Think out loud.
Explore recklessly.
Solve for X.

We think good ideas are worth sketching, writing, and sharing.
Here are some of ours.

Latest Articles:

Interiors

Turning Feedback into Strategy

While I initially thought I wanted to work in hospitality design for hotels and restaurants, my experience with the law firm’s design and renovation challenges ended up sparking my interest in workplace design.
3 minutes
Thought Leadership

CityBiz - The Future of Work and the Workforce with Steve Polo

OPX Managing Partner Steve Polo featured on CityBiz regarding the future of work and the workforce.
2 minutes
Culture

Celebrating David Owen's Retirement

David Owen is retiring from his tenure at OPX effective June 01, 2022. All of OPX extends sincere appreciation for his years of design expertise, professionalism, and good humor.
Culture

Six-Word Stories

Steve Polo

I was in a business roundtable the other day when the moderator suggested that in order to get to know one another better - and potentially set the stage for a more meaningful connection - that we tell a story about ourselves…
1 minute
Culture

Left Out

Steve Polo

How do we want our in-person and virtual employees feel? Connected or left out?
2 minutes
Workplace Strategy (IOE)

7 Strategies for Successful Hybrid Work

As organizations return to the office, many companies will use a “hybrid” method of working, with some employees working in the office and others working remotely.
4 minutes
Culture

Six-Word Stories

I was in a business roundtable the other day when the moderator suggested that in order to get to know one another better - and potentially set the stage for a more meaningful connection - that we tell a story about ourselves…
1 minute
LEARN MORE ABOUT GOING BACK, NOT BACKWARD.
Workplace Strategy (IOE)

The Employee Experience

Steve Polo

What if we took a deeper look at how our people, technology and physical environment actually fit together? And what if we started to think about these three things as an integrated whole?
4 minutes
Change Management

One Size Does Not Fit All

Steve Polo

What should be abundantly clear is that, eleven months into the pandemic-fueled remote work experience, it was never more true to say ‘one size does NOT fit all.’
4 minutes
Culture

Our 2021 Mood Board

2020 was a year of challenges and lessons learned. Here's what we're looking forward to in 2021.
6 minutes
Workplace Strategy (IOE)

Looking Back on Our 2020

Our thoughts on working remotely in 2020 - and how we can purposefully redesign our relationship with work.
5 minute read time
Culture

Small Wins

Steve Polo

Once you begin to see the small wins, you’ll begin to see them more often - and make them happen more often.
4 minutes
Business Model Transformation

Shaping the Future through Culture, Capital, and Social Responsibility

Steve Polo on conscious capitalism, social impact, corporate social responsibility, and the future of work.
1 minute
Change Management

One Size Does Not Fit All

What should be abundantly clear is that, eleven months into the pandemic-fueled remote work experience, it was never more true to say ‘one size does NOT fit all.’
4 minutes
Continue to the full article.                                                       
Business Model Transformation

Shaping the Future through Culture, Capital, and Social Responsibility

Steve Polo on conscious capitalism, social impact, corporate social responsibility, and the future of work.
1 minute
Strategy

Planning Your Workplace ReEntry

Steve Polo

The goal is not getting back to an office, but getting back to your office.
9 minutes
Culture

Managing a Team Remotely

Through my experiences and the experiences of my colleagues, there are five main strategies I’ve found most successful in managing a remote team.
5 minutes
Strategy

Return to Work Panel

Principal Kamran Riazi was featured on Dulles SHRM's webinar panel about returning to work.
1 minute
Culture

Living 3D in a 2D World

As we navigate the uncertain future and a "return to normal" that COVID-19 has challenged us with, we face the same decisions, but backwards.
7 minutes
Thought Leadership

Your Most Valuable Asset

Steve Polo

Leaders everywhere are asking themselves questions about how to get their organizations back on track in the coming days, weeks, and months. But if they want better answers, they need to ask better questions.
5 minutes
Thought Leadership

Reimagined Spaces for Social Distancing

Steve Polo participates in DC Events Coalition's webinar on Reimagined Spaces for Social Distancing in the events industry.
1 minute
Thought Leadership

What Will Be The Future Of The Office?

Steve Polo

Companies (and employees!) were forced by the pandemic to work remotely almost exclusively. Very few companies had policies, procedures, collaboration tools and structures to make the transition – and yet here we are all working remotely…..
5 minutes
Strategy

OPX's Response to COVID-19

Steve Polo

As the conditions and responses to the COVID 19 (coronavirus) unfold, OPX is responding to the current situation with caution and concern for the safety of our people and those around us.
2 minutes
Thought Leadership

What the Workplace Can Learn from Playground Design

Office spaces should give working adults the same advantages as great playscapes give to children; to experiment without boundaries, to build trust and relationships, to fill us with energy, to break down judgement, to silence our inner critic, and to trigger creative thought.
4 minutes
Design

Why Colors (And Our Brains) Don’t Work Like We Thought They Did, and What it Means For Design

You’ve heard it before. Colors have meanings: red is the color of love, pink is for girls, blue is for calmness, and green represents health, wellness, and well-decorated yoga studios.
4 minutes
Thought Leadership

Making Remote Work, Work

Remote work. We all hear about it. Some love it. Some will leave their jobs for the privilege.
4 minutes
Strategy

Integrated Operating Environment: Bringing People, Tools, and Place into Alignment

Design thinkers refer to a challenge that presents itself with incomplete or contradictory information and vague paths forward as a “wicked problem”. Our mission at OPX – making good companies work better – is the epitome of a“wicked problem”.
9 minutes
Culture

A Dose of Your Future: Working Better

Steve Polo was featured on The Influencer Collective's podcast, "A Dose of Your Future," with Jenn Sherman on February 19th, 2019.
1 minute
Thought Leadership

Fix the Workplace Problems, Not the Symptoms

Steve Polo

“What you did here was cut off the person’s leg, and gave them a golden crutch.” – Sal Chaudry
3 minutes
Thought Leadership

External vs. Internal Solutions

Steve Polo

Me: “My life would be so much better if I moved to LA.”My friend: “Are you sure? You know you have to take you with you, right?”
4 minutes
Thought Leadership

How Workplace Culture is Intentionally Created – Both Good and Bad

Managing Partner Steve Polo was featured on Federal News Network’s “What’s Working in Washington“with Jonathan Aberman on January 16th, 2019. To learn more about how running a business isn’t just taking a good idea and running with it.
5 minutes
Servant Leadership

2018 OPXhibition – Everyone Has a Tail to Tell

Everyone had a “tail” to “tell” this year at the OPXhibition! On October 18th, OPXers, friends, and supporters, gathered in the Atrium for a fantastic night of food, drinks, and a live auction.
1 minute
Thought Leadership

The Future of Remote Work: A better way to work or a strange new world

The future of work will depend on complex social, economic, political, environmental, and cultural factors that interplay to create a landscape that we can only say will be different than today.
7 minutes
Thought Leadership

Rethinking Remote Work

The nature of work is changing. Every year more people work remotely and for longer periods of time, and in looking ahead, remote work will almost certainly become even more commonplace.
6 minutes
Servant Leadership

OPX Park(ing) Day

Back in 2005, a trio of San Francisco designers asked a big question: Could public street parking spaces be more than temporary storage for one’s automobile?
4 minutes
Thought Leadership

[OPX] Mother's Day

Every day, but on Mother’s Day in particular, we celebrate the women of OPX who are raising the next generation.
2 minutes
Thought Leadership

Wellness Week: Not Just About Wellness

Do you want to have a good laugh during the day? Watch your colleague drop next to his or her workstation and give you 20!
3 minutes
Sustainability

Protect the [Planet]

Stop acting so small. You are the universe in ecstatic motion. – Rumi
3 minutes
Sustainability

Guiding the Environmental Design Dialogue

In a year of diving deeper into our values at OPX, this month we’re focusing on one of our core values, Protect the Planet.
3 minutes
Sustainability

Standing Up For Sustainability

The folks who produced the first Earth Day knew what they were doing when they picked April 22 to celebrate.
3 minutes
Thought Leadership

The Sound of Work

I remember when I first paired music with work. I was a freshman in high school taking a Drafting elective, a class where I learned the foundations of technical drawing.
3 minutes
Thought Leadership

International Women’s Day 2018

While we celebrate our teammates every day at OPX, we feel it’s important to give rise to the individuals that make up our dynamic collective.
2 minutes
Thought Leadership

Count Your Lucky Stars

On the NPR podcast, “How I Built This,” host Guy Raz interviews successful entrepreneurs about how they built their business.
5 minutes
Thought Leadership

Finding the Gap

In volleyball, points are scored by placing the ball where the opposing team is not. Coaches often urge players to look for where the other team isn’t for serving and hitting opportunities to score points.
4 minutes
Thought Leadership

Operational Results – The OPX Library

In March, we’re focusing on one of our core practice areas – Operational Results – specifically the processes that we hone in order to produce Operational Results for our clients.
1 minute
Thought Leadership

Focus on the Soul

Like the water inside a glass, tainted by a drop of paint, our minds can just as easily become infected by the slightest bit of negativity.
2 minutes
Thought Leadership

A Culture of Thanks

Now, I’ve been fortunate enough to never have worked in an environment quite as hostile as Mad Men’s Sterling Cooper (or have ever had a boss quite like Mr. Draper), but I have felt underappreciated in the workplace.
2 minutes
Thought Leadership

Choosing The Positive

What is the secret to positivity? Is it an extra cup of coffee? Another hour of sleep? For me, it’s both those things – but most importantly, it’s loving my fate.
3 minutes
Thought Leadership

The Vigor Epidemic

On a bleak and bleary February day, with the holidays a distant memory and spring just out of reach.
4 minutes
Thought Leadership

Seeking the Unvarnished Truth

For me the quest for constant improvement is a good indicator of a life-learner personality type. The natural curiosity of a life-learner can form the basis of a very powerful design tool if fed by the honest feedback of clients and end-users.
2 minutes
Thought Leadership

On Seeking Improvement

A couple of months back, as a fellow OPXer and I surveyed a building for one of our current projects, I walked into a large room filled with nothing but rows of desks with computer stations.
2 minutes
Thought Leadership

365 Drawings – An Exploration of Craft and Self

For designers, bringing your ideas to life through the effortless stroke of a pen is what is expected of us. Drawing should be second nature, part of your DNA.
2 minutes
Thought Leadership

Hello, Twenty GREAT-teen!

It’s the top of the year. A time for renewal, new beginnings, resolutions, and betterment.
4 minutes
Innovation

What the Workplace Can Learn From the Cruise Industry

Lounging poolside in the middle of the Caribbean while a robot bartender prepares you neon colored quaffs certainly seems good for morale.
3 minutes
Thought Leadership

Work Better Wednesday: Servant Leadership

Derrick Mashore of Space Matters interviewed our own Steve Polo last month as part of his Wednesday Wisdom series.
2 minutes
Thought Leadership

The End of the Office As We Know It (Apologies to REM)

Steve Polo

Imagine that you went to work in a different office every day. Some days you felt like working at the office near your house, and sometimes when you wanted to be in the city, you went to an office downtown.
9 minutes
Thought Leadership

Really Good Coffee Won’t Save Your Organization

In the same way you wouldn’t quit smoking with only a patch, deep rooted organizational challenges can’t be solved by merely building a new employee lounge.
5 minutes
Thought Leadership

Apple’s Missed Opportunity to Redefine the Relationship between Work and Home Life

Apple, the world’s most valuable company, valued at almost one trillion dollars, has been showing off its new corporate headquarters recently.
2 minutes
Thought Leadership

Co-Existing Part 2: We Can Share Our Spaces More! But How?

A few months back I wrote a post advocating for a closer integration of living space with working space, a concept I dubbed “Co-Existing”.
4 minutes
Thought Leadership

Choice

Steve Polo

Much has been written and discussed about the notion of ‘choice’ in the design of the workplace.
3 minutes
Thought Leadership

Generations in Flux

Ready or not, Millennials will soon be in charge. Handing over the reins to the next generation can be an exciting and honored experience. It can also be fraught with anxiety and uncertainty.
6 minutes
Strategy

The Vision Session: Strategy? What Strategy?

With a healthy dose of caffeine and sugar and an insatiable eagerness to question business as usual and challenge assumptions, we’re ready for the Vision Session.
6 minutes
Thought Leadership

Co-Existing: Can We Share Our Live/Work Spaces Even More?

For the first few years of my career, I worked for a design firm that specialized in multi-family housing, i.e., living spaces which are typically inhabited between the weekday hours of 5pm-9am and the weekends.
5 minutes
Strategy

The Office through the Eyes of an Outsider

The floor is quiet but for the distant tip-tap of a keyboard echoing down the dark hallway. The cloyingly sweet scent of hazelnut coffee wafts in invisible clouds from the pantry.
5 minutes
Innovation

Washington Business Journal’s 2016 Innovation Awards: OPX ESP™

OPX was honored Thursday, September 22, 2016 at Washington Business Journal’s inaugural Innovation Awards for our web-based application called ESP, or Electronic Scenario Planning.
1 minute
Thought Leadership

The Indispensable Focus Group

While it may be easy for popular media to poke fun at focus group clichés, effective focus groups are a useful method for measuring a group’s opinions, reactions, and needs.
5 minutes
Servant Leadership

Building Erin’s Wish

Our family at OPX loves to get involved, at every scope we can, in making the world a brighter, happier place. Every once in a while we’ll get a really special opportunity.
1 minute
Innovation

Fortune Telling: A look at OPX’s Scenario Planning

Scenario planning is like predicting the future, but won’t tell you tomorrow’s weather or who will win the World Series. Scenario planning’s value, if done correctly, is derived from its ability to provide information on all possible futures from any given decision.
7 minutes
Servant Leadership

OPXhibition 2016 Most Successful Yet!

Did we mention how much fun we had at OPXhibition this year??
1 minute
Servant Leadership

OPX Red Nose Day 2016!!

PX is excited to be participating Red Nose Day for another year! Red Nose Day is an annual celebration of the power that laughter and joy have to unite and heal.
1 minute
Thought Leadership

Through What Lens?

Steve Polo

Recently, I’ve been taking our teenage daughter on college tours.For those of you who have done it – you’ll probably agree that it’s an interesting process.
3 minutes
Servant Leadership

That’s a Wrap!

OPX recently had the pleasure and honor to donate our time and design services to helping Community Support Services (CSS), a Gaithersburg-based nonprofit that provides services and support to children and adults with autism and other developmental disabilities.
3 minutes
Thought Leadership

On Servant Leadership

Steve Polo

‘If you want to be a leader, find yourself a parade and stand in front of it!’ – Pogo (Walt Kelly)
3 minutes
Thought Leadership

Look Right!

Steve Polo

“Life is one big road with lots of signs. Wake Up and Live!” -Bob Marley
3 minutes
Servant Leadership

Red Nose Day

Steve Polo

“To know one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
2 minutes
Servant Leadership

Inaugural Red Nose Day!

OPX is participating the inaugural Red Nose Day in the US. The campaign, which has raised over $1 billion for organizations that address poverty in the UK, makes it debut in the US on May 21, 2015.
1 minute
Servant Leadership

OPXhibition 2014 in the Books!

On October 23, 2014 we hosted our annual OPXhibition event and raised over $2,000 for Rebuilding Together of Washington DC.
1 minute
Thought Leadership

Thank You

Steve Polo

“For all that has been, thanks. For all that will be, yes.” – Dag Hammarskjold
2 minutes
Thought Leadership

Trust

Steve Polo

“In God we trust, all others pay cash” – sign in local service station
2 minutes
Thought Leadership

Design Thinking – What Could Be?

Last week, OPX’s Professional Development lunch veered from the norm. Our very own Steve Polo took the floor and discussed his passion — design thinking.
3 minutes
Innovation

Dupont Underground Boutique Hotel

The Arts Coalition for the Dupont Underground (ACDU), a registered not-for-profit 501 (c)(3), is working to convert the abandoned property into a venue that will showcase DC art and culture.
1 minute
Servant Leadership

OPX Gives Back: Oral Rehydration Therapy

On March 30, OPXers were fortunate to participate in the 7th Annual Outreach Project: Oral Rehydration Therapy with Temple Beth El and Immanuel Church on the Hill in Alexandria, VA.
1 minute
Innovation

Revit API: Wrangling Revisions with Ruby

OPXer Mat Hart came up with an idea for managing Revit project sheets: he wanted to have a master schedule log that would keep track of all of the revisions for every sheet, like pictured above.
5 minutes
Thought Leadership

Office Design that Delivers: Design By Law

In the legal profession, the saying goes that the law is whatever the judge says it is. But when it comes to law firm design, there are many masters.
4 minutes
Thought Leadership

Reflection on Freedom Park School

Steve Polo

One of the greatest leaders of our time, Nelson Mandela, was buried on December 15, 2013 in his home village of Qunu in Johannesburg, South Africa.Good fortune gave OPX a special connection to Nelson Mandela.
3 minutes
Thought Leadership

Design Matters

Steve Polo

“Design is the ‘seat of the soul'” – Tom Peters
2 minutes
Thought Leadership

Attitude

Steve Polo

“Nothing is either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.” – Shakespeare
Thought Leadership

Important

Steve Polo

“Experience is not what happens to you. It is what you do with what happens.” – Aldous Huxley
3 minutes
Thought Leadership

The Truth about Change

Steve Polo

“The only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance.”– Alan Watts
3 minutes
Innovation

SmartCEO: Skyline Awards

On Monday, May 4th SmartCEO held their first annual Skyline Awards event in Bethesda, MD to honor companies in the Commercial Real Estate industry that are sharing landscapes and changing skylines for the better. OPX is proud to be a Skyline Awards Finalist, honored for our Integrated Operating Environment (IOE) work.
1 minute
Servant Leadership

Santa Is Real

No, not necessarily in the red suit, overweight, bearded form; but in our field, jolly ol’ Nick is a necessary spark of joy. The twinkle in a designer’s eye that then leads to an idea that’s followed by a thrill pursuit a of the unknown – that is real.
3 minutes
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