Culture is a System. Here’s How One Firm Designed It.
📰 What if innovation wasn’t a side project, but core infrastructure? This Leadership Edge edition unpacks how OPN Architects built culture, alignment, and digital practice by design and why adoption matters more than the next shiny tool.
Before we get to the main course of this edition, here’s a fun appetizer: I was recently interviewed on the USModernist Radio podcast. If you'd like to hear some of my interests, history, and more you can check it out on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, and Spotify.
Now back to our regularly scheduled program.
What if the real competitive advantage in your firm isn’t a new tool, hire, or market sector, but the fact that you’ve intentionally designed how your firm learns, experiments, and aligns before you were forced to?
Summary
In TRXL episode 215, I talked with Wes Reynolds and Hugh Soward from OPN Architects about what it looks like when a firm treats innovation as something you build into the operating system, not something you bolt on when a client forces your hand.
What stood out to me is how OPN uses an all-firm annual retreat as cultural infrastructure, and how their digital practice work stays grounded in a simple question: does this help teams do better work, and does it create real value for clients?Their experiments spanned everything from reality capture and LiDAR to VR/AR and even curiosity around concrete 3D printing, but the point was never the tool. The point was adoption, trust, and momentum.
Key Takeaways
Here are my top takeaways from the podcast episode. Then we'll get into the deeper analysis.
- Treat retreat like infrastructure: If you want alignment across studios, you cannot leave culture to chance.
- Normalize experimentation (and failure) publicly: Innovation moves faster when people are not under the magnifying glass when trying.
