In the latest episode of Love What You Do, Aneetha McLellan, Executive Director of JSI Health + A+D, shares how a pivotal moment early in her career on a project revealed a purpose that has driven her ever since. Aneetha opens up about pushing herself to the point of burnout, the health scare that forced her to redefine her leadership point of view and that passion is something sustainable, and why she believes healthcare spaces have to work for caregivers, not just patients and families alone. It’s a conversation about resilience, reinvention, and (reimagining) design with people at the center.
Doug: Welcome to the Love What You Do podcast. I'm your host, Doug Shapiro. These are the conversations that open doors to what's possible when you love what you do.
Have you ever done a podcast?
Aneetha: No.
Doug: That surprises me. Really, no one's come and sought you out for that?
Aneetha: No, because I'm not the formality — and video are like my worst fears.
Doug: Oh, really?
Aneetha: I like things non-formal — like I don't even know anything's going on, and then I just go.
Doug: So you're facing your fears right now?
Aneetha: I'm facing my absolute fear. Video and formality.
Doug: The courage is pouring out of you right now. I can feel it.
Aneetha: You just asked me a trivial pursuit question. I'm game on.
Doug: Let's start with some fun questions. Okay — if you could borrow a famous person's swagger, who would it be?
Aneetha: No doubt, every day, day in and day out — it's Prince.
Doug: Oh wow.
Aneetha: Hey, some swagger — similar height, not similar build, and badass all the way. That's what I want.
Doug: I like that, that's a good one. All right, here's one — this is going to be interesting because your hometown is far away. If you could put a billboard up in your hometown, what would be on it?
Aneetha: The Heisman Trophy–winning quarterback, always running the plays to the finish line. Never, ever doubt me in the red zone — I will get the touchdown.
Doug: That's awesome. So you'd go football on your billboard?
Aneetha: Absolutely. Look, I'm from Nebraska — that's what we do, right? We're Cornhuskers. We don't have a pro team, we don't have a lot of other things, and this is what we pride ourselves on. For decades upon decades, we've prided ourselves on this. It's in your DNA, it's in what you eat — I always make fun of myself and say I'm corn-fed, corn-finished, you know? So I was bred for that. I sat with my dad in the same seat since I was six years old, watching the Cornhuskers.
Doug: Oh my gosh, so you moved to Nebraska when you were six?
Aneetha: Yes, when I was six. Came to the United States when I was four.
Doug: Is there such a thing as, like, Nebraska values? What would that be?
Aneetha: You know, it's actually similar to JSI's, at least I think so. I mean, it's an agricultural state — people say it's flat, but I don't see flat, you know? I see beautiful rolling hills, great plains. I sort of make fun of those in Kansas — who'll probably now throw stuff at the podcast because I said this — because I think it's flatter there.
But I think it's very much about purpose. It's legacies of families who have been farmers for millennia, and they're proud of who they are, proud of their heritage. They believe they have a purpose — feed the world. People always ask, "Are you from a cow town?" And I say the cow town reads the Wall Street Journal and USA Today, because they have to know the futures and what's going on across the planet. So sometimes people don't give credit — but yeah, it's very Midwestern, with strong family values, driven by a real passion and a journey to sustain life. That's really what I believe in. Sort of a generational mindset — generations upon generations.
Doug: That's really cool.
Aneetha: So I've planted my seed, and now I have a first generation.
Doug: Yeah, so it's kind of cool — is your daughter going to stay in Nebraska?
Aneetha: It broke my heart. This year she graduated high school, and I was like, "She's going to be a Cornhusker, right?" And she didn't — she decided to go to Colorado, which is no surprise. But she may come back. She has some of her mom's DNA, that pride and stuff like that, but I don't 100% know. And you know what — she can go plant her agricultural roots anywhere, she'll still be a Nebraskan.
Doug: Oh, that's awesome. I love that — the Nebraska values, you can leave Nebraska but Nebraska can't leave you.
Aneetha: Nebraska can't leave you, that's a thing.
Doug: Well, really cool — I'm glad you're here, Aneetha.
Aneetha: Thanks.
Doug: I feel like it's weird introducing you — we work together all the time, but you lead A&D here, you lead healthcare for us, and you're a friend and such a wonderful colleague that I get to work with. So it's really fun to sit across from you and ask the questions now.
Aneetha: Terrifying. Fun, but I'm super humbled and honored, Doug. This is just so cool.
Doug: So cool. I want to get right into the good stuff — the tough stuff, in a way. You found your way into healthcare, and I don't know that I've met anybody as passionate about that area of the profession as you. You almost attack your role as being a consultant, as being a helper — you see products as ways to save lives. You don't make comments around "furniture can save lives" lightly. You really feel like there's a difference that can happen there. And I want to know — where did all this passion for healthcare come from?
Aneetha: Sure. It's not as simple as saying, "Oh, I got this job and I fell into it." In some ways I did. In other ways, I think it starts kind of like — I always go back to the DNA, right? I believe there was a purpose. I came to this world born in Colombo, Sri Lanka. My parents are immigrants, I'm an immigrant, my daughter's a first-generation American — really cool. But as easy as it was back where they were from, it wasn't as easy when they came here. I just remember the instilling of working hard, being passionate — and it probably really came from my dad.
He always thought he was going to stay in India, where he was born and raised, specifically Kerala. Living in his ancestral home, he thought he'd stay there and work in government service — but he met a professor and was inspired. I do think it's the power of one — there's always somebody who inspires you, motivates you, and pushes you. He met this professor, studied in Thailand, and the professor asked him where he wanted to go. He said, "I'm going back to government service in India." And the professor said, "Your purpose is somewhere else." I think about that statement, and I think that's foundationally where it is for me too.
So my dad came to Virginia — we came as well. He studied at Virginia Tech and wasn't ready to go back. He reminded himself of what that professor said, that he had a greater purpose. My dad's purpose was really to teach. I know people talk about their parents and how they inspire them, but truly — I was a student of his, I never thought I'd be. I went to architecture school, and it turned out he was there too — everybody was going to have my dad, and we all called him "Dad" in class, and also asked him for money. But he was driven by this purpose that everybody deserves a chance and an opportunity to learn and live the dream they want to dream.
Now how does that correlate with healthcare? There is no other profession, in my opinion — I mean, there's firefighters, there's police, there's a lot of different things that attribute to this — but there's something deep down about caring for the most amazing thing in life. It comes into this world and it leaves this world, and it's powerful. Extremely powerful. So I didn't exactly say I was going to go be a healthcare designer. You go to school and you're like, "Oh, I'm going to be the next Richard Meier, I'm going to be the next Zaha Hadid" — that's what you dream about. But I am Zaha Hadid, I am Richard Meier, I am Fay Jones, because the gift I give is in a different way. I may not have the notoriety or the book or whatever, but when I got the opportunity to change somebody's life —
it was powerful. It was absolutely powerful. That story happened at a design firm where I was designing a children's hospital, and it just moved me.
Doug: I was going to ask you about that, because it feels like your dad had a fork in the road — he met someone, it altered his life. Did you have a fork? Were you faced with a decision where you had a sense of clarity and went down a path because of it?
Aneetha: Yes — I knew I had a purpose, and the purpose was to design things, plain and simple. I knew that at four, I never wavered once. This is what I've always done, this is what I was meant to do. I mean, you always, as a kid, think about other things — "Oh, I'm gonna be an astronaut." No, this is what I wanted to do.
Again, like I said, you want to be that amazing "cape architect," you have these grand visions — but I went into a firm that did healthcare, and it's a great firm. I spent many, many years there, but my first project was the Children's Hospital in Omaha, Nebraska. And to this day — it still moves me — I'm still designing, still trying to figure out my purpose.
I got an opportunity to present at the grand opening.
Doug: And how old were you? Like, what?
Aneetha: I was probably about 22.
Doug: Oh wow. So that's big.
Aneetha: It was a pretty big deal, yeah. I'd been working as an intern, then went into this, had a great mentor, and got this opportunity with the CEO. And he was kind, he cared. I mean, this is pediatrics — these are kids, you know, you never think about kids being sick.
I was kind of beating my chest — it was a cool design, it was hospital of the year in publications — and I was talking about the space. At the end of it, I noticed this man kind of beelining, coming toward me. I didn't know what to think. He came up to me and said, "Are you Aneetha McLellan?" I said, "I am." And he said, "I'd like to shake the hand of the person that designed a facility where my daughter spent the last six days of her life, and she never once suffered — she thought it was the most amazing place. And I just need to tell you, thank you."
To this day, it never fails — those things are moving. And that was it. That's when the lightning strikes and you say to yourself, "I have a purpose. This is my place. And never once am I going to leave without leaving some mark for someone else — whether it be their first day on this planet or their last day on this planet." I knew this is what I was going to do. Super powerful moment.
Doug: What happened after that? Just take me to the next part of the story — you go home, you're like, "This is it for me." You're 22 — that's really early to have an impact like that. When I was 22, I don't think I would have even had that chance, or known what to do with that sort of weight or importance.
Aneetha: That's a big deal. It was a big deal. As I get older, I go back and think about moments — that was a very pivotal one. There were moments in school when I was taught by my dad — that was a pivotal moment. Who gets that, right? I graduated from college, my dad gave me my diploma — that was cool. And then this happened — I got put on this project, I was a junior person, and the CEO wanted me to present. Who gets that, right?
And then to your point — what do you do with that? In some ways I became kind of a monster. I'm like, "I am going to give this everything I have. I am going to be the best of the best at every stake." Now that comes with positives and negatives.
Doug: It's still happening — I experience it in you every week.
Aneetha: Okay, so that hasn't changed yet. I guess those things haven't changed, which is kind of funny, because you think you change. But yeah, it became a monster — and like I said, there's a positive and a negative to it. The positive is, I'm going to give it everything I've got, with every juice and every bit of passion I have.
Doug: Right.
Aneetha: The negative is, sometimes things suffer. I gave it so much that I got sick, because I didn't have anything else — there was no balance, there was nothing. Sometimes passion, as awesome as it is, is also a roadblock — because you see the road very clearly, but then you forget, and you leave people behind sometimes.
So through this becoming kind of a monster, I got sick. And then I had my own healing journey — I was like, if I'm going to give myself, I have to take care of myself, which I'm very bad at, everybody will tell you that straight up. So I took — I was like, "I really am meant to do this, but I have a battle, something I'm going to have for most of my life" — pretty much all of my life. And I'm going to help people through the journey too. Now I'm the patient, right? Now I get to see it from a different lens and look at things differently.
That journey took me down a slightly different path — where design was everything, the prizes and the awards and being recognized — to "wait a minute, what about the person who actually has to be in the space? Did that environment actually impact them the way we say we want it to impact them?" And I didn't realize that, because I got selfish, I became a monster, and I was thinking of the bigger thing and forgot about the sole purpose of these spaces — it's about people.
And then I took that and said, well, if I can be a monster here, I can go on a warpath here to change things and help — because the patient is one thing, but the people who spend hours and hours in these spaces trying to heal these patients need these spaces to also work, to help them do their job more effectively.
Doug: Was that a lightbulb that came on later?
Aneetha: It came on later. I think they say as you get older, you get wiser — I'm not a hundred percent sure I fit that all the time. But wiser, you know, you meet new people. Like that father and his daughter — I can't even imagine what that man went through. She was six years old, she had a terminal illness, and he was brave. He had to be brave. That taught me something. Then I got sick — that taught me something. Then I met Toby Cosgrove from Cleveland Clinic, and that changed me — I'd never met anybody at that high a level of leadership who says everything we do, the way we design, is about the environment, because there's a person in it, and every person walking through that building is facing some challenge.
Think about that — put yourself in that truth. Like, today I'm in a great mood, I had a great night, but the person who just walked by me just got diagnosed with cancer. They're in a totally different place. Or the nurse that day lost someone she was taking care of and got close to. That was a teaching moment about — wow, how does empathy play into design? How do we take an emotion and create an actual, static space that can help deal with all the emotions we all feel?
So all these steps have been a journey. It's kind of funny — I think of Wicked and the yellow brick road. I'm still on this yellow brick road, but I'm scared of Emerald City.
Doug: What's in Emerald City? You know, I think about your moment with Cosgrove — it's almost like when you're a leader at that level, probably the most powerful thing you can do is give the people around you purpose. And it sounds like he did that for you, and I'm sure he did that for so many others.
Aneetha: And his whole facility. I think I've told you the story, Doug — in healthcare, in these buildings, you have your CEOs, your CFOs, your CIOs — but he believed the building can change your experience, so much that he hired — the first person I've ever known to hire — a chief design officer. A chief design officer! And you think about all these Fortune 500 companies — I'm passionate about healthcare, I'm passionate about buildings and design, but a chief design officer — why don't we give that more credit? Why don't we think about these spaces? People live in spaces, right? And we know — because research is a big thing in healthcare too — that depending on the purpose of a space, what you're wanting to get out of people... people are the largest expense any business has. Why would we not invest in something like that in all businesses, to really elevate our people, the passion inside them? Because when they're passionate about something and believe in something, something will happen — and almost nine times out of ten, it will always be good. Always.
Doug: So I want to go deeper into healthcare, but I kind of don't want to lose touch with the 22-year-old you. You were fortunate enough to have that moment. There's a lot of 20-something designers who have yet to have that moment where purpose unveils itself at a deeper level. There's probably a lot of people — like that father who felt thankful, might even be an office worker who feels thankful about where they end up every day — but they don't get a chance to come up and say thank you. So I kind of feel like maybe design is a little bit like motherhood — you don't hear thanks as often as you should. And I just wonder if you have advice for somebody designing in their 20s who feels like, "I don't know if I'm making that impact, I don't know if I've found that thing." Obviously, look how driven you are — I think people will envy that drive. Everybody instinctually wants to be that driven. How do you find that if it's not presented to you the way it was to you?
Aneetha: I'm lucky, right? I'd say this every day. Has there been highs? Yes. Has there been lows? Absolutely. But I had somebody who believed in me, and always gave me that sense. If you don't have that — build it. Build it in you, right? Look, you are your temple. Celebrate it all the time.
I mean, I was lucky, I had a dad who told me I could do anything I wanted, be anything I wanted, go anywhere I wanted — and then other people showed up along the journey too. If you don't have that, you are that. Start with believing in yourself, be tenacious. You know what — you will have a bump. Bumps are healthy. But you are your temple, and you can do it — believe in yourself. Don't wait for the accolade — you are the accolade. Constantly push yourself, think big, and trust me, you will get it. It will happen. It may not happen in words — sometimes it's a gesture, sometimes it's something else, but you don't always need somebody to tell you that. If you truly believe you were put here for that purpose, let your passion drive you to it. You are your temple, and you're really the driver of your destiny.
Doug: I love that. You know, there's nothing that will stop you.
Aneetha: Absolutely nothing. Know there'll be bumps, know sometimes there'll be hurdles, but I promise you the promised land is a wonderful place.
Doug: I know that you believe that deep in your heart.
Aneetha: I do.
Doug: What a difference it makes — I think that's an awesome answer. You have this incredible tenacity, this incredible belief in yourself, you've had wonderful support around you — you did drive yourself sick, like, I mean, that happened, that's a real struggle.
Aneetha: It did.
Doug: But where's the self-doubt? When was this? I mean, surely — because everybody has it — when was self-doubt an issue for you? Or has it ever been?
Aneetha: No, there was a monumental event — and, you know, you sometimes think the road is very clear, and then out of nowhere a tornado comes in. I use "tornado" because I'm in the Midwest, right? If I was in Florida I'd use a hurricane, California I'd use a fire or an earthquake. But something happens, and you're shell-shocked. It happens. And I never thought that would ever happen to me. It was a pivotal moment, a career-changing thing. And I had doubt — I lost the confidence, I lost the true belief I'd had.
But you know what I didn't lose? Passion. That's here, that's never going to die — it will not, because that is my core. I might have self-doubt, I might have self-pity — I mean, who doesn't have to have a pity party every now and then?
Doug: You can go to Pity City, but you just can't stay there.
Aneetha: You can't stay there, exactly.
Doug: I couldn't resist.
Aneetha: No, that's okay — I get picked on a lot, you know, us five-foot girls get picked on a lot.
You think, "What have I done? What did I do wrong? How did I do it?" But you know what — I truly believe that as dark as it can get, the most fulfilling thing is picking yourself back up and marching right back, right? It's not necessarily starting over — I know people say, "Oh my god, I had to start over my career" — I didn't. I did, for a little bit, sit in that pity-party place, but I knew there was still that fire. No one took water and dumped it on the fire. No one was allowed to, because I'm not going to let them do that to me.
I knew that passion was there — it was just going to be fulfilled in a different way, and finding that different way was difficult. It left me a little less resilient than I was. But do you know what it did do? It made me stronger. It made me better than that monster that was there before.
So, funny story, I have to segue a little — one of my bosses, Phyllis Gates, was describing me to people one day, and she said, "If the Energizer Bunny and the Tasmanian Devil had a baby, it would be me." And I was like, wow, is that really how people see me? But that's the thing — that's because the fire was still there, the passion was there. It didn't matter what the hit was, and it was a hit, right — a life-changing career thing. I could still say to myself, this is just one challenge of many in my life. I will find the way, I'm still driven, and the monster has risen to a new level with a new challenge and a new opportunity — and that's just what we've got to say to ourselves. No one can bring you down.
Doug: Yeah. I feel like we have to find a new word for "monster" — I mean, listen, it absolutely captures the energy, it's kind of a bad word but it captures the capability, right?
Aneetha: Yeah, we have to find better words.
Doug: True, good point. "New challenge." Maybe by the end of this podcast I'll have something.
Aneetha: Okay, I like it.
Doug: This is great — this honestly helps me understand you.
Aneetha: That's a scary place to be, Doug — I would work yourself out of that.
Doug: No, it really does. Okay, so — you, I don't know which is the dark side, there's the whole thing about moving to the dark side, right? I don't know which is the dark side.
Aneetha: Engineers are the dark side. So I'm still in the light.
Doug: You're still in the light.
Aneetha: I'm still in the light — I can say that because I married an engineer who pushes me every day, and I go, "This is exactly why I'm not you."
Doug: That's really funny. You left the practice of architecture and design and moved into the world of products, manufacturing, furniture.
Aneetha: Yes.
Doug: Was there an internal struggle with that? Was there a birth of new enthusiasm? I mean, that's a huge learning curve — because in some ways there's a lot you can carry over, but this is also a totally different business, set up differently, different stakeholders. I'd just love to know what those first moments were like.
Aneetha: It was tough, I'm not going to lie. Because in my head, I was bred to be a designer, right? That's one of the things in architecture school, which I fight with too — this idea that this is the role you have to play, and it's only this prescriptive role. That's what you're taught in school, or what I was taught: "This is the elite. That is not the elite. This is the elite."
So when I took the job to go into furniture, I thought I failed. This is part of that path, right? I'm like, "Oh, I'm taking a step back, not a step forward." So for quite a while there, I was trying to figure out — what am I doing? This is not where my gift is — or where I believed my gift was.
Doug: Yeah, I was going to say, you're quite gifted.
Aneetha: It was really — it was kind of earth-shattering, and I'm like, wow, I took a step back, because we've programmed ourselves to believe this is a step back — which is a travesty to our profession. We have so many great opportunities — it's not just one road, it's many. And that's what's beautiful about the profession, we just don't celebrate it that way.
So I took it as a bit of a hit, but I said, I'm going to try it, I'm going to do it, it's an opportunity, right? But emotionally, I was still struggling a little bit. And then I was like — I don't sell widgets. I don't sell widgets well. But I know what I can sell, which isn't really selling. There was nothing truly about what I was doing that was "selling" — it was truly meeting someone, and I'm going to call them friends, I'm not even going to call them customers, because I think everybody I meet truly is a friend. They may end up being a customer, but they're friends. If they're not, they're still friends.
Doug: Exactly.
Aneetha: It's okay. But I truly felt like I needed to have conversations — I didn't want to go in there and say, "Hey, here's a chair, the chair works like this, if you push this button it goes up, if you don't push it it goes down." I was like, I can't do that, I'm not good at that. There are people who are great at that — that's not me. But what I can do is say, "I love your facility — why'd you design it this way? Help me understand some of the things you're facing."
So I was doing the design role in a very different way, and solving it with the widget — but I wasn't there yet. And so, a year and a half into this journey, I still hadn't fully — I was still processing where I was, still thinking I'd taken a step back and not a step forward — and I got another opportunity in design again. And I was missing it, and I went back to it.
And I realized through this journey that there are many people who deserve these opportunities in design. This is untouched, this deserves more work — I need to go change healthcare in an area where the progression wasn't happening. That's my path, and I went back. So I overcame the mental lack of clarity — because I thought maybe I'd failed — to the clarity of: you got this, Aneetha. You got this. You could be a pioneer. You're doing things — this isn't met, they need me. They need me because we aren't solving the problems with the widgets. There are big problems out there, and we have an opportunity, and this is where my gift needs to go. I need to celebrate and change this.
Doug: So there's a designer right now who's probably thinking, "I do great with presentations, I have the passion, I can articulate" — how does a designer know if they might be better serving themselves or the industry at large in a role like the one you have? What are the signals a designer looks for that say, "I can contribute to this profession in this other way — what can I do, or where can I go?"
Aneetha: Take a risk. Learn from me. I am risk-averse in my personal life, but in my professional life, risk is where I like to be. Risk is a fun place to be — scary at times — but what's the harm? What are you going to lose by taking a risk? Oh, it's not for you? Guess what — you learned something. That's not the game you want to play, right? You didn't want to go to Park Avenue, you really wanted to be somewhere else on that Monopoly board — take it. It's okay to take risks, and risks in your career can be the most fulfilling thing. I did not realize that — because the mental journey, what you're programmed to believe, is not always true.
Take a risk, try it — the worst that can happen is, "I don't like it." But you know what it gave you? It gave you grit, gave you a different point of view, and it's going to help you solve other problems you didn't realize. Design gave me a lot of things — what it didn't give me is some things rooted in the reality of what people actually use, right, and that doesn't actually work here. I'm not saying either is right or wrong, I'm just saying it's kind of a magical thing — and if I didn't have those risks, I wouldn't know. My dad always said to me, if you didn't have black and white, you wouldn't appreciate one or the other. So take the risk, leap in. It's scary — it's okay to be scared. Hopefully you'll have mentors there to help, or ask. Or, like I said, be tenacious — don't be the monster, we're already changing that vocabulary — but do it. Nothing bad will come from it. It may not be what you want, but you now know. If you didn't try, you'd never know. So try it — your impact could be great.
Doug: I love hearing your career path and your take on it. I don't think a lot of people can put into words the way you did how you felt through it — I don't think a lot of people are willing to say out loud that they felt like it was a step back.
Aneetha: It was a hard look. I have one obligation, right — and that's hopefully to make an impact. So why hide behind something? Journeys are here to learn from, and I want everybody — look, there's nothing to hide. I've done good things, I've done bad things, I've done mediocre things, right? But learning from them — if someone can learn from me, or have that conversation, I welcome it, all day, happy to have that conversation. But you know what — those failures have made me who I am today and where I'll go tomorrow.
Doug: So let's stay on the learning track. You're going to teach now, but maybe not through your career journey — let's actually forecast. I want to look forward into the future of healthcare. What are you tracking right now? What has your attention in the world of healthcare design?
Aneetha: Well, and I know a lot of people say this, so I'll acknowledge it — we're at a pivotal time. We are, and we'll continue to be, at pivotal times and journeys and stuff like that.
Doug: You pivot enough times, you start getting busy.
Aneetha: Yeah, exactly, right? In my lifetime — I remember being part of HMOs, then we had the ACA, who would've ever thought that would happen? Then we had COVID. And sadly, we'll probably have another pandemic at some point — bugs are getting bigger, things are happening. Interestingly enough, though, COVID did something to us — enlightened us, good and bad. It changed the fabric of what healthcare couldn't be, and it really brought up some of the major issues.
So I truly believe — and now we have all this disruption in the world, on multiple different levels — healthcare is facing huge challenges. I'm forecasting around three things, and I'm not saying I'm a soothsayer who's got this figured out, but I truly believe we have some major financial issues. If you think about it, our number one rule in business is to stay in business — how can you have a leading institution that takes care of people, that we need to take care of people, having financial challenges? Any other company would go out of business.
Doug: Yeah.
Aneetha: Okay? So we need to figure this out, because if we don't have them, we will not be well. So there are major, major financial challenges going on.
Second thing — there are operational challenges. We have a very bad habit, in my opinion, of loving to do the same thing over and over again. When I taught people and did training about healthcare, I always said the most dangerous phrase in the English language is, "We've always done it this way."
Doug: I mean, what's the root of that — do you think it's a natural tendency toward being risk-averse in healthcare, or are there other driving factors?
Aneetha: Well, change is hard. Change for anybody is hard — like your wife, when you're having your first kid, that's a major change and there's fear to it, right? Or changing a new job, there's fear. When you're really good at something sometimes, you don't always see, because you're good at this, that you aren't evolving to know there's something that could be better.
I always get asked about the telltale sign — the word "standards," right? You've heard me say this, I'll say it here on this podcast — standards are meant to be broken. The standards I created are meant to be broken, and I'm proud to say that. They get old, right? So when we say we've always done it this way, does that mean it's the right way? Is there an average life expectancy for standards? You should evaluate a standard every six months, for multiple reasons.
Doug: Give me the reasons.
Aneetha: If you have crap service, why would you stay with something? There's a performance reason, obviously — it's like when you go to a restaurant. It's funny, we rate things from a hospitality perspective, but we don't rate these things the same way. When we go to a hotel and it's crap, we're like, "We're never going back to that." So why would you keep something as a standard — the "gold standard" — if you don't get any kind of hospitality from it? That's number one.
Number two, change — things change, right? If we used the same practices for heart surgery from 200 years ago, I'm not sure we'd be living as long. There's new processes, new technology, new ways of working. It's all about operational effectiveness, life expectancy, things working easier so you're not working harder. So I truly believe this is one of the biggest issues in healthcare, because change is difficult — "we've always done it this way," "this is the practice," "we have to have this," and there's all these regulatory issues too. But we need to evolve — otherwise we'd still be the ape, still humbling around. We evolve, that's what we do as humans, so our practices should evolve.
And the third thing is truly building performance — the facility's resiliency, the ability to adapt. Prior to COVID, we had a cost per square footage that was already high — one of the highest, with highly complex building structures. After COVID, we've quadrupled — we're paying like five times what we used to for the same space.
Doug: Wow.
Aneetha: What are we doing? And healthcare facilities plan 10 years out — how do you plan for that kind of escalation? The other thing is we keep doing exam rooms the same way, at 120 square feet, when half the people coming in are probably well and don't even get on the exam table. I mean, I was just at the doctor — I never made it to the exam table, I just sat and talked to the doctor and left 20 minutes later. Do I need 120 square feet for that? Can you imagine how much quicker that automatically makes things — how it automatically improves the financial perspective? So when you put all the puzzle pieces together, we can make this happen, just at weird odds — weird odds of what's going on.
And we have great, incredible design professionals out there trying to figure this out. But it's funny — the one thing we can't figure out is burnout.
Doug: Why can't we figure it out?
Aneetha: We can always figure out how to redesign a space, try to make it cost-effective, put in new mechanical systems, make things more efficient. But when it comes to the human being who has to work 12-plus hours, who was burned out during COVID — we still can't produce a fix for that? We're talking about this 10 years later?
Doug: Yeah, something's wrong. Is it just a shortage of professionals?
Aneetha: Because, I mean, if there's any shift that probably shouldn't go past eight hours, it's probably one where someone has your life in their hands. You can't drive a truck — I think, I don't know what it is exactly —
Doug: Is it like an eight-hour cutoff, something like that?
Aneetha: Yeah, you can't drive a truck past eight hours.
Doug: Right. But you do hear about some of these shifts for nurses and caregivers.
Aneetha: Well, I have a story to share on this. I was also part of a medical error — almost killed myself, and not by my own doing. So I was pregnant, I'm a diabetic, and there's a point in your pregnancy where the diabetes fights you. I got admitted into the hospital, I was put on insulin — I'm not normally an insulin diabetic. They finally got it leveled and I was to be released.
And I'm not blaming anybody for it — it's just things happen. You're tired, you're fatigued, you've got seven other patients to deal with, they're all calling the nurse call button. The doctor said, "I want this many milligrams of insulin," and they added an extra zero. You can't treat yourself with that much insulin and survive well.
Doug: Oh my gosh.
Aneetha: And I had come home, and I'd basically given myself four times the dose of insulin. My blood sugar dropped so bad — I was at a 22.
Doug: Okay, normal is 70.
Aneetha: And I couldn't walk, I was incoherent, couldn't even get to the phone. I threw myself down the stairs, and my mother-in-law's chocolate chip cookies — those things saved me, it was the only thing I could reach on the counter. Couldn't get to the orange juice, couldn't get to anything.
Doug: Oh my God.
Aneetha: And that's why burnout is huge — because of the number of people who could die, these preventable things. I work in a corporate environment, right, I can take breaks, I can do things — we can't even put a nice respite break room within five feet of where these people work 12-plus-hour shifts. Something as simple as that. I know we're doing it, I know people are talking about it — but I don't think we solve things if we've been talking about it for 10 years. Why aren't we solving the actual challenges?
That's truly where I think healthcare is — we're here to solve these problems on multiple levels. We've got amazing scientists trying to solve cancer, we have great breakthroughs — if we could put that same amount of energy into design, on this, at every level, even at my level, we can make great things happen. We can be the greatest at solving and taking care of people, loving people the way they need.
Doug: I mean, that's not a bad reason to wake up every morning and go be the monster.
Aneetha: Go be the monster! Attack the job with rigor.
Doug: I mean, I'm inspired.
Aneetha: Yeah, I mean, this is what I do, but we all have the gift to help people in different ways. But these are truly the challenges — they really fall into these three buckets, and there's a way we can solve them. I don't have all the answers, but we have great minds out there. When we come together and workshop it together, we can solve it — we could truly solve it.
Doug: I agree. You start to break this down, and there's a very healthcare-centric example that you're bringing to the table that is heavily inspired by your own personal journey.
Aneetha: Yes. Clearly. It was scary — and by the way, my husband was out of town.
Doug: Oh my gosh.
Aneetha: I mean, it was very scary. But again, remember these little points, these little journeys — like, wow, medical errors, how can I help prevent medical errors in design? You go beyond healthcare and start to look at people who are coming into an office every day, maybe depressed — what could a change of environment do for those people? Or people in a school who don't feel understood, or can't find a place they feel comfortable learning. There are so many examples of ways the environment could not just passively help, but directly influence how we perform and feel. Culture, choice, care — the three C's. It's like, unless you've directly felt it the way you have in your journey, sometimes that impact feels a little distant.
Doug: So it's like this helps you reconnect with why this is so important.
Aneetha: A hundred percent. But I said the three C's for a reason — you've got to have a culture, right? Doug, we're fortunate, right?
Doug: Yeah, we really are. I know — maybe we don't talk about it as much as we should — but we had choices, we made choices.
Aneetha: Yes, and our choices here — because of the culture.
Doug: Yeah, because there was a purpose, and we believed in that purpose. So it's got to start with culture.
Aneetha: Yeah, right — choice. We had a choice to come, but the other thing is, we have a choice in how we choose to work, and how we choose to impart our passions, our gifts, our talents, the way we do them. Neither of us — I felt we get to do, or as I say, I want to make a t-shirt: "I do what I want." But that's a choice, right? That instead of saying, "This is the prescriptive job," you say, "Tell me how I can support the job you want to have." Think about that.
Instead of — I mean, I know we create lists, this is the job description, to get it — but I think if we flipped the script (and this works in workplace, this works in education, this works in healthcare, this works in hospitality), and said, "You do the job the way you want to do it, you create the script" — that gives a choice in how you take your passion and invoke it in what you do. And the last is care — everybody wants to belong, everybody wants to know they're doing well, everybody wants to be cared for.
You live with those three C's — in workplace, in education, and — it's going to be better. It will automatically be better. You're giving people the opportunity to use their gifts the way they want to, to care for others and improve themselves for the betterment of the company. There is no better ROI, right? So I just think that sometimes we forget that, because we get so compartmentalized — here's your exact job description, here's the lane you need to stay in.
There's a reason on the interstate they have dashed lines, and I use them vigorously.
Doug: I love that.
Aneetha: There is a reason. So, because sometimes there's an obstacle, and trust me, I'm like — you've got to be kidding, I'm stuck behind this — come on, right?
Doug: That's so well articulated. That's why they make those express lanes, and you pay ten more dollars to do it.
Aneetha: Yeah, yeah. So yeah, this is the kind of stuff we need to embrace.
Doug: Love it.
Aneetha: We're all talented. Let people be there — let people celebrate the way they want to celebrate. Just let them do it.
Doug: This has been great, Aneetha. Is there something I missed — something you wanted to share that I've left out?
Aneetha: You know, I think I'll just end with this — that I'm really, very fortunate. The journey is still going, and I'm excited about it. And I think that when you put this lens on — and the lens will change, trust me, I never wore glasses in my life and now I've got some lenses that irritate me — but it's changed my perspective, right? Just know that the future is bright. It is so, so bright. I mean, if you're going to be a designer and you're going to put on glasses, they have to be rose-colored — and they are rose-colored, and guess what — they'll be whatever color you want them to be, because you get to dictate your future.
And trust me when I tell you — learn from me — it's bright, and the opportunities are great, and your gift will be celebrated. It could be different, but it will be lasting. So don't ever, ever shy away from this: you have a gift, your talents are appreciated, and you will belong.
Doug: I love it. A hundred percent. I'm proud to work with you, Aneetha.
Aneetha: Well, likewise, Doug.
Doug: Yeah, thank you.
Aneetha: Yeah, boom.
Doug: Thanks for joining me here on Love What You Do.