Jennifer Kolstad, Global Design Director, Ford Motor Company 
In conversation with: Brian O’Keefe, FORTUNE 


Brainstorm Design 2022 - Workplace Reinvention: The New “Office”

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Brainstorm Design 2022 -  The New “Office”

we are going to start off with a delving into a pretty huge workplace experiment 100 years ago, the ford motor company's eponymous founder pioneered the five day workweek so that, that was kind of a paradigm until we got always on working and the pandemic just changed everybody's perception and desire about what we should do with the, with the workday. Um last month Ford brought in 25,000 people to embark on an ambitious hybrid work model, blending physical and remote arrangements In preparation. The company reimagined a third of its Michigan office spaces, turning some 3.35 million square feet into collaboration centers. We're going to get into what that means. A central goal is to promote interaction and collaboration of location. So the physical overhaul has been accompanied by rollout of virtual collaboration and digital productivity tools to discuss the thinking behind the project and how workplaces are likely to evolve in the future. We have joining us virtually. Please welcome Jennifer Kolstad, the global design Director, Ford Motor Company. Mm hmm. Hello, jennifer Hi, I am, I am I on screen And what you will now your on screen and you look great. And uh, I should, I should tell everybody that you were gonna be here with us today, but you ran into some nightmare flight cancelation challenges, but you're a trooper. So you're joining us virtually. Um and, and Maryland is joining us to virtually Maryland behind you. Oh, that's oh, she's here. Uh No, we're gonna do this hybrid style ford style. So maybe it worked out. That's right. It's thematically appropriate. So you joined ford in in 2019, I believe? Um you're the Global Design Director. I mean when I, when I hear Ford Global Design Director, I would normally, you know, I think a lot of people think cars, you designed cars, but that's not your background, your your background is in architecture and interior space design. So what was your mission coming in? What's your job as global design Director for? I wrote the role with Jim Hackett, who was the ceo of ford at the time. And um, the ask was really to find somebody who could come in and begin unifying all of our assets globally. And uh, just so you all understand the order of magnitude here, we have almost 200,000 people working for Ford around the world. And so inside of that portfolio, not only do we have industrial and workplace, but we also have hospitality hotels and the whole community districts like michigan central and Detroit, which is a revitalization project. So, and of course retail and, you know, for a long time, we hadn't, we had neglected constructing a red thread, which is really a brand language that would bring all of those assets together and to simply put that with the remit. So when you started that remit, that was ambitious, uh, rethinking everything, but then the whole world changed. Just a few months later, obviously you went through the lockdown the trauma that we all did? And then you had to start reimagining your reimagining. So what was that process like? You know and where was was there a definitive moment when you said okay we're gonna you know wipe off the chalk board and uh we're gonna rethink this you know how did that go? You hear people now saying that Covid was somewhat opportunistic and it was to be real because um you know in spite of the fact that everybody went home in a very untested environment you know we hadn't even tested our I. T. Capabilities and the the entire workforce went home on a friday and went back online on monday. Um we also had our new world headquarters which is the hub of Dearborn campus campus transformation kind of duel going up going up so still on the ground dirt, dug well through schematic design with our architects and then this Covid moment. So we paused the project and did a rethink which led us to a think tank that we called the future of work. But you know we had several projects around the world that we're running and we did exactly that. We just took a minute to catch our breath and deeply think through what the future of work might look like. Not for everybody for us. Yeah. And how did you do that rethink and what did you find and how did the you know what were the big signals that came through the noise of you know everyone's speculating about where this is going to go look, I'm sure there's gonna be a lot of head nodding in the room right now. I can't see y'all, but let's see if this tracks with wherever you're from too. I mean, even today we would all say that we don't know what the answer is and what the outcome will be of our new policies. I mean we returned to work what April the third now and we're and we're, you know, looking at our centers and seeing what the metrics are telling us even over a couple of months, anticipating over that over the next 12 everything is going to shift and we'll probably reset again. But you know, at the beginning of this, um, you had to know that this was gonna, we were going into a whole phase of unknown and beta test and the way best to do that is, you know, essentially bring really smart people with you to construct a framework so that you can move through the unknown time frame thoughtfully And for us that was leading with human science first, that's kind of our default when we practice research like design, we just start to fill up with all of the human scientists and scientists necessary to help us think into the problem. And those would be folks like behavioral psychologists, anthropologists, neurologists like, you know, the people who will help you understand the human condition and what potentially might be an outcome. So I just want to remind everybody will have a chance for a couple of questions before the end. But um, so what did you what were the big takeaways from, you know, this discussion, this deep consideration of the human condition? What did you come back and say, okay, this is, you know, now this is how we're gonna these are fundamental principles for designing a flexible but future looking uh work environment. We tried to go a bit deeper than um actually the word flexibility is a great example because, you know, a lot of folks would have carried flexibility into um covid or into our think tank, but what we quickly learned that it's not flexibility and flexibility anymore. Now we're into kind of a state of systemic resiliency, which is more about anticipatory change. Like there's a nuanced shift to thinking through a new definition of the new parameters, flexibility. We can all anticipate and understand that we're potentially better for it. So it's not like it was radical shift, but it was more like shifter or clarifications. Like for example, we talked about wellness before. Now we're really in a state of health equity, which is health and wellness for all. So how do you take an idea like health equity? Um and build that into the work environment and connect that physical environment were the, you know, holistic working environment with behavioral applications. Well, if we just hang on wellness for a second. um, you know, for those of you in the room that our designers, architects and tourists, whatever else. You know, you're, you're familiar with. There are certification strategy like well, um, and that helps us along to a degree. But what we've learned is that um, you know, when you, when you come into a tough moment when we're starting to debate distribution of resources, you really start prioritizing something like health, health equity means that you get around it and you um, you protect it. So for example, in the hub, you know, which is, as I said, was going up and it's still under construction now because of Covid and our agreement that health equity is a priority when we have to shed some of the, you know, the design elements in the building. We now ford say, well this is important to us. We're going to keep the elements that promote healthy living, like, like great facade glazing, you know, that allows natural light to penetrate the depth of the floor plate or like our interior court era and the landscape that goes in them instead of giving that away, which would have been easy to do couple of years ago Now we're going to protect for that stuff. I just want to bring up, we have a few visuals. I just want to look at real quickly. Um, yeah, this is, we're seeing the outside of the hub. Maybe you could just tell us a little of the specifics about this, this massive building and and what's in it, you know, and then we have a couple more slides, which I think, you know about. So you were looking at a two million square foot new headquarters, which will be our new R and D center in dearborn michigan And day one, it's meant to house 6000 bums in seats. So a lot of people are coming together really for the first time ever because if you've been to um, ford campus, it's, it's pretty distributed. In other words, you got people and buildings all over the place and they've not really collaborated or worked side by side before this was really important to Jim Hackett when he kicked off the project before he left we hired a firm called Snohetta to design with us that's Craig Dikkers and his remarkable team and now a firm called I. B. I is taking it across the line, but you can see the glazing on the building in that image that you're looking at right now. And the fact that it's lifted off the ground and there's retail and food and beverage and a bunch of sort of public amenities filling the space as well. I'm trying to, yeah, there's another image of the outside of the hub. Um, and then we have a few images of the experience center. Could you just tell us quickly, uh, what the essence of the experience center is like the experience center is actually, it's just finished, it opened january and that's like our think of it as our pilot to the hub, it really is a co lab center, so we've tested some ideas, some, some were designed for a couple of years ago and some precipitated as a result of covid like placement of technology and the fact that we have a lot of folks participating uh you know like I am right now coming in from other locations like Chennai or san paolo or wherever and so that really had us go back and reevaluate our technology package, but um this is our experience center and um it's you know, it's designed for our dealers for learning and development for our external customers and if you come to Dearborn please come by and have a look, so if you have a question, stick your hand up and we'll get a mic to you, um we have mike handlers in the room um but jennifer, I want to ask you, so you you mentioned getting people back in in april and starting to implement this and you know, see the results in real time and interactions. So first of all, how did you uh communicate? Uh you know, we're coming back into this new space and then what are you starting to see early on as people are beginning to experience it. Um This was an immense communication effort, let me tell you and a lot of teaching about um what I mean, starting with what is collaboration? Um how to balance your time, How to work with your people leader? I mean some people I learned I didn't appreciate really needs some um structure to their day, you know, to understand what focused time is versus collaborative time and how to use their buildings. And so we took the better part of a year teaching that out globally and now we're going to really see the fruits of that labor. We're seeing already that the collaboration centers are being used. But you know, let's say a week ago the CDC recommended masks go back on, we did that and statistically uh you know, the population of our centers declined immediately. And that's not a bad thing. It means that people are making the choices needed to uh you know, to be comfortable and safe themselves and to work in a in a way that's most productive for them. You can tell people don't like working with maths on, so they're staying home. So uh my understanding is that a huge portion of this space, the new space you've designed like 75% is common collaborative space. Um You know, we all have like a lot of debate about kind of uh you know, shared office space before the pandemic. Then it all took on a new meaning. So what do you what do you what kind of feedback are you getting in terms of different groups of employees? Is there a generational divide? Uh is there one group of people who like this more and and how do you measure as you go forward? The productivity, is it more productive in this environment than you know, the old environment? Um It's difficult for me to answer that question directly because we have so many skilled teams and so many people, it's gonna take a while for us to gather the data for me to be able to give you that answer. But what you're asking about really is a demographic and psychographic analysis um and how people are responding to their environment. Um I think this will end up being more skilled team based for example, like ford credit has typically had more about, you know, quiet focused office type space. But then we have other skilled teams who have always worked in open studio format. And so I think what we're going to see is some clashing between our skilled teams. So I mean this is going on at the same time that Ford Motor itself is going through this massive transformation of, you know, splitting the company into two divisions, the the forward looking electric vehicle, you know, business and and sort of the legacy uh car and truck company. How did you weave that into what you're doing? Is that, is, do you make a distinction between the businesses or do you, you know, put everybody in together for the moment together because our collapse centers are meant to just be kind of like taken on and used and abused by skilled teams, Like I'm like, I'm describing to you, but you know, if model e needs to have run a design sprint, which they did a week ago um, as a group, they'll claim a space like a lot of space and then take it for, you know, a few weeks to run their sprint and then they'll kind of disperse again and then another team will come in and use it and that's how it's meant to be used. So it's not assigned necessarily, but you know, it can be taken and really, um, you know, worked in for a duration. Great, well, there's a lot of exciting things happening in Dearborn. Um I'd love to get out there and see it. I'm sure people in the room would too, thanks so much for joining us. It was, it was great to hear about what you're doing and good luck. And uh we look forward to hearing the results of this big experiment. Thank you. Have a great session, everybody. All right, thank you