Welcome to 2025! This is the year we finally get a direction, figure out together where corporate real estate is going, and make a plan to get there!
Or not. I’m not sure anymore to be honest what is going on.
As I write this, it is nearing the end of January. Not even a month into the year. I am seeing increasingly more divergent thinking about the future with 5-day RTOs in the news, hybrid becoming increasingly undefined, and Preptech off doing its own things again.
Here’s what I do know.
Power: Our job is to teach the people in charge what good looks like. We need to give them options for how we move forward with plans, budgets, schedules, and experience. But we must do it in a way that takes into account what they value, where they see the future going, and the strategy they have in mind. The process is, by definition, recursive. Our experience gives us the power of influence.
Community: For the past few years, workplace experience and employee/people experience have been the buzzwords we have built around. They are still good places to start, but they are increasingly missing the idea of experience outside the office. Planning around our organic communities is a good way to reframe the conversation around experience. These communities shift and change like the tides with different rules and ways of engaging based on members’ shared experiences.
Empathy: At the end of the day, all real estate is about people; the people that build it, use it, maintain it, and think about it. No concept organized around people should lack empathy. We must consider the individuals, the groups, the communities, and the company as we plan. For some reason, empathy has become a “woke” concept in some circles. But empathy is simply taking into account another’s perspective. It does not mean building our spaces are 100% positively received by 100% of people. That is not possible. It simply means caring about the people we are building for.
If we deliver by getting leaders bought in by using our experience while considering the people we are planning for, we will have better outcomes. Full stop.
Corporate real estate is hard. It may be one of the hardest professions out there in terms of creating measurably good long-term outcomes. We build out workplaces intended to last the next 10+ years with minimal additional investment without knowing the long-term business strategy and with constantly shifting employee expectations of what a “good” workplace is. All while being chastised by Finance for spending too much money.
This is why we must be grounded in our understanding of what good looks like. Building the same workplaces we did two years ago is a losing battle. Look to the future and plan.