S6 E1: Energizing a culture of belonging, featuring Caroline Quick

0:00You're listening to About Place, a Millernall podcast where we explore the evolving role of place in our lives at work and beyond. Now here's your host, Vice President of Global Research and Planning at Millernall, Ryan Anderson. Hey everyone, welcome to About Place Season 6. Before I introduce today's fantastic guest, I wanted to chat a little bit about this season. We began recording the first several episodes of the season back in June at an event called Design Days in Chicago. You'll notice that these episodes have a little bit different sound and feel as they're set in an environment that has quite a bit of buzz in the background. We're also doing some additional on-site interviews in London which I have to say has been really fun because it's given me a chance to sit face to face with many of our guests this season. I'll also share that we're continuing to emphasize a theme that has arisen over the

1:01last several seasons, which is that many organizations are rediscovering the value of their offices in part due to increased AI adoption. Organizations aren't just viewing their workplaces as spaces to complete tasks, but instead are leaning more heavily on their workplaces as valuable assets to increase connection among employees to build healthy working relationships. This can not only improve employee well-being, but it can also enable the types of improvisational and highly interdependent interactions between team members that enterprise AI adoption requires. In many cases, we're finding that transforming the physical workplace has become a high priority among technology teams who are furthest along this AI adoption journey or leading technology companies who are helping to enable these new ways of working. And with that in mind, I'm really pleased to introduce our first guest of the season, Caroline Quick. Caroline is vice president and head of global real estate and workplace at Cloudflare.

2:02If you're unfamiliar with that organization, it's a global platform that plays a critical role in securely supporting many of the websites that we use on a daily basis, including supporting nearly half of the websites of the Fortune 500. Previous to this role, Caroline led global planning, design, and construction at Twitter, and I've looked to her for a long time as someone whose thoughts and experiences offer a great deal of insight. Enjoy this conversation with Caroline Quick. Hey, Caroline, welcome to the podcast. Hi, Ryan, nice to see you. I'm thrilled to have you on. I've hoped that you would become a guest for years, so I'm thrilled we're finally doing this. I think I might be more excited because I'm a total fan, so we can fight it out. There we go. Well, I appreciate you recording in the midst of design days were surrounded by several thousand of our favorite friends. That's place to do it. So I've known you for years. I have a world of respect for you. I just want to make sure that our listeners know a little bit about you and what you do, so why don't you tell us? I always joke that people in our roles never get into our roles from a straight line.

3:05You never hear anyone, you know, when they're tauted around and saying, when I grow up, I want to be in corporate real estate, design, or anything like that. And so definitely didn't even cross my train of thought when I was younger. I grew up, you know, tinkering with computers and literally building them in my free time. I'm very much a nerd, a geek, a dork, whatever you want to say. That's me. And so I always envisioned myself going straight into tech and had great internships from a young age. I used to do computer game design. I actually worked on the very last Indiana Jones PC game. No. Yeah, it was really like a dream for me. I was at LucasArts for a little while, which was awesome. And then I went straight into tech and I was a producer. So I used to develop content around technology. My company was acquired by NBC. We became the NBC internet. And then the dot-com bus happened. And it feels very familiar to you today, where, you know, there were a lot of layoffs happening. No tech was hiring. And it was a moment in time where I really had to re-end up myself and figure out, what am I going to do?

4:06No tech is hiring. This is my livelihood. What's next? I've always been an entrepreneur. I grew up with parents who owned a business sitting around on a kitchen table talking about furniture because they owned a furniture store. My dad opened the very first all-leather furniture store in the United States. No way. And so as a kid, I used to go to shows just like this. And I had business cards that said that I was the official Ottoman buyer. A Ristore. And with test out furniture. And so one of the ideas that my husband and I came up with when we were kind of in this creative time was we couldn't find any furniture that we liked that we could afford that was not IKEA or design within reach, right? There was not that middle ground back then. And so we decided that we were going to invent that business that would fill that gap because that's what we needed. So we started a business called EQ3 and we found a manufacturer out of Winnipeg, Canada, and partnered with them and opened up a retail furniture store. I had never done retail in my life.

5:07I just had a passion for the design and what we could bring to people who were similar to us. And we started something that was pretty amazing. It was before West Elm, it was before CB2, and we had that business for about seven years. At that time, we saw tech starting to come back because companies were coming to our store to buy furniture for their offices. And I was also pregnant with my daughter. And then we decided around that time, maybe now is a good time to transition back into the old world that we were in before. And so we ended up selling our business to our manufacturer. And I took some time off of my daughter and was about to start another business when someone reached out to me who I knew who was a very, very early employee at Twitter. And this was back in 2010. We didn't have a Twitter account. Sign up for one real fast. And she's like, we need someone who really understands design, understands how to work with engineers and knows how to run a business. To be kind of our first head of workplace office manager, all the things combined, even though

6:10they were only on one floor in San Francisco at that time. Company was around 100 employees. And I said, that is a weird description of all my skills together. Yes. And I went in for an interview and met with the co-founders, one of their wives, sister. And walked out with an offer. And I said, wow, that's a really interesting idea. So I put up my business on hold and started Twitter and was there during the first set of crazy times and helped define what the future of their workplaces looked like. So as, you know, I ended up being the first head of designing construction there. And that's kind of where I really transitioned into this world. Amazing. Yeah, so it's kind of an interesting start. That is a transition for sure. Yeah. And then what since then? After I left Twitter, I ended up actually getting my brokerage license because I was constantly working with brokers from around the world. And on real estate deals. And I was like, wow, I think I could really add a lot to the conversation. Knowing what I know from helping grow Twitter, helping a lot of other high growth tech companies

7:15make their strategies to attract and retain the next generation of talent. And so, got my brokerage license, did that for a little bit, helped more on the consulting side with a lot of high growth tech companies when, so on reached out to me from Cloud Blair during COVID. So this was in August of 2020. And she said, Caroline, we need you. And this is actually the same person that recruited me into Twitter, by the way. Okay. And she said, we are in a period of time where we are looking to completely reinvent the purpose of space. We don't want people to come back from the pandemic to the same way of working or the same environment that they left. Are you interested? And I said, well, if you're calling, yes. And 16 interviews later and three months, I became the first head of real estate and workplace at Cloud Blair. And that was coming up on six years now. Amazing. And what a pressing view that they had already concluded that whatever workplace people came

8:15back to should be different than the one that they left. It was a really exciting initiative because it was our co-founders that were actually really focused on that and making that change. And I said, if they're behind this, then this is actually really important. And that's exciting. Yeah. Tell us what Cloud flair does. So Cloud flair is something that everyone interacts with every single day and might not know it. Our mission is that we're helping to build a better internet. So if you think about it, we're working to make the internet faster, safer, and more reliable. About 20% of all internet traffic goes through us. Wow. So when we do MS queries, we serve every second. It's like faster than the blink of an eye. We work with anyone from local small businesses to global businesses and global governments. And it's really exciting work because we're helping to make sure that your traffic on the internet is secure and that you're also protected. Yeah. So when you stepped in to partner with the co-founders and others to make this transformation, how would you describe the from and to in terms of how the workplace has evolved and where you're

9:18taking? I mean, we were very much like a lot of other high growth tech companies where you walk in and it's a sea of desks. Everyone had a assigned space. And there were some ancillary spaces, but not a lot. And it was really fun because we got to partner with design firms and say, all right, every idea is on the table. Nothing is out of bounds. And this is obviously during COVID, too. So we're doing this all over Zoom, right? And Blue Sky thinking, if you could do anything, no Holes Bard, what would you do? And then bring it down to Earth and how would you implement it? And so it was great because we had several members of our senior executive team that were involved in these presentations that helped open up the minds of like, what is possible. And we wanted to make sure also the architects that were involved in this RFP were compensated for their time. And so we made sure to pay them through it, which is not normal. But we wanted to make sure that they took the time and knew how important this was for us. So it was a great process. We learned a lot and selected our firm based on who kind of understood and had some of

10:21the craziest ideas, but also knew how to implement them. Today, we learned so much about process and we continue to learn. The goal of our spaces is that the way that we work will always continue to evolve. And I mean, we live through it then. We're living through it again right now at a mind-blowing rate. And the goal was to create these spaces that will evolve. So when you think about not having to be tied down to power and not having walls that are really challenging to move, we make sure that we can continue to iterate our spaces depending on how we see our teams working and collaborating together. That's an ambitious and meaningful goal. And it certainly resonates given just how few predictable things there are in our world right now. That's the thing. But I want to go back to this notion that you didn't just start with like practical, meaningful, incremental change. You took time to think big and it sounds like maybe even a little bit crazy about what could be, what did that process do for you and what if any ideas emerged from that that were transformational?

11:22I mean, I think if anything, it made us really question what the status quo had been for so many years and really made us think, what are we missing now in the way that's working and what is working? And this was during the pandemic. So with everyone being remote, what are the things that we can't capture with people at home? And the space needs to be the place that really amplifies and supports that so that people have a reason when they come together. So collaboration, mentorship, you can't do all of that just in a bank of desks. But also making sure that people have spaces that really help them work with their, the different types of work they need to do, help support the neurodiversion employees who are being super successful at home and just making sure that when they come in, there's a reason and they're able to work effectively together. We also decided too that we're not going back to assigned desks. And that was I think one of the smartest things we did was that when we came back, anyone

12:25could go anywhere and we haven't changed that. And if we go back to that, it's going to be hard to come back to where we are now, but making it possible for anyone to work from anywhere and kind of with that mindset of flexibility really helps us with this mission of making sure the space can continue to evolve. Well that move from assigned to shared desks can be a tumultuous one that causes a lot of organizations nervousness. You feel like it went well? How did you approach it? I do. I think that because we did it, when we came back and knowing this, for one, we changed the space dramatically, right? So the desk that you used to sit at wasn't there anymore. So you didn't have that place of comfort that you were conditioned to keep going back to because we completely removed everything and changed everything up. So you're coming back to a brand new space and you're really trained to kind of explore it and we had a lot of conversations with people that said like, you shouldn't feel like you have to sit at this desk all day. If you're in an air at a time of deep focus in your calendar block, we have a great space

13:29for that where the acoustics are completely different. The paint colors, the carpet, the vibe is like actually meant to support the brain activity that is happening during that time. But if you're working and you're collaborating or you're meeting, we have spaces for that too. So really making sure that we're talking about it and making it part of the conversation and making people more comfortable to make those moves throughout the day. There's the beach towel problem that we talk about where it's kind of like when you go, you know, so you go to vacation car Hawaii and there's those people that wake up at like 5 a.m. to put their towels in the best seats. Yes, and never sit there throughout the day. Exactly. That is a real thing. And so just making sure that we're educating people about like, if you're in a meeting, it's okay. Take your stuff. There's lockers. You know, leave them there. I love to move throughout the day. So just encouraging people to do that and help them understand the why makes a huge difference. That's fantastic. What you said about changing the space so that it's not like you come in and that was my desk and now it's everybody's desk. It makes a lot of sense, but it also sounds like you're engaging with the associates,

14:32communicating intent of the design with them in a way that they're able to understand maybe what the bigger ideas in terms of how to work differently. I don't always see that. Sometimes employees come into a space that's beautiful and there might be a lot of variety, but there isn't like any sort of clear training or conversation about why. How might they work differently? How have you approached that? Well, I mean, part of it is also that we're flexible too. There are teams that might need a touchdown space where they know they can go to and find their team members for certain periods of time. Maybe they're working on a sprint. They're having an on-site. We have a ton of on-site. We have people from all over the world come together in our offices. So it's a very different mentality around like we're going to have our incubation teams sitting here this week because they're working on something really exciting and blocking those spaces off. So it's not that the spaces aren't available to them when they need them. So that's part of it, but it's also just everyone having the same mindset. When we have new employees come in, this is the first time they've ever experienced this,

15:33there is a transition period. So. Well, it sounds like what you're describing is not people coming in and staring at screens all day, although I'm sure that's part of the job. And it would be easy to think that in organizations like yours that has this degree of management or governance over the internet would be people just staring at six displays for eight hours a day. You've described gatherings and connection in different ways. Tell us about your goals in terms of connecting employees and creating better relationships or interactions between people. That is so important, especially right now with the rate of innovation that's happening for people to have the opportunity to come together and have a reason to want to be together so that they can learn from cross-functional teams and how they're using AI and like just changing their workflows is super important. And the way we've designed our spaces is that we have some spaces that are specifically for that collaboration moment. We have our all-hand space that we call the commons, which is our main gathering area. We might have certain snacks in that area or a special coffee that you might not get

16:33anywhere else in the building. And so, at some point, you're forced to go down there and talk to the person who's waiting for the coffee next year or something like that. And we open up our spaces also for neighborhood meetings, for we have a space we call our community have that opens up our doors to local companies and even just our neighborhood watch to come and use our space. And we're encouraging our employees to be part of that as well. Also, we just started a program as well where anyone who is on the Cloudflare Workers program, which is a part of our startup ecosystem, they can actually use our offices. There's a blog post on it that I wrote late last year and we're just starting a program now where we're going to have startups within our space that are also working on our platform and we can learn from them and we can learn from us. That's really exciting. So giving those opportunities for people to come in and interact with each other, interact with other people who might be outside of their normal work environment makes a huge difference.

17:33I think it's awesome and rare to see an organization view their own spaces as being permeable and open to partners or the community as a whole. I'm just curious, was it difficult to get people past the idea that this is just our space? I have to believe security in all of its forms is a huge factor for you. What caused you decide to kind of like create a space that was more community oriented? I think a lot of it has to do with just who we are as a company at our core and because we have a lot of amazing nonprofit efforts that help secure elections and help secure nonprofits. And so at our core in the products that we have, we're already doing this work. And so it's making sure our physical spaces are a true manifestation of our brand in the physical form. And so doing that with our spaces is just a natural evolution. Excellent. Well, I want to reference back earlier when you were describing like your career trajectory, you talked about helping technology companies attract and retain the best group of new employees.

18:37If you give a little bit of thought to those who are early career stage, maybe only in the workforce for a few years, still learning the ropes. How do you imagine their experience in all of this? How do you create an environment that helps with that development? That is such an important thing for us. Right now we just launched a program this year. We have a goal to hire 1,111 interns globally. Really? Yes. And that number? Yes, interns. Wow, that's a lot of interns. It's a lot. And that number is a nod to our public DNS, 1.1.1.1. With that said, our intern program is really huge for us because this is the next generation that we're going to be learning from. It's not just them learning from us and learning how to work and what is a real job like. It's actually learning from the innovation that they're doing and how they're using AI to completely change their workflows. And in turn, we'll change ours and ask questions that maybe we hadn't thought of. We're really trying to disrupt our status quo as well.

19:37So learning from the next generation is really important for us. And then as we bring them in and hopefully they continue on with us once they graduate, which many do, we've already created a really great foundation of working with them. And then in our spaces, it's all about the internal events and the activations that we're doing to bring people together. And it's not always a cloud flare themed thing. It might just be a puzzle that we throw out and say, right, how fast can we solve this in? Or there was just a spelling bee. Should we do our own spelling bee and like spell some of the early networks that people might not know what they are? Questions, things like that. So just something small all the way to big events that might be more expensive, but they really draw people in. So we have a good balance. We also have a monthly lunch that we bring people together for. Because we'll do it every two weeks, it just depends on our cadence. And those are really popular days for people to come together. So making sure that there's those interactions of like the early stage employees with those

20:38that have been around for a while and mentoring them is really critical. And we put a lot of focus on it. That's really cool. I'm still focused on more than a thousand interns. There's a lot of organizations that I've talked to or read about over the years that have maybe scaled back a little bit on these programs. Because I think maybe hybrid policies complicated it or the thought that maybe AI would reduce the need for young talent. But then I talk with organizations like yours, you know, you're leaning into it and it sounds like you not only have thought about that talent pipeline, but you've thought about the role of your physical spaces in nurturing that talent pipeline, which I think is super rare. Yeah, it's super important. And it's really fun to be in the office with them because they add a whole other energy. I was just in Austin two weeks ago and we had 200 interns that started over the past two weeks there. And their energy and excitement just added a whole different element that we hadn't really felt in a long time. So it's infectious. You want to kind of be around it and you want to talk to them and learn from them and share

21:39your learnings also. It's really fun. Yeah. And Austin is such a great city and I know right where your offices are. It's a very cool part of town. So that makes a lot of sense. Well, if you think a little bit about the spaces that you've helped to create and that how players creating, are there certain ones that just really resonate with you that you're like, if I could choose to hang out anywhere for a day or a week, what constitutes your favorites among those spaces? That's kind of like asking someone to pick who their favorite pilot is. I know. I know. So, but I will say one of my favorite things about the work that we do. I kind of mentioned earlier that our spaces are a physical manifestation of a brand. It's not just that our physical spaces actually help secure the internet. You might be wondering, what do you mean? So I encourage everyone out there to Google or look up online, the Cloudflare, LavaLamp Wall. And so in San Francisco, this is the first version where we have a wall of over 100 Lava lamps. Really?

22:39Why? Well, if you think about it, the blobs that are inside of the lamp are constantly changing and turning and undulating in random fashion. And if you look behind you, as you're looking at the wall, there's a camera that's trained on this whole wall of Lava lamps. And it's constantly taking images. And those images are constantly changing because the way the Lava moves in an unpredictable manner. Even walking in front of that adds another kind of layer. We're grabbing those images and translating it into code that is then fed into our back end that helps secure the internet. It's like pretty incredible. And so then we take that design and we have it flow throughout our space. And so every time we go into a market, we think about what is something in this market that creates entropy in this local culture that we could have as part of our design element that will then continue to add to the randomness that's fed into what we call LavaRand. Because it's LavaRand. Yeah. As in LavaRand. Yes, exactly. And so in Lisbon, we just did an amazing full wall of wave machines because we're right

23:44on the water there and everyone knows about the famous surfing, you know, in Portugal. In Austin, we have this amazing moving light catching chandelier that projects reflections on the walls. And that speaks to the beautiful sunsets of Austin that you see there. And we're currently in design in New York. We haven't announced it yet. So I'd have to kill you if I told you. We'll avoid that. You know, it's really fun to figure out these moments. And we have people travel from all over the world to visit them. So there was a time where I was in San Francisco, not that long ago. And there was a backpacker coming and knocking on the window. And he was like, pointing at the wall. And so I opened up the door for him. And he came and he's like, I just came from Germany. And I want to come see your wall. And we're like, please come in. So we try to make these spaces, you know, a place where people can come in and experience and be part of securing the internet as they see it. So it's really awesome. I've never heard of anything like this. That's really cool. I'm sure these spaces mean a ton to the employees. And if I'm getting you right, there's this amazing kind of constant evolution and ebb

24:47and flow of what happens there in an unpredictable way. But you've harnessed it as something that's kind of like emblematic of how you are evolving the organization and how you're helping to keep our internet secure. Absolutely. Yep. That's really cool. That's a lot of fun. I have to say. I can see why that's your favorite. You mentioned a few things related to supporting those with neurodivergent needs or others early in their career stage. It sounds like fostering a sense of belonging and making sure these spaces are not only usable but really enjoyable by everyone is a priority. Tell me a little bit about how you think about that. Yeah. I mean, I kind of mentioned how as people move throughout their days, there are different types of spaces available for them to work from. I always describe our design as almost like a gradient of sound and use. So we have our open community spaces. We have our team collaboration spaces. We have our focus space. Then we have our deep focus space. And so depending on how you work and your needs, there's always a space for you.

25:49And if you think about it, when you think about, you know, I like to use the analogy. So my mom was born and raised in Hawaii. So growing up and going to Hawaii all the time was a special place for me. And when I step off the plane and take that first breath of air, something special happens, right? And it's kind of like when you step into a space, like our library spaces, that the acoustics completely change. And all of a sudden you go into that zone. Just like if you were in college and you're going into the library to study, like something different happens with the way that your brain is responding that makes it a completely different type of experience. So making sure that we are really fostering that. And we're not shouting it from the walls and we don't like put up signs. It's more about the subtle cues that you notice when you walk in that you might not actually even notice, but they're there. So just making sure that we're following that, being really thoughtful about it, which is important. And we also do a lot of work within our spaces to support our business resource groups.

26:50So making sure that we have the badges for each group in a very public area where people can see them, I remember when we opened up our Lisbon office, it was the first time we added one of our new badges and one of the employees there saw it and she was so excited. And she got her whole team and she's taking pictures in front of it. And so make sure that they're feeling represented too and the work that they're doing to bring people together. We also in places where we don't have offices, we have site leads. And these are our roles, I've never heard of any other company doing it this way. These are employees who have a full-time job at Cloud Player, but they are our culture carriers in those markets. They actually get compensated for helping support us, bring people together and really kind of being a champion there. It's really exciting. And these are in cities where you might not have your own space, but their job is to gather folks and promote that sense of a line. Exactly. That's really interesting. So if you go back to the BRGs, they have special badges. Tell us more about that.

27:50Yeah, so they're like designed badges that you can get in stickers or you can have on your laptop. We blew them up and have them on big plaques on our walls. And they're all together so you can see the diversity of all the different types of groups we have in one central location and we continue to add to it as new groups are formed. This is so cool. I am curious. Our team find itself working with human resources and those thinking about talent development or retention a lot. Like is there a specific connection there? Most of the time when I talk with organizations, trickly and tech, real estate is firmly within like the CFO or COO's, but it sounds like a lot of what you're doing has a very strong talent focus. Yeah, it's interesting. I mean, you hear depending on the stage of a company really dictates where they are in that reporting structure. And I've been on both sides. Actually, when I joined CloudFlare, we were under the CFO organization. Well, they were under HR before I joined. Then I joined and we went into the CFO and then just about a year ago moved back to the

28:52people team. Oh, we do. So we're the people in places team. I report up into our chief people officer. And so we've always definitely had a, you know, if you think about the initiative that I was given when I joined, it's very much the people oriented. But I'm also, you know, I form a firm business owner. So the financial side for me is very important. I treat it like my own business, right? Yeah. So we work hand in hand with the people team on most of our initiatives, for sure, because everything we do has a deep impact on the individuals with the company. Yeah, but it sounds like you're maintaining that balance. That connection between both. I'm thinking like an owner and being good financial stewards while still making sure that it's a people-centric approach. Absolutely. Not always easy. That's a tough line to walk, but I do think that represents exactly where this whole industry is going. Yeah, for sure. Caroline, tell me a little bit more about how you're thinking about AI and how it's affecting your team's work. That's a great question. So there's a lot of chatter right now on the industry about AI replacing humans and

29:55taking jobs and everything. But in our world, it's actually the opposite, which sounds a little counterintuitive. But AI and the work that our team is doing to be better about our workflows and eliminate a lot of the administrative burden that is such a time suck actually allows us to be more human. So it takes the pressure off of needing to sit at your computer all day and do the things that could easily be automated and focus so much more attention on how are we bringing people together? How are we creating more human connections so that sitting next to someone who is learning how to use open code versus someone who hasn't tried it before, you can't learn that anywhere else. You can't screen share and try to set it up. Being in person is so much more effective and the innovation that comes from that is critical. So it's really freeing us and the pressure on ourselves to really say, all right, that's taken care of. I got it done 20 times more faster than I could have done it before.

30:57And now I can focus on the important things of what are the types of events that we want to have so that people are continuing to learn from each other and how are we creating more of these human connections so that we're really moving out of faster rate, which is really exciting. Yeah, so you're reinvesting that time savings from that AI efficiency into some of these more interpersonal opportunities for learning, gathering, growing. Is that just your team or is that CloudFlare as a whole? So CloudFlare as a whole, we're rebuilding all of our workflows from the ground up. We are completely redesigning the factory floors how we talk about it, which is insanely exciting. And we're actually mind blowing every single day. It's such an exciting time for it. It's a little overwhelming because it's happening so fast and the opportunities of like, oh my gosh, I didn't even think I could actually do that. And that, not that there's so much. So it's like, you know, really trying to focus and figure out what can we focus on team for the next two to three months versus 10 years, which is how, especially in our industry, we're always thinking like way further into the future.

31:59So taking it kind of at smaller bites, but as a company, the amount and the pace of innovation is incredible and so exciting. It's a lot of fun. So as those groups are rebuilding those workflows, like building a backup from the ground, are you finding that they use their physical space differently than just sitting on their laptops doing the solely through screens? Like our group spaces or collaboration spaces playing any sort of support in that process? Absolutely. I talked a little bit about how we have a lot of team on-site and we're seeing more and more teams come together cross-functionally that we didn't see before. So a lot of those silos are coming down and there's a lot of more interaction. Even my team, you know, we're working really closely with an engineer who's helping us build some of these things that we could do at a baseline, but maybe not necessarily be able to take them as far as we could with engineering help. And normally you would never see that, you know, a workplace team working with someone who is like a deep engineer.

32:59So that's one thing we're seeing, but there's also as you walk through the office, there's a lot more collaboration going on side by side. Just kind of someone asked questions from and looking maybe you see something on their screen, you're like, wow, like what's that? What are you building? You know, even in our all-hands meetings too, there's a lot of conversations around like, you know, what did you build? You know, how does this help the greater good of the company and not just like me as a person in my own workflow? Yeah, that makes sense. Well, in close, let me ask you this, you went on this remarkable kind of transformation with CloudFlare from thinking about how to evolve beyond what workplace was pre-pandemic. There are a lot of organizations that are just beginning that process, or maybe you're still working under the assumption that their old approach is the right approach. And in some cases, it might be, but for those that might like to say, hmm, we also would like to rethink our approach to real estate, rethink our approach to workplace experience and light of all that's changed. Any advice on where to start? Well, I think one of the most important things is listen to your people.

34:00It used to be where people would look at what the other companies were doing and say, like, I'm going to do that. But if you really truly want your space and the way that people are working to be reflective of who you are as a company at your core, you actually need to look internally, right? And have those conversations. And make sure that you go in with a very open mindset, kind of like the blue sky thinking that we talked about earlier, because you might unlock something that might surprise you or learn something that you didn't expect. Or just reinforce something you already knew, and then taking those learnings and figuring out, okay, now how can we create some unique concepts within our space that really speak to the things that are important to people? And then making sure that you maintain the flexibility, because we're going to continue to evolve. It's a huge cost center, right? When you're doing these changes and adding new furniture and adding new walls. But if you make sure that it's something that over time will change without too much of an uplift, then you're ensuring security as well for the longer term.

35:01So that's why we like to think of our offices as living labs. Like they're never going to just stay the same. We're going to continue to test things out and try them out. And dog food or spaces, just like we do, all of our cloud floor products, right? And so when you think about it like that, it's a little bit of a different mindset where it's not like we're making an investment for this to always be like this. Instead of sending an investment for the future and testing things out and if it doesn't work, that's totally okay because if you've totally learned that this isn't something new. Yeah. So you're not just investing in a new design, you're investing in agility to be able to evolve and change just like those lava lamps of sandalene over time. Exactly, and it's exciting because the industry is catching up with that too. And the mobile power and the ability to plug a desk into a DC outlet. Yeah. You know that we just saw here today. So it's exciting that things are becoming more flexible and the ability to really harness that. I completely agree. Well, thank you so much. It has been years into making. I'm so glad we finally got you. Thank you for sharing your insight with us.

36:02Thanks for having me. It was really fun. And like I said, I'm a huge fan of the podcast, so I feel honored to be here. We're honored to have you, my friend. This has been about place, conversations about the evolving role of place in our lives at work and beyond. To learn more, please visit us at Millernal.com.