How Greenprint and MBH Turn AI Experiments Into Business Transformation | Hillary Thompson and Nicole Chavas

In this episode of the *Smarter by Design* podcast, I’m joined by Nicole Chavas, President and COO of Greenprint Partners, and Hillary Thompson, Principal at MBH Architects, for a candid conversation about what they are learning as they turn AI experiments into meaningful business transformation. Both Nicole and Hillary are senior leaders who are also personally building agents and redesigning workflows, which gives them a close-up view of not only what the technology can do, but what it reveals about their firms. Again and again, they have found that building with AI exposes the same underlying questions: What does good look like? Is this actually our standard, or just what we happen to do today? Is the knowledge documented clearly enough to use? And are we redesigning the work itself, or simply bolting AI onto an existing process? One of the clearest lessons is that scalable transformation often means going smaller, slower, and together. Nicole describes initially trying to move quickly, work largely on her own, and use agents to redesign entire business processes at once. What she learned was that proposal development and project management are really collections of interconnected subprocesses, and that lasting change requires a different approach: involve the people doing the work, break the system into smaller pieces, focus on the highest-impact opportunities, define what good looks like, redesign each subprocess for an AI-enabled way of working, and then train the firm on the new process. Hillary describes a parallel journey at MBH, where rapid prototyping with firm leaders through an “agent charrette” surfaced her leadership team’s dreams for AI-driven business transformation. Rapid prototyping then exposed the undocumented processes, conflicting standards, duplicated effort, and poor data quality standing in the way of their dreams. In that sense, AI serves as an organizational mirror because when agents struggle, they often teach you something about the business. But process redesign is only part of the challenge. The other major constraint is change capacity. Nicole and Hillary are both operating in environments where the technology is improving faster than their organizations can realistically absorb change. They discuss experimenting with “good enough” solutions, following the energy of early adopters, sharing successful use cases between peers, building trust with skeptics, and giving leaders closer to day-to-day project work permission to control the pace of change. The goal is to build a trusted core of people at their firms who can experiment, interpret what is changing, and act as a kind of shock absorber for the rest of the organization. This helps the firm move fast without forcing everyone to experience the full chaos of living at the bleeding edge of the AI frontier. The throughline is that AI itself is not the point. It is an increasingly powerful catalyst for redesigning the business around the fundamentals AEC firms have always cared about: high-quality work teams are proud of, profitably run projects, happy clients, and engaged employees. ## Guests Nicole Chavas, President & COO, Greenprint Partners Nicole is President & COO of Greenprint Partners, a Chicago-based urban planning, civil engineering and landscape architecture firm. In leading all aspects of firm operations, she brings a passion for rallying resources, talent and partnerships to scale sustainable infrastructure—a passion that has informed her approach to team leadership and company growth since 2014. Nicole's love of learning is inherent in every initiative she leads. Whether it’s spearheading a proposal, accelerating adoption of a new knowledge management system or recruiting and onboarding employees, she is committed to transparency, collaboration and continuous learning every step of the way. She is inspired by the knowledge and interests of every Greenprint team member and seeks to foster a flexible, inclusive and mission-oriented company culture that supports the personal and professional growth of all employees. [**Hillary Thompson**](www.linkedin.com/in/hillarypthompson)[,](www.linkedin.com/in/hillarypthompson) Principal, MBH Architects Hillary brings together design thinking, strategic communication, and systems development to strengthen how MBH operates, learns, and tells its story. With experience leading brand, marketing, knowledge management, and business systems initiatives, she approaches organizational strategy as a design challenge, creating frameworks that connect people, processes, and information to drive better outcomes. Her work focuses on building scalable platforms, improving access to knowledge, and transforming complex data into actionable insights that support decision-making across the firm. Hillary has led initiatives spanning brand strategy, digital experience, business intelligence, AI-enabled knowledge systems, and cross-functional process improvement, helping teams work more efficiently while preserving the creativity and expertise that define MBH’s culture. She is passionate about creating alignment between technology, operations, and people to ensure the firm’s collective knowledge, innovation, and capabilities are both visible and actionable, supporting growth, quality, and long-term business performance. ## Credits Host: Christopher Parsons Executive Producers: Denise Parsons, Christopher Parsons Editor: Coe Hoeksema Theme Song: “We Took the BART” — Written and Performed by The Parents ## Episode Resources **Books** Tharp, Twyla, with Mark Reiter. **The Creative Habit: Learn It and Use It for Life.** Simon & Schuster, 2003. Referenced for her "banker's boxes" system for tracking ideas she's not actively working on. **KA Connect Talks** Leonard, Dorothy. **"Deep Smarts and Core Capabilities."** KA Connect 2017. Referenced for the "critical knowledge transfer" cohort project. Milton, Nick. **"Lessons Learned from Lessons Learned."** KA Connect 2018. Referenced for the "lessons learned databases are where knowledge goes to die". ## Chapters (00:00) Episode Introduction (03:40) Guest Introductions: Hillary Thompson and Nicole Chavas (07:12) From Human Knowledge Management System to Real Systems (09:41) Picking Agent Use Cases: Frequency x Pain (11:30) The Light Bulb Moment: From Chatbot Helper to Agent Infrastructure (15:23) Refining the Formula: Repeatability and the Right-Sized Agent (20:38) The Human Side of Process Redesign (24:44) Skeptics, Fences, and Guardrails for AI Adoption (30:52) Uneven AI Adoption Across Roles: Engineers and Creatives (36:33) Embrace Disruption but Choose Changes Wisely to Maintain Trust (41:27) Design Charrette: AI As An Organizational Mirror (49:58) The L&D Venn Diagram: Merging Just-in-Time Learning with Training (53:01) Rebuilding Training Standards from Scratch (55:06) Project Management: Tackling Subprocesses First (56:51) Good Process Before Good Agents (1:02:11) Robot Jim and Critical Knowledge Transfer 2.0 (1:07:42) Lessons Learned Reborn (1:10:50) Nicole's Roadmap: Metrics, Practices, and Quality of Life (1:15:57) Guardrails Create Freedom (1:19:28) Idea Trackers and the Gas-and-Brake Team Structure (1:24:33) Synthesis MCP Server and Commons Command Center (1:29:10) Advice for AEC Leaders: Don't Outsource Your Understanding