A Word on ‘Working Mobile’, levering Technology and Crossing Finish Lines…

Greetings and I hope this finds you doing well and healthy!

I’ve had many folks ask me given the current Valley we are all running through together: ‘Are you remotely?’ ‘Are you mobile?’

Actually, given the nature of my career, I’ve been very “mobile” since the mid-90s when I was in operations management with Sara Lee Knit Products (aka: Hanes) and my first promotion out of management trainee and off of night shift supervisor in our textile plant in Galax, VA was to the newly created position of Jamaica logistics supervisor during NAFTA. As I pushed up the curve to helping manage large plants and distribution centers finishing up at Wake Forest B-school at night, Avery Dennison Corporation came calling to bring me on board to help start up a new global supply chain division; Hanes was a great company (and I’m proud of them for stepping up during this COVID-19 crisis) but I recall being enthusiastic about recruited away to be a part of this start up venture under a Fortune 500 umbrella on the premise of 25% travel. My best boss ever Kim (then LaVorgna) Macaulay asked me to start a few days early because a large client of ours by the name of Nike was “having their logistics team converge on Hong Kong and we’d like you to be there with our team too Pete to meet the Nike logistics team”; so my first day on the job with Avery Dennison was on a plane to Hong Kong, a sign of things to come…That 25% travel went right out the window.

The nature of our business eventually demanded about 90% travel, nobody’s fault, it just was what it was; such was the nature of a new start up e-commerce driven global supply chain division; spending a lot of time at many of the major logistics ports around the globe and being where our clients were; we had offices in Hong Kong, just outside of London (Wooburn Green), just outside of Munich and outside of Boston (Framingham). Avery Dennison’s HQ is in Pasadena. Some face time was required in our business then for sure, thus the living on airplanes thing, but I would say today that business model and the travel required would be cut back drastically given the technology we have in place.

A typical month for me would look like Hong Kong one week, London the next week, Boston the next week, a weekend jaunt home to Greensboro, etc and on it went for several years, and I wasn’t alone for sure, my teammates were doing the same thing…so my point:  had we waited until our global trotting team was in one place at the same time to have a meeting we never would’ve gotten anything done. We used Cisco Webex way back then (Goto meeting hadn’t come along in 1that 1999-2003+ period – I think it was launched in 2004).

When running through airports is your life you learn how to work from wherever you are by necessity. 2001 hit and I was in the air going from Boston to Pittsburgh the beautiful fall morning of 9/11 for a day trip to visit Dicks Sporting Good Logistics team – we never made it there and we were diverted to Syracuse (I realize we are all lucky ones) that would eventually prove to be my off ramp from the Fortune 500 highway; Avery Dennison is a great company, great team, great clients but the travel took its toll and my sons were very young at the time and I was afraid I was going to miss them growing up. When I jumped out of a Fortune 500 World and into the real estate world, “working mobile” translated very nicely..

When I did eventually become co-owner of my own real estate firm, if I came into the office and saw a bunch of my broker teammates sitting around, I would get nervous… I would think ‘why are you in here, the business is out there!’ It’s funny how I’ve got some colleagues who want their brokers in the office…Almost “tethered” to a desk.

“Working mobile” requires a certain amount of discipline, regimen and focus because it is very easy to become distracted. Long commutes and face time in offices had begun well before COVID-19, and I would suggest that they will decline even further and faster now for many. Being proverbially chained to a desk is a relic of a bygone era, a horse and buggy whip kind of thing; being able to work from wherever you are and being disciplined enough to do so is certainly not a new thing but I predict once this horrible ‘thing’ is behind us, and it soon will be thank God, working mobile and untethered will be more important now than ever and although not a new ‘thing’ will be one of the MAIN THINGS.

The global supply chain business we started up at Avery Dennison Corp., a team I was very proud to be a part of, was at its core an e-commerce business; we partnered with this little tech company you may have heard of called ‘Oracle’ and they were our ‘under the hood’. It was a brilliant business model, a platform I was fortunate to have the opportunity to leap to after seeing the U.S. textile business disintegrate, having essentially been “off-shored” (I’m happy to see the supply chain dictating some of its return here to the U.S. again). Avery Dennison was smart enough to follow “off shore” trend and it positioned itself to help connect the motherships (HQ) like Walmart, Target, Nike to their clients’ offshore factories and we used our barcoding business as the entry in to control the information flow (then called “EDI”, Electronic Data Interchange) to help our customers import their products through customs and back into the US, whatever those products were, usually private label apparel. The role I fortunate to play introduced me to some amazingly bright people, half our team consisted of tech experts from around the globe; many in our Framingham office outside of Boston were brilliant IT folks – these teammates helped teach me how to work from anywhere and while on the move…

I’m still in touch with several of those teammates today, grateful for our very long time friendships now and excited for the days to come. During this crisis, I’ve done my best to stay positive and I have gotten a kick out of seeing all the articles from ‘experts’ writing and coaching about how to work from home or how to work remotely, some are often humorous and enjoyable to read and there is some great advice out there. Don’t get me wrong: I’m not an island and have never been one; I’m a borderline extrovert. The best deals I have ever done have usually been part of a team but that didn’t mean that we had to be right beside each other to get it done… I do enjoy companionship, camaraderie and teamwork just as much as the next person but our tech driven, supply chain driven world has changed much in the past decade and beyond and I predict will continue to do so now at an even more exponential pace.

So, what does that mean to you and me? If you are a small, medium or even large business and your business model revolves around having your team tethered to a fixed workstation from 8am to 5pm five days a week, I would cordially suggest you should quickly be re-thinking your business model and make sure you are investing in and analyzing your process and technology to untether your team. I would argue the productivity you will see in terms of return on investment will make it worth your while. You know your business better than anyone. Maybe get some outside “eyes” to take a look if you need to; consider this a suggestion from a friend.

To conclude: during this time I have found comfort in my routine, and focusing on Habit 7: Sharpening the Saw of Dr. Stephen Covey’s classic and timeless book 7 Habits of Highly Effective People (I’m thankful to Sara Lee Knit Products for introducing me to and putting me through Dr. Covey’s amazing course back in the early 90s when I was part of the management team.). If you haven’t read his book, I would highly recommend it. In summary, Habit 7, Sharpening the Saw to me means taking care of the total you: regular exercise (Physical) social/emotional, mental and spiritual, not necessarily in that order. I have been trying to moderate my news intake as well. Helps my outlook for sure!

In my humble opinion, we can look at this historic time as a hurdle and an excuse for not doing well, for crawling into a hole. Or we can turn it into an opportunity to help others and transform our business models, our businesses and even our lives and those around us for the better.

As someone who has participated in a few endurance events, I can attest the last 6 miles or so of the marathon (i.e.  the last 10k of the 26.2 miles) is often the toughest, that place where you have to reach the deepest. I suggest we are quickly coming up to the back stretch of this marathon. It’s time to reach deep. I’m convinced that many opportunities and good things will come from this historic event, many opportunities to cross our finish lines and help others do the same. This historic time has made me double down on one of my mantras: Life’s experiences have taught me to not taking any one person or any one day in my little world for granted.

God bless our health care workers, first responders, police officers, firefighters, medics and all on the front line fighting for others. I continue to pray for those impacted health side by this virus. I’m personally looking forward to having this behind us and I’m looking forward to the days ahead. Don’t bet against success, don’t bet against America…I’m looking up and forward... #CCIM #NCCCIM #SCCCIM #NAR #NCR #CRCBR #BCAR #RCASENC #RealEstateNC #CRE #commercialrealestate ????

Pete Frandano, CCIM, GRI, MBA is a combined 30 year veteran in the Fortune 500 supply chain and real estate arenas, an avid endurance sports enthusiast, proud father of two awesome young men and author of the upcoming book Endurance Real Estate which after 18 months in the making will be launched (targeting early summer) for a period of time at no cost in its e-version in the hope it can help real estate professionals, business owners or anyone who needs it in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Watch the Endurance Real Estate Book Trailer here: