Let me start by saying this is not a post intended to shout down mandates or say they are wrong. What I want to address is the unintended consequences that have come up in most mandates throughout 2023 and the impact those consequences have on future real estate decisions. There is tension between real estate…
Taking time to stop and recognize your biases will help you better approach the problems you are trying to solve.
Hi, my name is David, and I actively hold many biases about the right ways to approach corporate real estate. All of us have biases. They are formed through teaching and experience. There are many ways that biases both help and hinder us in our everyday lives. Sometimes making things easier (a bias against a…
Does your workplace strategy promote positive cultural engagement among employees?
One of the topics I do not see coming up nearly often enough in the conversation around return to office is whether the workplace itself is appropriate for the current world. Bringing employees together in person is a worthwhile endeavor (even though I will consistently argue that mandates are not the right way to do…
Activity-based workplaces have a fundamental flaw you must address upfront or be in danger of a bad workplace experience.
Everyone is about hybrid working. Which naturally changes the way people use the office. This leads us to ask what they are doing in the office. And all this eventually leads to the question: What if I design my workplace around these activities my employees perform? Surely, designing around activities is an efficient methodology. The…
Workplace technology is evolving so quickly, investing too much in upgrades today can limit you tomorrow if you do not plan for the long term.
The grand return to office phenomenon has resulted in one central area of weakness being identified the world over with wifi, AV, and workplace technology from before the pandemic not fit for purpose after. Every AV company quickly moved to upgrade their camera and audio tech while also trying not to make costs go through…
Maybe is a more powerful word than either Yes or No.
If you want a team to spend an inordinate amount of time on something, tell them Maybe to a suggestion. Maybe is the most dangerous word in any language. It carries with it the implication of “Yes, this is almost close enough to move forward” but also “There are things you need to fix but…
I am starting to think that the term “Hub and Spoke” cannot apply to office workplace strategies.
The hub and spoke concept is coming like a freight train to corporate real estate. It works as a rough picture of how workplace portfolios might evolve, but operationally I cannot imagine how it would actually work. For those not familiar with it, the hub and spoke concept has been one of the dominant approaches…
2023 will be known as the year when businesses began to understand how workplaces are actually used
Since the dawn of corporate real estate, businesses have seen it as a necessary function but not one they wanted to think about the strategy of. In most companies, the closest most leaders came to thinking about their real estate strategy was when the office they sat in was up for a project and they…
“But what can we do in our offices about Mondays and Fridays?”
If you are in corporate real estate, the odds are good that this is one of the top 5 questions you have been asked over the last year. In the US, everyone knows that office occupancy is very low on Mondays and Fridays. [Note: it was probably low on Mondays and Fridays before the pandemic…
Arguing against a position you support is an effective weapon for process improvement and preventing groupthink.
One of the traits I picked up early in my career is a desire to poke holes in whatever I was working on. If I did not challenge my own thoughts and deliverables at the start they would make it through and get caught later by others. Sometimes that later would be too late to…