Offices: not dead, just creatively destroyed....

Stuart Kirk's FT article above outlines the case for going long on offices. He's almost a lone voice in mainstream media compared to influential commentators such as Dror Poleg. Whilst I'm firmly in Kirk's camp, it is for completely different reasons which I explored in a piece originally written for major legal occupiers in May 2020:

"With eulogies penned for the death of the office and the market cap of tech companies zooming inexorably upwards, lawyers would do well to remember Mark Twain’s correction to the newspaper editor who announced his obituary some days before: 'rumours of my demise are greatly exaggerated'.

The ability to work anytime, anywhere, on any device is not new. Even the most conservative, and the voraciously profit-driven, lawyers had adopted smartphones, tablets and cloud computing way before March 2020. Despite having the capability to strip a workflow to its most efficient design, and the technology to ‘uberise’ their workforce, they have shown restraint, intentionally balancing the pursuit of marginal efficiency gains with an inescapable truth: inclusivity and circularity are essential ingredients for healthy economies and societies.

Prior to COVID-19, leading law firms were already tuned in to the future impact of technology on their business models, structures, processes and, above all, how it could be used to compete with Google, Facebook and a slew of Fintech Unicorns to attract and retain the best talent. By strategically addressing innovation, looking at People, Technology, Processes and Workspaces in the round, Ashurst developed a calculus for transforming the shape and style of their workplace. The result, a ‘magic portal’ for connecting and creating, has paid dividends which tech zealots might find surprising. The part Workspace-induced improvement in their Collaborative Behaviours, measured across a range of criteria, such as the ability to listen and share information, has played a significant contribution to their response to the pandemic, including the embracing of new technology.

Ashurst wisely eschewed the opportunity to create a white-collar factory, in favour of delivering a hub to attract their people and customers, and ‘nudge’ the behaviours that form deeper bonds between people. COVID-19 hasn’t paused this cultural transformation, but accelerated it during Lockdown.

By making spaces and processes to encourage more open, candid conversations, Ashurst reinforced their commitment to transparency. Their 66% improvement in Governance, and other Collaborative Competencies, hasn’t melted away during the pandemic – their service remains visible to provide confidence to customers and co-workers that value is still being delivered – it is just being delivered more from home, at the moment.

The improvements to Ashurst’s Collaborative Competencies, in part delivered by better workspace design, have put them in good shape entering Lockdown and the ‘muscle memory’ developed around Change Management, Risk Management and Cultural Awareness will serve them well for supporting their community in the months and years ahead.

Whilst technology rightly garners headlines as an enabler, it should be acknowledged that it stands on the shoulders of giants: People, Processes and Workspace. Walking from Ashurst’s front door in Spitalfields past the vast Broadgate campus, where Bradman and Lipton developed an ice rink amid the vast dealing floors, along Bishopsgate where a cluster of towers from Brookfield, Lloyds and Nuveen stand proud, passing Soane’s Bank of England, the cavernous transport hub underneath, Bloomberg’s cathedral of information and the latest iteration of Paternoster Square reveals the enduring attraction of offices: capital has been agglomerated over centuries, through millions of interwoven relationships, in a financial system dependent on collateral linked to rents paid by occupiers. It’s not an accident that the main investor of Zoom was Li Ka-Shing, one of Hong Kong’s largest property investors!

Tech is a disruptor and COVID-19 has brought into sharp focus that adapting to it is no longer somebody else’s problem, but an opportunity for everyone. The mindsets required to run towards this opportunity – a responsiveness to process and organisational restructuring – are partly forged in thoughtfully designed workspaces. The system is beautifully symbiotic, and whilst it is important to figure the why and what of legal services, it will be folly to think the how and where are less relevant all because of events from Wuhan.

In the same year as Twain’s quote, the New York law firm of Gillender Fixman and Mumford erected an elegant skyscraper in the financial district. Technology – electricity, air-conditioning, indoor wc’s, lifts and steel frames in this instance – led to their Beaux Arts masterpiece becoming obsolete and demolished within twenty years. Gillender has also disappeared as a law firm – with firms such as Ashurst eating their lunch - and the disruptive forces of finance, politics, technology, plagues and transport will continue to end and begin again, influencing urban and workspace design for generations to come."