Corporate real estate knowledge is often thought of as a standalone function. It’s not something that is usually considered part of the manager’s toolkit of knowledge. Does a manager really need to know everything about choosing between cities when relocating an office? Traditionally the answer has been no. I would argue that CRE expertise inside…
Use your time wisely when you are on the road.
When I travel I often fall into the trap of trying to put too much into the working agenda. I try to meet everyone, schedule things over breakfast/lunch/dinner, team build after the day is over, show up first/leave late. The whole nine yards. I invariably walk away from business trips feeling like the trip was…
Some stories are worth repeating regularly because they show the common bonds of teams.
Some people don’t like to hear the same stories over and over. You know the type of story I’m referencing: the ones that always come out after 4 beers to groans, laughs, and quiet smirks. The stories could be a decade old but they still come out as if they are fresh. These stories are worth…
Question everything you know about CRE.
Corporate real estate is a canvas that is to be painted on. No two solutions should ever be the same. The way you made decisions yesterday should not be the way you make decisions tomorrow. Always assume that the CRE ground has moved under your feet. These may sound like random thoughts that simply emphasize…
Just because someone knows AutoCAD doesn’t mean they can design your building.
Many skills in this world are viewed as black and white. The thinking seems to go: If you know Excel, surely you can do this data mining project. Heaven forbid that someone knows Access, suddenly they become general database experts. The worst are when people know SharePoint development and they are automatically cast as developers. All…
Being set in your opinion is a perfect reason to revisit it.
We all have our opinions on different issues. Is Atlanta a better CRE cluster than Charlotte? Is alternative working/work from anywhere here to stay? Two monitors versus three? (Surely you knew I wasn’t going to go political?) With opinions, it’s very easy to hold an opinion for a long time and have it become more and more…
Announcement: It’s not Gen Y changing the workplace, it’s Technology!
[Editor’s Note: I hate the term Millenials so I use Gen Y to help avoid many of the common mental stereotypes that exist around the term.] Everyone in the CRE space is familiar with the sensation of seeing articles talking about how Gen Y are changing the way work is done. They don’t like to…
Blogging as sharing of knowledge versus higher level marketing.
There’s a constant give and take in blogging about whether you should share your full thoughts and details or hold back and let people reach out to you for more. I personally fall into the camp of share everything. If someone is smart enough to take your thoughts and use them without you, they would…
It doesn’t take All, Most, or even Many….it just takes Some.
It can be easy to think that we need to get everyone rowing in the same direction; that someone dissenting is actively working against us. Most of the time, this isn’t true. We don’t need everyone on the same page as us. Usually, you just need a small group. In any given group, most people…
Habits and patterns make it easier to be productive.
Recently, my schedule has been a bit off. I’ve been working on a variety of projects that all seem to have project teams that schedule meetings at conflicting times. This means that I regularly end up with 30 or 60 minute gaps in my calendar between meetings. These are the most unproductive times possible because…