Up Close With Lauri Goodman Lampson
PDR has designed 8M SF of high-performance workspace in Texas in the past three years. But what really makes president Lauri Goodman Lampson tick is knowing that her team's design improved the productivity and well-being of 25,000 people in those offices.
Lauri is an award-winning designer whose projects are enjoyed by over 100,000 people in more than 30 countries. Her specialty is high-performance team strategy, and she was recognized for organizing and leading a team at Accenture that managed the transition of a landmark department store in Wilmington, DE, into corporate office space. Her strategy became the standard for Accenture’s workplace business process. Since then, over 10,000 High Performance Team seats have been delivered globally for Accenture.
ExxonMobil also implemented the high-performance team strategy, and has since created over 10,000 high-performance team seats. For ExxonMobil’s Global Business Support Centers, she authored a compilation of comprehensive design guidelines titled “A Great Place to Work.” The white paper became the foundation for ExxonMobil’s global workplace design criteria.
“I don’t miss being a designer because I am a designer. I’m a design influencer for project teams to get them to think about why they’re solving what they’re solving," Lauri, pictured with PDR chairman Drew Patton, said.
She wants PDR to disrupt the corporate workplace. Under Lauri's leadership, the firm has evolved into four distinct but integrated problem-solving practices to help better the workplace and ultimately businesses as a whole. Those include Workplace Performance, Business Transition, Design & Architecture and Visual Communication.
She tells us one-third of PDR's business and expertise is in business consulting, and two-thirds is in architecture and design.
The team is focused on the future. Nearly 50% of PDR are Millennials (they must be the ones who convinced them to do the Mannequin Challenge above). When Lauri is talking design, she urges team members to think about designing offices for eighth graders to stay ahead of the curve. She's got two school-age children at home to look to for inspiration—her sons are 9 and 12.
