232: The Five Conversations That Drive Growth in Creative Organizations
From Practice Disrupted by Practice of Architecture by Evelyn Lee
April 23, 2026 · 1h 24m · Season 12 · Episode 232
About this episode
Evelyn Lee discusses the importance of conversations in driving growth within creative organizations with guest Laura Weiss.
Why does the architecture profession’s investment in human capital development still lag so far behind its investment in technology and tools? In this episode of Practice Disrupted, host Evelyn Lee is joined by Laura Weiss , an architect who stepped away from traditional practice thirty years ago to focus on the human systems that make design possible. With a decade-long tenure at IDEO as a practice director and associate partner, where she co-led the original service design practice, and experience as a principal at Korn Ferry, Laura brings a precise, unsentimental perspective to the profession. Now an ICF-certified coach and mediator returning to teach at Yale, she explores why the quality of the conversations we have is the ultimate determinant of a firm's success. The conversation centers on Laura’s framework of the "five conversations" essential for the growth of people, firms, and projects. She breaks down the mechanics of why feedback often collapses in creative organizations and why conflict avoidance is a "leadership strategy" that inevitably leads to higher long-term costs. Laura challenges the industry to rethink its approach to leadership, moving away from the "worker…
People in this episode
Host: Evelyn Lee
Guest: Laura Weiss
Topics covered
- human capital development
- creative organizations
- leadership
- feedback
- organizational systems
Keywords
- architecture
- human systems
- service design
- feedback
- leadership strategy
Mentioned in this episode
Organizations: IDEO, Korn Ferry, Yale
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