Welcome to the first in our new "Away From the Office" series.  Each Saturday and Sunday we're visiting with our guest alumni and learning from them how they spend their time away from the office. We've also added transcripts from our interviews to allow you to read them at your leisure. We kick-off the "Away From the Office" series with our friend Robert Couturier.   James                                       Join me as we chat with Robert Couturier and discover what his life is like when the weekend comes. Robert, it’s a pleasure to welcome you back to the show.   Robert:                        Thank you, James. A pleasure to be with you on this show.   James:                          Thank you so much. For our listeners, Robert, give us a snapshot. Tell us a bit about you and your business and all that it entails.   Robert:                        Okay. So I’m an architect interior designer and decorator. I work – actually mostly in America at this point and I’ve been working a lot in Europe as well and Latin America, even in the Middle East. And I have an office that varies between 25 and 50 people depending on the season. And very busy at the moment, quite happy.   James:                          Busy is a good thing, right?   Robert:                        This is an excellent thing.   James:                          It’s an excellent thing. Indeed. So I’m curious to get your thoughts on how people around you view you. Sometimes it’s interesting to get a snapshot of what we think people are perceiving us as. How do you feel your staff perceives you, Robert?   Robert:                        I hope perceives me incredibly well. I think you always have a good comeback back up. I think I have done this in probably a good cut up. I can also be very opinionated, quite headstrong, and a little priggish in many ways. I’m very definite in what I like and what I don’t like and I like things to be done. I think ultimately we owe it to our clients to give the very best that we can give and I abhor mediocrity so I can be very demanding and I’m sure that people in my office find me so. And I hope I’m not demanding in a mean way and if I am, I apologize. That’s not the way I want to be.   James:                          It’s a balance, isn’t it between being demanding and then being conscientious of the people that work for you?   Robert:                        Yes, and also I think it’s quite difficult for people, for staff to understand my own demands and my own choices and how I like things to be done. And there’s a tendency, there’s a judgment also that some – myself can have and I think it’s a natural thing to say that this is important and this is not important when I’m the only person who can decide what is and what is not. So, of course, it’s a balance. But on a certain level, I am the ultimate decision maker and everything comes out of me and comes back to me. So if there’s a mistake, ultimately, it’s mine and now I try to fess up to mistakes that often my staff has made because I haven’t been looking because you can’t look at everything. And those mistakes happen –   James:                          They do. They do. So the key to getting things right, would it be communication? Is that the cornerstone of getting it right?   Robert:                        I think there is a natural tendency of humanity being perfect and I think imperfections is a fact of life. And when you think that everything should work the way it should work, there’s always something that doesn’t. And it’s always the one thing that you thought ought not to have been a problem that turns out to be a problem.   James:                          Of course.   Robert:                        So the next time that you do that thing, that’s the whole problem I will not have the next time. But something else creeps up and there are always problems. There’s always a problem.