The Office As An Entity, Doesn’t Perform. People Do.

Last weekend, I participated in a LinkedIn discussion which ended in a random sidebar conversation about performance cars. If you know me, you will know that I am married to a guy who eats, breathes and sleeps cars 24x7. A comment was made which happened to put the words Mustang and Electric (gulp!) in the same sentence. I was triggered. I turned to my husband and shared what I had read, knowing exactly where the conversation was going next. So, I hunkered down and prepared for a long-winded conversation but this time, I was actually interested in learning why he had such an aversion to electric vehicles.

Unbeknown to him, about a quarter of the way through, I realized how weirdly relatable the conversation was to what anyone in Corporate Real Estate is thinking about today - do I really need an office to enable my employees to be productive?

In our house, ANY Mustang and Electric juxtaposition launches my husband into orbit.  Seriously. He’s a hardcore gear head and classic car guy. Before we met, he owned a 1992 Ford Mustang 5L LX loaded with SVT and SVO racing parts in it, a 1962 Ford Galaxie Box Top with a 223 with a straight 6 and a 1963 Ford Galaxie Fastback with a 390 with 3 deuces (whatever that means). Now he just has a 1969 Chevy Camaro with a 502 big block that rumbles and roars like there is no tomorrow (True story: I actually had to Velcro my glassware down so they didn’t venture off the shelf when he fired it up in the garage. He broke 2 wall clocks in our kitchen in a matter of weeks this past summer). I digress. 

Breakfast conversation last Sunday morning was definitely unusual for me, but the brief exchange of ideas he shared sparked a curiosity in me and I felt a blog coming on. I hate shop talk but I was genuinely interested in hearing his opinions regarding the electric vehicle. As I share what he said in the next few paragraphs:

1.   Please bear with me as I try to simplify his shop talk jargon

2.   Think about how oddly similar the sentiment sounds to how we feel about the purpose of the office and the “experience of work” in our quest to understand motivation as the driver for the future of work. 

Fasten your seatbelts! Here we go...

The Experience Factor

The very first thing he referred to when I posed the question “what’s your beef” was how the electric car degraded the real experience of driving. He shared that for him, driving an electric vehicle is just too sterile and not engaging in anyway. 

He went on to say there is an emotion that is triggered when driving a car, adding that the feeling, the physical rumbling, vibration, smells, noise, gauges etc. together are part of the overall experience. I know from watching YouTube videos, they can pipe the sound into the cabin of an electric car. I suggested how the problem of noise could easily be solved to which he laughed and said "what a joke" adding that if you've never sat in a real performance vehicle, you don't know what you don't know and that piping sound into the car will never ever yield an experience like the real thing. On sound specifically, he said that some cars even have signature sounds like the Mustang, the Ferrari and the Porsche to name a few. The signature sound he said, is tied to pride of ownership of the brand.

He also talked briefly about nostalgia and that if by chance there is a fond memory tied to owning a vehicle of days gone by, the experience of owning one is multiplied tenfold. 

My takeaways for experience

• sterile and not engaging experiences are negative
• a 'symphony’ of sensory experiences is necessary to elevate the experience
• the real experience can’t be replicated with technology, no matter how much you try
• age and experience is a factor - if you’ve never experienced something there is no FOMO
• what the brand represents has the ability to create a real emotional connection 

The Performance Factor

On performance, he shared how the fuel powered vehicle has a ton of moving parts. He explained that it is precisely what enables the power, and how it is these parts that can be tinkered with, that enhance and fine tune performance. He shared how there are things you can add to improve horsepower (you can remove stuff to decrease horsepower too but that's not favorable). He shared that it's the reason people add turbo chargers, super chargers or nitrous oxide – to increase horsepower. 

Another thing he said that astonished me was that performance can’t have a time limit. He shared that the harder you push the pedal, the more the performance factor is short lived, especially in an electric car (i.e., you can’t get very far on a charge if you push it). Compared to fuel powered cars the same is true except fuel powered vehicles can deliver more performance longer.

My takeaways for performance

• ability to tweak to improve performance is favorable and can enhance the experience
• make modifications to improve performance
• performance has to be void of time limits
• the best performance will happen when something is 100% self-sufficient

The Environmental Factor

The “environmental factor” part of our conversation was a tad emotionally charged. He shared his sentiment about how electric vehicles are not self-sufficient and are therefore not really “green” since they don’t recharge themselves, using the kinetic energy they produce. Because they require the owner to plug their vehicle in to a power source, the power source is not "green".  He went on to say that using electricity is still causing pollution because electricity comes from fossil fuels, nuclear or renewables. (I Googled which of the 3 is prevalent and it turns out, fossil fuel is still the primary way to produce power today.) For him, the most disappointing fact was that pollution was just being diverted away from the vehicle as the source of the pollution and that's just not cool. For fuel powered cars, he shared that GHG emissions tied to petrol/gasoline could be easily resolved if they just commoditized cleaner options like alcohol or biodiesel.

His last point was that much of the parts, for both electric (including the batteries) and fuel powered cars, are made of plastic. Plastic comes from crude oil and crude oil doesn’t have a favorable impact on the environment.

My takeaways for environmental factors

• there is an emotional connection to sustainability; don't kid yourself, the most unsuspecting people actually notice and care
• integrity and authenticity matters
• pushing your environmental and social responsibilities on to someone else and even worse, claiming you are environmentally friendly, is not cool

The Design Factor

In a nutshell, we both agree that the packaging matters but why it matters is where we see things differently. The example he gave me was to imagine taking an everyday driver around a corner at high speed, and imagining how it would handle. He said that driving a performance vehicle designed to handle that same corner would deliver the right experience. 

When it comes to looks, we have different opinions. I asked him if he had to choose between performance, esthetics or brand, which would he choose? His pick? Performance. (I would have picked esthetics because really, who wants to drive an ugly car?). I then asked him “what if I took the motor out of a performance car and put it into an everyday driver, a car you don't like the look of, but didn’t tell you. Would the looks still matter?” He said yes. When I asked why, he said “for performance, the two need to be in sync.” He added that you can’t take the power from a vehicle that is designed to do something, and put it into a vehicle that wasn’t designed to respond to those same situations.

My takeaways for design

• how it looks only matters a lot to some
• design and performance are not mutually exclusive - when they are aligned you get optimal performance
• what matters to the user is what the individual user values the most

The Maintenance Factor

Maintenance was an easy one because he admitted not knowing too much about the specifics for electric cars. He suggested that electric cars don’t have as many moving parts when compared to internal combustion engine cars, but that they do have more technology and that more technology tends to drive up the costs. He said that it was also true of fuel powered vehicles, noting that as more and more technology gets added, vehicles get more expensive to maintain. Either way, his thought was that frequency of maintenance would continue to be tied to usage.

My takeaways for maintenance

• high tech = high cost
• not everyone has the 'know-how' for maintaining the new technologies aimed at improving experience and performance

The Cost Factor

The cost discussion also alluded to some interesting similarities. He said the electric cars are expensive because of all the technology in them. While they have fewer moving parts, the sophistication of the technology makes them expensive. He added that in the end, someone will buy what they can afford, adding that if they care at all about performance, they’re going to strive to get the biggest bang for their buck. 

I asked him "why not rent for 'performance on demand' since performance isn’t an everyday necessity when driving?" His first response was “performance vehicles aren’t affordably rentable” and then went on to explain that having a vehicle that has built-in performance capabilities (i.e. the highest torque and horsepower) gives you the freedom to get to where you want to go fast, when you need it.

Another interesting dimension was on the profitability of the electric car compared to the fuel powered ones. He showed me how Tesla for example, only employs 48,000 vs. VW 670,000 (noting that VW is the biggest automotive company). He also showed me the comparative numbers for GM 164,000, Ford 175,000, Chrysler 199,000, Toyota 370,000, and Honda 215,000. It was only when we looked at the niche performance companies like Ferrari 4,164, Bugatti 297, Pagani 55, Lamborghini 1,750, Audi 90,783 and Porsche 24,481 that the employee counts were significantly lower. (thanks Google!)

My takeaways for cost

• technology is good, but it’s not cheap
• half-assed technology that doesn’t fully support performance is not cool
• investing in technology enables better efficiency and profitability
• being a niche performance company enables your company to be more efficient and profitable
• more technology and/or high performing = way less people needed

The Buyer

I thought it would be a good idea close off the conversation by understanding the buyer’s mindset.  He shared that people typically buy based on one or more of these five things:

1.   what they care about i.e., the environment, sustainability

2.   what they're passionate about i.e., the experience of driving

3.   what they need the vehicle for e.g., point A to point B and back

4.   pure nostalgia i.e., what the car represents, if anything at all

5.   a variety of personal preferences i.e. futuristic vs. classic or modern esthetics

My takeaways for the buyer?

• your "why" determines the choice you make; while it seems personal, the preferences point to clear buyer personas
• if you can deliver on all 5, you’d have a clear winner!

So, after all that, I was left wondering, what/who is performing? The car or the driver?  We know that a car cannot be pushed to perform without someone behind the wheel (yes, I know autonomous driving vehicles are coming, but they hardly qualify for the performance category.) A performance car is designed to keep up with the demands, when activated by the driver. It's always ready to respond, if and when there is a need for performance.

When it comes to the office, there is a parallel to be drawn here. Think about it. We're all talking about the experience, performance, design, costs, maintenance and users. Who is the driver? The employee or the office?

The bottom line is that we seem to be increasingly obsessed with the performance of the office as a space or a place, when really, we should be obsessing over the performance and abilities of our people.

Instead, we should be laser focused on understanding the value of interactions with other people who use place, space and/or the technologies available to them, to inform how they should work in sync. Only then can we know how to optimize for performance and enable businesses to continue to move forward.

Instead, we should be laser focused on understanding the value of interactions with other people who use place, space and/or the technologies available to them, to inform how they should work in sync. Only then can we know how to optimize for performance and enable businesses to continue to move forward.

The office as an entity, doesn’t perform, people do and it is the people who drive the performance of the business, not the building, not the place or the space.