I am an Industrial Engineer which means that I often focus on the intersection of process, people and technology. Most times the people I work with want to focus on the latter two items in that list as they are the most tangible. Process is often misunderstood as it is the rules that guide behavior…
Decisions are meant to be revisited – particularly those made during a startup.
Decisions are interesting events. They often come under time pressure for a resolution yet have on-going, lasting effects. Decisions are made prior to really understanding the entirety of impacts that will be caused by the decision. Yet often there is no mechanism to go back and reassess whether the decision was the right one, and…
#CRE market rent forecasts are a nice to have but not indicative of your project.
Every real estate company out there creates some type of market research reporting showing rent changes in one or many markets. Almost invariably these forecasts show that rents will be going up as vacancy rates go down over the next 5 years. Interestingly, for specific projects in that market the market rate you will be…
#CRE is the canvas on which business decisions are painted.
Any given real estate decision is preceded by dozens or hundreds of business decisions. Real estate is the culmination of those decisions and the implementation of the vision. But the decision did not start by imagining a certain building or plot of land. The decision did not start by envisioning a certain office or workstation…
Online culture and its impact on the real world.
By now you’ve probably heard something about this thing called Gamergate. You probably have a lot of confusion about what it is and why it is a big deal. I encourage everyone to read up on it to understand how certain online cultures are trying to intimidate and change culture that’s happening beyond the monitor….
Back from a much needed vacation. Now I get to think about how to drive best practices.
Best practices is a buzzword. But it’s one that at least has meaning for brainstorming purposes. Best practices is a goal and not something that actually exists. Today’s best practice is tomorrow’s inefficiency (another buzzword!). For some reason, whenever I return from vacation I’m energized to make the world a better place. Whether that means…
99% reliability in something used daily is not very good.
Directv has recently been running a ton of commercials featuring Rob Lowe. One of them in particular bugs me – it’s the one that talks about their 99% reliability. Not 99.99% reliability – just 99%. Just to verify, I went to their website which says the same thing (screengrab below): 99% reliability. Said another…
Email is work. Email is productive work (sometimes). Here’s my approach.
I believe in my Inbox having zero unread messages. Email is work and a representation of the role you play in an organization. Messages may be one of the following (with each having unstated subcategories): Direct action request – someone needs you to do something Indirect action request – someone needs an action and tentatively…
The best way to be successful on a long-term engagement is to hit the ground running.
One of the biggest things that will cause you to fail on a new long-term engagement is to start slow. If you don’t hit the ground running, you won’t have the relationships, knowledge or track record to weather your first big crisis. One thing is true on any account – there will be a crisis…
Information is not by nature a scarce resource. Natural processes cause it to grow.
I love the idea of entropy applied to all kinds of concepts. Today I was thinking about information and how it spreads. Information can have entropy applied to how it moves. When you share a piece of information with someone (for example we give market information to a client) that information may now stop with…