Workplace Strategy Helps Unlock Full Potential

LOS ANGELES-Do you know what you’ll be having for dinner next Tuesday night? Are you able to predict who the next president will be?  Or where the next natural disaster will occur? If you are like most people without a crystal ball, the answer is no. And yet, every day corporate real estate professionals are tasked with predicting the future of their organizations in order to ensure their short-term and long-term office requirements are fulfilled. To add to the challenge, in many cases these decisions are being made five to 10 years in advance. Add to thatthe speed and impact of new technology, and designing a flexible real estate strategy is a daunting task.

CBRE was recently faced with this dilemma, as many of our office leases across the US were nearing expiration. We knew we needed to approach our own future workplace in the same way we advise our clients, and so we looked to our proven client processes to inform our own internal strategy. As it turns out, through our journey of developing an effective workplace strategy, we actually came full circle—going through this process with our own people has allowed us to develop an entirely new perspective that is now informing the way we advise our clients.