Future-proofing – by definition – requires effort beyond today and into the future.

As the nature of corporate real estate shifts before our eyes, there is a lot of talk about future-proofing real estate portfolios and workplace designs against on-going change. This makes perfect sense as a concept. Anytime things are in a state of constant change, making yourself resilient against future state impacts is wise. The challenge inherent in this is making sure you actually have an understanding of what that future is or a process to continue to mitigate those changes over time.

The problem with most future-proofing efforts is that they tend to follow the ATAMO system (aka And Then A Miracle Occurs). This process tends to follow the line of thinking:

1. Here is a problem that we need to address today but is a known area of future change.
2. Here are some options to address it today but we are not quite sure that they will work given future changes that could occur.
3. Let us just pick one based on what we know today.
4. Time passes and everything is fine (aka ATAMO)

The miracle in Step 4 is that time passes and nothing goes wrong. Sometimes we get lucky and all of our assumptions about the future turn out as expected. But more often than not, we miss a few things that were outside of our ability to control. If we are really lucky, the things we miss have no impact on the future state, but we are rarely that lucky.

Real future-proofing requires a step between 3 and 4: Implement a process to track progress and course-correct along the way. Set-it-and-forget-it is a great concept for infomercials, but as a business plan it leaves quite a few things to be desired. Keeping tabs on solutions that have elements beyond our control is simply good practice. Unfortunately, the most common reason it gets left out is due to a lack of either resources or accountability. Where this is the case, it is fine to simply pick a solution and run with it, but what is being done has nothing to do with future-proofing anymore.

Future-proofing is often a luxury in the world of real estate. Too often there are not enough funds to make a later change or resources to keep an eye on how things are going. The best we can hope for is to build flexible, adaptable, and resilient workplaces that meet as many needs of the business as possible. Again, there is nothing wrong with this, but it is not future-proofing.