As the ‘move champion,’ your biggest challenge will be to establish your projects key performance indicators and then navigate your path through the myriad of agendas and overtures you will encounter from supply side proponents, all of whom have little, if not zero regard for your objectives.
Tenants and owner occupiers rarely appreciate the critical (and non-critical) activities and their durations
This tenant will be right royally ‘glad handed’ by every real estate agent in town and will ultimately waste time and lose all credibility in the market. More often than not, this tenant will fall frustratingly into the arms of their existing lesser with little or no time to execute any other option and transact on very soft terms, having wasted the window of opportunity, which just slammed firmly shut behind them…..for another 5-10 years. To avoid this dynamic, we recommend you conduct a very deep needs analysis and workplace envisioning process involving all key stakeholders from which a clear picture of the future workplace can be established along with the associated metrics of time and cost which can be used to uniform the property transaction.
More often than not, this circumstance arises when you the “move champion” subscribes to the “free” expert advice provided by real estate agents resulting in the critical workplace success factors of ‘people, process and place’ being totally overlooked.
Resulting in:
A corporate real estate and new workplace project is a major undertaking, often involving millions of dollars, many very important stakeholders and very high stakes to pay if the entire project gets off the rails or under delivers. Not to mention that a project of this type provides a window of opportunity to make some pretty big and some very strategic decisions about what the organisation should look, function and what the new physical manifestation of the business should say to visitors and staff. It is important that the ‘move champion’ have a senior profile in the company, be well respected, accessible, and prepared to champion any necessary change strategy. This is a job for a leader who has the capacity and the resources to enlist the hearts and minds of the entire organisation in a journey of change.
Regardless of your ‘stay V go’ strategy, starting early is key, and creating competitive tension between your landlord and the market is fundamental. You must illustrate to the market a demonstrable capacity (time-in- hand and conduct in the market) to walk away from your current property. Over the past couple of decades there have been numerous instances where we have received instructions from clients along the lines of; “We would prefer to stay in our current building and ‘refresh’ the workplace to meet our needs into the future”. At the conclusion of our workplace envisioning sessions and property market testing, these clients have been enlightened on the merits of our process and the potential to improve building grade, workplace environment and financial benefits” and inevitably opt for the relocation option.
Real estate agents such as CBRE, JLL and Knight Frank act for building owners and their balance sheets are underpinned by them. Those owners by the way are the very same people to whom you pay rent. Regardless of overtures of Chinese Walls and integrated services, the conflict is palpable. The ‘war stories’ told by tenant representatives who once worked in these organisations are all too well known. Opting to take advice from such parties can be likened to jumping out of the pan into the fire!
The value of your lease covenant is manifest in such things as:
We have seen great companies dilute the value of their lease covenant through ill-advised strategy and market behaviour. The very best way to ‘unlock’ the value of your company's lease covenant is to avoid one of these top ten mistakes and obtain truly independent representation in the national property and project market.
Today the go to briefing words are ‘flexibility and agility’, so the property and workplace must work hand in glove to achieve these challenges.
Whilst there has been a lot of buzz about activity based working (ABW) environments, the facts are that despite all the sizzle, very few organisations have actually adopted ABW. The clear majority of these organisations occupy what we call a hybrid solution, which falls between the two extremes of the static workplace (allocated real estate) and the ABW workplace (unallocated real estate).
The opportunity of adopting, to some degree, initiatives which change the ways your people conduct their work can reduce your property footprint up to 30 % and lift productivity and engagement levels, so the topic is worth investigating if only just to facilitate ticking the box.
Once again this is a very costly mistake and one which is largely a symptom of not being represented by an independent consultant who can assure 100% target market coverage. You can very effectively deny your organisation opportunities through one or more of the following: