Driving Disruption: Joel Phelps Of Reflection Window + Wall On The Innovative Approaches They Are Taking To Disrupt Their Industries

An Interview With Cynthia Corsetti

Everybody thinks that commercial construction is a business where it’s either kill or be killed. Our culture is showing us that it doesn’t have to be that way. Instead, we focus on offering solutions instead of running from problems to avoid risk. We do not monetize other people’s problems. We provide clients with fair value and have found that not only can we survive but thrive by doing so. That’s our culture; and in our industry, that is disruptive. People don’t hear what you say, they “hear” what you do.

In an age where industries evolve at lightning speed, there exists a special breed of C-suite executives who are not just navigating the changes, but driving them. These are the pioneers who think outside the box, championing novel strategies that shatter the status quo and set new industry standards. Their approach fosters innovation, spurs growth, and leads to disruptive change that redefines their sectors. In this interview series, we are talking to disruptive C-suite executives to share their experiences, insights, and the secrets behind the innovative approaches they are taking to disrupt their industries. As part of this series, we had the pleasure of interviewing Joel Phelps, Chief Operating Officer, Reflection Window + Wall, (RWW) Chicago, Il. Joel oversees global design, sales, operations and manufacturing supply chain for high-performing and innovative exterior façades with manufacturing partnerships spanning millions of square feet in Shanghai, Mumbai, Doha, Cicero and Indianapolis. RWW maintains design offices in Chicago, as well as Spain, India and the Philippines. These offices help Joel contribute remarkable and recognizable building facades in markets around the US including Chicago, New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Nashville, San Francisco, LA, Las Vegas, Phoenix and others. Prior to working with RWW, Joel was Vice-President, Business Development, Entekk Group & Chicago Heights Glass, Inc. Joel graduated with honors from Purdue University.

Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series. Before we dive into our discussion about disruption, our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you share with us the backstory about what brought you to your specific career path?

I started in manufacturing as an industrial engineer, then was recruited by a construction company who was building a new factory for us at the time. A year later I split off with three other partners in my early 20’s to form our own general contracting firm named Matrix Construction; convinced that we knew everything about everything.

Matrix construction built a backlog of just over $50 million in projects in a very short time which at the time felt like a lot. I learned a tremendous amount from that experience, including lessons on scope, employment on scale and cash flow management that everyone learns at one point or another; however, the tuition was steep, and the company didn’t quite survive.

After that, I had my own small solely owned construction firm for a few years, and then was recruited once again by a commercial construction facade manufacturer. I worked in a variety of capacities including project management and business development. In 2012, I had a brief sprint in federal politics before heading back into the private sector working with a business where we acquired an access control and monitoring technology from an Australian defense and mining tech firm that we licensed, manufactured and sold into the U.S. to the likes of Disney, Boeing and Toyota.

I was lured back into the commercial facade industry by the owner of a company looking for a succession plan, but that agreement wasn’t ultimately upheld. I joined Reflection Window + Wall (RWW) in 2020 and was charged with starting our curtain wall business. It was a tremendous challenge and a lot of fun, as it brought all the skills and lessons learned over my various ventures to develop a major product and build a business division from scratch. We’ve had great success with our new product line; and received multiple patents for our innovative work, and this division now accounts for 35-%40% of our revenue.

I was promoted to Chief Operating Officer of RWW in January 2022, as Reflection continued to grow our high-rise façade business by earning projects across the country throughout 2022 more than doubling contract revenue and number of markets served; while also expanding our global supply chains to India and Qatar, sourcing environmentally sustainable products and inventing new technologies. We recently received multiple new patents that I’m proud to be an inventor on, that will forever change the functionality of building facades. Those patents include designs for a new window and wall system designed to be carbon negative; and allows developers to integrate, easily replace, maintain, upgrade technologically advanced photovoltaic, and electrochromic facades at a very low-cost point by changing the way we think about power and data distribution within the context of high-rise building facades.

What do you think makes your company stand out? Can you share a story?

In my experience, due to the basic universal human desire for significance, a company’s culture starts at the top, by those that decide what kind of behaviors, personalities, and achievements are recognized, promoted and rewarded. If folks that are promoted and rewarded demonstrate conflict, and predatory business practices, that’s what you’ll get, and it will become a culture. Conversely, if people are recognized and rewarded for honoring their commitments, supporting each other, supporting your customers, and acting in solutions-oriented ways, then you’ll get more of that, and that becomes your culture. Our culture at RWW is that people matter more than money, and that is because our founder and CEO Rodrigo d’Escoto lives and breathes that philosophy and rewards the same in his teams and organizations. We don’t look for reasons to try to capitalize on other people’s mistakes. We help. We’re that way internally and externally. Rodrigo genuinely cares about his employees, our customers, suppliers which can be witnessed in the quality products we bring to the marketplace. Each and every day he makes it a point to instill those values in his employees makes it clear that those are the things that our company stands for, that are valued first and foremost. I think that’s fundamentally what sets us apart, and it shines through in every new product and contract. I don’t think this culture is very common in our industry, but that mindset guides every aspect of what we do.

This mindset promotes neuroplasticity, and a relaxed mind that allows us to be creative, when solving problems and when thinking about the future. It has allowed us to innovate and become a leader in new sustainable technologies. Our mentality is people are more important than money and helping our customers reach their goals is more important than eking out an extra point of profit.

We’re always looking to see what we can give for a dollar instead of get for a dollar, and that drives RWW as a value solution. We’re good partners, and a lot of people out there appreciate that. The story of our growth is based on that value proposition. When a general contractor or developer finds us, they realize this is not just something said in a sales presentation. Developers take us with them as they grow into different cities and markets. Those partnerships are about treating people well and doing what we promised. For example, right now we were working on buildings in Philly whose relationships started in Chicago, and projects in New York whose relationships started in Philly. We grow and succeed by helping our customers and clients grow and succeed.

One other significant thing that sets RWW apart from the pack is how we embrace and actively manage with great intention, the hot potato of design risk inherent in our industry. Design liability issues are increasingly contractually forced to roll down past architects, and General Contractor’s to Subcontractors. This conversation is playing a more significant role in the construction business than ever before. Instead of fighting this trend, we’ve embraced it utilizing our in-house architectural firm, and by being smarter about more every aspect of material science and specific performance attributes than anyone else. We are students of our craft, and we are teachers of that craft to our clients. This has proven to be very beneficial as we provide a team to assist architects, letting them know that we care about their designs and understand what they’re trying to accomplish. They get the advantage of having our deep manufacturing and value chain knowledge to get their design to market with the highest performing product at the best value possible.

We have all the resources in-house from engineering, structural engineering, thermal engineering, acoustical engineering, including all the practical and material sciences disciplines required for a state-of -the-art functional design. We provide rapid feedback to the owner, architect and various designers, to find the perfect mix, sooner rather than later. Time kills all deals. We’re allowing the owner, architect and the developer to work through the design process while keeping the building on schedule.

Our culture and the fact that we’re a one stop shop differentiates us. Everything from aluminum billet processing all the way to installation. We bring that power to bear on each and every one of our customers’ projects.

You are a successful business leader. Which three character traits do you think were most instrumental to your success? Can you please share a story or example for each?

Consistent hard work, and consistent persistence of course, and most importantly never losing the sense of, the more I learn, the less I know. I credit my father as my example. He would get up early for his job as an engineer at the University of Chicago and work 10–12 hours a day, every day. He never complained. It was not glamorous or glorious, but he persisted because that’s what you do, and you don’t give up. I was raised in this pretty blue-collar family. We couldn’t afford the fancy gym shoes and cool clothes I wanted growing up, so at the age of 13 I got a job and went out and got it for myself. Making money for the things I wanted made me feel good and reinforced my purposeful behavior of persistence and self-reliance. As I get older, and “things” mean less, the effort and traits remain, but now I find great joy, fulfillment, and even daily strength in leveraging those traits to help those here at RWW I love achieve success for themselves.

If I could add a fourth, I would say, really seeking and investing yourself to solve a problem, by understanding the myriad of underlying variables is absolutely fundamental. I’ve seen so many folks in my career at every level, use knee jerk characterizations that sounds good when they face an issue, just labeling it with a sound bite, assigning blame, and moving on declaring it solved. However, if we really want to solve something, if we really want to get better, we have to invest the time to do so. You have to have the ability and mental stamina to hold two opposing, seemingly conflicting, truths simultaneously, until you can reconcile both in a win/win action. I’m constantly working on developing my mind, questioning my own perceptions or bias, and trying to make sure to take the time to get all the facts and understand them.

The goal is to provide a complete solution. Being fair-minded to the problem and the people involved while providing a sustainable solution that works for everybody is the difference between trying to build and run an organization versus trying to just be an “executive.”

Leadership often entails making difficult decisions or hard choices between two apparently good paths. Can you share a story with us about a hard decision or choice you had to make as a leader? I’m curious to understand how these challenges have shaped your leadership.

Sometimes it’s two good paths you’re choosing from and trying to choose the best one, in which case that’s a values decision. Or sometimes it’s the least bad path. Oftentimes we’re choosing two things that are both true in the moment, in opposition to each other. For example, in 2022 we had an amazing year just because the macros were great with the economy. We’ve booked nearly a half billion dollars in new projects. This year is a different story, interest rates and building vacancies are up — driving sales down. The $2 trillion worth of office assets are continuing to weigh down the economy and are affecting construction activity. With high interest rates being paid by developers, they’re looking to buy trades — contractors and subcontractors for less. Here’s the paradox, we’re getting more work than ever before and are performing well on our projects. At the same time, we need to prepare for the downturn while continuing to execute more work at a high level, managing them both at the same time.

It’s our job to land on the what’s in best interest of our employees. Our clients are at the heart of these decisions as well. The truth is, you’ve got to manage both simultaneously, finding ways to do that without wearing our people or supply chains out, while letting people know that they’re safe and that things are okay. It’s important to see the threats and stay calm, figure out a way through it and to reassure others and to communicate the plan. That’s leadership. You must reconcile the challenges and deal with the paradoxes to keep the engine running.

And I’ve learned a lot of this from watching Rodrigo and his partners Ed and James. When others were scaling back, they took the contrary position and decided this is when we need to be inventive. When everybody else is reducing, hunkering down and sheltering in place that’s when they chose to invest in a new curtainwall division and expand. That’s when we were developing new supply chains overseas, because when the world comes back from the pandemic, and it did, we wanted to be the ones poised to serve the needs in the marketplace; and we are doing just that.

We looked into the future and thought, what will be the needs two years from now? Our team developed new products, earned patents and sought low embodied carbon solutions to lead the sustainable revolution in our industry sector. All of this while balancing a pandemic, followed by explosive growth, and now the new economic reality for the next little bit.

When you really love the people that you work with, and work for, and trust in your team, knowing that we’re all in this beyond the paycheck while moving forward with innovations and projects and preparing for a better future for all of us, the challenges build teams instead of breaking them. A culture of kindness at the workplace really works. You don’t have to beat people down to get the best out of them.

Ok, thank you for that. Let’s now jump to the primary focus of our interview. Let’s begin with a basic definition so that all of us are on the same page. In the context of a business, what exactly is “Disruption”?

Disruption is solving a problem better for the same or less money. For example, the automobile was quite a disruption for those that made whips and buggies. The Model T cost less when assembly lines were invented. They’re faster and better. That’s disruption. If I can solve your problem in a radically better way for the same or less money, it makes the previous method obsolete and disrupted.

How do you perceive the role of ‘disruption’ within your industry, and how have you personally embraced it? Is it a necessity, a strategy, or something else entirely in your view?

As I said, the pandemic everyone was hunkering down in place, while we were busy expanding our resources, supply chain and developing new relationships. We’re now sourcing product out of Qatar, India and have maintained our wonderful supply chain out of Shanghai. This allowed us to hit the ground running immediately after the pandemic and created what we call “certainty premium” in construction and development. The more we control all the variables leading into that eventual output, the more certainty we can have for the output.

We have factories in China, India, Qatar and the U.S. If there’s a problem with receiving product from one of them, we can pivot to another. We have mirrored supply chains, all with consistent quality of interchangeable parts, pieces and systems. This allows us to give developers that certainty that, short of a world-wide Armageddon, there’s nothing we can’t navigate.

We can navigate political nuances, geopolitical threats, and financial crises in various countries by pivoting, and keeping their project on track. It’s fun to say it’s harder to do, but I’m super proud that we’ve done that. That’s the way we’ve disrupted our industry. I don’t know of anyone else who offers the same value proposition.

Another disruption is that we’re building for ta sustainable future without charging more for it. If you look at the trajectory of population growth, the built environment must double by the year 2060. The manufacturing of building materials accounts for 40% of the carbon that human beings put in the breathable atmosphere. 13% of it being embodied carbon, 27% being operational carbon, which is the energy it takes to operate the buildings. We’ve embraced sustainability and are focused on making the world a cooler place.

Certain of our new patents were recently granted to address this significantly important issue. It’s a radical and disruptive improvement. They advance window technology to near neutral embodied carbon and allows them to function in a carbon negative operational carbon footprint.

We have the potential to be carbon negative on a building for the first time. Windows are one of the most carbon intensive parts of the building. These are the eyes of the building that people look through and play a significant role because thermal transmission of aluminum and are sensitive to outdoor weather. We’re going to be able to provide a product to the industry where the windows chew up more carbon than they take to maintain. That’s disruptive. We’re working every day to provide cost neutral solutions, because as a species if we are inclined to sacrifice either our comfort or our finances to make green choices, we would have done it already! We’re actively changing that paradigm that the clean choice is not the most economical choice. That’s disruptive also.

What lessons have you learned from challenging conventional wisdom, and how have those lessons shaped your leadership style?

I’m very grateful for having met Rodrigo d’Escoto, Founder and CEO of Reflection. He’s been such an incredible mentor. His contrarian mindset, and the courage to go against conventional wisdom is inspiring and has changed my world view. When conventional wisdom says shrink, we grow. When conventional wisdom says that we need to do less, we do more. I give Rod tremendous credit to not only have the vision to see it, but the courage also to do it, and then the persistence to see it through. This has been a constant while working side by side with him. Being a contrarian doesn’t mean being reckless, but it means we’re not afraid to see things differently. Disruptive ideas often meet resistance. He’s taught me personally that if you see it differently, have the courage to go after it. It may not be perfect or easy, but nothing worth doing is. Significant opportunities could be lurking in the shadow of doubt and fear. This mind set will generate better products, and your people will be better, smarter, tougher.

Disruptive ideas often meet resistance. Could you describe a time when you faced significant pushback for a disruptive idea? How did you navigate the opposition, and what advice would you give to others in a similar situation?

Any time, any time you go against conventional wisdom, or upset the status quo, you’re going to get a lot of pushback and be attacked. You’re going to you’re getting a lot of pushback from people that have your best interests at heart. They’re afraid you’re making a huge mistake, and they want to save you from it. Also, you’ll get pushback from people who don’t have the foresight or the courage and they’re afraid that you’ll outflank them, and they’ll try to discourage or block your attempt. They’ll try to create roadblocks because they want to feel safe, and they’d like you to stay as they do because it makes them feel better about it.

If the resistance you’re dealing with is from an internal source, repeating the vision, and reminding people why you’re being contrarian and the hill you’re trying to take is important. Most of the external opposition is fear based. They can be afraid that you’re right, and they don’t dare to come with you on the journey. So just ignore it because you’re going to win or fail big. But either way, you learn. What we find is if you have the best people with the best intentions, with the best skills, and you can get the best out of them, you’ll find a way to succeed. It’s hard to unlock creativity, to unlock people’s best. You have to have that heart to genuinely love them, to fully have their best mind at work. They must not be under duress. That’s how you get the best.

It’s all about how you treat the people involved and tapping into how creative they are. Making sure that you’re creating an environment where you get the best out of your people and they get the best out of you. My advice on creating a market-disrupting culture is to set a contrarian mindset and then stick to it. Sometimes we feel the least competent when you’re learning the most. That’s the time when most everyone gives up, assuming they’ve failed, when they’re just about to succeed.

Ok super. Here is the main question of our interview. What are your “Five Innovative Approaches We Are Using To Disrupt Our Industry”?

1. Be the solution when times in your industry get tough. During the last construction industry downturn some general contractors, owners, developers, and architects got into financial trouble. It was painful. They shifted more responsibility, risk and creative problem-solving to their subcontractors. We embraced the opportunities that shift afforded to us. We said, let’s be their solution. We know. We know what works and what doesn’t. We stepped in during a crucial time for many. This has paid dividends for us.
2. Sustainability at a value price point is disruptive. In the US, dirty coal-fired power grids, powering just the aluminum industry alone put more pollution in the air than the entire continent of Europe last year in its entirety. The construction industry is ripe for a sustainability initiative. We have worked hard and travelled halfway around the world to find clean low-embodied carbon aluminum at the same or better price than the dirty option.
3. Everybody thinks that commercial construction is a business where it’s either kill or be killed. Our culture is showing us that it doesn’t have to be that way. Instead, we focus on offering solutions instead of running from problems to avoid risk. We do not monetize other people’s problems. We provide clients with fair value and have found that not only can we survive but thrive by doing so. That’s our culture; and in our industry, that is disruptive. People don’t hear what you say, they “hear” what you do.
4. We have invested a lot of time, energy and money into developing smart windows that will disrupt the glass industry as we know it. We have patents on new technology and development partners to bring carbon negative window systems that embrace a variety of new technologies in an easy-to-install, maintainable and upgradable chassis. They will be priced very close to the dumb version. That is disruptive.
5. Lastly, there’s an arcane industry process called performance bonds. In this process a bank assures a subcontractors’ performance by forcing the owner of the subcontracting firm to effectively mortgage their life’s work often over a wholistic process beyond the control of the subcontractor. That said, for some folks, we still issue bonds on projects. However, it’s not an appropriate long-term solution, because a company owner has to leverage their entire life’s work and guarantee performance on a project and a bunch of things they really can’t control. If it breaks bad, they could lose everything. The Bond isn’t even a good instrument for protecting those it’s designed to benefit, because if for some reason the project has significant issues and insurance companies have to get involved it gets tied up in court for years. We’re taking a completely different path by providing our clients with surety based on our well-developed supply chain options. We have the resources around the globe to avoid any significant product issues. This “certainty premium” comes with every RWW contract, and it was developed during a time when many hunkered down during the pandemic, while RWW was expanding or supply chain options.

Looking back at your career, in what ways has being disruptive defined or redefined your path? What surprises have you encountered along the way?

It’s cliche, but it’s true. If you think you can or you can’t, you’re right. I’m not smart enough to know what I can and can’t do, or what we can and can’t do, so we just do it. When you approach life with that belief and the willingness to grind until you actually do it, you become disruptive.

How has that defined my path? It’s been defined by doing it, surviving it, benefiting from it, and like anything, it reinforces the behavior. Behavior which is rewarded is repeated. That’s basic human psychology. Incidentally, it’s how you train puppies too, and I’m not different or special in that regard. Having that mindset of being willing to put in the work that it takes, surviving, and benefiting from it, doing it again, leads to disruptive life. It leads to innovation because you think you can, and you’re right. It will be harder than you think it is. It’s always way harder than you think it is, but it’s always more rewarding also.

The process makes you smarter, and when you get smarter, you see more distinctions, you see things with more complexity and clarity and you think, this time I got it covered, but there’s always things that you haven’t thought of in anything new. There’s an art to doing everything well, but the struggle is beautiful, and is one of the best parts of our humanity in my opinion. I suppose realizing that is the surprise.

Beyond professional accomplishments, how has embracing disruption affected you on a personal level?

There are positive and negative aspects to it. It’s always harder than you think it’s going to be so when you’re unwilling to fail and determined to whatever it takes, you can become very single-minded and end up deprioritized things you shouldn’t. That’s a lesson I’ve learned about myself. That’s a negative.

The positive is that it gives you hope when you’re very uncertain about things. There’s hope for any problem and solution. You find ways through it. I find fulfillment and joy in disruption for those reasons. We’re working on the future now. Disrupting the status quo in this context means the planet is getting cooler, helping people live healthier and longer lives. What we’re working on starts with imagining the world we want, because it doesn’t exist right now, but through disruptive solutions it will. Believing in your heart that you can get from here to there somehow. That’s the benefit. That’s how it’s affected me on a personal level. I’ve been very blessed. The experiences and the people I’ve been surrounded by enable that approach to life.

In your role as a C-suite leader, driving innovation and embracing disruption, what thoughts or concerns keep you awake at night? How do these reflections guide your decisions and leadership?

There’s a season for everything, a time to be born, and a time to die as they say. This also applies to the cycle of innovation. There’s a time to conceive the idea, a time to build it, then there’s a time to go sell it so that you can do it again. But what you don’t want to do is spend too long creating without building, or too much time tinkering before producing and selling. You’ll run out of money to create. If you spend too little time creating, you may produce a product that isn’t what people want or is too complex in execution because it can’t be reliably produced. If you spend too much time creating maybe the time for the idea’s existence passes you by and is stillborn. It’s about balance and knowing the pace and timing for this product generation, and when to stop, sell what you have, and plan for the next generation.

It’s also about having great networks of people that are smarter than you on a million things. So, you can ask their advice on products and processes and get their perspectives. It gives you better perspective, so see where things are heading. It’s about knowing the limits of your people, your processes, and the limits of an individual’s point of view. Having your finger on the pulse of the market will help you know when it’s time we recreate. When we do that right at RWW, our clients and employee’s benefit.

Maintaining that balance keeps me awake at night. The questions keep me up of how to guide decisions and when to course correct. When timing this all out, you can’t be all details or all aspirations. You have to switch back and forth quickly. Having the neuroplasticity to be able to switch, to be able to be myopically focused on a manufacturing issue one moment, and then jump straight into a meeting where you’re planning a future five years from now. To be able to jump back and forth, and to do it frequently enough where you get an honest perspective of the whole board. It’s not easy.

Our brains are wired to work a certain way. They don’t like switching. It can be painful. I think the ability to lead a four-hour technical conversation about paint application, and then to be able to switch modes to talk about what we need for the next marketing push is an example of a day in the life of all of our senior leaders. They are brilliant, and I’m blessed to work with them.

Good C suite people always need to be learning, asking questions, expanding our knowledge and perspective, knowing that the more we learn, the less we know, and developing the strength to be okay with that as a daily state of being. Humans hate uncertainty by default. It feels scary. But to be able to hold in your heart and mind the feeling of uncertainty, knowing I’m uncertain because I don’t know enough, and let that drive you to learn more; instead of drawing a conclusion that makes me feel good for a minute, is critical.

We should always be curious. Always explore new options until it’s time to have the courage to make the decision to move forward and to live with results of your call. I’m constantly learning and doubting my own perceptions, but when it’s time to go, you go and you get better in the doing.

You are a person of great influence. If you could start a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. :-)

Being kind, being empathetic, and becoming strong enough to handle your burden, and carry someone else’s with them, so they can reach their goals also is what should define our success, self-esteem, and our legacy; not how much stuff or power we accumulate compared to others that we cross paths with. I wish that we could start a movement to see the world, and each other through that lens. That would be a pretty cool place to live.

Thank you for the time you spent sharing these fantastic insights. We wish you only continued success in your great work!

About the Interviewer: Cynthia Corsetti is an esteemed executive coach with over two decades in corporate leadership and 11 years in executive coaching. Author of the upcoming book, “Dark Drivers,” she guides high-performing professionals and Fortune 500 firms to recognize and manage underlying influences affecting their leadership. Beyond individual coaching, Cynthia offers a 6-month executive transition program and partners with organizations to nurture the next wave of leadership excellence.