Spacecraft — The Workplace Design Podcast

Friend of the show  Nigel Oseland is back with his most recent book on workplace design, 'Beyond the Workplace Zoo', backed up with years of research and experience (and his wife Maggie's insistence he gets out of her hair during lockdown).

Nigel is an environmental psychologist, workplace strategist, change manager, researcher,
international speaker and published author with 11 years of research and 23 years workplace consulting experience at some groundbreaking firms including workplace consultant at Johnson Controls, Swanke Hayden Connell Architects and specialist workplace practices AMA Alexi Marmot Associates and DEGW. 

Nigel draws on his psychology background and his own research to advise occupiers on how to redefine their workstyles and rethink their workplace to create working environments that enhance individual and organisational performance, delivering maximum benefit. He specialises in workplace strategy, design briefing and change management to help create workplaces that meet psychological needs and facilitate collaboration, creativity and concentration. Nigel has advised corporate businesses, public sector bodies and educational institutions in the UK and throughout EMEA.

As always, Nigel is great to listen to, and he also kindly provides a code to get money off his new book within the interview.

I had the pleasure of meeting Lee at the Virtual Interiors Event during a talk we did together. This is one of our longer recordings as Lee is so engaging I struggled to cut much of it out.

Lee founded & continues to lead globally renowned Architecture & Interior Design studio PENSON, is a regular global keynote inspirational speaker covering business & workplace change & is engaged as global Programme Director to deliver business-wide culture & workplace enhancements for some of the world's largest & high-profile brands & entrepreneurs.

PENSON have gone from strength to strength, working with some incredible brands, but what impresses me most about their work is their ability to get big ideas signed off — those brave creative statements many of us designers start with at the beginning of the project that eventually gets worn down to a shadow of their former self. PENSON have the rare gift of being able to get their clients on-side to create unexpected solutions. All of which are underpinned by a solid sustainable approach and delivered at breakneck speed.

As they say at PENSON "Life is too short to waste time in dull or inefficient spaces. We're the global disrupters in Architecture & Interiors."

We've worked with both Dani and Michael of MoreySmith on some of our favorite (and indeed award-winning) projects. We love working with MoreySmith due to their attention to detail and the fact that they push every project as a matter of course. 

Dani has recently been promoted to Director of Design, she joined MoreySmith in 2010 with a BSC first-class honours degree in Management and Marketing of Textiles from Manchester University and a Diploma from the Interior Design School. Her project portfolio ranges from high-end private and commercial projects to working with leading multinational brands in the music, fashion, marketing and drinks industries. Dani’s strong brand awareness and collaborative capabilities, combined with her passion for bringing specialist and artisanal craft and workmanship to a project, helps to underpin her unique and distinctive style.

Michael moved to London and joined MoreySmith in 2015, having studied and gained experience working on a diverse range of projects in South Africa, including food and beverage, exhibition and workplace design, alongside high-end residential and product design. At MoreySmith he has worked on a number of projects within workplace, repositioning and residential from a boutique hotel in Bath to innovative co-working spaces in Paris, finding creative solutions that add value to each project. Michael considers people at the heart of his designs, working at all stages from conceptualisation through to detailed design and closely with the client team to ensure the final handover retains the excitement and integrity of the original concept.

Jonathan is a tech entrepreneur, digital marketing educator, and keynote speaker, with decades of experience in growing businesses. We're taking a slightly different angle for today's episode — looking at how digital can help us engage with employees and build our brand.

In 2018 he launched Growva, an organisation designed to educate and help leaders of growing businesses to increase sales and customer engagement by better using their websites and other digital tools. He is actively involved in how Growva's customers use digital and inbound marketing to drive sales growth in 2021.

He is a Visiting Fellow at the School of Management at Cranfield University, where he lectures on subjects from Digital Marketing to Customer Advocacy, and was described by New York Business Expo as a “Marketing Change Agent”.

Jonathan has three decades of experience as a tech entrepreneur, Digital marketing specialist, and is skilled in the use of marketing technology to enable fast business growth and enterprise organisational transformation.

I met Simon through my good friend Ben James, and was immediately captivated by his warmth and humour, which you'll hear comes across well in the interview. Simon Co-Founded Jump with Shaun Fernandes 21 years ago and has grown an enviable list of clients (starting with Nike no less).

Very much focused on how to capture the spirit of a brand through their work, Jump's clients include Google, Nike, Rapha, Fidelity, Saatchi & Saatchi. Bloomberg, Starwood Hotels, Unite Student Accommodation, The o2 and Tottenham Hotspur F.C.

In 2015, Simon oversaw the merger of Jump Studios with Populous. The partnership has enabled Jump Studios to extend both geographical reach and scale of projects, finding new and creative ways for brands and organisations to connect with their audiences.

Simon encourages his clients to think from a position of First Principles. What if you started from a position of nothing? Looking at the results of this strategy in Jump's work, it looks like it's a solid approach.

Beth and Sally met at Sketch before both setting up their respective businesses just before lockdown. As they navigated their new ventures and caught up with their network.

"We kept hearing the same message, there was a loss of confidence in meeting face to face which felt like it was stalling the market. We were both missing the opportunities created by bumping into people — the organic connections we all make and leads we pick up.

We kept saying to each other, "the industry really needs a virtual p[platform to get people reconnected, but then we realised that no one else was going to do it."

Caroline Pontifex is director of workplace experience at KKS Savilles and leads their occupier and workplace strategy team. Advising occupiers using workplace as a vehicle for change, and developers ensuring real estate solutions are able to respond to change, her work analysing emerging occupier and workplace trends, and developing standards and space planning principles has lead to the studio winning prestigious awards.

Due to the current situation with Covid I wanted to touch base with podcast favourites Giuseppe Boscherini & Nikita Mikhailov who are joined by Olga Vysotska ( Treasurer, Board Member, Maternal Mental Health Alliance; Chief Listening Officer, PsyPub) to talk about how Covid is affecting us as we work from home over a prolonged period.

Giuseppe is a designer and architect who is constantly thinking around problems, and as part of his response to Covid, home working and creating something for people to feel safe within open-plan offices, he's created something called BoxOffice.

As ever there's a wealth of great information here within the conversation.

We catch up with Neil Usher, Chief Workplace & Change Strategist, GoSpace AI, on the back of his talk at Workplace Trends which you can find here https://workplacetrends.co/events/london-oct-2020. 

Neil is an avid blogger and author of two books, The Elemental Workplace, and now Elemental Change. We interviewed Neil just over two years ago and it's still one of the most listened to episodes (well worth a listen if you haven't already). From his wealth of client-side management and leadership experience from around the world in a variety of industries. He is a sought-after conference and academic speaker, always bringing a fresh perspective while challenging assumptions and myths.

Neil's new book is around change, which can be applied to workplace or organisations, but more about how we need to be the masters of change, we can't sit back and let change happen to us or expect others to do it for us. The timing of the book is impeccable in the current climate. Enjoy. 

Our interview with Rachel Basha, Founder and Design Director and Nicola Osborn, Creative Director of Basha—Franklin. As an Interior Design business they have human-centric design at the core of their work, we caught up with them after their Future Forward webinar which you can catch here.

Rachel started Basha Franklin only a couple of years after arriving in the UK, and as an agency, they're going from strength to strength with an enviable client list. Nikki joined as Creative Director in September 2019 and is already applying her creative force of nature to the business and its culture.

As said on their website "The workplace is a fast-evolving landscape, and your business requires a stimulating, agile space that supports change. We design intelligent solutions that respond to your specific office culture and nurture your valued people. Everyone deserves an inspiring, engaging, healthy place to work. We want to partner with businesses who feel the same."