became a nationally recognized leader in the field, including serving as the lead author of the AIA's Framework for Design Excellence, the most widely adopted definition of sustainable design in the profession today.

In 2023, Corey published People Planet Design, which offers both a philosophy and a toolkit for embedding sustainability into everyday design practice. It's also the only book we know of on sustainable design that includes an entire chapter on knowledge management.

At Bora, Corey has helped the firm translate its values: climate, health, and equity, into a structured, actionable body of knowledge that lives inside their internet: Chaco. That system helps project teams move faster, make better decisions, and scale their collective expertise across the firm.

In today's conversation, we'll explore how Corey approaches KM not just as infrastructure, but as mentorship, cultural change, and as a critical ingredient in designing a better future.

Personally, one of my biggest takeaways from this conversation is the power of shifting from individual expertise to collective intelligence. What Corey and the Bora team have built is not just a platform or a playbook, it's a feedback loop where project teams internalize knowledge, reuse it, and improve it over time.

This concept is powerful and essential for any firm looking to scale its values, avoid burnout, and truly evolve its practice. So now without further ado, I bring you my conversation with Corey Squire and Christopher Parsons.

Today we're talking with Corey Squire from Bora Architects.

And Chris and Corey know each other much better. Uh, this is my first introduction here to Corey, um, but I'm excited to learn more and go further on this Knowledge Management 3.0 journey with the both of you. So, Chris, take it away and let's do an intro for Corey.

Christopher Parsons: Yeah, so Corey, Corey's special, as you guys will, will see in this episode or hear in this episode. Uh, I, we've worked together twice. So Corey was a client when he was at Lake Flato and was the director of sustainability there, and now he's the director of Sustainability at, uh, Bora in Portland. And the, uh, we kind of had this weird time in the middle where we weren't working together and Right, right at the end, I think this was at the end of your tenure with Lake Flato.

Corey, correct me if I'm wrong, but you walked up to meet at an AIA Technology and Architecture Practice event, and were like, I need to talk to you about knowledge management and sustainability. I think knowledge management is the secret sauce for sustainability and unlocking that and making all these things that we wanna happen happen.

And

Evan Troxel: you just like described a Venn diagram,

Christopher Parsons: yes.

Corey Squire: It is

Evan Troxel: about right there. Right?

Corey Squire: Yeah.

Christopher Parsons: Exactly. And so, you know, Corey, just for background for people, worked on the AIA Framework for design excellence. He wrote a book in 2023 called People Planet Design, which is an amazing book about sustainability and a bunch of other important things, including he has a chapter in knowledge management in the sustainability book.

So that's, that is the Venn diagram. That is Corey, um, longtime partner, you know, for us in terms of thinking about knowledge management, especially as we started moving towards this AI powered era of knowledge management, we call KM 3.0. Right from the beginning, Corey was like, I think I see how this is gonna be really, really useful for us.

But we'll get there later in the episode. So maybe I can just start Corey with like, how did you get to that epiphany that like knowledge management was a thing that was gonna be really important for you and for other folks working in sustainability?

Corey Squire: Yeah. So, so here's, here's the story and here here's the epiphany. a lot of people work in sustainability, kind of are, are, maybe they're onboarded into the practice or they come to the conclusion themselves that the whole point of sustainability is to convince other people to do things right? And, and sometimes it's like we need to be more moral, right?

We need to be more ethical, we need to work harder, we need to care more. there, there's just a normal, a normal process, which in my book I called traditional practice, which is like how things are done. And sustainability is outside of traditional practice. And what we need to do is bend sustainability, practice, um, in a way that incorporates these things that we know are important. I followed that script for a long time. Most of my time at Lake|Flato, I was following that script. I was like advocating for sustainability. I had presentations which were like World War I trenches, where it's like we are in the trenches. We are trying to get the client to like put a little less toxic chemicals in their building. Um, but none of that really ended up making any sense. And one of the reasons is because the outcomes that we call sustainability are just universally desirable, They're better health, they're better daylight, they're better experience. Um, it's, it's, it's hard to separate what we call sustainability from just what we call good architecture if we start to think about it more clearly,

right? Historically,

Evan Troxel: Hmm.

Corey Squire: two things have been very, very different. From each other. Um, but again, if you dig in, it becomes increasingly difficult to draw a clear distinction. Like great daylighting. Is that sustainability or is that good architecture? buildings where People don't get cancer after years of exposure.

Is that sustainability or is that just like a universal human desirable attribute of civilization?

Evan Troxel: You would think that would like kind of fall under the health, safety and welfare

Corey Squire: It,

Evan Troxel: part, part of practice. But it doesn't. Right. Because it's like this is later that That's later.

Corey Squire: to prevent people from falling off of buildings, right? Because it's immediate. That's health,

safety, welfare.

Evan Troxel: Yep. Yep.

Corey Squire: work on, on, on the framework for design excellence, we've actually pulled sustainability into health, safety, welfare, which has been very successful. Um, but back to the question. So, so why is it right? Why is sustainability this thing that we need to advocate for and fight for? Um, the epiphany that I had is that it's not sustainability. The challenge with sustainability is that it's broad and it's complicated and it's involved and it's deep. And if you need. If you wanna be good at, uh, if you want your building to be good at energy performance, you need to understand thermodynamics, right? There's an energy modeling component there. You need to understand how heat flows where, where kinda where the sun is. If you wanna understand healthy materials, you need to understand some degree of chemistry to understand what chemicals are in the building products that we want to avoid, why they're there to begin with.

Which ones are okay, which ones are bad. Um, and sustainability is not this concept of working harder or doing better or convincing people to be more ethical. It's really just lots of information and, um, a lot of this information has just not been part of traditional architectural education for a lot of people who are practicing.

I would argue that even today, people who are coming outta school are missing a lot of this information. Um, but if we were able to capture the information that we call sustainability. manage it as knowledge and get it to the right person at the right time for these kind of very important decisions along the course of the design process. We could just incorporate it without advocating for it. Without fighting for it. Um, so, so that was the epiphany. It's like, if you set up a platform where people have the right access to the right information, their buildings will just automatically be better. And then me as a sustainability director could just like step back, right?

I don't have to be as active in the forefront engaging with people around these topics. I just need to create the platform where people are gonna go to for their information. And if that information is better, the projects will be better or the project will be more sustainable.

Evan Troxel: Can I, can I just jump in here? So, so this, this to me says you've gotta have great information to base all that on, which I know we're gonna get into, like, I'm just, I'm kind of foreshadowing,

foreshadowing here a little bit, but I think a lot of firms are maybe, maybe not in that position. And so maybe just kind of as like, before we get into your story about like how that's been successful, uh.

At various levels within your practice? Like what do you, what, what can you tell firms that, that don't like, like, because I mean, one of the things about our industry is like a lot of firms have, you know what they consider intellectual property, right? You wrote a book. That book is available. It's out there.

Anybody can buy it, the only people who are gonna buy it are people who are interested or want to do some kind of professional growth in that area, or are, are, you know, very enthusiastic about, about that. And then there's like the realities of practice like you're talking about, where it's like there's these new baselines, these new table stakes on projects that don't necessarily dovetail into the way practice has always been done.

And it's more complexity and all those things. And like those are the things that are swimming around in, in many practices who don't have a Corey Squire or don't have content that you're talking about. And I'm just curious if you like such a simple question, Evan.

Corey Squire: But I, I mean, I, I've thought about this.

So when

Evan Troxel: Awesome.

Corey Squire: was, at Lake Flaa, we were a firm of a hundred people. Obviously sustainability was important to the firm. We had a team, there were like three people working on this. most practices don't have a series of sustainability experts on, on, on staff.

And the majority of firms are small, and the majority of architects are, are sole practitioners. so

that was one of

Evan Troxel: Yeah, like 80%, like just so people know who are, who are listening. It's like 80% are solo practitioners, like not even a team of five. Right. So yeah, small, small, small.

Corey Squire: it's hard to have a sustainability expert on staff unless you

happen to be one

or

Evan Troxel: Are that right?

I.

Corey Squire: Um, and that was one of the reasons that we developed. It's the framework for design excellence at the AIA. Right. So the, the, a little, a little backstory on that, the framework for design excellence, um, originated out of the coat top 10 awards criteria.

The coat top 10 was a sustainability award that the AIA awarded since the late nineties to 10 kind of exemplar projects that did everything right across the, across the board of like looking great, performing great on energy, performing great on water, focusing on equitable communities, focusing on resilience. when, um, um, and a, a bunch of years ago when I was part of the, kind of the national committee on the environment at the AIA, we proposed that the, this framework, which had been really successful at recognizing high performing projects for 20 years at that point, could become the a i's standard

definition

Evan Troxel: Mm.

Corey Squire: initially it was gonna be sustainable design, but then it was just design excellence.

Again, it's hard to separate those two things. Um, that was kind of the vision. So the AI needed a vision on what is good design. In the 21st century, the framework analysis became that vision, and it's, it's simple. It's just designed for energy, designed for water, designed for ecology, designed for change. Um, these are the things we should be focusing on. But the information to back that up, was what was at the time called the toolkit. And the toolkit was kind of the, the, the piece that I was the lead author on. And for each of these measures of the framework for design excellence, um, there was a series of best practices. if we're wanted design for ecology, like one, one area that we could focus on is, is, uh, designing for dark sky. And then if we break down dark sky further, it's like, oh, well we want full cutoff luminaries. We want to make sure that there's no light sites from the outside of the building to the inside of the building. Um, Th kind of collections of best practices are designed to be relatively accessible, simple, not expensive, easy to understand. Um, so this toolkit provided the resources that practitioner, so sole practitioners, small firms, um, anybody who's not Lake Flaa with the sustainability team, or Bora with the sustainability team now had access to not only the vision, which is the framework for that excellence, but also the best practice to allow you to get there. It's not calculation based. We don't say do a simulation. We say, follow these back, get your window wall ratio. Right? Right. Get your lighting power density within, within reason. Um, make sure that those, those, uh, lighting fixtures are full cutoff. Make sure your, site, uh, is mostly, um, permeable surfaces and we're limiting black, uh, dark scape for to limit heat eyelet effects. And the idea behind that, which was fundamentally kind of what came out of that conversation that Chris mentioned earlier, is like, here's my epiphany. We don't need to advocate for, for this. We need to document it. We need to make the, the, um, make the best practices accessible, um, organized in the way that they're easy to find and easy to use. And then after we launched the framework and the toolkit, and that was back in 2019, um, I heard from small firms and they're like, we, we now have the resources to do this, right? We don't need an in-house expert anymore. None of it was that hard. But we did need it to be organized and provided, and we needed to separate what's important for what's not important. And I've seen my, like language that I wrote when I wrote the, the, the toolkit that supported the framework. I've seen that language pulled at the vast places kind of in, across the internet. Like, um, firms were pulling that in RFP response. To demonstrate their knowledge in this topic, right? Award submissions are now asking specific questions related to this, this f So once we were able to define sustainability along these 10 measures in the framework, and then provide the knowledge, um, in a simple, accessible way, I think that the general, the performance of the profession has really increased, uh, because of that. And, and again, that was all a knowledge management exercise.

Christopher Parsons: When you were saying that students are coming outta school and they're just like, they're not trained in certain piece of information or know things that maybe they should, is this kind of roughly what you're talking about? Like would it be great if they read this framework or is there something else you have in mind?

Corey Squire: I mean, they, they, the, the framework can be expanded further than it is, right? The AIA adopted it as their, kind of vision for good architecture schools should adopt it as their vision for, for good architecture, right? A lot of firms have, a lot of firms use the framework to evaluate and

define their own processes.

Is I haven't, I mean, some schools have, I haven't really seen that across the board. the students that I talk to are like really hungry for sustainability knowledge. A lot of people join the profession or go to architecture school, uh, because they really want to focus on sustainability 'cause they wanna make the world a better place. Um, for whatever reason, I feel like it's been a little slower to percolate there.

Evan Troxel: When I was in school, my, we didn't have sustainability class, we had environmental controls and I mean, it was the same concepts, but obviously it's a way bigger deal now. And I mean, schools are dealing with a lot that they have to kind of navigate as far as what the curriculum's gonna cover. But it does seem like is so, so you answered my question in a fantastic way because the information is out there.

It is available and it's for more than just practice, right? It is. It should be applied at the educational level as well. I love that kind of insightful just comment, right? Because that to me is like the people who are listening to this show. Are in school, they're out, they're, they're graduates, they're practitioners, they're on the technology side of practice most typically. And a lot of the things that, the concepts that, that you are talking about have also been adapted into specific tool sets and that also can work its way back into school, right? Like ladybug tools, cove tool, things like that, that actually are allowing architectural students and you know, it goes beyond architectural students, but Right.

Like MEP and all, all these other locations as well. But it really is a way to start to understand like why those tools matter. 'cause they, you can actually read the framework that you're talking about and understand at the foundational level is actually like, why these things are important on projects.

Corey Squire: we kind of fall into the trap of running straight to the

tools.

Evan Troxel: Exactly. Yep.

Corey Squire: is the real key part,

right? What are we trying to

Evan Troxel: Yeah.

Corey Squire: What are the, again, the best practices to get there? And the tools are great for fine tuning after we're most of the way there. Um, but we can get a lot of, we can cover a lot of,

Evan Troxel: Yeah. You wanna know why? Like that, you wanna get to the why of, of it all. And like starting like, like my, my class was environmental controls. It's about passive design first. Right? Getting as close as far as you can with passive systems before active systems and yeah. There's so much, there's so much to this.

Yeah.

Corey Squire: that, uh, for whatever reason, we forget that. and the context also has changed. Like designing passive first is still essential. We also now have to recognize that there's wildfire smoke that we need to

deal with, right? So

Evan Troxel: Mm-hmm.

Corey Squire: may be used to be able to function passively from a ventilation standpoint now should be designed to still do that, but also need to be able to shut down and to filter air and to provide systems mechanics.

So everything's just a little bit more complicated than it used to be, but it's still based on,

it's

Evan Troxel: just a little

Corey Squire: but it's still based on the same premises, right? Um, where we start with passive systems and we kind of use these historic architectural best practices. Um, that in the past have provided comfort and today decreased mechanical loads and could decrease first cost,

but for the

Evan Troxel: Hmm.

Christopher Parsons: So Corey, I think one way to think about what your, the argument you started with is kind of sustainability used to be an application, but now one, you wanna move it into the operating system, right? So there, it's not this kind of like, do you know what I mean? Like, it's not the standal

Corey Squire: thing

that you add on top,

Christopher Parsons: that you install and like maybe you use it sometimes like it should be in the

Corey Squire: It's

Christopher Parsons: os

Corey Squire: to what we're calling

architectural design.

Christopher Parsons: and so

Evan Troxel: like, I insert a kernel panic joke?

Christopher Parsons: yeah.

Evan Troxel: that, that

Christopher Parsons: I think you should stop. I think you hit the line Evan. Uh, I.

Evan Troxel: I did. I

Christopher Parsons: So when you joined Bora, you kind of, at least this is the way I remember the story, you said, I'm good. I'm not joining Bora without a knowledge management platform because this is fundamental to the way that I approach thinking about sustainability.

So I wanna talk about Platform, but before I do that, like did you just take the center, uh, sorry, this, the Design excellence framework and just upload that and you were done? Or did you have to do more content? That's Bora specific. Like, I'm assuming that this kind of a, i a, um, design excellence is kind of like a, a platform that elevates everybody to a point, but it has to be to work for a single practitioner all the way through a 2000 person firm.

It has to be somewhat generic and not,

Corey Squire: Yeah.

Christopher Parsons: yeah. And so like, in what ways is it generic? Is it firm size? Is it region, is it building type? Like how do you have to then take it and build more knowledge that's specific to your company?

Corey Squire: So the goal when we, when we created the framework was to make it generic, right? What, what strategies can we say work across the board regardless of region, regardless of building type. And we went back and forth on things like, are we gonna do a single family version of the framework? Are we gonna do a like, um, a commercial building version of the framework?

We decided not to, and we decided there's enough there within the architecture, just like the world of architecture that are consistently good practices, you're never, like, regardless of your building type, regardless of your location, you don't want to have your class facing west is just like one example. Um, so we did make it a little generic and we made it a little universal, and I think that helped sell it. but it also means that individual practices have to do additional work on it. before I joined Bora, but after I worked on the framework, I was a, uh, kind of a sustainability strategy consultant.

I worked with a lot of different firms and I often used the framework design excellence as a starting point for a firm to understand sustainability. Um, but, but it was more of a starting point. And then would talk to the firms about what is specifically important to you. There's 10 measures in the framework. 10 is a lot to keep in mind. What are the three things that are most important? Um, and then

the information,

Christopher Parsons: what would be an example? Like if a firm said it's these three, like what would those three be? You know, for example.

Corey Squire: so I worked for a firm where, um, or yeah, I, I consulted with a firm, um, in Southern California where they were very concerned about their clients, being put off by carbon calculations or energy intensive buildings because they're doing a lot of expensive single family. Uh, but resilience was especially important to them because over the fast number of years in Southern California, it went from a perfect climate to now it's a little too hot in the summer, right?

It used to be a perfect air quality. Now there's smoke sometimes. Um, so resilience became key to their work. firm that I worked for in Colorado, um, ecology of place was especially important, right? How are we gonna restore the landscape, uh, through the lens of building this building? equitable community is very difficult for many firms that do single family, for instance, while other firms like equitable communities, like the fundamental reason for their

existence.

Christopher Parsons: Hmm.

Corey Squire: I'll, I'll work with firms and try to figure out what is their key thing, like what is unique to them? What is their individual vision of sustainability that feels authentic, that reflects the work they're already doing? And then we can push a little further in that area. And the, the framework, we could still apply across the board.

Like all that stuff is still good, but if we're gonna prioritize, we're going to put additional emphasis on certain areas. We want it to be an area that already feels like a good match for the firm. So then what I'd work through is like, okay, now you do these specific building types. You're focusing on this specific area.

What does resilience look like for an office building or a school? and that's the more specific content that we would get onto, onto an intranet. Right. Beyond what the framework itself

is providing.

Christopher Parsons: Yeah. Right. And if you never, if you're, if you're in Southern California, you never practice in the Northeast. You never need to build any of that content because it's just irrelevant.

Corey Squire: instance. Well, if

Christopher Parsons: Yeah. Right.

Corey Squire: there's a lot of content about humidity that we need to talk about.

Christopher Parsons: Tell me about Chaco. Like what, what is Chaco? How does it help the company? Why, why is it called Chaco? Like just tell us, tell us a little bit about it.

Corey Squire: chacos our intranet. And, and to, to Chris's point earlier, um. I, I did, I, I, I did make it, it wasn't a hard sell, so I don't wanna be like, it was a requirement that we purchased, Chaco purchased synthesis for me to join the firm, but I needed a knowledge management platform, right? I, I had been successful at Lake Flato with the knowledge management platform that was there. I knew that sustainability is kind of the organization and access of a broad degree of, of expert knowledge. I was bringing that knowledge, but I can't be everywhere. if I can't offload it somewhere, I'm not gonna be as effective in my job. the package of like me and the intranet is what really allows of Bora to have the access to the information that they need to provide high performance work.

And then what I could do is I can, I could research more stuff. I could, I could talk to clients, I could encourage our employees. I could speak at conferences, I could, I could do whatever, whatever else I need to do. But all that information is available. Um, so. So Chaco, we had a, uh, I think it was on, on Chris's, uh, suggestion when we built our intranet initially. Um, we had a naming competition within the firm to, to kind of figure out what we were gonna call it. Chaco is this Javelina, um, that it's like a, um, it's like a, a, a, a pinata of a javelina that at some point in Boris history, somebody brought back from a job interview in New Mexico or something like that.

It's just this thing that has been hanging out in the office.

I don't even,

Evan Troxel: culture

Corey Squire: eternal

Evan Troxel: lore.

Corey Squire: I don't know that much about Chaco, to be honest, and I don't even know where the name came from, it's this thing and, and it, it felt very natural. there's a, there's a principal who had been at the firm for like 30 years who was retiring that year. Uh, and he made this really strong pitch during our vote that like, here's the story of Chaco. This is why it's so important to the culture of the office. This is why we should make this the name of our internet. So it lives on. so that's it. So

Evan Troxel: I'm gonna guess, I'm gonna guess the name comes from Chaco Canyon. Like it's a natural cultural monument in New Mexico. It's an amazing, amazing, and, and I mean, it's amazing to think back to times and they were literally doing sustainability practices back.

Christopher Parsons: design strategies.

Evan Troxel: just, I'm just,

Corey Squire: So

that's even a deeper level

Evan Troxel: it's,

Corey Squire: aware

of.

Evan Troxel: it's incredible.

Absolutely. Yeah.

Corey Squire: So,

Christopher Parsons: Corey, like what, um, so I think kind of what you said is, I'm gonna paraphrase, but it's like I can build this digital twin that can answer questions while I'm not here and people can get 1 0 1 answers and 2 0 1 answers without me. But when they kind of need to go deeper, like that's what I'm for, is to like something specific to your project or something new we've never explored for, if you just don't understand the condition.

It's kind of almost like a flipped classroom type situation you're trying to set up. Do I? Is that correct?

Corey Squire: Right. Exactly. There's like, we do a lot of schools in, in Oregon, for instance, and we apply the same window to all of our schools in Oregon. We apply the same building closure to our, our schools in Oregon. And there's no reason why a school in Oregon would change that, right? It's the same building type, same climate. Um, so we document all of that, right? And that's accessible. Everyone knows where to go for it. Um, but yeah, if we're doing a, a school in New Mexico, which we, we just started, we just started doing, we didn't have any information on. Kind of best practices around the enclosure on a school in Mex in New Mexico. Um, so that's where I can come in, I can add additional research and I can support that team and that information will now go onto the internet. So in the future, if we do another school in New Mexico, that becomes kind of our, our, our knowledge base. and, and yes, exactly as, as Chris mentioned, I can come in and kind of change things as, um, information becomes outta date or new things become available, or if we're just doing something we've never done before, or if there's a weird condition, right?

If there's a 45 degree angle site and then there's this tall building next to it that casts a shadow, we might do something different that a more typical West facing, uh, kind of building site without any major obstructive context.

Evan Troxel: I have a kind of a practical question when it comes to getting that information because a lot of times, I think many people listening, my, myself included, like, project experience is locked inside of a project oftentimes or inside of a team. And so how. I guess just how do you incentivize people to put this information on the internet and get it outside of the project silo so that it is useful for everybody?

I assume that's kind of a cultural thing, and it's probably something that you have to continuously kind of beat the drum inside of the

Corey Squire: something

Evan Troxel: Yeah. Just tell us how you do that.

Corey Squire: I mean part of that is like some of the knowledge originates the project team and then has to move to the internet. Some knowledge originates the internet and distributes to the project teams, which is

Christopher Parsons: Hmm.

Corey Squire: of the more what's what we should be aiming for, the more natural piece.

So again, those schools in Oregon, the best practices developed within the firm of us doing this type of work. It got documented on the intranet and that gets distributed to the team. So there's no new additional information from the teams that needs to get back to the intranet. Now the new things happen, um, kind of that's the impetus to update our information or, or kind of push, push information or push knowledge back to the intranet. Um, so it's, it's kind of, it is kind of in both directions and because it's kind of a lesser case the project is developing new information because a lot of the kind of the broad stuff is already covered, it maybe becomes a little bit easier to make sure that that information gets back to the internet for kind of future similar cases,

Evan Troxel: It seems like if people are getting value from the internet, they're also hopefully

providing value back to it because it's, they see that it's just kind of this give and take, right? Like the more you put in, the better the stuff you get out of it is.

Corey Squire: big piece of it. Like, and, and there's kind of different types of data that goes there, right? There's project data. Things like square footages and, and cost data that we just enter into, into vision or another database. And that goes straight to the internet. having more projects fill out their information does create that, um, that kind of positive feedback loop that you're describing

where you know the information is there when you need it, and then that encourages you to provide the information for your own project.

Christopher Parsons: Corey, you, um, you said this thing that I loved, you spoke at our K Connect conference. We do an, an for people that don't know, we do an annual knowledge management conference for the industry called K Connect. Corey spoke last year about unlocking sustainability with knowledge management and you had a, a slide in your deck that I just keep hanging on about know it was a two by two around knowledge and culture and how you have to do both and like you kind of explained what happens if you have great knowledge, but the wrong culture or the right culture, but not, you don't have knowledge.

So I wonder if you can take people through that. 'cause I think it's a really, really helpful way to think about things.

Corey Squire: that was like the big takeaway from my consulting work. So when I was at Lake Lato, I was, I was in one firm. I was dealing with one set of problems and kind of one culture. And then when I launched my own consulting practice, I was working with a lot of firms. Um, and I got to learn about a lot of different cultures, a lot of different problems. But what I realized was a lot of the firms are really facing the same challenges. And some firms are able to consistently put out high performance projects like one after the other. Some win a lot of code awards. Some are just recognized for doing high performance projects. And some firms really struggle.

Some firms like they really can't do anything as hard as they try again. And again, trying harder is not the leverage point here. It's knowledge, which is kind of the ultimate conclusion. really can't do anything above code minimum. And so the, the outcome of kind of working with all the other firms, um, a realization there was like. Um, was two things. Number one is like most firms are dealing with the same issues. There wasn't a huge difference from one firm to another firm. was one of the reasons I ended up writing a book. 'cause I thought that I could solve all of that in one, kind of one

stroke and to be

Christopher Parsons: Did it work?

Corey Squire: that is. but the other piece is like, if you are gonna excel, you really need two things. You need the right knowledge and the right culture. let's say you have neither of those things. You have, you don't know what to do and you don't know why you're doing it, right? You're just gonna do whatever, right?

You're gonna do code minimum buildings. Um, you're gonna do weird stuff if, if that's your thing. gonna be really hard to do anything special. Let's say that you have the right knowledge, but you don't have the right culture, which means that you know exactly how to create high performance buildings.

You understand your passive strategies, you understand mechanical systems, you understand your, your healthy materials, whatever else it is. But for whatever reason, the firm's not supporting it. The, maybe the lead designer is interested in something else, right? That person wants a swirly facade and doesn't really care about human outcomes. that's gonna be a really frustrating situation, right? 'cause you know exactly what to do, but you're just not able to apply to other projects because of artificial internal barriers. Now, the flip side of that, which I would say is much more common and also much easier to deal with, is you're gung-ho.

You're like, we are ready to like, step up to the challenge. We want high performance projects. We're all in on health, we're all on resilience. but like, where do I start? and if you are, if you're in that situation, like you just need the knowledge. And that's the group that my book was for. That's the group that the framework for that excellence was for. And if you're building an intranet, like that's the solution is to get that information accessible and available to that crew. Because now you have the culture that's encouraging you to, to do the thing, um, and now you know what to do. the combination of those two things, the right knowledge and the right culture lead to high performance projects. Um, again, pretty seamlessly. Without the advocacy, without the argument, without the fighting, just 'cause that will become the normal course of action.

Christopher Parsons: The implication of your quote, like there's a famous Peter Drucker quote that's culture eats strategy for lunch. And what I just kind of updated was culture eats knowledge management for lunch. So you know, the culture part's harder,

Corey Squire: culture

Christopher Parsons: if you have it, you're kind of like running downhill almost, and you can kind of collect the knowledge versus the other way around.

Corey Squire: And I mean, in my book, I try to address the culture question as well, but at the end of the day, you need to make the decision to do different, right? You need to, if, if high performance design is your goal, you can do it with knowledge and you can't do it without knowledge. If glass towers is your goal, you're not gonna be able to do sustainability regardless of how many, how much knowledge you

have, right?

So

Christopher Parsons: Interesting.

Corey Squire: book I try to talk about like, maybe you could change that culture, but again, you still have to make the decision to want to do that.

Evan Troxel: I'm curious, Corey, with, with what you've experienced at Bora since you've joined and like put this into place and kind of got these frameworks in there and watched teams adopt over time. Like, can you just kind of, you please talk about the, the behavioral changes that you've witnessed as far as like the, the performance of teams and how they're able to address these challenges projects that are being built all over the place?

I.

Corey Squire: I'll, I'll go back a few years because I think this is, I think Bora is a great case study for this knowledge culture piece. Bora did a lot of glass towers up until just a few years ago. there's a whole section of downtown, a new development around the, the Pearl District, which just has like, uh, 30 story glass luxury apartment buildings.

Bora designed like half of them. Um, and Sustainability connection to the earth. All these things were always values of Bora, but they weren't always evident across the portfolio. They

might have been evident in

Evan Troxel: Hmm.

Corey Squire: And, one or more of the principles went to a conference. I can't remember exactly what conference this was.

It might have been Design Colloquium. It might've been, I don't know, the what is, and, and soar a presentation around like sustainability and carbon and, and um, and just like this new way of thinking about design holistically about we can use architecture design to really benefit the planet. they got all gung ho about this. And that was a cultural shift. And again, that had nothing to do with me. That was more before my time at Bora. but that was, at that moment, Bora became the firm that had the right culture, but lack the knowledge. we, we had a lot of knowledge. Like we did have in-house expertise. We have some. We bore has been leading on material transparency for, um, for like over a decade.

We have an in-house spec writer who is the chair of the health Product Declaration collaborative, we weren't thinking holistically across the board around sustainability. So Bora hired me as a sustainability consultant to help them craft this vision that was gonna be able to apply, um, the knowledge and the focus to be able to live up to this, this new goal that they had. Um, I consulted with Bora for, for a number of years. Um, eventually I joined as sustainability director. And one of the reasons I joined Bora was because they had in my mind, the perfect culture to be able to apply these things. they just needed the knowledge and the platform to make it consistent and accessible.

Christopher Parsons: I was gonna say, that's a big thing though, to walk away from a project type where you're successful and you have momentum to then, you know, I mean, there's a certain amount of knowledge you're willing to almost lose there. Not to mention revenue and all those things. So that's a, that's a pretty big shift.

Corey Squire: Yes, it was, it was a big shift and it was very

intentional.

Christopher Parsons: Mm-hmm.

Corey Squire: and it was like our focus is designed that does good. And, you know, boar is a, I mean, boar is founded in the late fifties, it's not the first time that the firm has reinvented themselves. And a

Christopher Parsons: Hmm.

Corey Squire: through multiple generations of leadership will end up reinventing themselves.

And I, I've seen actually similar things at other firms, like LPA is a firm outta Texas in California, they won the firm of the year last year they were, they're also 60, 70 years old or whatever. They also at some point made a conscious decision, sustainability is what we're gonna do. Um, so I, I've seen other firms do something similar.

And you're right, you do, maybe you shift your project types, maybe you, um. Lose some institutional knowledge to focus on

something new.

Christopher Parsons: Mm-hmm.

Corey Squire: but it also is my hope that firms that were founded in an era when this was not an issue are coming up to speed and, and reinventing themselves towards like where the program is now. So I think that's really important.

Um,

Christopher Parsons: it like for you to come in as an outsider with, you know, kind of the design excellence stuff you'd already done the book you hadn't written yet? To be the directors. I guess you had been a consultant so they knew you,

Corey Squire: for probably two years before I, before I joined.

Yeah.

Christopher Parsons: but still like once you're in and like you're kind of driving an internet project, you're driving knowledge management, but you're probably the least tenured person of any of the other people that are doing sustainability and the technical excellence and all that kind of stuff. So like how do you fuse kind of like outsider coming in with knowledge versus the internal people and the way we've done things.

I'm just kinda curious how that plays out.

Corey Squire: You know, there, I mean, there might've been just enough disruption in that moment, right? It was during the pandemic. It was a few years after there was decision to focus on sustainability, really holistically. Uh, but also like as a consultant, I had a lot of success as an outsider. And there's a degree of credibility that you get as an outsider that, like, now that I've been at Bora for three years, like I'm starting to erode that like, like change might be more

challenging moving forward

Christopher Parsons: Mm-hmm.

Corey Squire: as, like, the ideas are not as novel and exciting as they, as they once were.

Uh,

Evan Troxel: I think that's a super interesting point. I've seen it myself as well. It there the firms love to kind of prioritize outside information over their own and I'm not quite sure what that's all about. It's, it's super interesting to, to see it unfold like that.

Corey Squire: like

Evan Troxel: Yeah.

Corey Squire: hear something once and and, and it's like different from hearing the same thing over and over again.

Evan Troxel: Yeah. Right. Yeah. I, I'm curious about codifying knowledge. If, if we could start to talk about like how you have approached, like, we talked a little bit about like how teams put some information in, but they're also getting a lot out of it. obviously things just continue to change and like something Chris and I have talked about before is like this idea that, I mean, there's actually two things.

There's, there's this idea that experts don't know what they know, and I think it's kind of difficult sometimes to get them to sit down and write a bunch of stuff. And, and, and, and Chris has shared kind of examples of, of doing interviews to help get knowledge into these things. I, I'm curious how you guys are, are going about that, uh, from, from your point of view, because. The o The other idea that, that I wanted to bring up here is like some information should have an expiration date, and, and then it's like, how do we make sure that the stuff that has expired no longer comes up when people are looking for it? It's like, bad, bad, bad. That's not good anymore. That's old. It's expired.

Right? It's time to get rid of that. And I'm just curious how you guys handle that because, so there's, there's constantly new stuff coming in, but there's also kind of like getting rid of the old stuff that doesn't apply anymore.

Corey Squire: I guess the two questions. The first one is, is that we have a lot of experts in the office. that's like kind of a bora culture piece, is that we have deep expertise in the areas that we have expertise. We have people who are really interested in digging in into technical detail. And I, I mentioned our in-house spec writer before, um, like. He wrote and then curates all the pages related to our assembly systems.

For instance,

Evan Troxel: Hmm.

Corey Squire: really experienced interior designers. One particular, one particularly who wrote page on all interior finishes, right on floor coverings, on wall coverings, on on ceiling coverings. and she had always been the source of knowledge for that information, but she never had a platform to document it before. So it was almost like a relief when we brought, um, Chaco onto, onto the scene because she had the same experience that I had. And, and, and Mike spec writer had the same experience that I had, but with a different set of

knowledge.

Christopher Parsons: Where you guys were, the internet in some ways, like people came to you?

Corey Squire: we were, the intranet. Like

Christopher Parsons: Yeah.

Corey Squire: there were, there were clear knowledge bases.

Um, but again, people had, we had to answer the same questions over and over again. Even someone like even like the HR manager, She was the knowledge base on all this stuff, but it wasn't clear where she put all that stuff. Um, and I think that's maybe a more typical use of an intranet is organizing things like, how does payroll work?

How does, how does your benefits work? How do, um, out of office, kind of processes or PTO work. but we just did the same thing with our design process because that's kind of the expertise that we valued in the firm. Now there's other people that were harder to pull information from and there's a lot of nuanced information that do, does live with experts. Um, and I think we got maybe 80% of the knowledge initially 'cause people were so excited to offload it. there's another 20% that's gonna be a, a slog going forward.

Right? And, and we

Evan Troxel: Hmm.

Corey Squire: have to make sure that we're capturing, um, maybe, maybe like relationships, soft skills, a lot of other important things, um, that people with a lot of experience have.

But again, as you mentioned, don't necessarily know that they're. That, that is an expertise

that they have

Christopher Parsons: Mm-hmm.

Corey Squire: so

Evan Troxel: Yeah.

Corey Squire: normal to them.

Christopher Parsons: You, um, you guys have done some interesting things like for people like trying to picture at home, you know, like the interiors page you were talking about. Like, I think they can kind of picture there's a table of contents and then there's some like, you know, here's the way Bora does it, here's why we do it the way we do, and then here's some strategies and best practices and the materials we recommend, et cetera.

But then you've done other interesting things like the Bora Perfect Project, and I think it would be cool for you to talk about what that is and how you use it and like why you invented this, this idea of this Bora Perfect project.

Corey Squire: Yeah, so the idea is we have a page on our website, on our intranet called the Bore Perfect Project, and it's basically our starting assumption for every project. And what we do is we are clear about where we want to end up. This is connected to our vision. This is the visioning workshop that I kind of walked for through when I was.

A consultant. Um, this is the organizational principle of our intranet where every piece of information is related to getting us to kind of our ideal goal. So our ideal goal is the perfect project, which is the project that gets everything right? Right. So the, the energy performance is phenomenal. The daylight is great. There's no toxic chemicals. It has a wonderful enclosure, right? It has, if, if the power goes out, it, it functions. Uh, people love it for a variety of reasons. our, our vision that we set up for, for our firm is, is climate health inequity. And this is kind of a takeoff of three of the, of the measures of the framework for design excellence. Um, so, so again, that's that, like what is most specifically relevant to the firm and what's most important. And then we took that a step further and we said, okay, climate is very important. What does that mean for building is very important. What does that mean for building? And that's building systems and building outcomes.

And then we can document those billings. Systems build outcomes and say, well, what if we do all of them on a project That's our perfect project. it's um, it's again our starting assumption for every project that, that we design. and we don't always achieve the perfect project, but we always try to achieve the perfect project. one example is like mass timber is very important to us. It's important to us because it's regional character from the northwest. It's important to us because it's lower body carbon. Um, we we're very kind of focused on wood sourcing within our practice. So we understand area like areas of forry where the, where the lumber is coming from. Um, it's also important to us 'cause it creates great spaces. People love the warmth of wood and respond really well to that. And there's also research showing wooden spaces will reduce people's heart rate, um, and, and bring down their stress levels over spaces that are maybe more or concrete. So, but not every building's gonna be mass timber. Um. And in some practices, if they wanna do mass timber, they might be like, that looks like a good candidate for mass timber. Let's do it. Or That one does not look like a, a great candidate. Let's, let's just do a more traditional system. But we, we do it Bora, as we say, every project that walks in the door is mass timber

until it's not.

Christopher Parsons: Mm-hmm.

Corey Squire: project that works in the bo has zero toxic chemicals until it doesn't for some reason. Right. Every project walks in the door has great day lighting until there's a reason that they're, that, that it doesn't. that's the whole perfect

project concept where

Christopher Parsons: heard you call that a, like a highest common denominator instead of a lowest common denominator.

Right. So instead of like starting at code and working up, you start at this thing. Yeah.

Corey Squire: Exactly. Yeah. That, that, and that is the idea. And we've been surprised, right. Projects that we started as highest common denominator, first of all, they're more likely to end up there. secondly, the project that achieves is achieves perfect products.

Project status might not be the one that we expect to,

so. We could have an ambitious client who says all the right things and for whatever reason, we might not get there. Um, the example perfect project on our website is a public library that we did with a short budget, and we got every single thing right on that

project,

Evan Troxel: Hmm.

Corey Squire: I don't

Christopher Parsons: But like without that, you, Corey, I think what you're saying is like you might have come into that assuming that none of these are gonna work 'cause this is this challenging project.

Corey Squire: we don't have the

Christopher Parsons: Yeah.

Corey Squire: timber. Why even try it? Right. But instead we tried it and we got mass timber.

And on other projects where it seemed more obvious, we did not get. Asked him.

Evan Troxel: I have, I have a question and then a follow up question. The first one is like, how, how do you, do you put that in front of clients? Do you say like, talk openly about the perfect project with clients to get them on board early so that you're setting that highest common denominator kind of expectation?

And then obviously you're, you're going through the normal process. The follow up question is how do your teams, um, do they appreciate not having to start with a blank page, I guess would be the way that I would put it, coming from kind of a similar theme that I've seen across. on this podcast where it's like technology, old technology, right?

Going back to drafting, right. Is you start with a blank page.

CAD was very similar. BIM is very similar, right. But now tools are very much speaking to this idea of not having to start with a blank page using, you know, codified inform instructions, things that the firm are carries along with it all the time. There's still so many teams that start from a blank page, and I, I, I would think that like having a resource like this, so my second, my follow-up question's way longer than the first one. Right. But it's like this, this idea of like having all that at your fingertips so that you have the whole kit and then you, the designers and the, the, the team starts to like put that together in a different way, site by site I think would be, that sounds fantastic to me.

Corey Squire: Yeah, so I guess the first question, like, so we don't, we don't talk to our clients about the board perfect project, and it's not really an

Evan Troxel: Okay.

Corey Squire: decision to not do that. We are very clear about our values, so when we interview for a project, we say we are mass timber experts. We say we are experts in healthy material selection.

We will not have. toxic chemicals in your project, they will be resilient. They will have great daylight. So we do talk through all the things that we want to, that we want to achieve, we, we just haven't used the board perfect project language. And I, I,

Evan Troxel: That's internal. Yeah. Okay.

Corey Squire: now to your second point about not starting with a blank slate, people really do appreciate that.

And I think that if there's just a thousand questions and a thousand decisions that you need to make on a project

Evan Troxel: Just a thousand. Yeah,

Corey Squire: let's, say, let's

say there's

Christopher Parsons: that seems low.

Evan Troxel: that was, that was yesterday. Yeah.

Corey Squire: 10,000, but let's say that 5,000 of those don't need any attention

because we've already

Evan Troxel: All right.

Corey Squire: that question as a firm, right? Um, that means that you could focus on the other things. So instead of trying to make every project mass timber we've read inside, there're gonna be mass timber. You could focus on doing more innovative mass timber, right? You could, you could focus on kind of. Designing within a context that already works, rather than throwing out a whole bunch of ideas and, and kind of, maybe, or maybe it won't work.

So I think when we focus our design efforts by taking certain questions and decisions off the table, we can get further in the detail. We can do more interesting things. We could make our time and sign effort go further in the areas that really matter,

Evan Troxel: This, it's brilliant because it's so simple. Like this is exactly kind of an architectural education of de developing an architectural language on a project, and then some of the decisions just make themselves right. It's because it totally follows the rules, and then you decide specifically where you wanna break the rules, and often those are the places you spend a little bit more time and attention

Corey Squire: And that's the,

Evan Troxel: because they're special for some reason.

Corey Squire: right?

Evan Troxel: Yeah.

Corey Squire: And, and we're confident that it'll work, right? Because the things that we

just do

Evan Troxel: Hmm.

Corey Squire: are the things that are tried and

true, right? The things that we

Evan Troxel: Nice.

Corey Squire: will get the good outcomes off.

And, and

Christopher Parsons: I, I,

Corey Squire: that different from the way architecture was, um, done, let's say 200 years ago before

we had electricity in buildings, right? We didn't get to choose the window wall ratio 'cause we couldn't do a hundred percent window. Um, we couldn't do a hundred percent glass, right? both because we didn't have the materials, but also because we couldn't cool it, right? It just didn't work. So we started with the building that worked and then we designed really special moments in it.

And I think that's what we're trying to do today. We're just avoiding all the distraction of the things we're able to do because of technology, but don't actually serve our, our purposes.

Like again, the

Evan Troxel: It's like the Bora version of graphic standards, right? Like graphic standards applies to everybody, but you guys have your own, and, and to me, like you just flip that open. It's like, oh, that's what I do in this circumstance. I I love that.

Corey Squire: right?

Because they're beyond graphics. It's like

Christopher Parsons: Mm-hmm.

Corey Squire: of strategies provides the function that we want in the physical world. We're just not gonna question it. We're

just going to take it

Evan Troxel: Yeah.

Corey Squire: on and, and again, like explore those special moments with more attention and more time and more

effort.

Christopher Parsons: What's so nice about this, Corey? And like maybe we can link, Evan Corey did an internet tour of Chaco that's on our website, so maybe we can put that in the show notes. But like what you see is that, um, I think the Bora Perfect project is like. Simple and like in a complimentary way. Like it's like a very, it's a, it's kind of a story.

So it's easy to like latch onto and understand and it simplifies a lot of complexity that lays underneath it. And I think the way, you know, in technology, we talk about this idea of progressive disclosure. So you start somebody with something simple and then you take 'em into detail, but only when they need it.

And so the way you've laid out your intranet is people start at like big picture values, best practices, design desire, design outcomes. And then you can work down into the specific strategy or material or detail that you need to support it versus just, here's just like a wall of information, go find your way through it.

You know what I mean?

Corey Squire: you can

stop wherever you want, right? You

Christopher Parsons: And you can stop wherever you want,

Corey Squire: tier

Christopher Parsons: right.

Corey Squire: right? You can do that two tiers. Um, but what's most important is like everybody passes the high level information and then you can get as detailed as you need to. So that's kind of like the fundamental structure of how we organize our

information.

Christopher Parsons: How is AI changing that for you? Is it changing the way you organize information, changing the way people are accessing information? Like I know you're using our AI search on Chaco, we kind of nicknamed it Robo Corey, you know, as kind of a joke, so it can answer questions even while you're at client sites or on vacation or whatever it is.

Um, what do you, what are your thoughts about AI in the future?

Corey Squire: allows me to go on vacation more

often.

Christopher Parsons: Yeah. Yes, that's right.

Corey Squire: yeah. So, and, and we're, we're like, we're, we're still rolling this out. We're kind of relatively new to the AI search. Um, and, but, but there's real potential there and, and it, and it's obvious what the potential is already. this, this, this is not an actual example that has happened, but a potential that will happen, I'm sure at some point, I tell the story, and I might've even told the story at Kay Connect, where, um, kind of one of my proudest moments as a sustainability director was when we were, I was with a project team and we were going through a cost estimate with a client and a contractor around an affordable housing project. the contractor said, there's gonna be a $200,000 cost ad for this non vinyl PVC, say non PVC flooring. and then the client stops for a second and says like, why are we paying $200,000 for this different type of flooring? then without me saying a word, every single member of our design team chimed in and explained why we don't use vinyl. There's, there's health impacts, there's, there's kind of equity impacts. It dioxins, there's end of life impacts. Um, and we were so clear and confident in that messaging the client said, okay, and the question never came up again.

Evan Troxel: Nice.

Corey Squire: you can imagine another, and I didn't have to say anything, right? Because we knew this was part of our

values, Right.

Christopher Parsons: right?

Corey Squire: information on the internet, everybody knew what we were gonna say. and you can imagine a scenario where we just started hedging. We'd be like, oh, I don't know. We'll study that more. It's like,

it's a good thing to

Evan Troxel: Totally.

Corey Squire: who knows?

Like,

Evan Troxel: I'll get back to you. Yeah.

Corey Squire: it's like, that project would've had

vinyl in it if that

Christopher Parsons: Mm-hmm.

Evan Troxel: Mm-hmm.

Corey Squire: we were clear about our vision, we were clear about, we were confident in our delivery. We had rehearsed it. Um, we connected to the client's values and, um, worked. what AI search on Synthesis can do is not just answer questions like, um. Like, why is vinyl bad? Or, or, or, I don't know. What, what, whatever else we wanna ask. It can answer questions like, how do I advocate to a client about not using vinyl? Um, or how do I talk to a client about using, I don't know. I've never gotten compost in toilets into a project. It's always been a goal of mine one day. How do I talk to a client about, uh, compost and toilets in their project, right? And the answers that are coming out based on the content, both in my book and also the content that we've just collected on our internet, this is kind of best practices unique to us and our values. The answers are really good, and they're written in conversational, uh, kind of way that a project team can just run with. So how do I make a project more resilient? Like, uh, it's not generic answers, it's kind of explicit. Like, do this from a design standpoint. And, and I, I asked, I asked the kind of looking at my book, how do you design. Um, how do you decide for resilience? And it had like six bullet points that are all actionable that you can imagine a team kind of just taking and, and using that to evaluate their project.

Or how do I talk about resilience to a client? That answer is really good. Um, and, and the, the way, the way that I talk, I, I talked about this at a, at a conference last week. The way I talk about it is I've been saying for a long time, um, like, we need to get answers, not resources to our project team. We need to get the right answer to the right person at the right time. And then my solution to that was I wrote a book as all the information it needs,

and the

Evan Troxel: Yep.

Corey Squire: 400 pages long. And even though I think that 400 pages is extremely succinct for the world of sustainability, it's still a 400 page

book. Um, what the, the Corey bot or like the Chaco AI can do is

answer,

Christopher Parsons: Well, you uploaded your book to Chaco, which I don't think we've said for this audience, like

Corey Squire: book to Chaco

Christopher Parsons: Yeah,

Corey Squire: and uh, and that's how, that's how Chaco was able to kind of read my writing and deliver an answer in my voice with information that,

that I've provided.

Christopher Parsons: yeah. And alongside the internet, which I think, so there's two things there. Like one, you wrote a lot of this stuff pre ai, but the way that you developed content was very like AI ready in that you didn't just say you didn't just

by happy accident. Well, I don't know. You tell me.

I'll tell you how, what I meant and tell you.

Corey Squire: Yeah, yeah,

Christopher Parsons: So like, um, a lot of people focus on the what, when they're writing kind of knowledge internally. Right? So our window to wall ratio is between 30 and 50%. Full stop. Like that's the end of it. Not like why is it between 30 and 50%? Like when would it be 30? When would it be 50?

Like why is this our approach? And when you look at any of the content on Boras intranet, the why is always involved, like in the who. And like there's a lot more context there, which is great for humans, which is why you wrote it that way. But it turns out it's great for AI too. So it it's what enable,

Corey Squire: And I

Christopher Parsons: yeah.

Yeah.

Corey Squire: wrote it for, I wrote it for, I, I did, I wrote

it for people. And,

Christopher Parsons: You wrote it for people. Yeah.

Corey Squire: there's, there's this, uh, joke that I've made in the past where it's like, whenever there's a question, sustainability, worst answer. And also the most accurate answer is it depends. And, and you hear that a lot, right? And it's like, it depends, is always true. Like what's the, what's the best win to wall ratio for this project? Like, well, it depends on the context, depends on the orientation, it depends on the building type. But it's completely unhelpful to say what? It depends.

So, so

Evan Troxel: Sure.

Corey Squire: answer.

Christopher Parsons: But you're saying why it depends. So you are actually like, and then you go on to like kind of Yeah.

Corey Squire: do in the book was like, um, explain at a high level, like not going to every single level of

detail, but

Christopher Parsons: Mm-hmm.

Corey Squire: high level, is the best answer. This is why it's the best answer. These are maybe one or two use cases where it might be a little different and this is how, you know, but that's it, right?

It doesn't, it doesn't go in through every single nuance. It doesn't go on forever of every single possibility. but it provides enough context that the reader should be able to intuit kind of the next step. And I, I think you're right. I think that's allows the AI to pick up on that explanation and make it maybe more, more

accessible

Christopher Parsons: The thing that was remarkable

Corey Squire: towards writing for an

Christopher Parsons: without intention. Right, right, right. But people can learn from that and now they can future proof or AI proof their content to make sure it's more. But um, one of the things that's remarkable about that story you told about the client in the vinyl floor is. You can imagine a world where people had done their job, they read the intranet, they know what's on it, and they just said like, no, we don't do flannel floors.

But they didn't just say, they also said,

they said, why we don't do it. Which I think is like,

that's a wholly different answer.

Corey Squire: Yeah.

Christopher Parsons: And that's a big success to the way you've done knowledge transfer. Right.

Corey Squire: that is, and that's how we've described it, knowledge to your point, right. The why is there, right. Um, you need to know a level down to, to be able to make the case. And and part of that is because I, my audience is both our, our designers at Bora, but they're also the people that, the people that, that our designers are talking to.

Christopher Parsons: How do you bring emerging professionals into sustainability and how do you bring 'em, I guess, kind of period into Bora, but like how are you onboarding people? How do you get someone from like day one to like the place where I can answer in front of a client, like why we're not, uh, why we're not doing vinyl floor.

Corey Squire: So I mean, so there's two, there's uh, there's two, two things there, right? And it goes back to this culture and knowledge piece. of, part of the cultural piece is that when the team explains to the client why we don't use vinyl flooring, it was everybody from the design principle in the room to like a very junior level designer and all of them felt confident and empowered to, to make that case, right?

And I've, I've consulted with a lot of firms where two people in that group would not have felt comfortable doing that. And that's the design principle who doesn't know the information and is afraid of, of like looking like they don't know anything. And then the junior designer who doesn't feel like they're in their

place to be.

Christopher Parsons: So they might know it, but they just don't feel like they can speak up, like is that

Corey Squire: probably knows it, but it doesn't

feel like it can speak out.

Christopher Parsons: mm-hmm.

Corey Squire: principle might not know it because maybe they're all on board with sustainability, but they haven't taken the time to kind of

internalize it.

Christopher Parsons: Hmm.

Corey Squire: The culture that we set up around sustainability at Bora is that this is a shared responsibility climate health inequity is seriously the reason that we do our work.

That's the lens through which we do. We look at everything um, and that means that anybody in the firm should have agency and feel empowered to advance climate health inequity on their projects. if they stand up to a client and say no, like they will be lauded by the principles. They will, they will.

Evan Troxel: Ooh.

Christopher Parsons: Yeah.

Corey Squire: And, but a

Evan Troxel: Wow.

Corey Squire: other

firms don't work like that.

Christopher Parsons: Nope.

Corey Squire: Like

Evan Troxel: Sure.

Corey Squire: say no to a client. So, and that's a

Evan Troxel: right?

Corey Squire: And that's what we did

first. And

Christopher Parsons: Hmm.

Corey Squire: the culture is more challenging, but once you have it there, you just supply the knowledge and it's easy enough.

So part of our onboarding for, for new employees at Bore is like, we take this stuff seriously, Our culture is, is entirely around our vision. Uh, it is your responsibility to live the vision, and it's your responsibility to educate yourself on the information you need to advance that vision. And it's all right here. And that's basically what I, I do, I do sustainability onboarding with

all of our new employees

Christopher Parsons: Mm-hmm.

Corey Squire: and, we're, we're in a period right now where we're, we're anticipating 20 or so new people joining the firm in the next few months. Um, and I'm kind of thinking about how to revamp that a little bit with ai and I haven't kind of gotten, gotten, gotten sure yet, but,

um,

Christopher Parsons: I was on a call yesterday with, we had, we do these community round tables. We with, with I, we have 30 clients on the call. And what, there was a firm that was telling a story, they just onboarded 30 people and they've got

kind of their, their version of which are, they do higher ed, so it's kind of like their perfect project, but from a higher ed lens, not a sustainability lens.

And when they're onboarding employees, they give them 25 questions that they have to go answer on the internet.

Corey Squire: Hmm.

Christopher Parsons: instead of saying Go, go read this a hundred page long thing or whatever, it's like, yeah,

Evan Troxel: Yeah.

Christopher Parsons: yeah. And like, just find the answers and dig and like come back and like be able to answer, you know, these questions and you kind of reverse the onboarding process.

Evan Troxel: And AI wrote that guide.

Christopher Parsons: Yeah, yeah. Right, right.

Corey Squire: mean that, that, that's super. Does it become too easy with ai?

Right? Do you just type in

Christopher Parsons: I think the point is like, kind of like you,

Corey Squire: you see the response?

Christopher Parsons: you see the response in like so do to, um, you see the response, but then you can click through and see the underlying resources, but you get a sense of confidence that there are resources to support your questions so that you don't just feel like you have to go look on the internet, you know, or just kind of like try not to bug your project manager too much.

It's like you can be empowered to go seek knowledge and that it's there on your behalf. And I think that's just a relatively, I, I mean, I thought it was pretty cool when they were telling that story.

Corey Squire: gonna, I'm totally

Christopher Parsons: yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

Corey Squire: sounds great.

Evan Troxel: Can I, can I ask about your book, Corey? I, I'm curious from, uh, I, I, I think I can count on one hand how many authors have been on this podcast unless there's people who haven't told me about the books they've written. But, um, and, and I'm included in that too. 'cause I've written a book and I know like how thankless it kind of is.

And, and that, and, and I, what I mean by that is like, of course there's people who buy your book and get value out of it, but in a, in a big picture sense, like, nobody writes a book to get rich. And so I'm, I'm curious what your goals were with that, and then like, kind of how you've seen that play out in the profession, but also at Bora because of the, the way that you've kind of taken that and, and put it into this ecosystem that your firm operates on as well.

Corey Squire: So I, so I think that, like, the reason I wrote the book was because I thought we were having the wrong conversations in the world of sustainability. And, um, part of that was because of this epiphany around knowledge management that, that Chris led with at the beginning. Um, part of it is just that there are no good resources that seem modern and applicable, for, for students or also just architects who wanna understand this stuff and. And the last piece is like, the information that is available is pretty theoretical. There's, there wasn't anything

practical.

Christopher Parsons: Hmm.

Corey Squire: way that my book is laid out, there's, there's three parts of the book. And the first, the first part is theory. the theory says, what is sustainability? How does it connect to design?

Why do we wanna do this?

What are the kind

Evan Troxel: Hmm.

Corey Squire: underpinnings of this whole thing? And maybe that gets to Chris's point about like, how do you have that conversation? And I felt that was fundamental to lead with. And if you, if you pick up a book like, um, sun, wind The Light is a great book, but I, I sometimes make fun of it just because it's a little dated.

It came out 50 years ago, and that's kind of still the classic, kind of sustainability or environmental control architecture book in school today. book doesn't start with a theory around why we should be doing this in our buildings. And I think that's, that's, that's something that we really need.

We need a common language to talk

about sustainability.

Christopher Parsons: So we're back to why, again, just like we, we've been

Corey Squire: We're right back to

Christopher Parsons: right.

Corey Squire: that's like, that's like why we start with vision. That's why we don't jump into simulation software when we talk about sustainability. Um, we need to be intentional and we need to be clear about what we're trying to accomplish. Uh, part two is called practice. And this is when I talk about culture, this is, when I talk about design process, this content was completely absent from any, and this is what I talk about, knowledge management. This content was completely absent to any other resource around sustainability.

there is, there's like understanding sustainable design and understanding how sustainable design fits into the context of architectural practice.

The way it's practiced today are two completely different things. And knowing sustainable design does not make it any more likely that you're gonna design sustainable buildings that get built in the real world, right? Um, so, so that became incredibly important. And then the third part of the book I call Design.

And what it is, is the best practices along a series of buildings. Systems. So best practices around Windows, best practices, around, uh, structural systems. I imagine that trees could be a building system, so best practices around trees. I imagine that building occupants are a building system that we don't often consider.

So

there's best practices

Evan Troxel: Hmm.

Corey Squire: Now, that third part of the book is, it's, it's my take on a lot of other things that have been written. It's like the way that I think sustainable design should be done, and it's through that best practice lens. But the first two parts of the book, the theory and the practice, I think are that's, that's the novel material, and that's the reason that I had to write the book where I felt like I had to write the book because we were talking too theoretically about sustainability within practice.

We were talking, weren't talking practically about process, about how to actually get this stuff done, and we weren't talking really effectively about the why we're doing this, right? Are we doing this to save the planet? Like what, what does that mean? Are we doing this? Because the lead checklist. Says that if we do this, we get a plaque on the wall.

Like, I think that's why a lot of people were doing it.

Um,

Evan Troxel: Yep.

Corey Squire: fundamentally, like my take is like human thriving is the reason we're doing this. Let's, let's talk about what that means. Let's talk about that connection to design. So, and then through my consulting work, like I felt we were all hung up on the same thing. if I provided this, this, um, this guideline, this kind of consistent kind of through line from theory to practice, to design, um, any firm, like whether you're a single practitioner, whether you're a five person firm, whether you're a big firm, there's, there's big firms who have been using my book for their, for their sustainable design process. Like it's kind of a one stop shop. It could solve the, like, instead of, instead of the 10 years that I spent like in circuitous roots to figure this stuff out. Like you could just start on day

one.

Christopher Parsons: You're giving people like a, a chair, lift up the mountain,

Corey Squire: that's,

Christopher Parsons: know, so they don't have to walk up with their skis over their shoulder and they can just, yeah.

Corey Squire: right? Uh, we don't all have to figure this out on our own. Right.

And I, I, I, I mean, maybe I didn't figure it out perfectly. Maybe other people figured it out differently, but I, I figured out a system that works and I've worked with enough firms to know that it works, and then I've documented it so other people can now just, yeah, take the trail, lift right up the mountain and get started.

Uh,

Evan Troxel: Nice.

Corey Squire: is a thankless process. You spend a lot of time by yourself thinking, you spend a lot of time asking people to read drafts and, feeling bad that you're like asking them to read drafts. Um, the reception has been, has been, has been positive. And I, feel like the audience that I was writing for is extremely small.

It was like people who care deeply about

sustainability, maybe they're in a

Evan Troxel: Yeah.

Corey Squire: sustainability role in a firm. Maybe they want to be, maybe they think their firm could do better, uh, and they just don't know what to do. And like the number of people in that position is like, what? 200?

So,

Christopher Parsons: Do you think it's gonna grow?

Corey Squire: I think it'll grow.

I think that, I mean, B never had a sustainability

director before

Christopher Parsons: Mm-hmm.

Corey Squire: of other firms have not. I think that this will be a normal role for firms of about 50 and above. Um, there are sustainability teams and I think as sustainability becomes less of a niche saving the world thing and more of a, like providing real benefit and value to clients, uh, like a technical overlay design, I think, I think it'll grow and I think it'll get more.

But every time I hear one of those people, like, uh, a new sustainability directive and affirming that's never had one before, who cares deeply about this stuff but doesn't know where to start, and they

get my book

Christopher Parsons: Yeah.

Corey Squire: five times someone has reached out to me and said like, they've been in that position.

And that's been kind of, uh, rewarding enough

for the whole process.

Christopher Parsons: then the impact that person will then have on that business and all those projects. Right. Like,

Corey Squire: more than that. Yeah.

Christopher Parsons: so you've recently started, um, consulting to other firms and helping them kind of on the Bora platform, and I'm curious to know, like if you start talking with or working with one of these clients, like how do you.

How do you get them started? Do you say, read my book and then I'll come speak to you? Do they hire you as a consultant? Do you have like a program, like how do you build a, help people build a sustainability muscle, you know, within the company?

Corey Squire: So, I've been doing this in a few ways, and I guess to, to start off, I think this is really important, kind of broadening, broadening sustainability expertise beyond my own firm. And I think that I haven't solved everything in my firm, and I think that not everybody at my firm is convinced that I should be going out and doing this, uh, specifically maybe project teams who want more face-to-face

time and less

Christopher Parsons: Mm-hmm.

Corey Squire: time for whatever reason. But I think it's really important, and I think that we are not a hundred percent, but we might be 80%.

We might be 90%.

Christopher Parsons: Mm-hmm.

Corey Squire: And with. a chunk of my time, if I could bring another firm up to 80% than getting Bora to 85%, I think that is like a net positive

for the world.

Christopher Parsons: Mm.

Corey Squire: So the way that I, the way that I work with, with, with other firms is in a few different ways.

Um, I, I'll do visioning, visioning workshops similar to what I did for Bora. Like fundamentally, we need to start with what's important to you, what reflects your values, and then we can move backwards from there into the strategies and resources. And I can work with firms to understand what their vision is. I'll also work as a kind of a consultant on projects. So we have this new project. Often people come to me because the client is interested to sustainability, though I don't think that's necessary. Like we just want to do a really great job on this project. And we did another set of eyes, maybe external set of eyes of like, what should we be focusing on to achieve whatever our goals are.

So I'll, I'll work with a project and I've, I've, I've even interviewed with. Uh, as a consultant through Bore, I've interviewed with other firms as the sustainability expert, and we've been

awarded projects,

Christopher Parsons: Hmm.

Corey Squire: through that, which has been also pretty rewarding. and I'll also, uh, I'll also kind of take a look at internal resources that other firms have talk about whether those are the right resources, how accessible those are, how we can get those to the right people. Um, so that's, that's kind of, that's kind of the program and beyond, beyond myself, like, uh, again, there is a breadth of knowledge and deep expertise within Bora, around material health, around resilience, around mass timber, around wood sourcing. and I can bring

these people in,

Christopher Parsons: Mm-hmm.

Corey Squire: just me.

It's a, it's a team that we have of five or six people. These people are a hundred percent billable on Bora

projects, but

Christopher Parsons: Right,

Corey Squire: like they're not a standalone sustainability team.

Christopher Parsons: right.

Corey Squire: But they have the expertise that, um, that we can just get out to other firms as, as,

necessary, so,

Christopher Parsons: But if you were to pull one of them in, like if that were to happen in the future, now you have to do more knowledge management, right? You have to do critical knowledge transfer from each of these experts to be able to backfill with an expert. You know, that's kind of maybe can take over, you know, for them like that, that, yeah.

Corey Squire: is, that is

the plan, right? Like

Christopher Parsons: Mm-hmm.

Corey Squire: we we need to get this knowledge out to, to everyone, both internally and, and externally,

Christopher Parsons: I think you said about firms, it was interesting. You have a slide. Sorry, Evan, did you want, am I good?

Evan Troxel: Uh, no go.

Christopher Parsons: You have a, you have a slide in your presentation from KConnect where you kind of show this chart. I'm trying to draw with my hands, but like, maybe I shouldn't 'cause of audio. Um, but like you have, I don't know, like say they're 10 projects and each one is like 10 or 20%, and then you've got one that's at like a hundred percent

Corey Squire: project. Yeah.

Christopher Parsons: sustainability

project, right?

It's like we're gonna push all our chips into the table and this project is gonna be the hero project for sustainability and we're gonna the rest. And you, you kind of argued it's better to have all of 'em at like 70% than that one hero project, right?

Corey Squire: right.

Christopher Parsons: You almost just made that argument, it's better to have more a e, c firms at 70% than have board at a hundred percent, right?

Corey Squire: mean this and this argument is a through line for I think all of my work. And it goes back to like the

Pareto equilibrium,

Christopher Parsons: Mm-hmm.

Corey Squire: 80 20 rule. If we can spend, can spend, um, 20% of our effort getting to 80% multiple times,

Christopher Parsons: Mm-hmm.

Corey Squire: a bigger impact. And sometimes you need to get to a hundred percent right?

Um, but in the world of sustainability, we're gonna get a little, a little better energy performance. We're gonna get a little, a little better. Like we don't always need to get to that. And, and an example that I share make this point is that an optimization curve has a flat

top,

Christopher Parsons: Yeah. The scur, right? Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

Corey Squire: And if, and if you can like edge a little bit along the top of a flat optimization curve. Or you can get up this steep

side

Christopher Parsons: Mm-hmm.

Corey Squire: get up this steep side, you're gonna have

way more of an impact. I,

Christopher Parsons: Mm-hmm.

Corey Squire: I was in college, I like signed up for like, when I was an undergrad, I, I signed up for like six classes and I was like, well, I'm not gonna do very well in all these classes, but I'm gonna get a good amount of information and six classes and overall I'm gonna learn more.

Then I've had to four classes that got a's

in them.

Christopher Parsons: That's fantastic. I did the exact same thing, Corey. That's great. I didn't.

Corey Squire: Yeah. It's like a disease that I've had my whole life. but it's, it's about, it's about

scaling impact

Christopher Parsons: Mm-hmm.

Corey Squire: that sustainability is like, it doesn't matter if one project is really sustainable, that does not help the people in that project.

But it, that's not the point of sustainability.

Christopher Parsons: Mm-hmm.

Corey Squire: Sustainability is a broad kind of civilization wide change of perspective and um, and we're gonna get there by having a broad impact on a lot of projects, talking to a lot of people. And I think that's what's one of the things that's been so helpful with. F knowledge management, like starting with Lake Flato's intranet, going to the AI's framework for design excellence, writing my book, building Chaco. Um, it's all the same theme

getting the,

Evan Troxel: Mm-hmm.

Corey Squire: there's nothing special about holding onto knowledge.

Um,

Christopher Parsons: Well, right. It frees up like, you know, it's interesting. When I first started knowledge management, the, the people used to say, well, knowledge is power and experts aren't gonna wanna give it up. Like, I don't hear that as much now as I used to, which I think is kind of an interesting cultural shift. But I think what you've, we've talked about Corey, is like when you write that stuff down, it actually kind of creates white space in your brain to go learn more stuff.

Corey Squire: yeah.

Christopher Parsons: know, like from a growth mindset, you can kind of like offload it and now I can go deeper. Right?

Corey Squire: I can learn more and there's always more to learn, right? Even if I didn't try to learn more

stuff.

Christopher Parsons: Right.

Corey Squire: new things happening all the time. then also the process of writing helped me understand maybe contradictions within my own

thinking.

Christopher Parsons: Hmm.

Corey Squire: so

Evan Troxel: Hmm.

Corey Squire: Like, I knew all the same stuff, but it became clearer after I wrote it.

Evan Troxel: Totally.

Corey Squire: So,

Evan Troxel: Yep.

Corey Squire: and that means that it's clear that now I think about it more clearly, that I can share it more, the more clearly. And I wouldn't have written it if I wasn't going to share it.

Evan Troxel: I, I, I just wanted to draw like a connection here because I think that the thing that I keep hearing in all of these, the, you just laid out kind of all those different pieces of your cur career trajectory like all of them center around humans, right? I think that's super interesting, right? And it's like this idea that, and this is a new definition that I've heard recently just so well put about what leadership is and it's helping other people win.

Christopher Parsons: Hmm.

Corey Squire: No, I love

Evan Troxel: I thought that was a, a fantastic for leadership. And that's what I'm hearing, right? It's like this doesn't need to stay locked up. It doesn't need to stay locked up in me. It doesn't need to stay locked up in our firm. It doesn't need to stay locked up in our internet or, or other experts in our firm. I think that. I hope that's the message that really comes out of this episode. Like obviously there's like some super practical takeaways, but I think like, big

Christopher Parsons: Mm-hmm.

Evan Troxel: this is what our profession really needs. And, and I'm not complaining in any way because like, there's no shortage of super amazing experts like you guys coming on this podcast and doing exactly the same thing.

Like the list is long, but in the grand scheme of the profession, um, it needs to happen even more. And, and so I'm, I'm really happy to hear it, but I hope that that's a big takeaway for the audience.

Corey Squire: that really resonates with me going back to that story that I shared of like my proudest moment as a sustainability director. I was sitting in the back, I didn't say

a word. the, the,

Evan Troxel: Hmm.

Corey Squire: the team knew what to do to, to talk to the

client

Evan Troxel: a proud moment. Okay.

Christopher Parsons: I mean, I can't resist saying that, like what you figured out is that you made sustainability sustainable. 'cause it could go on without you, right? Like you created momentum

in that moment.

Corey Squire: There's

Christopher Parsons: I don't know. It's, it's just interesting, like in technology, um, we talk all the time about, because like people will say in RKA community, but then in architecture in general who aren't in our industry, like, they'll say to me like, I can't believe you get competitors in a room together sharing knowledge with each other or presenting in front of each other.

Like how they do what they do. And you know, what I always say is like, you know, this technology industry is the same way and they say, uh, agree on standards and compete on implementation. And I feel like there's a, there's a similar thing here. Like you're trying to like raise the baseline, you know, it doesn't mean that you're not gonna still go try and win a project against another firm and like do the best possible version of that project.

You can.

Corey Squire: better that we all agree is the right

thing. Right,

That's the

Christopher Parsons: right.

Corey Squire: Yeah.

Christopher Parsons: right. Yeah.

Corey Squire: But, um, but yeah, I mean, I mean, yeah. In, in, in, in your group with, uh, the K community, with other groups that I'm a part of and like interfor sustainability communities, like not only do people wanna do that, that's like what people like really desire.

That's the, the best time of the year is we can get, get together with the people at other firms who are our competitors who are working on the same stuff.

Um,

Christopher Parsons: right. 'cause there's like 200 of you, as you said, right. And that you're, A lot of them are on their own island in their own company, and so like, these are their people and so they get to like, you know, connect and share. Yeah. That's great. I don't know Evan, I, I think this has been great. Do you have any, any closing questions?

Evan Troxel: I don't, I, I'm good. I think, uh, this has been a fantastic conversation. I really, so many key insights that I've soaked up and, and I think that that's gonna translate well for the, for the rest of the audience.

Corey Squire: well thank you so much. This was, uh, this was totally fun.

Christopher Parsons: Co. I think maybe I'll do a closing comment on something that I, I was kind of a noticing, a through line. This is something I say all the time in knowledge management and I think you said it about sustainability, but didn't like come out and like say it, say it is, there's more knowledge in your firm than you can manage.

Like it's just not gonna happen. Like, and so this idea of like starting with whether it's values or whether it's your company strategy and what's important to you to then establish that vision. So you know what knowledge matters more than others. And that could be sustainability knowledge or design technology knowledge, or it doesn't matter what it is like.

That kind of like, almost like how you said like you had to write the missing part of the book that was missing. It's like people just don't start there. They just kinda like dive in and like, oh my God, there's so much knowledge to manage. Let's do all of it. And I think your argument is you don't have to manage it all.

You have to like kind of prioritize and be intentional and go after the things that really matter to your company and your building types or whatever those are. So I think that's that. I just wanted to underscore that. 'cause I think it's a really, really important thing.

Corey Squire: point, and like, like right from the beginning, sustainability is challenging because it's broad and because it's deep and 'cause it's complex. Right? That's why we felt like we had to advocate for it. The people who were saying no to sustainability, they just either didn't have the time or they didn't, they weren't actively against it. You make it simple and you make it desirable, you do that through prioritization and values and it's, it's an easy sell, right? It's this, it's what everyone wants

already.

Christopher Parsons: Instead of arguing, you don't love polar bears enough and then you get into this weird thing and

Corey Squire: yeah, I mean, that's not

Evan Troxel: Right.

Christopher Parsons: I.

Corey Squire: but a lot of people

do it, right, and they

Christopher Parsons: Yeah.

Corey Squire: they don't, they maybe they haven't yet realized that the, the, the person they're talking to is on their

same side.

Christopher Parsons: Mm-hmm.

Corey Squire: just need to prioritize

aligned values, um, and, and focus a little bit.

Evan Troxel: Yeah, you both just said it, right? It's about aligning values and, and the example that you shared of sitting in the back of the room and everybody else making the argument about vinyl the outcome of having that really clear, prioritized information that aligns with the firm's values. That then, that's the stuff that comes right to the surface in the, in the moment.

Like when, when it's needed the most. not like you can't weight everything equally, right? There are things that have to be weighted way higher, and that's a value alignment, and that is, is super,

Christopher Parsons: The word priority actually was intended to be singular. If you go back to the Latin, and

Evan Troxel: Priorities.

Christopher Parsons: butchered it. Priorities is actually not supposed to be a thing, just to be clear.

Evan Troxel: right. That's true. 38. I have

Christopher Parsons: Yeah.

Evan Troxel: priorities. Which one should I do? Yeah.

Corey Squire: have three.

Evan Troxel: Well, thank you both.

Christopher Parsons: Three priorities is cool. I think we've agreed in the modern age. Three priorities is is a

Corey Squire: okay.

Christopher Parsons: five max. No more than Five

Corey Squire: I used to say three plus or minus two.

Christopher Parsons: Yeah.

Love it. Perfect.

Evan Troxel: Well, thank you both. This has been a great conversation. I've packed full of great takeaways and, and I can't wait to get this out to the audience. We'll put links to everything that we've talked about. I'm gonna throw an extra one in here, Corey, just for use, uh, is the, the Compost Toilet Handbook. That's a gr that's a great gift.

Corey Squire: the

internet.

Evan Troxel: You should. And, uh, it's fantastic. I just did a project recently where I, I, I did my first one and that book was invaluable. Invaluable. So, uh, but, uh, links to everything that we talked about in this episode. We'll be in the show notes and, uh, thank you both. This has been a fantastic

Christopher Parsons: Thank you Corey. Thank you, Evan.

Corey Squire: All right. Thank you.