About Place

This week, we welcome Corinne Murray, founder of Agate Studio. As a leading workplace strategist, Corinne helps organizations think differently about how they approach the creation, management, and evolution of their places of work. In an enlightening conversation, Ryan and Corinne explore the nuanced world of the future of work, touching on several approaches employers can use to evaluate both the built and social work environments to improve employee experience. For more MillerKnoll insights, visit millerknoll.com/ideas-in-action.

Disruption has been the theme of Ronen Journo’s 28-year career, so his perspective on this period of rampant experimentation in corporate real estate is particularly prescient. Ronen is Senior Managing Director and European Head of Management Services & Operations at Hines, a privately owned real estate investment, development, and management firm. In this episode, he and Ryan discuss how the pandemic provided an accelerant for challenges that had been on a slow burn for decades, and the need for corporate real estate professionals to focus on the experiences of the people who use the built environment in order to fully realize its value. For more MillerKnoll insights, visit millerknoll.com/ideas-in-action.

Inclusive design is a topic not nearly enough people are talking about. This week’s guests are working to fix that. Jolene De Jong is an Applied Insights + Design Specialist at MillerKnoll and Joseph White is the company’s Director of Design Strategy. They recently collaborated on a white paper for the peer-reviewed CRE Journal. In it—and in this episode—they unpack the need for architects and designers to move beyond accommodation of unique needs and toward a more widespread adoption of the notion that spaces that follow inclusive design principles simply work better for everyone. For more MillerKnoll insights, visit millerknoll.com/ideas-in-action.

Host Ryan Anderson could not wait to share this episode with you. Our guest, Cali Williams Yost, has spent her career helping organizations reimagine not just where, but also how and when their people work to improve performance and well-being. With a mix of infectious enthusiasm and the truth-bomb directness of someone who has been advocating for these shifts for 27 years, Cali makes a strong business case for embracing flexible work and remaking the office into an intentional enabler of a more flexible operating model. For more MillerKnoll insights, visit millerknoll.com/ideas-in-action.

On this week’s episode, we chat with Craig Robinson, Chief Growth Officer at flexible workplace provider, Industrious. With more than 20 years of experience in the commercial real estate business, Craig helps organizations to be more innovative in their approach to real estate by expanding their concept of "workplace" and providing greater employee choice while managing costs and risk. Join host Ryan Anderson and Craig as they discuss ways to support optionality, flexibility, and environments that promote belonging and purpose. For more MillerKnoll insights, visit millerknoll.com/ideas-in-action.

Our guest this week is on a mission to convince organizations everywhere to take the double disruption of COVID plus inflation as an opportunity to change for the better. Debbie Lovich is a Managing Director and Senior Partner at Boston Consulting Group. She brings her sharp wit and analytical mind to this conversation about the need for leaders to model flexibility, how our reasons for being in the office today have increased demand for shared space, and what the future of work looks like for the 70 percent of the global workforce in manufacturing, retail, and other industries where employees can’t work from home. You’ll find Debbie’s article on that topic here. For more MillerKnoll insights, visit millerknoll.com/ideas-in-action.

Season 2 rolls on with a visit from Samantha Fisher, Head of Dynamic Work at Okta, an identity and access management company that’s actually expanding its number of offices even though it does not require its 5,000-plus employees to come into the office. In an insightful conversation with host Ryan Anderson, Sam breaks down the implications of enforcing a standard eight-hour workday and shares how a dynamic work schedule and environment encourages productivity, equity, and empowerment. For more MillerKnoll insights, visit millerknoll.com/ideas-in-action.

Host Ryan Anderson welcomes Phil Kirschner of global management consulting firm McKinsey & Company. A self-proclaimed “accidental workplace strategist,” Phil fell into managing workplace strategy transformation efforts at Credit Suisse more than a decade ago and never looked back. As a result, his openness to supporting new ways of working fuels this fast-paced exploration of the need for executive-level change management, for widening our perception of what “hybrid” means, for using AI to identify moments that matter in the physical workplace, and more. For more MillerKnoll insights, visit millerknoll.com/ideas-in-action.

Kristin Leimgruber, Ph.D., joins us to kick off the season. Kristi is a behavioral researcher at BetterUp, the virtual coaching and mentorship platform whose science-based approach helps people thrive in the workplace. She and host Ryan Anderson link the rise in workplace burnout with the decline of our sense of social connection at work—an unintended consequence of remote work. It’s an important and timely conversation—and ultimately, an optimistic one, as Kristi and Ryan explore strategies for identifying burnout and strengthening social connections across organizations. Read the Connection Crisis Insight report from BetterUp here. For more MillerKnoll insights, visit millerknoll.com/ideas-in-action.

Host Ryan Anderson takes time to share some highlights from Season 1 and set the stage for Season 2 by answering the two most frequently asked questions he gets asked once people find out what he does for a living: What is the current state of return-to-office? And what does it mean for the future of the workplace? For more MillerKnoll insights, visit millerknoll.com/ideas-in-action.