The executive corner office is the embodiment of having made it to the top after many decades of climbing up the corporate ladder. However, looking beyond those four- cornered bastions of success and personal achievement, the world of work is changing. Today’s leaders only have to open the pages of the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Economist or the Financial Times to be confronted with articles on open-plan workplaces and how management has to be more accessible, authentic and ‘in touch’ with their employees – how technology and agile or flexible practices are driving change in every aspect of our working lives. Terminology such as hot-desking, co-working, third space working and the gig economy abound. Attracting new talent is a challenge as young interviewees grill management on a company’s ethical and environmental stance and retaining them is even harder without an engaging, stimulating workplace.
Is it any wonder that most CEOs and those in management positions are all at sea, as the waves of new-fangled technology, working practices and progress are battering them from all sides? Looking around the executive corner office, it resembles a gilded cage which is beginning to lose its shine as increased governance and accountability are making business leaders more wary. Furthermore, company chiefs of a certain age are seen as boardroom dinosaurs, especially in terms of tech skills, and in reality, how many of them are really comfortable with all the new technology? Perhaps they all rely on executive IT support teams, but the stings of those pitying or irritated looks from today’s digital natives when they are not so quick on the uptake of new tech cannot be ignored.
It all boils down to a fairly human condition of helplessness, where many leaders ask themselves: how am I going to manage all of these new developments and lead my organization through uncertain times? The Covid-19 pandemic of 2020 proved to be the unexpected curveball that affected not only business, but our whole way of life. The fact is the corporate sphere now needs to take a Darwinian approach – adapting and evolving in order to cope with uncertainty. This is the primary reason for writing this book. But I have another motive too, which has been honed by my unique experiences spanning a 30-year career, which took me from the unglamorous world of chartered surveying to guiding major global corporations such as The Walt Disney Company and the BBC through challenging real estate-enabled organizational transformations. This meant that as an industry insider – or intrapreneur – I had the responsibility and accountability for both strategy and delivery. I certainly earned my battle scars in helping make the world’s largest media enterprises more efficient and productive, by maximizing the potential of their workspaces and deploying agile ways of working.
Although my background is in property, I am considered an industry provocateur for espousing the view that commercial real estate is a disjointed and siloed system of facilities, real estate and design/construction management which can be bewildering to the uninitiated. In other words, the most important people in the equation – the tenants or clients – are completely befuddled by the property world’s anachronistic ways, complex procedures and jargon. Added to that there is a real disconnect between the providers of space, the deal makers and those who help run and operate the finished product. This is especially true in the corporate property sector and yet business leaders are expected to deal and communicate with this convoluted and fragmented industry. Furthermore, they risk enormous sums of their organization’s money and their reputations in making decisions affecting some of their corporation’s costliest assets.
This is another aim of this book: to demystify the complexities of the corporate property sector to make it just a little easier for everyone to understand. This is a problem I have dealt with at every level all over the world. The amount of times I have heard (and sympathized with) those responsible for their company’s property portfolio as they cry out in exasperation ‘Why are things so damned difficult and complicated?’ Worse still, they are paying millions for the privilege of being frustrated by an industry which holds them in disdain and does not even view them as customers. Currently there is no emotional connection between landlords and tenants, maybe the time has come to fill this vacuum?
I have been very fortunate in my career to have come across a variety of people from many backgrounds and professions who have inspired me to broaden my view beyond the insularity of the real estate industry. They have encouraged me to look at property from a different perspective, to go beyond the challenges of its complexities. However, to achieve that, I always felt the need to ‘interpret’ my industry to the outside world. To this end, I collaborated with freelance journalist Eugenia Anastassiou to help me explain how the corporate property system functions, as well as its changing role in the workplace, in an accessible, engaging way.
Another important aspect of my work has been trying to open the minds and eyes of business leaders to see the importance of the physical workplace in their company’s success. Through first-hand case studies such as the regeneration of the BBC’s failing real estate, I demonstrate that a company’s property portfolio, one of its most substantial, yet underused assets, can be utilized for change and that it can be converted from a cost centre into a value creator.
This helter-skelter journey of change management was a learning curve for me, not only in terms of rising to the challenge of providing this iconic British institution with a fit-for-purpose estate at minimum possible cost. It also instigated commercial partnerships which laid the foundations for two new creative, innovation quarters in the UK, reviving previously neglected areas and turning them into vibrant, attractive places to live and work in.
The BBC change management programme confirmed one important factor: that in order to deliver twenty-first-century workplaces there has to be a ‘joining of the dots’ between property, people and technology. These three contributors need to align around the corporate goal and collaborate to ensure effective results. This all inspired me to devise the Smart Value formula, which fuses my ‘People, Place and Process’ philosophy to the potential of an organization’s brand and the land it occupies. It forms a template of how property can be used to create business value and by extension can also benefit society.
Another premise of the book is to question the way the property industry works and to challenge everyone, both in the sector and business leaders/management. I help them see that the traditional meaning of workplace and the office is being reshaped, primarily by the formidable impact of technology. Every time I use my smartphone, I am reminded of the huge amount of capability it provides, and furthermore, that I can use it as a tool for work anywhere and at any given time.
With good connectivity widely available, easy access to the internet and effective cloud computing, any space can become a workplace. Which obviously begs that all-important question – where will our offices go? If working from the comfort of our own homes means we can meet our deadlines/work obligations, while also avoiding the wretched daily commute, or working from the convivial atmosphere of a coffee shop suits our lifestyle and actually makes us more productive, does it actually matter where, how and when we work? Or are there other factors?
Covid-19 has provided the impetus for everyone – the property sector as well as corporate executives – to realize and accept that there is a multiplicity of places – home, digital offices, third spaces – which are redefining and reinventing the way we work in the twenty-first century. Everyone has to come to terms with the new reality that we are now entering a new era of ‘omnichannel’ property/facilities.
The notion of how people work was being discussed as far back as 1959 by the ‘father’ of modern business management Peter Drucker in his book, The Landmarks of Tomorrow. Drucker has been credited with changing the face of corporate America and went on to ‘invent’ many of the concepts which have now become reality in the working landscape. Drucker coined the phrase ‘knowledge work’ to describe how working people would generate value with their minds to a greater extent than using their muscle power. He also suggested that the shift from manual work to those who ‘think for a living’ will be the single biggest influence on our society.
With all this in mind as we look around our twenty-first-century workplaces we should ask ourselves: why do we carry on using offices in the way we do? How do we work differently now in comparison to 20 years ago? Why do so many of us use offices in the same way as our parents did when it is so patently outdated? What do we need to do, if anything, and how might we go about it? We must not forget that today’s Millennials are becoming embedded in the management layers of our organizations and their workplace expectations and demands are different from previous generations. These questions are being asked more and more by many business leaders and in organizations globally and it is time that the supply side of the industry stepped up to the challenge. The impact of Covid-19 reinforces this.
Another important issue is that twenty-first-century companies are increasingly becoming more aware of their social responsibility. Savvy business leaders are in the unique position to drive significant beneficial change in shaping the value systems and behaviours of the ways we work, which also benefits their bottom line. Additionally, this also means encouraging the property sector to be more conscious of creating a more sustainable workplace environment. This requires business leaders and the corporate property sector to adopt a different type of leadership mindset. There needs to be a convergence of approaches to create workplaces, which inspire employee engagement, foster creativity and increase productivity, while also improving a company’s capacity to compete and create value.
This is a ‘clarion call’ for everyone to crawl out of their siloed, insular spheres/sectors and take a smarter approach in how spaces and places are used in the best possible way. One of my great inspirations is Charles Handy. Not only is he a fellow Irishman from County Kildare, but like Peter Drucker, he is rightly regarded as a business management visionary. Charles Handy once said to me, ‘We need to address the challenge of how to design the modern workplace for creativity and human engagement.’ To this, I add that we should all become part of the ‘Coalition of the Convinced’ – a collaborative endeavour in building bridges to create effective, engaging workplaces, which contribute to a better, more sustainable, ‘built’ legacy for future generations. These challenges have to be faced not just by property professionals and corporate heads, this also involves HR, IT, Procurement, as well as management at every level, and even those studying business and change management. The book’s aim is to act as a guide into how the true potential of an organization’s people and workplace can be harnessed and to demonstrate how business success can be achieved by integrating ‘People, Place, Process’ in an intelligent and innovative way.
Drawing upon case studies, research, data and interviews from global business leaders, academics and experts in the fields of the economics of work, urban planning, architecture, human resources and government, I hope to be able to steer decision-makers in all sectors to formulate their strategic thinking in terms of turning placemaking into profit-making, as well as creating new, more meaningful solutions for the workforce and the workplace. These are the reasons why I am writing this book – to present a game-changing challenge to the existing ways we produce, operate and consume workplaces. This holistic view of an entire industry and the way it impacts on our working lives has never really been explored in this manner. The book also offers ‘real-life’ solutions, not just theory, into how business leaders and managers can capitalize on their workspaces by deploying smarter ways of working.
It is now an accepted fact that ‘business agility is no longer a luxury; it is critical to survival’, but what has been ignored so far is that an ‘alignment between workplace and purpose is a key tool in managing agility’. This vital link has to be made in order to create successful and productive workplaces. I hope that in this way I can help guide businesspeople to join the dots and make sense of the complex demands of dealing with the twenty-first-century working environment.
Chris Kane, London, 2020
Sources
1. The Stoddart Review. ‘The Workplace Advantage’. Raconteur Custom Publishing, 2016, pp.28–9.