My #CRE blogging mission: change the dialogue.

Too much of what’s written in the CRE space, whether it be by some of our leading bloggers or news sites that specifically cover the industry, focus on 1) the value added by brokers to transactions, 2) how to win more transactions, 3) market and economic conditions or 4) the importance of workplace.  If a post is particularly adventurous it’s about technology that helps in one of those four areas.

But the reality of CRE to most businesses is that it often time feels like the tail wagging the dog.  Why should a CEO care about the real estate deal?  He doesn’t care about the transaction, he cares about the people he has to hire and are they going to make his business stronger.  Everyone in real estate wants to get the CFO on the line because she understands how big of a cost item real estate is, but that’s it- it’s a cost item.  Why isn’t CRE trying to go to the CEO or COO?

At the end of the day real estate must support the business, not the other way around.  But too many in this industry see “the deal” as everything.  Sure, that’s how you get paid but that’s not what matters to the business.  They care that they hired 400 people in a new market that invented the next iPhone 3 years down the road.  Or that they hired 400 people that increased their profit margin from 5% to 12%.  They care that they successfully expanded into a new market and hit their sales target in 18 months instead of 3 years.

I hope you will all join me in this goal.  It’s important if we’re going to keep ourselves from being disrupted by people who actually think about the business more than they think about the deal.