Fast Company published an article confusingly titled The return-to-office mandate is here. So is the open office. One has to go. To pull some background forward, the author states they are someone with dyslexia and ADHD who has struggled to work effectively from traditional corporate designed offices. Right off the bat, sentence number one, we…
Tag: managing
It is time to retire all “Return to” concepts. If your Return has not yet happened, it probably is not going to. #CRE
The world is now mostly two years beyond the end of almost all COVID-era restrictions. A “New Normal” has been established through intentional action or unintentional patterns forming. Headlines that continue to talk about Return to Office or Return to Work (with Amazon causing the most recent ruckus) are missing the point about how people…
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…
Picking up the phone is becoming an increasingly underappreciated productivity hack.
Increasing hybrid and remote work rates have led to a correlated increase in people who used to be together in person regularly suddenly not seeing each other at all. From there, it is easy to just drift further and further apart by the day. Early on you think “I should give them a call.” With…
If your employees are “coffee badging,” it means that you have lost their trust and your culture is in jeopardy.
Coffee badging is a phenomenon that has been around for a while. It is the term for those employees who show up in the morning (badge in), grab coffee, stay long enough to be seen, and disappear as quickly as possible. It is also a trend that is increasing in offices. This trend is a…
Success of in-person working has no relationship with average office attendance levels.
Over the past two years, more non-real estate people have begun dabbling in real estate data. I have pulled together more occupancy and utilization charts in the past 6 months than in the past 6 years combined. I have gotten so good at describing the difference between peak, average, and seasonal occupancy patterns that I…
When you stop worrying about the small things, they have a way of becoming unexpected large concerns.
Over time, it is easy to become comfortable with what came before. We naturally want to move on to bigger and better things. If we dealt with million-dollar worries last year, we want to have ten-million-dollar worries this year. Moving up to bigger problems is a clear way of showing we are progressing. The problem…
The massive changes to CRE over the past and coming years mean stress and burnout to individuals.
I enjoy looking at the incredibly uncertain landscape that is Corporate and Commercial Real Estate. For me, it is a wide-open opportunity to figure out new solutions and implement them. I get excited by change because it presents a challenge I have not yet faced. It is a chance to prove myself against the world….
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…