Pear Workplace Story
When Della and I brought the “new” Pear Workplace Solutions showroom online in 2018, we knew we had something special. A new productivity paradigm was established for downtown studio office furniture showrooms.
Every company has an identity. It shows up in the reference experiences people have every day — the moments that shape how they feel, connect, and choose to act. It was up to us to identify, uncover and amplify those experiences. Our identity was so strong, it manifested in the space itself. That happens! But asking the right questions gives us the opportunity to make it happen every time.
Here’s how we used the Outcome Frame to create our perfect space:
– **What would you like?** A space that showed the potential for all space.
– **What will having that do for you?** (the Meta Outcome question!) It would feel like us — it would show who we are and how it felt to work with “us”.
– **How will you know when you have it?** Everyone wins.
– **Where, when, and with whom would you like this?** In the same space we had been in for 20 years. On Day One, with our team, customers, and design community.
– **What might you lose?** The identity of the past 25 years. We were “safe” the way we were. A new approach might leave some people behind… but it might bring new ones forward. And it did.
About John Robbins
John Robbins is a workplace strategist and project execution expert with over 35 years of experience helping organizations bring their vision to life through space, culture, and design.
His journey began in 1987 at Haworth — where he not only launched his career in contract furniture but also met his future wife and business partner, Della. The two have been building together ever since.
In 2002, they founded Pear Workplace Solutions, a leading dealership known for its strong design sensibility, deep client empathy, and breakthrough execution. Over two decades, they helped shape the look and feel of some of Colorado’s most inspiring office environments — culminating in a successful exit in 2023.
Today, John brings that same insight, experience, and passion to Work NLP, a new AI driven application of a proven methodology that decodes the cognitive structure of organizations. By blending computational linguistics with behavioral analysis, Work NLP explains and predicts the Adoption Gap that stalls strategy. It moves beyond designing space to changing our fundamental understanding and discovery of the audit trail of the biological edit of human intent.