It’s been almost two months since I started on a change in path and stood up 4th Spaces. In those two months, I have received one question more than any other: what do you like doing most? At first, it was a tough question to answer on the spot. There is so much that goes…
Tag: CRE
Power, Community, Empathy.
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…
The question of the year in Corporate Real Estate: What is success?
Welcome to 2024. If we thought 2021, 2022, and 2023 were wild real estate years, we had no idea what was still ahead. I have already put my wagers down on the fact that there will be no “return to normal” as defined by how things worked before COVID. But I am increasingly thinking that…
It is nearing the end of 2023; a year that has not been like any before it!
It is Thanksgiving week in the US. This is the perfect time for a little pause to look back on all the change that we have been dealing with. Self-reflection is an activity that has benefits beyond just a review of the year. It can help with stress by putting the day-to-day into perspective. It…
A reversal has occurred where 3rd party commercial real estate experts are only now learning how the workplace operates in a post-COVID world.
I have had the pleasure of sitting through A LOT of workplace technology demos that claim they are able to solve the problem of hybrid working and the office. Typically, within 10 minutes of the start of the demo they prove that they have not had to deal with the real-world issues that come from…
Considerations when evaluating offices with high vs. low occupancy variability.
We all know that occupancy has changed today from what it was pre-pandemic. The aspect that has changed the most when I look at workplace utilization patterns is occupancy variability. What I mean by Occupancy Variability is that before the pandemic, almost all offices globally had consistent month-to-month, week-to-week, and often day-to-day predictable occupancy. It…
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…
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…
Embracing contradicting ideas is an easy way to engage a team to innovate
The world of Corporate Real Estate is filled with contradictions these days. Businesses want people back in offices but they want to reduce space dramatically. Workplaces need to be more collaboratively focused but all colleagues in the office still want a traditional desk space for most of the day. Flexible working solutions are the hot…
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…