Voices of Design Leadership. Ken Sanders
strapped it on her wrist. As the adults around her continued chatting, she began tapping and swiping. When she handed the watch back to me a few minutes later, it featured a new Mickey Mouse watch face.
Through her own intuition and instinct, my six-year-old had niece had quickly mastered the user interface of a product she had never seen before. To Giulia, the watch was not technology at all. It was just a tiny iPad. She swiped to Settings, scrolled through the collection of watch faces until she saw Mickey Mouse, and clicked Save. No training was required.
As the world continues to change rapidly, the very definition of technology is altered with each generation. In Chapter 15, Nader Tehrani points out how such rapid change has reshaped the curricula at The Cooper Union: “So much has transformed in terms of practice, it would be a waste of time to attempt to establish a direct correspondence between what one learns and what one practices. At best, what we can do in school is to develop a curious mind, analytical skills, or a critical mind, such that the graduate can translate those capacities into worldly practices as circumstance warrant.”
This is referred to by some as meta learning: the process of learning how to learn. Meta learning requires an awareness and understanding of the phenomenon of learning itself, far beyond the short-term objective of obtaining specific knowledge. Learning never ends.
But it all starts with individual attitude. Design professionals who are committed to lifelong learning and feeding their own curiosity are usually those who emerge as influential citizens and MVP talent.
Gensler University
Few strategies are more critical to an organization’s long-term success than identifying and developing new leaders. As mentioned in the opening chapter, I was privileged to co-lead three Gensler University (GU) programs, each of which included eighteen to twenty-four next-generation leaders. In addition to the workshops and speakers, each class was asked to collaborate and propose initiatives for pursuing a strategic opportunity for the firm.
The theme of GU 2007 was “Think Blue,” inspired by the book Blue Ocean Strategy by W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne. It was required reading for all students. The book introduces a strategy the authors call “value innovation,” which aims to increase client value and reduce delivery costs simultaneously, thereby creating “blue oceans” of opportunity as opposed to “red oceans” filled with competitors.
The GU 2007 class, which I co-led with Janine Pesci,7 was asked by Gensler’s co-CEOs to develop strategies to help fuel the firm’s global growth over the next decade. Over a period of eighteen months, the team met in person three times (once in Los Angeles, once in London, and once in Washington DC) and virtually at least once a month. Janine and I were coaches and facilitators more than instructors. The success of each class primarily depended on their ability to build trusted relationships with each other and collaborate effectively.
Gensler University 2007. Left to Right, Front Row: Dave Broz, Wyett Baker, Ala Hason, Theresa Shiels, Andrew Bennett. Middle Row: Chris Curson, Carolina Tombolesi, Kate Kirkpatrick, Xiaomei Lee, Stephanie Burritt, John Adams, Jill Goebel, Lisa Bierenger, Fergal Walsh, Lindsey Diethrich Sena (executive assistant), Janine Pesci (co-leader), Ted Kollaja. Back Row: Jim Oswald (facilitator), Duncan Swinhoe, Kevin Heinly, Robert Fuller, Johnathan Sandler, Rob Wood, Ryan Haines, Ken Sanders (co-leader). Photo Credit: Photo by Gensler.
At the conclusion of GU 2007, their proposals were presented to Gensler’s co-CEOs. Among the recommendations were a formalized talent exchange program between global offices known as GenslerExchange, and a Global Office Start-up Team (GOST) to share best practices and lessons learned with the leaders of new global offices.
Versions of both proposals were implemented and helped accelerate Gensler’s global expansion during the next decade. In 2007, the firm had six offices located outside of the US: London, Tokyo, Shanghai, Beijing, Dubai, and San José (Costa Rica). Today, it has eleven more: Bogota, Mexico City, Birmingham, Munich, Paris, Abu Dhabi, Hong Kong, Bangalore, Bangkok, Singapore, and Sydney.
In terms of leadership development, the twenty-one students of GU 2007 represented fourteen Gensler offices in the US, United Kingdom, and China. Today, sixteen are still with the firm. Of those, thirteen are Principals, three are office Managing Directors, three are Regional Managing Principals (responsible for multi-office regions), and three have served or are serving on Gensler’s Board of Directors. Without exception, I consider all of them my friends.
Importantly, every time I co-led a Gensler University class, I was also a student. I learned something from everyone who participated. In the same way, I learned something from every design leader interviewed for this book. In the chapters that follow, I hope readers will too.
Mollie Marti is exactly right.
Notes
1 1 Xiaomei Lee was one of the first three Gensler employees hired in the firm’s Shanghai office. Today, she is Managing Principal of Gensler’s Greater China Region and serves on Gensler’s Board of Directors.
2 2 Tim Brown is chair of the global consultancy IDEO. He is a frequent speaker to global business leaders on the value of design thinking, creative leadership, and innovation.
3 3 Dr. Jennifer Doudna is featured in Walter Isaacson’s book The Code Breaker: Jennifer Doudna, Gene Editing and the Future of the Human Race, published by Simon & Schuster in 2021. It is a compelling documentary of her collaboration with Dr. Emmanuelle Charpentier and many others to develop the ground-breaking CRISPR technology.
4 4 Andrew Cuomo, David Petraeus, and Richard Meier are leaders who built strong reputations over several decades only to see them irrevocably damaged by public disclosure of their private behavior.
5 5 One example is The Trusted Executive, written by John Blakeley and published Kogan Page (2021 second edition), which defines its “triple-bottom-line” as Results, Relationships, and Reputation.
6 6 Mollie Marti is a psychologist, lawyer, researcher, humanitarian, and founding CEO of the National Resilience Institute, a non-profit organization focused on cultivating human resilience.
7 7 Janine Pesci, former Director of Talent Development and Chief People Officer at Gensler, played an instrumental role in the growth and development of Gensler University and other learning programs at the firm. Janine retired from Gensler in 2021 and is currently Founder and President of Do It If You Can’t, LLC.
Chapter 3 Sharron van der Meulen
Photo Credit: ZGF Architects
| Leadership Role: | Managing Partner, Portland |
| Firm: | ZGF Architects |
| Office Location: | Portland, Oregon, USA |
| Country of Origin: | USA |
I’ve always believed that we design for the human experience, designed by humans for humans. That’s what I want to focus on in our work, and how ZGF carries forward into the future. My work style is that I’ve never been the loudest person in the room. I’m inherently a little shy, but I also like to listen first, hear what others have to say, and try not to be reactionary. I take a very measured approach. That’s not to say I don’t have strong opinions, but I like working towards consensus vs. forcing decisions.
Introduction
I first met Sharron van der Meulen in 1993, shortly after I joined ZGF Architects in Portland, Oregon. She is an amazingly talented interior designer, and I was fortunate to have the opportunity