Welcome to 2024. If we thought 2021, 2022, and 2023 were wild real estate years, we had no idea what was still ahead. I have already put my wagers down on the fact that there will be no “return to normal” as defined by how things worked before COVID. But I am increasingly thinking that…
Author: dmusic604
Growing connections is about mastering all types of communication from written to virtual to in-person.
I must admit that I have grown to dislike the phrase “collaborative workplaces” (even more so after getting through putting these thoughts together!). I was on the bandwagon for most of 2022 and 2023, but it has ended up on the same list for me as hoteling and hot desking. Looking back, the office has…
Your new collaborative workplace spaces are not doing what you hoped, are they?
For three years now, the two catchwords of Corporate Real Estate have been hybrid and collaboration. Hybrid captured the idea that employees would work from home (much) more often. Collaboration captured the idea that employees would be together, talking, brainstorming, innovating, and not doing heads-down activities in the office. Neither worked out quite how many…
Picking up the phone is becoming an increasingly underappreciated productivity hack.
Increasing hybrid and remote work rates have led to a correlated increase in people who used to be together in person regularly suddenly not seeing each other at all. From there, it is easy to just drift further and further apart by the day. Early on you think “I should give them a call.” With…
If your employees are “coffee badging,” it means that you have lost their trust and your culture is in jeopardy.
Coffee badging is a phenomenon that has been around for a while. It is the term for those employees who show up in the morning (badge in), grab coffee, stay long enough to be seen, and disappear as quickly as possible. It is also a trend that is increasing in offices. This trend is a…
Workplace technology post-pandemic has changed almost as much as the physical workplace model has.
Some days it feels quaint to look back at how we worked five short years ago. Video calls were not common. Hybrid working was a niche concept. Most of our days in the office were spent plugged into a desk. Most of our days were AT the office. One thing that recently struck me is…
Success of in-person working has no relationship with average office attendance levels.
Over the past two years, more non-real estate people have begun dabbling in real estate data. I have pulled together more occupancy and utilization charts in the past 6 months than in the past 6 years combined. I have gotten so good at describing the difference between peak, average, and seasonal occupancy patterns that I…
When you stop worrying about the small things, they have a way of becoming unexpected large concerns.
Over time, it is easy to become comfortable with what came before. We naturally want to move on to bigger and better things. If we dealt with million-dollar worries last year, we want to have ten-million-dollar worries this year. Moving up to bigger problems is a clear way of showing we are progressing. The problem…
Let’s talk a bit about conference room utilization and “efficiency.”
If you want to hear me go off on a brain dump of thoughts, one of the good ways is to ask me how to figure out how many conference rooms by size an office needs. I have sat through so many bad vendor demos of how to do this analysis that I am extremely…
The massive changes to CRE over the past and coming years mean stress and burnout to individuals.
I enjoy looking at the incredibly uncertain landscape that is Corporate and Commercial Real Estate. For me, it is a wide-open opportunity to figure out new solutions and implement them. I get excited by change because it presents a challenge I have not yet faced. It is a chance to prove myself against the world….