Good, Thoughtful Hosts #313: Inspiration from Others: A Season Review with David Koel

Episode #313 Transcript | Listen on SoundCloud

Producer 01:18
Today’s special guest,

David Koel 01:21
I’m David Koel. I’m an architect and a principal and Director of Design at Cushing Terrell.

Sarah Steimer 01:26
Awesome. Well, David, thank you once again for joining us. You are this season’s bookends, which I hope you appreciate having that

David Koel 01:35
Never been called a bookend before.

Sarah Steimer 01:37
That’s not a bad thing. It keeps everything in place right? Again. I’m so glad that we’re able to do this and kind of come back around and, you know, we, we first spoke quite a few months ago. At this point, it’s been, you know, a nice, long season. So let’s do, let’s do a little bit of, actually, a recap here to begin with. You know, we talked about the importance of inspiration, and what inspiration is when we first spoke. You know, after, after listening to all these episodes, are you thinking differently about what inspiration means?

David Koel 02:06
Well, in some ways, yes, but I have to say, you know, I listen to all of these and I think what I was most inspired by was the fact that people are inspired by different things. That diversity of responses was, I guess, inspirational that makes any sense, because I was able to see inspiration through different eyes, something that I hadn’t really thought about before. Got my own mechanisms for inspiration, right? Everybody does, but to hear such a diverse collection of what makes people, what drives people, was really powerful in my mind, and so I think these are worth keeping thinking about and re-listening to time and again, because, I guess it just opened my eyes to be more willing to indulge in other areas of inspiration that some — that alone is inspirational, I guess, right?

Sarah Steimer 02:47
Oh, absolutely. And I’m glad that you said it that way, too, because I feel the same way. You know, when I was talking to everyone, there were some times where I was like, Oh, I never would have thought of that. And that’s like you’re saying, inspires me to consider these other things. And then there were definitely some where I loved the way people spoke about it. I felt similarly. You know, maybe it was a topic that I already used as inspiration. But were there any, were there any episodes or topics that really spoke to you or maybe surprised you’d never thought of it in that way before?

David Koel 03:20
There were several. And if it’s okay, I’ll just sort of run down of run down a few, because I had to actually write some notes because along the way, so I wouldn’t forget. But I mean, right off the top, you know, listening to Ross talk about inspiration through it, is his goal to strive for constant improvement was an interesting one, and I love the way he put that, and he used diversions as well exercise and other things to sort of pull him away for as a mental refresh in order to come back to his craft in a renewed way. And the admission that you never actually hit perfection is something that is difficult for me and for all for a lot of people, but actually go into it, recognizing that perfection doesn’t exist was kind of empowering, really. I thought that was very, very insightful and really great to hear it even just like the idea of breaking away for exercise, we often forget to do those things as the older I’ve gotten, the less I do that, because I’m focusing more and more on just thought work all the time, probably like you are, and pulling away, though is, is, is extremely important. I remember, you know, back when I used to work out just about every, every day at lunch. And you get on the treadmill, you do your thing. And then afterwards, I would reward myself by spending, you know, a few minutes in the in the hot tub there. And it’s funny, I’m not kidding, almost every time I would just be kind of cooling down. And then all of a sudden, some new creatives. I would start thinking about projects while I was sitting there steaming, you know, and new, new ideas would literally come to me just out of the ether. And that’s actually where I found a lot of inspiration, just sitting there in the stupid hot tub but it’s true what they say about exercise and what they say about taking mental breaks, and Ross kind of nailed that.

Sarah Steimer 04:53
Yeah. And I’m glad. I just want to pause you real quick, yeah, there, because I do think it’s worth mentioning, especially in this day and age, and we’re seeing so many articles and research recently about, you know, we’re now seeing how detrimental like smartphones can be. It’s fascinating how much when we declutter our minds, when we don’t have a screen in front of us, and like you’re saying, you’re just steaming up in the hot tub or sauna or whatever, taking five minutes to just clear your brain, that inspiration from unplugging. So continue, continue. I just really wanted to note that.

David Koel 05:27
I think it’s important you’re dead-on right, because it seems like we’re driven more and more to perform, and sometimes performance means stopping, taking a pause, and letting your mind rest. So Ross, did it. You hit one great right out of the park there. I had to relate very much to David Serna’s description of music and his inspiration. As you probably remember, I was a I also am very much inspired by that, not only listening to it, but playing it, performing it, writing it. But I think David is into some of that as well. But, you know, in fact, I think that, again, is a mental pause. It’s a separation, but driven by something other than just, you know, production of work and the the ability to utilize music as a source of inspiration. But for me, it’s actually the process of crafting it to a certain degree. I’ve got some good buddies who, I’m a drummer. In fact, if I wasn’t an architect, I’d probably be a poor drummer somewhere trying to make, make, make money. But you know, when we get together, my buddies and I to write music. It’s probably the most inspirational thing around because it is very collaborative. And this actually kind of links. I was trying to draw some links between some of these inspirations as well. Jimmy talked about David Lynch, the director, and he described how ideas to him come in little pieces, one bit at a time. I think he called them fragments. And you gather enough of these over time, and you can use it then to write a script, or to paint a painting, or to, in this case, write music. I think bits and pieces come from, you know, different people’s inspirations, like guitarists will just sort of lay down a, you know, a guitar lick of some sort. And you know, the bass player, I’ll pick up something along the lines, I’ll, I’ll lay down a beat. And then the, you know, the songwriter or the vocalist will kind of listen to all this. He’ll go into another room and start writing poetry, right? And then bits and pieces come together. We’re working on that. Maybe an hour later, the vocalist comes in, and he kind of starts spouting poetry to the music. And next thing you know, all these, all these fragments come together in the form of something that could never occurred on its own. So it’s about collaboration, and it’s about, you know, these fragments coming together to create, literally, create magic out of out of almost nothing. That’s inspiring to me. And it’s the same kind of process. I think you can apply that exact same fragmental process to, I think the built environment, architecture as well. Similarly, we don’t. We’re never handed the entire program of how to solve an architectural problem. It’s, it’s in pieces. It is fragments of things. Here’s the site, you know, here’s where the sun comes from. Here’s some things we want in the building. But there’s a lot of things you don’t know yet. And so fragments come over time, and they apply, they’re applied to the project, and oftentimes they’re in a collaborative way. And over time, you create something that could never have been imagined without those fragments and without the collaboration that goes into it. That’s inspiring, because together, you’re creating something that, again, one could never have done on their own. So a lot of these things in my mind started to relate the concept of music, the concept of David Lynch, concept of architecture as well, and how we rely on each other for inspiration and for success.

Sarah Steimer 08:27
And that’s, you’re making me think how much they are really because I was thinking of these as such separate pieces. And like you saying it’s, it’s so, I mean, when you’re talking about this, I immediately thought of Kaitlin McCoy talking about, you know, inspiration through systems. You know, when you’re talking about these buildings, where it’s one piece at a time, it’s also, how do these one pieces at a time relate to each other, and how do you find inspiration from that? It’s it really. It’s, for me, it’s been a pleasure to see the way not only people get inspiration, but what inspiration just means to them and how the ways in which they draw on it changes their approach. So I I wanted to know how this variety of answers made you think about the ways in which people approach inspiration differently, because I started to notice that, like, Okay, some people think of inspiration as giving yourself the space. Some people think that inspiration is, how do I pull ideas from something? I mean, it was really a wide variety of just what the concept of inspiration is. So how did, how did that kind of change your thinking at all?

David Koel 09:32
That’s a great — I thought about that as well, because it’s, it’s true. Well, I’m gonna, I’m gonna pose it from the perspective of, uh, of an executive at a company which is, which is what I am. And we, you know, if I think of, if I put that hat on, and I think about, what do we need to do to make sure our teams, and in this case, this, this is a whole bunch of wonderful people that work for Cushing Terrell, so my job is to make sure that they are given everything they need to succeed. And so when I hear this variety of methodology or methods to to be in, you know, to be inspired to do, to do better and better work. It tells me that we, as a as firm leadership, need to provide as much sort of latitude as we can, to allow these, these bits and pieces of inspiration to occur. If we’re too oppressive in one fair way or another, we are going to, I mean, just as literally, from a business perspective, we’re going to get less, you know, quality, less creativity out of the people that that that need it most, right? And so holistically, we need to this is, this is really important and really inspiring to me, because I need to learn how to digest conversations like this and provide really the best, I would say, environment for creativity and inspiration to occur in order for the firm to do the best work. Does that make sense? It it’s not selfish. It’s just, how do we drive, how do we make sure that people are at their absolute best, such that they can enjoy what they’re doing and as a result, perform the best? That’s that’s literally what one of the things I took from this. And so I’m not sure I’m answering your your question, but I do think, I do think that what it taught me is that there isn’t just one way to be inspired, and I need to be always mindful of that and thinking about it. Yeah, you’re right. You know, Kaitlin’s conversation about complex systems was just a remarkable, different way to think about inspiration in general. Biomimicry, utilizing nature as an inspiration or as a source to derive solutions is amazing. I loved Darren Johnson talking about beauty just in general. That was, in fact, that one of the one of the more touching ones, really, was Darren talking about just beauty. What I kind of interpreted that was more about mindfulness than just being present in the moment and just being; allowing yourself to find beauty in something small and what would otherwise be sometimes overlooked or considered insignificant. Darren’s not doing that. He’s thinking about every little thing and trying to stay in the moment. I can’t, I don’t know about you, but I can’t tell you how most of my life I spend, you know, months in the future. My mind is always deep in the future, and if it’s not there, oftentimes it’s months in the past, because I’m probably wishing I hadn’t done a certain thing. Rarely am I right in the moment. And Darren finds inspiration in the moment, and that is impressive. It’s kind of hard to do my mind.

Sarah Steimer 12:11
Yeah, I mean, I’ll be the first to admit I’m absolute trash at staying in the moment, isn’t it terrible? It really, it is. But at the same time it’s, I, it’s, it’s almost one of those things where it’s, you know, the ideal piece of advice that people give when it comes to meditating is, it’s okay if thoughts come in, just acknowledge them and let them go. I sort of have to do the same thing personally, like, if I’m not being in the moment, if I catch myself, Hey baby, I just figured it out. Now I’m in the moment again. Yeah, it is okay. But something you brought up that I really I want to get back to, is thinking about the sort of business motivation, or work motivation, career motivation, of making sure that you are facilitating the space or the opportunity to be inspired. And I think that’s a really interesting conversation for us to have, however briefly, here at the end of the season, because, you know, this is a creative industry, and it’s obviously extremely important to be able to feel inspired to problem solve within this field, and really any field I had, you know, I don’t care if you’re an accountant or whenever there is a certain amount of inspiration that you need to just be motivated, period. So, you know, when we talk a lot about corporate culture, company culture, things like that, and there are so many things that kind of become buzzwords, within company culture, that’s a buzzword, right there. How do you think about as an executive? How do you think about considering there are so many different ways to be inspired? How can you help to make sure that people have that space?

David Koel 13:57
Yeah, contrary to all of that, is the concept of business and efficiencies, right? I mean, you that’s the problem in this world, and we’ve actually talked about that a bit at the leadership level. Is the difference, almost the the battle between allowing people to do what they got to do, to be at their best, and the fact that we still got to run the business, and we have to do it in a certain number of hours. So much of our so much of our work is driven by the hour, and sometimes those are in conflict with there are times, though, where I’ve kind of noticed that if you are, if I’m put under pressure to perform at a certain certain tasks, particularly creative ones, sometimes I’m better off because I when I have a limited amount of time, because then I resort to instincts and intuition to solve problems. They aren’t always right, but they are quick, so sometimes training people to follow their inspiration there is, you know, their instincts and intuition to solve problems is a good thing, but not everybody you know gets that right out of the gate. But I do think that to kind of answer your question that we do need to I think the best solution is to recognize. Is the fact that inspiration comes at many different levels, in many different ways. We need to allow the freedom for people to find those things, give them time to exercise, give them time to do what they need to do, and come back energized. But I also think it kind of comes back to as a firm and as a mission. We need to make sure that we, as a firm, but with individuals as well, have continued to have a sense of purpose in their work. I think if, if that’s missing, at any point, you are going to find yourself kind of resolved to just sort of filling in the blanks, and you know, doing what you need to do to get through the day. That’s that’s not a that’s not a good existence. We want to make sure that people have a sense of purpose, including myself, including leadership. Our purpose is to ensure that the teams are at their absolute best doing the work that they love to do. And if we can’t provide that, then we’re failing. So all of this comes back to purpose. To me, you’ve got to be driven by something greater than yourself and even greater than your team. I think inspiration itself, kind of is the fuel that sustains the drive to do purposeful work and and as such, it’s vital in our work.

Sarah Steimer 16:03
And maybe I’m oversimplifying this, so please correct me if I’m wrong. But does it feel a little bit like, yes, there’s inspiration, but purpose is almost the why for the inspiration, like of okay, so everyone wants to be inspired, I’m sure. But okay, why do you want to be inspired? Right? Right?

David Koel 16:21
Right. You’ve got to have something to do with that, but that inspiration, right? You’ve got to channel it, I guess, is maybe another way of saying what you’re saying. So the work that we do, it got to be, it’s got to be purpose-driven. Somebody, I think it was Isaura talked about this a little bit as well. She talked about, yeah, mission-driven work in a different way. And I think Jill was talking about continuous learning. There’s a lot of folks kind of angling toward this idea of purpose. And I think it’s true that purpose is the end, the end game, the end goal. We inspire ourselves in order to follow out and complete certain purposes. I really like Isaura’s comments about mission-driven work. I’ve thought about that a lot as well. We’ve been given a skill, and if we can’t use that to improve, you know, the conditions for other people around the world, and things like that, things like that, that are driven by mission. Truly is that what greater purpose than giving people, you know, roofs over their heads, right? And so I totally connect with Isaura’s comments about mission-driven because, again, with these talents, we should be able to do good with them. I would rather spend my time trying to help folks that need it the most. And that’s where Isaura is going. So we do all kinds of different work, different styles of work, you know, different markets of work, but the best work is the stuff that, you know, drives at the heart of what, what the world needs the most. And so to me, that’s where we need to channel, continue to channel, the efforts of the firm in order to, I think, get the most out of our team and do the most good.

Sarah Steimer 18:10
I’m glad you, that you tied it back to that episode too, because that was, I mean, that’s having a purpose, of course, like you’re saying, behind what you’re doing, to channel that inspiration and everything that makes a lot of sense to me, and I love this idea of inspiration. Sort of, you know, kind of dancing between, how do you channel it through purpose, but also the flexibility of being able to find inspiration in the way that every individual finds inspiration. One of the last things that I wanted to end with. And I love talking to you because, you know, we’re able to have these conversations that are so free flowing, yeah, you know, like, it’s just very conceptual, which I enjoy. But, you know, this is a very broad, broad, broad topic here. But now that we are closing out this season, we’ve heard from so many different people. We started out with just talking about the concept of inspiration in general. But I want to get an idea, after hearing all of this, why do you think is this still an important topic? You know, we developed this entire season around it. It’s worth noting you were the inspiration for the topic of inspiration for this season, which is, you know, super fun, but you know what? After everything, you know why? Why do you think this was an important topic? You know, we did, of course, step out of just talking very specifically about architecture and design. Why did we talk about inspiration this season?

David Koel 19:30
Well, that’s it. I don’t know. I think it’s something that, honestly, we probably take it for granted a lot. I don’t think a lot of people actually stop and think about what inspires me to go back and and do more and more work. This was, again, I think you used the term mindfulness earlier. This was, this was a season that brought to the surface in my mind, at least, the fact that a lot of people just need inspiration in order to do their work. And I love the fact that every single one of these folks thought for a while about what it is that inspires them, and took the time to, you know, to do an interview with you, to talk about it which which just means it’s that much more important to them. I think we need to constantly be thinking about what it is that inspires us, and then talking about it like this, sharing it like this, and then allowing for it and maybe inspiring others through it. Because in the end, you know, again, this is what we only go around this with this life one time. Let’s do it in the most inspirational way that we possibly can. What I want is for all these team members and anybody listening, you know, to take this and think about a little bit and recognize that inspiration is important because it affects, you know, everything that you do, really, your home life, your work life, and everything in between. And that’s the mindfulness piece that I think is important sometimes, if you don’t think about it and actually talk about it and share it, you may not actually think about it or discover it. And I think it’s very important for people to realize what drives them. I think it’s been important season and topic really, because, you know, it’s bringing to light the fact that everybody’s a little bit different and what drives them. I wish I could talk about Joel Anderson; he had so many interesting … I don’t know how much time you spent with Joel, but you’ve got to admire his bravery for doing what he did. You know, he’s younger, you know, quite a bit younger than I am, and the fact that he made a choice like that to just, you know, take a leap of faith and decide to decide to raise a kid and, you know, chase down other things that inspire him differently, pretty interesting. It’s actually almost a little bit scary to me, because I actually am, you know, approaching, I mean, true like retirement age here in the next five years or so, not leaping, not leaping too early, but the concept of retirement is scary to me a little bit because, I mean, I know CEOs and other folks that have retired, and they struggle for a while because they’re so used to, you know, being in charge or having a real driven purpose, to sort of, you know, drive a company, and then they step away and they they struggle because they don’t even know what to do with their time. And that’s, that’s scary to me. And so the concept of inspiration is, is really, you know, high in my mind right now, because I’m already starting to think about, what am I going to do to sort of reinvent who I am in order to be, you know, contributory in some manner as I, as I approach retirement, maybe just means work forever. But at the same time, I actually think, in my mind, I’d like to sort of re-channel to other things and provide a different sense of purpose in other areas, probably like Joel’s doing, but you’ve got to pre plan a little bit on that, otherwise you’ll be, you’ll be kind of sitting there, you know, struggling. So anyway, I just wanted to touch on Joel a second, because it’s his, his, you know, it’s pretty cool what he’s managing to do to feed inspiration in his life.

Sarah Steimer 22:49
But, you know, I’m so glad that you mentioned for starters, every time I chat with Joel is such a pleasure. But see what I love that he, you know, really brought up was this idea of and not that he necessarily said it expressly, but what I drew from it personally, was this idea of inspiration for inspiration sake, like I had mentioned in that episode. But you know, you don’t just have to be inspired when you have a problem to solve. That inspiration can be used for any number of things. And I think whether you are facing retirement or you just don’t want your entire life to maybe be about, how do you get the job done? You know, how do you how do you get inspired and excited about just making dinner, even if you don’t feel like cooking, for example, you know, everything sometimes requires a little bit of inspiration and motivation. You know, picking out a Christmas gift for someone, or birthday gift, whatever, you know, all of those things require you to tap into something, some sort of well, that you might have. So yes, and I something else, I wanted to also highlight that you you said a couple moments ago, was looking at the way that people are inspired on an individual level, I think is so important to underscore, because we may be trying to solve the same problem together, whether in a group, however massive that collective may be, but the way in which you approach it will be very unique. And even more unique than that is going to be what is driving you to do that thing, or what is helping you tap into that well of inspiration that we just talked about like that is so hyper personal and something to not only acknowledge, but probably to celebrate a little bit too for sure, for sure,

David Koel 24:42
yeah, yeah, the diversity really of the answers or inspiration, to me, was inspiring. You know, when you asked the question early on, I think it was, what was there anything new that led to inspiring you? You know, is anything new coming along that actually inspires you? And I think the answer the question was the diversity of of responses actually was inspiring to me, because it made me recognize that I just think that I gotta, I gotta dig deeper. There’s a lot more things I could be, I could be I could be responding to, or I could be seeking that I that I currently am not. It’s also kind of interesting to think about some of the things that we the traps that are out there, honestly, that we need to stay away from, that actually are the opposite of inspiration, right? Things that are demotivating, and because there’s so many things that we do that we probably shouldn’t be doing, or places we go mentally that we probably shouldn’t be going, that actually do the absolute, absolute opposite of inspiration. And things, some things that we have to do, like, again, at the executive level, we, there are things we have to do here, you know that we don’t always like to do. They are not inspirational. We have to deal with staffing. You have to deal with the fact sometimes we don’t have as much work as we want or need. Sometimes we have to right size the firm. Sometimes we have to talk about topics that we really don’t want to deal with, but you have to in order to drive the firm. Those are not inspiring conversations, but you have to figure out how to utilize, I think, those conversations, and then try to turn them into something good on the other side of it all, but it’s going to benefit the whole. That’s kind of hard to do mentally, but it’s the, really the only way to survive when you’re when you’re dealing with, you know, simply the destiny, if you will, of 500 individuals in a firm. We have to think that way. But there are traps that you have to try to stay out of, I think, mentally, in order to maintain a sense of positivity, purpose and inspiration, we don’t have to go about maybe that’s maybe that’s a another episode. It’s the demotivating episode. What are we going to call that? De inspiration?

Sarah Steimer 26:32
I feel like there’s something about like, dwelling on an issue in there somewhere too, and having honesty. I was just going to say, I feel like we’re going to keep, like dragging you into every single season, whether you like it or not, but you’re right, and I think that’s that is something that we haven’t talked about yet that is worth at least touching on, as you did just now, that sometimes you are fighting against powers that don’t want to necessarily allow you to be super inspired, or maybe you’re not going to necessarily look to see how you can be inspired to right the ship in a way that’s a little uncomfortable, but at the end of the day, there is a purpose for that, maybe way down the line, but it might still exist. But David, yes, thank you once again for taking some time to chat with us. I feel like these episodes could always be longer, and then the entire season can be longer. And you know, next thing I know, this is my full time thing. We love it. Well, what’s been so nice? I’ll probably talk about this in the final, final, kind of bonus episode — teaser alert — but what’s been nice is that having these conversations has been inspiring for me as well. I’m sort of the person who gets to pull and draw a little bit more from people each time I talk about their inspiration, and truthfully, it makes me feel kind of giddy through each conversation. Is it’s so cool to feel that way, you know. But again, David, thank you so much. Before we fully wrap up, here, is there anything else that you wanted to mention or recommend to folks here at the end of the season as it relates to being inspired.

David Koel 28:06
Oh, I would just say, follow your heart, you know, whoever’s out there, and don’t be afraid to talk about it and share it like like the folks in this season did. I think it’s really important to take a little time and recognize what inspires you and then go for it, talk about it, share it and make it known. Because, you know, we’re all, we’re all in this together. Someone’s probably going to learn from you as well. And so, you know, I’m definitely, I’ve definitely learned a lot by listening to the wonderful folks from this season. So I’m looking forward to the next one, Sarah, but I’m very thankful for the ability to contribute here.

Sarah Steimer 28:39
Yeah, and again, thanks for serving as our little source of inspiration for this season. I really appreciate that.

David Koel 28:45
Well, thank you. I love being called a bookend too. That’s awesome. That first time for me, it’s awesome.

Sarah Steimer 28:50
Yeah, is this helping your thinking about retirement?

David Koel 28:52
Pretty much now, that’s right, that’s right for all funny, awesome.

Sarah Steimer 28:57
Well, thank you.

David Koel 28:58
Yeah. Take care. Thank you.

Producer 28:59
Music for Good, Thoughtful Hosts was written, produced, and performed by Sam Clapp. Our moderator is Sarah Steimer. Editing by Travis Estvold. And a special thanks to our content development team, Amanda Herzberg and Marni Moore. For more information about the podcast, visit thoughtfulhosts.com. Thanks for listening.

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