Even if the data doesn't give the answer, you can still use it

The other day I was reading the summary of CBRE's recent study on organization design.

Here is the emotional roller coaster I went through when reading the results:

1. Sees new published study: gets excited (new data is always exciting)
2. Reads the summary graphic: gets a little interested
3. Studies the information: gets kinda mad
4. Reflects on the information: feels more accepting

Here is the CBRE chart I was focused on:

Voice of customer data should have 5-7 MECE categories

CBRE interviewed executives at 62 organizations about how CRE contributes to enterprise goals and 77% of the #1 responses were "Enable the business." My first reaction as "Huh?" and my second reaction was "Duh."

I would have thought the point of the interviews was to find out how CRE enables the business. (Maybe those details are in the non-published version of the response data.)

Also, looking at the other items in the bar chart, aren't some of those goals the same as Enabling the business? The data as summarized in this bar chart did not seems to qualify as MECE: mutually exclusive + collectively exhaustive. Anyway, that's just the statistician in me.

But...a silver lining?

As someone who has asked countless CRE executives this same type of question, I could see how this could happen. So, not trying to throw shade on CBRE for weak data. I'm just saying we all wish we could get better answers.

But then I got a gleam in my eye! Maybe there is something to make of this, after all.

In particular, I think we have to acknowledge that the enterprises that host corporate real estate functions have a wide variety of needs. And "the business" is not one thing -- different parts of the business have different goals. Sometimes these goals are even contradictory. (Have you ever had a business unit that was "special" and got everything it wanted, whereas other business units only got the bare minimum? -- those business units will have very different goals and very different CRE service levels.)

Enabling the business means having good CRE business partners

CRE needs to listen to each major part of the enterprise talk about its goals and translate those goals to CRE goals and programs for each of those business units.

This is the primary role of the CRM (customer relationship manager) or business partner or whatever you want to call it. The folks from the CRE department whose job it is to understand the goals of the business unit, to blend those goals with the CRE team's fiduciary responsibilities (e.g., cost controls) and come up with appropriate support SLAs and programs.

The data was weak but the message was there

The data doesn't tell us much about how to enable the business; but it tells us a lot about the business partnering skills CRE needs in order to contribute to enterprise goals.

The results of the CBRE study point to the need for very good relationship management and business partnering between CRE and the business units it supports. The CRMs need to be advisors, strategists, and agile analysts all at once. This way, "enable the business" can be broken down into the specific enablement needs for each business unit, then operationalized.