We need to be more precise when using the terms hybrid, remote, and return to office. These terms are holding back the conversations we are trying to have across corporate real estate by greying out the middle ground strategy options. Hybrid – It’s a word we all landed on during the pandemic to describe something…
Tag: Communication
For those that need the occasional reminder: meetings are not a replacement for managing.
I sometimes fall into the trap of forgetting that a meeting is a vehicle for things to happen, not a thing that makes things happen. We all know the tropes about “this meeting should have been an email.” All of us have attended those meetings (possibly multiple today alone). But similarly, all of us have…
Growing connections is about mastering all types of communication from written to virtual to in-person.
I must admit that I have grown to dislike the phrase “collaborative workplaces” (even more so after getting through putting these thoughts together!). I was on the bandwagon for most of 2022 and 2023, but it has ended up on the same list for me as hoteling and hot desking. Looking back, the office has…
Your new collaborative workplace spaces are not doing what you hoped, are they?
For three years now, the two catchwords of Corporate Real Estate have been hybrid and collaboration. Hybrid captured the idea that employees would work from home (much) more often. Collaboration captured the idea that employees would be together, talking, brainstorming, innovating, and not doing heads-down activities in the office. Neither worked out quite how many…
The long-term downsizing of a real estate portfolio requires a lot more than just building smaller workplaces. It must be a partnership of all areas of the business led by a strong CRE team.
I have spoken over the last six months to many corporate real estate leaders dealing with the no-win scenario of being told by Finance to cut costs by reducing space while being told by the business that there must be enough space to maintain a 3-day-a-week in-office mandate. The two directions are incompatible in the…
Two years after becoming the word everyone uses to describe post-pandemic working, does hybrid have a real definition yet?
Hybrid may have been the corporate-speak word of the year for 2022. Hybrid working and hybrid workplaces were all the rage as the world settled on that word to describe the flexibility they were “granting” employees to not be in the office. There was no solid definition of the word other than everyone agreed it…
Have you worked on your Corporate Real Estate narrative recently?
I say often that Corporate Real Estate is a hard business. We are responsible for implementing and maintaining offices for businesses we are often not intimately familiar with that are expected to be effective for years into the future. We must balance costs today against costs in the future while building an in-office environment that…
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 have found myself talking about Communication as a superpower a lot recently
One of my core beliefs is that success, both individually and as a group, begins and ends with communication. Communication is more than just sending emails. It is fundamentally about understanding. If I tell someone to “get the paperwork completed,” I may have told them clearly to do something but it is not a guarantee…
Hybrid Workplaces require teams to reimagine their cultural dynamics when not together as often.
While no one agrees on what hybrid working means in practice, it is universally agreed that it means less often in the office than in 2019. A very small percentage of people are back as often as they used to be, some people are now only 1 day a week less in the office, and…