When is the right time to experiment with your office space? A hint: not when it's full.
Corporate Real Estate primarily defines itself by one relatively simple mission: get (enough) space for people to work in (but not too much). Then of course, when 80% or more of these people don't come to fill these spaces anymore, things get a little dicy. Possibly even a bit tense.?
These are the bigger picture issues. But there are also more specific problems facing CRE leaders. Namely - what to do in these seemingly never-ending waiting times??
In discussions with industry leaders, I often hear the opinion - "we can't do everything we would like to do with the data, because there are not enough people in the office".?
We at Locatee, couldn't have a more different opinion here! For us, fewer people in the office is the best time to collect and make sense of utilization data. And here's why:
At the end of the day, there is a very crucial problem within Corporate Real Estate and Facility Management: our industry understands "agility/flexibility" as making others work agile and flexible. Agility in workplace management? Means flexible seating. Hot desking perhaps. Hybrid work patterns.
But is it just this? Agility could be understood not just how others work, but how CRE and FM approach their own tasks. This is particularly relevant now that CRE and FM are faced with massive uncertainties. Agile is precisely designed to tackle uncertainty!
The thinking that you need everyone back in the office to start analyzing data is only a rigidity that needs to be overcome. No, not everything needs to be perfect in order to start testing and learning. Actually, waiting for perfect conditions is a fallacy inherited from "waterfall" management methodologies.
Nothing was ever perfect! The office wasn't ever full. The data was never ideal.
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And in fact, I would contend that having small numbers of people in the office is a great way to learn more about your office environment. When they have the choice, when all options are available, what are your people doing? What do they like more? How do they behave???
I’ve said it a number of times, the data is the key to transformation. But it’s very easy to get lost in wanting the perfect data. The perfect set-up. The perfect everything. You need good metrics, not all the metrics.
Quick flashback: the Agile manifesto was born from excessive documentation and analysis and losing sight of the most important piece: pleasing users.
The first thought is not “enough data”, it’s “what can we do to improve our user’s experience”!
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