Corporate Real Estate 2.0

Welcome and thanks so much for visiting my new blog. I’ve held lots of jobs in corporate real estate over the last 20 years and here’s the thing I’ve come to realize: it’s not about the bricks and mortar. Not at all.

There’s a wonderful saying that goes something like this: To a man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail. I think in the world of real estate we sometimes get so obsessed with building and dealing and managing and operating that we forget what we’re doing it for. We think about the bricks and mortar because we’re real estate people, but why are we doing all this stuff in the first place? We do it because we’re enabling people to work, to serve their own customers. Everything we do is supporting a means to that end.

A friend of mine once said he wanted to drag the real estate industry kicking and screaming into the next century: the 20th century. He’s right. We might be using new(ish) tools but we’re firmly rooted in the 1800’s when it comes to the way our industry works. Look at the way we do deals. The way we operate buildings. In this flat, virtual world we’re still tending to the bricks and mortar. When it comes to resisting change we’re better than the buggy-whip makers, but not by much.

I’m kind of obsessed about ideas in workplace, especially when it comes to the powerful integration of technology, real estate and human resources. I think integration of those three forces will be the key to dynamic change (and maybe to survival?) and ideas will drive that integration.

Please visit me regularly. I’m going to interview some thought leaders in our industry and share some cool ideas about changes and challenges. I’m passionate about some things (sustainability) and plain curious about others (the power of advanced analytics). I’m suspicious and skeptical, interested and engaged, but always thinking about how we can make things better.

If you’ve got ideas or questions of your own I hope you’ll let me know. Let’s explore this thing together.

This is going to be cool.