In this episode of the AlchemistX Innovators Inside Podcast, Ian Bergman sits down with Ciara Peter, Senior Vice President of Product at Robin, to explore how AI is reshaping hybrid workplaces—and why human connection remains the ultimate competitive edge.
Here are the five main takeaways from their conversation:
Ciara emphasizes that modern product managers must focus less on “product owner” project tasks and more on strategic research, customer discovery, and long-term ownership of outcomes. In an AI-accelerated world, the PM’s highest-value activities are:
Optimizing your product management approach for hybrid teams involves embracing continuous feedback loops and defining clear success metrics from the outset.
Robin’s AI assistant saves thousands of days of manual desk-booking work by answering on-demand space and analytics questions. By removing friction from routine tasks, teams can:
Integrating AI-powered automation into your hybrid workplace tools frees up employees to focus on the creative, high-impact work that drives innovation.
Despite advances in remote collaboration tech, Ciara warns that teams who avoid in-office interactions risk pigeonholing themselves into automatable “task work.” Key reasons to prioritize human connection include:
Hybrid work policies should intentionally schedule in-office days for brainstorming, mentorship, and relationship building, not just as an afterthought.
Robin’s “Collaboration Score” combines seating patterns, room usage analytics, and employee sentiment to recommend optimized hybrid schedules and office layouts. To create your own hybrid-work playbook:
A data-driven hybrid strategy ensures you’re aligning real workplace needs with organizational goals, rather than enforcing rigid, one-size-fits-all mandates.
Automation often lowers active usage metrics, but that’s a sign your AI is working. Ciara recommends:
By aligning your analytics strategy with the problems you’re solving, you’ll know when AI-powered tools are truly delivering value.
Whether you’re a product leader, HR professional, or facilities manager, these insights from Ciara Peter provide a blueprint for harnessing AI while preserving the human touch that fuels creativity and collaboration in hybrid workplaces.
Have a question for a future guest? Email us at innovators@alchemistaccelerator.com to get in touch!
Timestamps
🎙️ Introduction & Welcome (00:00:00)
👩💼 Meet Ciara Peter, SVP of Product at Robin (00:00:16)
💡 What Does Innovation Really Mean? (00:03:04)
📈 Ensuring Adoption & Landing the Plane (00:06:10)
🤖 Leveraging AI for Analytics & Customer Discovery (00:08:48)
🔗 Why Human Connection Matters in the Age of Automation (00:12:12)
🧪 Serendipity & Cross-Department Collaboration (00:16:12)
🗺️ Creating a Hybrid-Work Playbook (00:23:29)
🗣️ Balancing Analytics with Employee Sentiment (00:26:41)
🖥️ Designing for Comfort: Desks, Amenities & Policies (00:28:24)
📐 Micro-Automation to Reduce Friction (00:35:40)
🎛️ Measuring Success: Adoption, Retention & Funnels (00:39:19)
🔍 Key KPIs for AI-Driven Features (00:40:30)
❓ Rapid-Fire (00:41:53)
🔗 Where to Follow Ciara & Robin (00:47:42)
00:00:00:01 - 00:00:02:04
Ian Bergman
Ciara, welcome to the podcast.
00:00:02:06 - 00:00:04:05
Ciara Peter
Thank you. Really excited to be here.
00:00:04:08 - 00:00:15:07
Ian Bergman
I really appreciate you coming on. Innovators inside. I'm looking forward to a wide ranging conversation about AI hybrid workplaces. Who knows what else we'll get into?
00:00:15:09 - 00:00:16:21
Ciara Peter
Yep.
00:00:16:23 - 00:00:37:26
Ian Bergman
Well, look, for folks who maybe don't know you, I'm pleased to welcome Ciara Peter, who's senior vice president of product at Robin, a leader in the hybrid workspace solutions. And for folks who haven't heard about Robin, we're going to talk a little bit more about what you do and and what it means to be providing solutions for the hybrid workspace.
00:00:37:28 - 00:00:48:14
Ian Bergman
But first, Ciara, I'd love to just get to know you a little bit more. You know, tell me a little bit about your background and tell me how you came to be sitting on this podcast talking about innovation.
00:00:48:17 - 00:00:57:20
Ciara Peter
Hello, everybody from downtown San Francisco. I'm one of the people that stayed here when everybody left during the pandemic. I'm really excited.
00:00:57:23 - 00:00:58:26
Ian Bergman
And in the city.
00:00:59:02 - 00:01:00:05
Ciara Peter
In the city, I'm like.
00:01:00:12 - 00:01:00:21
Ian Bergman
Good.
00:01:00:21 - 00:01:30:26
Ciara Peter
On the Embarcadero, like near downtown. The energy is the energy is coming back. Which is which is pretty exciting. But, I have been working in, B2B SaaS for about 18 years now, and, I started as a designer. So I did product design innovation design for about six years, got into management there and then worked at various different, you know, startups.
00:01:30:26 - 00:02:02:00
Ciara Peter
So seed stage all the way to public companies. There's some of those companies being names you might know, like Box Gainsay, Medallia and, so now I'm at Robin Hybrid. We do, workplace operations, technology. And the reason that the reason I wanted to work at Robin when I started about three years ago is because it brings together a combination of there's a big human element and and user element, which is, employees.
00:02:02:02 - 00:02:28:25
Ciara Peter
And I'll talk about why employees have challenges, you know, just being in the workplace. Sure. But there's an employee aspect. But there's also a collaboration aspect. There are really interesting problems to be solved. And I guess if you look at the thread across my career, I have been trying to bring, amazing user friendly experiences to, things that might be boring.
00:02:28:27 - 00:02:57:01
Ciara Peter
You know, file management could be boring, or it could be an extremely innovative way to capture insights about your company customer. You know, customer success could you could treat it as, you know, a CRM and a record of, you know, customer information. Or you can treat it as a way to, understand the direction of a company, really sort of understand, and capture the customer journey and where it's falling down.
00:02:57:01 - 00:03:04:17
Ciara Peter
And, work with your customers to kind of create stories and, and, build the right thing.
00:03:04:20 - 00:03:26:13
Ian Bergman
And I love that because, like, isn't that sort of like inspiration about what could be possible in a space? One of the roots of innovation, right, like innovation derives from we've got some problems to solve, but it also derives from being inspired by what's possible, by having the files stored by, you know, understanding how people are working. I, I think I see that thread.
00:03:26:15 - 00:03:33:13
Ian Bergman
I'm really curious, you know, how do you think about the word innovation in the context of the type of work you do?
00:03:33:16 - 00:03:55:27
Ciara Peter
Okay. So something I think something I've been thinking about a lot is, what is the job of a product manager? Because, there are a lot of jobs that people are saying, oh, to be easy to automate, like engineering is one of them. But engineers can also use tools like, cursor. You know, my engineering teams are using cursor.
00:03:56:04 - 00:04:26:24
Ciara Peter
They're doing things ten times faster. So it's not, you know, making them obsolete. It's making them, making them faster. Product management. There are narratives that product management is dead. And I actually think that those conversations are interesting. But what I think is really happening is a piece of product management is dead. That piece that is dying is the product, what you might call like a product owner role, which is a lot of, project management.
00:04:26:27 - 00:05:03:28
Ciara Peter
And I think that even though Product Owner is seen as kind of like a junior sort of title, most product managers in the tech industry have been, even if they're very senior, have been doing the product owner and product development aspect of the job. Product manager is a person who has a product that needs to be sold or used and brought to market, and you know, if this was a physical product, like what a tech, what a software product manager would do is they would maybe get it.
00:05:03:28 - 00:05:29:28
Ciara Peter
Maybe someone would say, I need a gold ball. If they were a little better, they'd say, I need something decorative that is going to be modern and exciting, and they'd interpret that and turn it into the gold ball. But a lot of times their executives will say, I need you to build a gold ball with, one inch, you know, holes in it and the diameter of, you know, X they build the gold ball, they'd finish it and they would throw it away.
00:05:30:00 - 00:05:53:20
Ciara Peter
Okay, that is not what product management is. If you want your product to be successful, most of the job, the hardest part of the job is figuring out what to build, which requires a lot of customer and prospect conversations, a lot of competitive research, which is typically overlooked. People just think their competitors aren't very good, and they or they don't want to know what they're doing.
00:05:53:20 - 00:06:10:05
Ciara Peter
They're like, we don't want to copy our competitors. I'm guilty. I was guilty of that for many, many years. I only maybe like a few years ago started really embracing competitive research. Okay, so then you have to figure out what to actually build and make sure that, yes, the designs are good. You're building it with the right scope.
00:06:10:05 - 00:06:15:17
Ciara Peter
You're not, you know, it's following the strategy, but then it has to land.
00:06:15:19 - 00:06:17:12
Ian Bergman
And yes.
00:06:17:14 - 00:06:35:07
Ciara Peter
Most product managers I've worked with, they finish and then they move on to the next thing. Maybe they will come back and look at the metrics and iterate on it. But they don't really care if it gets adopted. They don't. They the it's.
00:06:35:07 - 00:06:47:05
Ian Bergman
An ownership question like you're articulating, I think, a need for product managers and product leaders to take more long term, long term ownership over that, over the innovation they're building and how it lands.
00:06:47:08 - 00:07:04:07
Ciara Peter
Even short term ownership. Yeah. They will typically hand it to a product marketer if they work at a company that has a product marketer, and then they're done. There's no point in building building software if people aren't going to use it. And that goes into this.
00:07:04:07 - 00:07:06:23
Ian Bergman
The spoken like someone who's been at startups, by the way.
00:07:06:26 - 00:07:35:22
Ciara Peter
This. Yeah, they're this applies to startups and it applies to every stage of company. You let's say you're changing something about an existing product. You can't just pop people into the new product and not say anything because that's that is a product that they purchased. They've been using. Whether you're metrics, let's say only 5% of your user base uses it.
00:07:35:24 - 00:08:00:13
Ciara Peter
Well, those people do use it. And you have to tell them where the thing, went that they were using to do their job. People don't communicate in the product. They don't say why this thing exists. They don't, ensure that their sales teams, if there is a sales team, they don't ensure the sales team are talking about it properly.
00:08:00:16 - 00:08:33:02
Ciara Peter
We just been missing the ball on what a product manager's job is. Okay. And so the product manager's job, I think most of the things that most of the things that matter today are strategy and communication and research and the things that don't matter or matter a lot less are things like PhDs. If you're if you're a PhD writer and you spend half your time writing PDFs like you're not what your job should be obsolete.
00:08:33:05 - 00:08:38:05
Ian Bergman
You want the data. Yeah, you want the data. Like it shouldn't take that long to structure it and communicate it.
00:08:38:09 - 00:08:47:08
Ciara Peter
Yeah. And the thing is that, now that we're building AI products. You have to give up control. You you.
00:08:47:11 - 00:08:48:06
Ian Bergman
Oh, interesting.
00:08:48:10 - 00:09:12:05
Ciara Peter
So you should be able to define who like a product managers role. And in building AI products is bringing the problems to the engineering team watching what people are doing. So we built an AI assistant. And while I'm really glad that the AI assistant brings value to our customers, what it does is it answers analytics questions so you don't have to build a dashboard.
00:09:12:05 - 00:09:23:12
Ciara Peter
You don't have to know in advance. You need a quick answer. You get it. My not so secret intention is I'm looking at all the prompts that people are putting in, and I'm figuring out what people want us to build.
00:09:23:14 - 00:09:24:19
Ian Bergman
It's customer discovery, right?
00:09:24:19 - 00:09:47:11
Ciara Peter
They're customer discovery that is, extremely valuable. So then part of it is customer discovery. So we can plan a long term roadmap. But really like the product manager can't can't control many aspects of what the AI does or it is not like we're not writing. You can't write a PhD for it. You can say, these are the problems we need to solve.
00:09:47:13 - 00:10:19:11
Ciara Peter
So the things we're identifying now that this thing has been launched is we're saying, oh, it can't it doesn't do a very good job of knowing you're talking about a specific building. So we have a building called 53 State Street, but our system knows it has 53 state. And so that's where it airs. So that's it's sort of a tactical thing that a product manager could say, we need to get better at translating this type of, so there are iterative iterative aspects of product development that the PM can and should do.
00:10:19:11 - 00:10:30:14
Ciara Peter
But it's exactly that. It's learning. Researching can't tell. You can't you can't you can't write a deterministic PDE for a an AI. It won't. It is impossible.
00:10:30:18 - 00:10:45:16
Ian Bergman
It is impossible. And so I want to I want to build on this because you've been working in and around the AI space, in the content space for quite a while, and at least in kind of the public lexicon, AI is clearly been having a moment for a few years. But the joy around the generative and Llvm stuff.
00:10:45:16 - 00:11:07:03
Ian Bergman
But I have a question for you before the recording, you landed a statement that to me is like a pretty hot take. It's a pretty hot take about how where maybe, maybe some of the advocates of remote work are shooting themselves in the foot in the age of AI, and maybe some of the things we're not thinking about when it comes to remote work.
00:11:07:05 - 00:11:11:18
Ian Bergman
Can I can I set you up a little, like, what are you concerned about here?
00:11:11:20 - 00:11:39:02
Ciara Peter
Yeah. Okay. So it depends on the reason for remote work. If the reason is, hey, I get a lot more done at home. I really need heads down time. I think that makes sense. But there are arguments that make less sense to me. And one of those arguments is I don't want people shouting at me. I don't want to have to do the watercooler talk.
00:11:39:05 - 00:12:12:15
Ciara Peter
That to me is a really big mess. Because if we are moving into an age of AI where a lot of our, busy work gets automated and a lot of the task based work gets automated, it's the human connection that remains. It's the you have more time for human connection. You have more time for creativity. So if you truly believe that you're in a job that doesn't require human connection, with some exceptions, those are the types of jobs doing tasks, assembly line work.
00:12:12:17 - 00:12:43:05
Ciara Peter
Those are the types of jobs that are at the most risk of being automated. And so I think we really need to think about the reasons, why we advocate for remote work. One other thing that I'll say is that, office like workplace occupancy stats have stayed static. And so the argument that companies want people back in the office, because they have a lease and they want to make sure that their lease is being used, a lot of those leases have already turned over.
00:12:43:05 - 00:12:45:22
Ciara Peter
And so.
00:12:45:25 - 00:13:07:10
Ian Bergman
Yeah. So some of these arguments just aren't landing. But but this notion that people might be pigeonholed, pigeonholing themselves into the type of work that can most easily be automated away because they're ignoring the value of human connections, like, I think that's so powerful. And it's not it's not it's not just line workers. It's not just engineers like you can imagine, a doctor, right?
00:13:07:10 - 00:13:21:07
Ian Bergman
Like a doctor who just does diagnostics and doesn't do patient interpretation and, you know, patient care and bedside manner and explaining it to them. The human element. Same thing, I think. I think that's such a powerful statement.
00:13:21:09 - 00:13:43:08
Ciara Peter
Yeah. And, not everyone will agree with it and not everyone will like it. And I think, there are good reasons. There are good reasons to advocate, you know, working from home or working part time from home. But, I think we have to be real about the risk if you're if you're just, doing a repetitive task over and over.
00:13:43:11 - 00:13:43:22
Ciara Peter
I would.
00:13:43:26 - 00:13:44:05
Ian Bergman
Like.
00:13:44:12 - 00:13:44:16
Ciara Peter
You.
00:13:44:18 - 00:14:10:01
Ian Bergman
You, you lead product for a platform that does hybrid work. You're vested in this. But but at the same time, like, I think there is something to this, anthem or fight song in defense of human interaction in the office. And I love that. I love that point. I think a lot of people, when they think about AI and the superpowers that we imagine it, it can give us whether or not it's real yet or not.
00:14:10:07 - 00:14:42:10
Ian Bergman
Think, oh, this gives me more freedom. This means that there's less reason to come into the office, more ability to communicate, share information, more ability to amplify my superpowers. But I feel like you are making a really interesting point and that, you know, all of this, all of this, kind of adoption of these advanced technologies that enable us to interact in, in the office less, maybe is actually hiding a real problem.
00:14:42:16 - 00:14:51:19
Ian Bergman
Maybe is hiding a real problem and kind of leading us to say, hey, we're going to be less effective at our jobs.
00:14:51:22 - 00:14:55:12
Ciara Peter
Yeah. People assume other people read, first of all.
00:14:55:17 - 00:15:00:02
Ian Bergman
Well, yeah, that's, Wouldn't that be nice? People assume other people care enough to read.
00:15:00:05 - 00:15:21:16
Ciara Peter
Care enough to read? People generally have, a shorter attention span, than they did ten years ago. And so getting their attention, like, even if you have these great written communication policies, like, I've seen fully remote companies that are like, we don't even have meetings like we do all of our communications in this, collaborative whatever collaboration tool.
00:15:21:22 - 00:15:29:21
Ciara Peter
And we do it through comments. And then we have a very structured way of like, how you might, you know, get a review, but.
00:15:29:23 - 00:15:46:25
Ian Bergman
Yeah, I mean, the founder of Automattic wrote a blog post that, like, actually really impacted me, like five years ago when Covid started and I first read it, I think it was written a couple of years before, but about that, exactly that. And it impacted me because I basically said like, holy crap, that makes sense. I have no idea how to do that.
00:15:46:25 - 00:15:52:16
Ian Bergman
I have no idea how to make that work within my organization. And I think that's point, right.
00:15:52:18 - 00:16:12:28
Ciara Peter
I think it can work in very special circumstances. And so I think I recall that one, and I think I remember seeing saying, oh, okay, that does that seems like it actually does work for them. You have to be so intentional about it. You have to enforce it. Within the culture, you have to you have to kind of like start there and stick to it.
00:16:12:28 - 00:16:46:03
Ciara Peter
You can't have people working in in different ways. Let's talk about those same people in the office. If a company is doing a downsizing and there are two people that have the same performance review, but they chit chat with somebody every day, they know about their life, they have a human connection to them. They're probably going to if it's between the two of them, they're probably going to keep the person that they know on board, because humans are humans and they crave connection with other people and they value it.
00:16:46:10 - 00:17:06:05
Ciara Peter
I actually, I went to a, product management book signing on Wednesday. And at the end of this event, there was a table in each table lead asked the people in their table, what's your ask of the group? So some people would be like, I'm looking for this type of job. I want to join a board.
00:17:06:07 - 00:17:25:03
Ciara Peter
I want to just, like, have people to share ideas with. I said, I want an excuse to get out of the house. So if anyone, you know, because actually. So even on so I. The funny thing is, my company is based in Boston. I actually fly out there like twice a month, and I just work from the office the whole week, and then I work remotely and.
00:17:25:05 - 00:17:46:07
Ciara Peter
But it is tough to be home, all week for me. So I'm like, that was my ask of the group. The common theme is that 50 or more percent of these asks were related to some kind of human connection. I want to just talk about things. I want to share ideas. I want to be inspired. I want to find a group of people to do hikes with.
00:17:46:10 - 00:18:05:09
Ciara Peter
It wasn't about work. It was, people want, people want that connection. They value it. You know, the CFO is more likely to approve your spend or your new hire or your salary increase. Well, if they know you and if they know the person you're advocating for.
00:18:05:15 - 00:18:13:05
Ian Bergman
And by the way, there's a lot of people who don't like that. But that's true. Like there's a lot of people who don't like to hear that. But that is a true statement.
00:18:13:07 - 00:18:45:17
Ciara Peter
Yeah. I mean, there's tons of sure, like that can lead to bias. That can lead to all kinds of, you know, there are definitely negative sides. That too, I think like, in male dominated industries like, that is the sort of boys club thing that's where microaggressions come out of. So there are are there are downsides. But we have to kind of realize, like, technology isn't going to change people as fast as the technology changes.
00:18:45:17 - 00:19:13:27
Ian Bergman
I want to step back for a second, because this has got me thinking about kind of some of my own journey with hybrid and remote work and, and how it's intersecting tech. But like I, I vividly remember it's it's March. It's March 2025 when we're recording this. I vividly remember just about exactly five years ago, I was running a pretty large, globally distributed team, but I had an office in Seattle, Washington, and like, you know, at least the the North American or the Seattle based portion of the team showed up in the office.
00:19:13:27 - 00:19:31:04
Ian Bergman
And I remember being in that office sitting with the leadership team in kind of an emergency meeting, all of us looking at each other, saying like, oh, we have to shut down plans. We have to shut down events. Like we're like, collapsing. And this was a week before all of a sudden, all of us. I was at Microsoft at the time.
00:19:31:04 - 00:19:58:07
Ian Bergman
So across hundreds of thousands of people were sent to work from home. I remember that very vividly because of a few things. Like one, it was that system shock we all lived through, right, as sort of like Covid and the implications really took hold. But I remember thinking, I have not figured out running my globally distributed team that still has offices, how to do three things bond, plan and tackle the small projects.
00:19:58:07 - 00:20:14:23
Ian Bergman
Unless I bring people together. And I remember thinking like I was like, wow, like, how are we going to solve this? And so now fast forward five years later, I'm recording this from my my basement in my home. Right. Zero commute. I missed the commute for my podcast time, but zero commute. I still haven't figured those things out.
00:20:14:26 - 00:20:40:28
Ian Bergman
I still run a globally distributed team. And we we have not figured out how to work effectively remotely. And the tools, the technologies that have shown up to help everything from the unbelievable I kind of transcribers and recorders that can translate institutional knowledge to the video conferencing that we're on, to the, you know, airplanes, haven't solved that.
00:20:40:28 - 00:21:03:18
Ian Bergman
So, you know what's going to happen here? Like, because this is a human issue, like humans are doing this work is is hybrid. The future. Like what what is your view on what is going to happen in the workplace so that we don't get trapped in task work that can be easily automated so that we remember we are humans.
00:21:03:20 - 00:21:08:03
Ian Bergman
I know it's a big question, but like this is on my mind.
00:21:08:05 - 00:21:14:05
Ciara Peter
I like that you brought up the automatic example because it works for it worked for them.
00:21:14:05 - 00:21:15:29
Ian Bergman
It worked for them.
00:21:16:02 - 00:21:42:26
Ciara Peter
There will not be I do not foresee there being a global kind of. This is how every company works, right? Every company is their own living, breathing organism that is very unique. And they have to figure out what is right for their company. So, you know, you might look at Robin and be like, okay, heads up some desk booking, some, you know, analytics, visitor management, like some tactical stuff like, I don't I don't really care about that.
00:21:42:28 - 00:22:04:19
Ciara Peter
All right. So the next level is so then you think about AI, which we think about a lot. And the first thing we did was we automated the automated the things that people don't want to do. They don't want to have to think about reserving their spaces and actually reserving a space is harder than harder than it used to be because people are distributed.
00:22:04:19 - 00:22:16:07
Ciara Peter
You don't know where they work. You're going to forget to get a room for somebody who is in, you know, your, Australia office. And then they come in and it's a customer call. They have nowhere to go.
00:22:16:10 - 00:22:19:24
Ian Bergman
Literally just happened to be last week at our San Francisco office.
00:22:19:27 - 00:22:52:03
Ciara Peter
Yeah. And if it's an important meeting, like, you look bad in front of your, customer or whoever it is you're talking to. So that actually is a real problem for people. And so we started by automating that. The next step was, okay, well, how can we help people get people get better insights? So asking questions about their space, pretty soon we'll have the ability to actually recommend, you know, where people should be seated, how departments should be organized and sort of like recommend that on a map.
00:22:52:05 - 00:22:52:25
Ian Bergman
Interesting.
00:22:52:25 - 00:23:29:10
Ciara Peter
Here's the real problem to solve. I think there is no playbook for this. No company. Like we have great sort of customer success people that can work with the customer to figure out their needs. But there is not a playbook for figuring out what's right for your workplace. So, I think that it will be very important for us to create, create summaries or create the playbook that we can hand to customers based on what's happening in their office, to recommend what's right for them.
00:23:29:12 - 00:23:58:13
Ian Bergman
And aren't there some principles though, like so this is really interesting, right. Because aren't there are some principles like you've mentioned this, that serendipitous encounter between the account executive and the engineer that results in, you know, a bug fix or a feature implementation that takes five minutes instead of five hours and ten meetings, like so. There's some principles that say that probably say you want to enable these, but there's no playbook because how on earth besides just forcing everyone into the same room, could we have done this before technology.
00:23:58:15 - 00:24:17:20
Ian Bergman
So is there a role that that Robin can play now to help companies really optimize everything from not just physical location but schedules to to help unlock all of this kind of like human to human interaction.
00:24:17:22 - 00:24:43:26
Ciara Peter
Yes. So we we introduced, something called a collaboration score. And the collaboration score looks at a few different, elements. It looks one of the interesting ones, though, is are people seated next to people in their department, or are they seated next to people in other departments or near people in other departments? Companies that kind of mix up roles are generally more successful.
00:24:43:27 - 00:25:16:26
Ciara Peter
You know, whatever the measurement of that is, I won't get into. But, so I think that I think that coming up with the right plan for your company comes from a number of things. So you want to balance, here are the usage patterns. Here are the types of rooms people actually gravitate towards or not. And that's important because if you see like all of the call rooms overflowing and the huge conference conference rooms, going unused, you're going to realize people need more space for heads down work.
00:25:16:26 - 00:25:38:20
Ciara Peter
And in the office, you're going to find relationships between departments that, didn't, didn't you didn't know existed and maybe are important ones to foster. You're going to see if you have a policy in place that you want people coming in three days a week, you're going to see which departments stick to that, which ones don't stick to that.
00:25:38:22 - 00:26:01:21
Ciara Peter
And maybe that's completely fine. And maybe you want to say, hey, you know, engineers, you can work from home four days a week. Other, you know, other types of roles, especially like these junior sales roles. You need to watch people working. People new to the workplace in general or workforce in general, need to understand the dynamics of how people communicate.
00:26:01:21 - 00:26:02:24
Ciara Peter
And so, like.
00:26:02:27 - 00:26:20:10
Ian Bergman
And can you help with that? Like I think that's that's something that's been on my mind a lot, like I think and I don't think I'm alone. I think there's a lot of people who think we're probably doing a disservice to an entire generation by pretending that, you know, they can be absorbed into an organization that can learn from an organization remotely.
00:26:20:12 - 00:26:41:09
Ian Bergman
So can you be proactive, as Robin, in helping organizations navigate these problems? Or is it more that you're looking at their behavior and you're saying, okay, we're going to help you as an organization, follow what your people want to do. Like, how do you feel? How do you view your role in helping organizations get the most out of their people in their facilities?
00:26:41:11 - 00:27:14:00
Ciara Peter
So then there's the so you have these kind of like usage inputs or what what actually is happening, right? What has happened? Then you need to combine employee sentiment. So, people with facility management titles, something really interesting has happened is that, we did a survey of our customers and 50% of people with like workplace or facilities in their title said that employee experience in the office is the number one measure of their success.
00:27:14:02 - 00:27:20:02
Ian Bergman
Is that a national or, or international survey or is that kind of hyperlocal?
00:27:20:04 - 00:27:29:22
Ciara Peter
It is international. It is international. Most of our customers are North America and Europe, though.
00:27:29:25 - 00:27:36:09
Ian Bergman
Because because that's a really interesting statement. Because if your customers were like Bay area tech companies, right?
00:27:36:15 - 00:27:36:24
Ciara Peter
Yeah.
00:27:36:28 - 00:27:54:16
Ian Bergman
From especially from maybe the Zurbaran a little earlier, like I would you know, I buy of course, the facility managers are all about giving them the play things that they need. But but at scale globally across industries. What a fascinating statement. Like facilities managers care about employee sentiment. And they're and they're incented on it.
00:27:54:17 - 00:28:24:15
Ciara Peter
That's new. Yeah. A lot of our customers are in professional services type of organizations. Some tech companies, typically 500 to 5000 people. It's very it's it's it's cool. It's a very diverse spread of companies. So you need to understand what you need to understand employee sentiment. But we also have like an actual feedback survey. And so it is important to take, to take that feedback and summarize it and apply it to your company policy.
00:28:24:15 - 00:28:40:29
Ciara Peter
So there are things that you can infer from analytics, but you need to kind of measure that against what people are saying. Because if employees, the whole point of an office is for people to want to be there and people don't want to be there right now because they don't have their stupid desk or their conference room for their meeting, they're commuting.
00:28:40:29 - 00:29:04:29
Ciara Peter
A salad is $20. Like they only see downsides. And so the workplace has to be comfortable for them. And so that just I mean, that's just these design elements are really important. So you need to know, do these people actually prefer working in this open kind of cafe style environment? Certain departments might in certain departments are actually going to absolutely hate that.
00:29:05:01 - 00:29:27:27
Ciara Peter
Do you need the private rooms? Do you need the larger rooms for collaboration amenities? Sitting near a printer, like sitting near a printer, if you are an architect, is, is this extremely coveted thing? We actually created a priority booking system for certain workspaces that are near these coveted amenities. But you have to know very specific things.
00:29:27:27 - 00:29:46:03
Ciara Peter
You have to know amenities. You have to know what kind of accommodations you have to, Oh, this should be obvious. People hate hotel desking. They hate going to an office and not having the same place to sit, even if they only go in once or twice a week, they want to always go back to the same place.
00:29:46:03 - 00:30:10:07
Ciara Peter
And so, what a company would do with that is say, okay, if you come in a certain amount of days a week, you will get an assigned, desk. There's just so many, so many nuances. But I think companies do have to design their own policies. And they may have a belief behind it. Some companies believe you got to be an in the office five days a week to be productive.
00:30:10:07 - 00:30:26:20
Ciara Peter
Some are really strong on remote. Most are in between, though. Most don't have a super strong philosophy. They're like, we just want to be. We just want to be productive. Well, and I and I guess what, this goes back to this AI thing, which is I think that people are going to be people who complain about busywork for so long.
00:30:26:20 - 00:30:43:15
Ciara Peter
I don't want to do this busywork. Half of my job is busywork. I don't have time to do the deep thinking and the deep work. Guess what AI is doing? The busywork. So what are you going to do now? You get to come up with ideas, and you have to refine the ideas, and you have to collaborate on them, and you have to get them done creatively.
00:30:43:17 - 00:30:46:21
Ciara Peter
What are people going to do now that they don't have busywork?
00:30:46:23 - 00:31:06:17
Ian Bergman
You know, I mean, okay, so we're going to get really philosophical here for a second. But I think this is really fascinating because like, you're right, people complain about busywork forever, but they still do that. But in my experience, people still fill their days with busywork. Yeah. No matter how powerful the tools get. And I think this is going to get really interesting and that in the age of AI.
00:31:06:17 - 00:31:35:24
Ian Bergman
Right. Like let's take let's take housework. Right. Like I've got dishwashers, washing machines, I've got I've got a robot vacuum. Right. What did I do? I probably still spend as much time on home house busywork as I would have without all of those. It's just that now I'm doing it on a bigger house, or I'm doing more things like I fill it up so, you know, I am really interested in sort of the the human eye dynamic of the interaction around around what you just said.
00:31:35:24 - 00:32:00:09
Ian Bergman
Like, I can do all the busywork. So what do we what do we fill it with? I think the optimistic view that I love that you're espousing is this will give us back some of our time to think because, oh, wow, do I feel like we've lost the time to think? But I wonder if it also gives us back some of our time to collaborate and to work with other humans?
00:32:00:12 - 00:32:30:05
Ian Bergman
And I'm processing this out loud. I promise this isn't a plant and an argument for hybrid and what you're doing, but it feels to me like the natural end state of this conversation is, wait, is technology giving us the opportunity to get back into the office and think and discuss and actually, like, plan together and actually operate as an organization, which maybe has been a little bit hard to do for the last couple decades.
00:32:30:07 - 00:32:56:01
Ciara Peter
I think that's ideal. I think you can absolutely do that in two days a week. You don't need to be there every day like there is. And busy work does serve a purpose that's not just, doing it because you have to, some busy work. For example, I need to watch customer calls and watch it and not read the the AI summary because I need to connect.
00:32:56:03 - 00:33:19:28
Ciara Peter
I just, you can connect with people much more than you can connect connect with data. And so if I yeah, there are things that only a human can tell, like nuances in their facial expression. I can I can understand that's a real pain point. If I look at their face or listen to their tone of voice, I'm like, yikes, that's I can't believe we're not, helping them with that, with that problem.
00:33:20:05 - 00:33:47:22
Ciara Peter
So that's the type of busywork that you're going to choose, some busy work that takes a long time, that could be automated because, because it helps you learn, empathize, and connect. Sometimes you if you're like in a brainstorm for eight hours, right, like you're going to burnout sometimes you can't do deep work. You can't do deep work 40 hours a week either, or however many hours you work.
00:33:47:25 - 00:34:05:02
Ciara Peter
So there is an in-between. That's why I think companies are gravitating to a few days in the office, other days from home, and that that mix seems to be successful.
00:34:05:05 - 00:34:34:23
Ian Bergman
Sarah, did you ever see. I feel like it's been a number of years since I've seen one of these. So in my mind, I'm equating them to the early 2000s. But maybe there have been more recent do you do you recall any of these like big envisioning videos about the workplace of the future? Like, you know, what it would look like five, ten years from now, you know, so, you know, I like I remember, you know, transparent walls with inking and touch screen and real time translation happening and all of this fun stuff.
00:34:34:26 - 00:34:49:15
Ian Bergman
If you were if you were producing one of these videos today and you were going to, you know, try and make a case for the workplace or the future of the workplace of five years from now, ten years from now, what would it be?
00:34:49:18 - 00:35:05:19
Ciara Peter
I think some of those ideas that were in the vision videos still apply. But, the workplace of the future has to enable really easy ways to have meetings with people that are not there.
00:35:05:21 - 00:35:10:00
Ian Bergman
Yep. Hybrid talk in a way.
00:35:10:02 - 00:35:40:23
Ciara Peter
Yeah. That part is not going away. So that's really important. But here's the thing that people have to think about now that they didn't before. They need instructions because they might be going to a different place every day. So they actually need guidance. They need like actual directions around their workplace. So something I would add is sort of a mobile companion or assistant that tells you you're going to be in a different building in 15 minutes.
00:35:40:23 - 00:35:55:05
Ciara Peter
Do you want to start walking over there? It sounds simple, but it's a lot more important when you don't work somewhere five days a week. You might only go in once a month. You don't know the names of buildings. You don't know where a room is.
00:35:55:07 - 00:36:07:07
Ian Bergman
Does this tie into their personal lives as well? Like, like maybe you need to know that it's actually a half hour or not 15 minutes from your kid's school or whatever, or, you know, something like that along the way.
00:36:07:10 - 00:36:09:28
Ciara Peter
Sure.
00:36:10:01 - 00:36:10:18
Ian Bergman
Maybe I don't.
00:36:10:18 - 00:36:25:20
Ciara Peter
Know, you know, Yeah. Well, I think I think people depend on technology too much in their personal lives, and then there's just no version, no version of it to help them navigate navigate the physical workspace. I don't know if you've been to an Equinox lately, and but I haven't.
00:36:25:27 - 00:36:26:08
Ian Bergman
I probably.
00:36:26:08 - 00:36:50:18
Ciara Peter
Shouldn't. I? I had to quit because I'm lazy, but I also had to quit because, you'd walk into the Equinox, on Market Street, there's a stretch area, and the stretch area is eight people on their phones, and then you go to the machines, and then two people are actually doing a physical activity with the machines, and another 18 people are on their phones.
00:36:50:20 - 00:37:09:07
Ciara Peter
It's really sad. So I think people are over dependent on, phones to manage their personal life. They, they, we don't remember. I don't remember directions anymore. I don't know anyone's phone number anymore. Why would I need to? But, Yeah, but there needs to be. There should be some version of it at work. Which is. Hey, you forgot to get these rooms.
00:37:09:09 - 00:37:30:12
Ciara Peter
We we went ahead and put these for you. Hey, we see that you have external people that are coming to see you. We can go ahead and, automate that process, so. And create their visitor form so they know where to go, what to do. We can reserve EV parking spots for people because they have a special type of car.
00:37:30:14 - 00:38:02:29
Ciara Peter
There are a lot of these, like, just small, like micro aspects of work that make it really painful for people to be in an office. So kind of like I guess to summarize, there's, there's helping people with just the, the, the painful, annoying things. We built automated desk and space booking and we have saved, what was it, 999 days of work combined across our customer base.
00:38:02:29 - 00:38:09:22
Ciara Peter
We saved like three years of productivity that people would have to go into a software and.
00:38:09:24 - 00:38:10:06
Ian Bergman
Oh my.
00:38:10:06 - 00:38:12:25
Ciara Peter
Gosh, look at their stuff. Well, and and.
00:38:12:25 - 00:38:22:24
Ian Bergman
It's a full activity, but it's emotional and cognitive overhead and friction to like yeah that that task activity is ways on people that you know maybe that don't want to come.
00:38:22:24 - 00:38:25:00
Ciara Peter
In. They have to do work just that's actually.
00:38:25:00 - 00:38:26:07
Ian Bergman
An incredible stat.
00:38:26:09 - 00:38:30:06
Ciara Peter
Yeah. They have to. It's like a tax that they have to pay.
00:38:30:08 - 00:38:49:10
Ian Bergman
So so there's all of these subtle things, you know, that both the a focus on a platform for hybrid work can help with. But also that, you know, like we are able to do because of the technology is easy. I I'm not the engineer. So I get to say easy, but it's it's within our grasp. Right. That's really, really cool.
00:38:49:10 - 00:39:19:17
Ian Bergman
So okay, I how as we kind of come to the end of the segment here, how do you think about measuring the success of your work? Right. You are pulling together a lot of interesting technologies, but you're also dealing with kind of social and professional workplace dynamics. There's a lot going on. So what are your KPIs? What are some of the outcomes like like what you just shared in terms of three years of of time saved?
00:39:19:20 - 00:39:43:26
Ciara Peter
Yeah. So we want to so it's really interesting with automation and I think a lot of companies have to kind of come to terms with this. So we have goals about how many people adopt the automations by, you know, by choice, how many people keep them on. And, but you're going to see some of your active usage drop with these automations.
00:39:43:26 - 00:40:09:15
Ciara Peter
And so you have to you have to monitor that. So like our monthly, you know, our daily active user has dropped a little bit because we do the work for people. So I think you have to kind of know that going into it, as you automate more process and processes behind the scenes and make the software invisible, you have to be comfortable with that and understand what the relationship between those metrics should be.
00:40:09:15 - 00:40:30:03
Ciara Peter
There is a clear relationship, so I feel I feel good about it and like it's doing the right thing. I don't think that KPIs change really much at all with AI. Again, it goes back to what is the right problem to solve. You own a product. Your product is to solve a problem for people. Are you solving the problem?
00:40:30:05 - 00:40:54:18
Ciara Peter
For people, I am a believer that there's a different KPI for every problem to solve, so I don't really use like a universal. Sure. You want to look at overall metrics, but I look at retention. I look at, the things that I think actually are more problematic for product teams are like, again, it's landing the plane.
00:40:54:21 - 00:41:07:07
Ciara Peter
Yeah. Recently I did a board review. One of our new features has. 11% adoption, 95% retention.
00:41:07:10 - 00:41:07:26
Ian Bergman
Oh, wow.
00:41:08:00 - 00:41:08:29
Ciara Peter
So that's that's to me.
00:41:09:02 - 00:41:10:10
Ian Bergman
That's a good signal.
00:41:10:12 - 00:41:39:25
Ciara Peter
This is a amazing use really useful thing. And nobody can find it. Yep. Those are the things that I look for more. I look a lot at, task funnels specifically, so I can tell if somebody lands somewhere where they go next, it will tell me whether we told whether they we told them what the purpose of this feature or place is for.
00:41:39:27 - 00:41:53:15
Ian Bergman
So really cool. Yeah. We're just going to play a little game for a few minutes here. I'm gonna ask you some rapid fire questions. Okay? Just don't think too hard. Just answer. And some of them, maybe we'll talk about some of them. I'll just move on to the next questions. I'm good.
00:41:53:17 - 00:41:54:18
Ciara Peter
Okay.
00:41:54:21 - 00:42:01:00
Ian Bergman
All right. I'm gonna I'm going to go old school Mac, Windows or Linux.
00:42:01:02 - 00:42:18:10
Ciara Peter
Hey, I mentioned that my first job was design. I'm all about Mac. I'm not an engineer, so I really can't add any context to the Linux, element of the conversation, but, I love I love a beautiful piece of hardware. So I'm going to go Mac.
00:42:18:13 - 00:42:39:25
Ian Bergman
And that's I love a beautiful piece of hardware I have. Okay. So I, I led a hardware innovation team for a very long time or, well, a long time, relatively a few years. But like I was a little weird. Like I would go around and like pick up hardware and like, pet it and just like, like I got to know what the word chamfered meant for, like chamfered edges, like, you know, I get you get a little it's a little weird.
00:42:39:26 - 00:42:42:10
Ciara Peter
So we're back. We're back to the props. Okay.
00:42:42:14 - 00:42:50:26
Ian Bergman
We're back to the props. Exactly, exactly. All right. Are you inspired by tech?
00:42:50:28 - 00:43:12:29
Ciara Peter
I love building things. Yeah. Am I inspired by tech? I think there's a lot of junk out there, and I think there's some really good innovation. So, San Francisco, the Bay area is a weird place. So I think that I've. I think that if you have a couple of counties in a row that are full of people that think about tech all the time, you can kind of see the downsides of tech.
00:43:13:06 - 00:43:38:17
Ciara Peter
I think there's a lot of overblown and overhyped tech, that doesn't solve real life problems. But I'm really fascinated by solving real life problems. So if you asked me, hey, let's say I was handed $100 million tomorrow, would I still work? I would still work. I would still choose product management. I love it because it is a creative job.
00:43:38:18 - 00:43:52:10
Ciara Peter
It has both elements of creative and, deductive. Is that the word I'm thinking you have to create and you have to refine? Yep. And, you know, I love doing macro data refinement. What can I say?
00:43:52:12 - 00:43:55:25
Ian Bergman
There it is. There's a there's this. Well, there's the real job right there.
00:43:55:29 - 00:43:57:03
Ciara Peter
You love.
00:43:57:05 - 00:44:02:00
Ian Bergman
All right. Beach or mountains when you got to get away, you're in California. Have both.
00:44:02:02 - 00:44:27:08
Ciara Peter
Yeah. It's going to be mountains for me. I lived in San Diego for college, and I actually find the beach to be really melancholy, and it's like it's a little bit sad to me. Beaches actually make me kind of sad there. There's. Yeah. Like, most people won't say that. They're this big, huge abyss that can really, I respect the water.
00:44:27:08 - 00:44:39:20
Ciara Peter
I respect the ocean. And it's not my. It's not for me. Yeah, like it's not my place. There are a lot of other things that belong in the ocean, and, it's fascinating.
00:44:39:22 - 00:44:41:08
Ian Bergman
But I'm not one of them. I.
00:44:41:08 - 00:44:54:26
Ciara Peter
I took a surfing class in college, and, my surfing instructor was a little bit distracted, and, I got caught in a rip current once surf, attempting to surf. So that is a.
00:44:54:29 - 00:44:55:17
Ian Bergman
That'll wake you up.
00:44:55:18 - 00:44:57:11
Ciara Peter
That's enough. That'll do it.
00:44:57:13 - 00:45:07:09
Ian Bergman
That will wake you up. Gotcha. All right, well, just a couple more. What's a non-tech hobby or a skill that you wish you could master overnight?
00:45:07:11 - 00:45:34:19
Ciara Peter
Okay, if I. So. So I guess the thing I would do if I really didn't want to do tech anymore, I am fascinated by plants. So I want to understand, both botany and horticulture a lot more. I did, I do some amateur gardening at my place, but I would love to. I would love to understand how all these ecosystem work together.
00:45:34:19 - 00:45:35:28
Ciara Peter
That's what I would do.
00:45:36:00 - 00:45:58:13
Ian Bergman
Incredible. Okay. That's fun. And now we're we're. You veered so far and I know nothing about like I'm the opposite of a green thumb. I'm not going to ask you any follow up questions on that one. That's really fascinating. All right. One more. How do you celebrate wins?
00:45:58:15 - 00:46:06:07
Ciara Peter
I celebrate wins.
00:46:06:09 - 00:46:26:16
Ciara Peter
Publicly. Often? I think, but you have to force yourself to celebrate wins. Because how do I personally celebrate win? I'm like, great. That's my job. I need to just move on. Like I don't care. Like, I'm, like I care, but I just keep it moving. But I think in a management job, it's very important to celebrate other people's wins and make them visible.
00:46:26:23 - 00:46:52:09
Ciara Peter
So I actually, like, have a note. I have a note to self that I remind myself to, like, look to do that and celebrate them. Because I think it's really important for people to get credit for a work again. A human thing that you're never going to, you know, never going to get around, people, people want to be acknowledged and celebrated, and it goes a long, long way for motivation.
00:46:52:11 - 00:47:19:03
Ian Bergman
It really does publicly, often and deliberately is or what you just said. Yeah, that's really good. Awesome. Sarah, we've covered a lot of ground here. We've gotten a little philosophical on AI. We've gotten some real lessons on kind of like product management, product development, evolution, of course, talked a lot about hybrid hybrid work for for folks who are maybe interested in continuing to follow your ideas and to follow your work, where should they look?
00:47:19:03 - 00:47:25:27
Ian Bergman
Are you on LinkedIn and are you, posted on Insta every day? Do they head to the corporate website? Where would you guide people?
00:47:25:29 - 00:47:42:17
Ciara Peter
Well, if you're interested in the actual hybrid topics, please do go to Robin. Robin powered.com, but I talk about a lot of different things and that would be LinkedIn. So Ciara Peter, go ahead and connect or follow and we can continue the conversations there.
00:47:42:20 - 00:47:54:14
Ian Bergman
Amazing. Well we'll make sure that's also linked in in the show notes. And I'm going to go ahead encourage the audience to to reach out. Ciara, thank you so much for coming on innovators insight and taking the time today.
00:47:54:16 - 00:47:56:07
Ciara Peter
Thanks so much. And this is really fun.
00:47:56:14 - 00:47:58:15
Ian Bergman
Awesome. Ditto. Have a good one too.