Member Viewpoint

How Do CRE Professionals Juggle Increasing Demands?
By Barry Beswick

Across the globe a fundamental movement towards sustainability is changing the way businesses, organizations and governments operate. Sustainability has no single definition, but it generally contains the idea of progress that respects the importance of the "triple bottom line," giving value to the economic impact of social equity and environmental programs. Whether achieved through market demand or regulatory pressures, sustainability's growing track record of creating superior value and growth assures its widespread acceptance for future generations to come. This question was recently posed to three Corporate Real Estate leaders: JoAnn Lane, GE Financial Assurance, Jim Chalkley, BearingPoint and Larry Ebert, Capital One Finance. The three gave remarkably similar responses in describing how they handle what Chalkley characterizes as the full-on fire hose of excitement that faces him every day.

Be Organized
All spoke about the importance of rigorous application of repeatable processes, toolkits and checklists, and common information databases in managing CRE's work demands. They cannot afford to spend time and resources reinventing the same wheel in different places. Finding and then embedding the right work methods into the fabric of the extended CRE organization drives cost and staff efficiencies. Lane oversees an average of 60 real estate transactions around the world on a continuing basis. Her ability to lead the variety of players involved in this work is predicated on everyone using the same process and tools; and everyone being trained on how to use them effectively. Lane uses weekly teleconferences to stay connected with her teams. Ebert commented that he wants to use the structure and discipline of organized processes and analyses to drive creative solutions (Scientific Testing 101). This not only reflects the analytical culture of Capital One, but also gives his CRE organization the focus needed to extract the best choices from an ever expanding list of opportunities.

Select and Embrace the "Right" Service Providers as Partners
There was unanimous endorsement for the power of leveraging the right set of service providers. The trick is to select service provider partners who will fit with the company culture and be compatible with the work ways of the CRE staff. Service providers earn their stripes by demonstrating superb technical real estate expertise and a commitment to learning the company's culture and investing resources in training and communications to build solid relationships. All viewed service provider selection as a long-term proposition requiring extensive and continuous partnering to build relationships that span geographies, staff turnover and company business cycles. These selections are definitely not in the category of task outsourcing.

Chalkley has a single service provider for his global organization. His staff in Europe is co-located with the service provider. He believes that the physical proximity helps both parties to better understand and complement each other in managing the European workload. Lane relies on GE's three global service providers to handle any of her assignments around the world. These three firms are full participants on her management team and allow her to extend her reach across multiple geographies in a consistent fashion. All report that they sleep at night knowing their service provider partners have the capacity and cultural familiarity to handle any surprises and unplanned challenges coming CRE's way.

Plan, Plan, Plan
All three leaders place a very high priority on a strong strategic planning process. This process should engage senior business management in a dialogue about what and where they think the future business impacts may be. This dialogue provides directional guidance as to where CRE should focus. The plan's details may change considerably, but the key is getting the early warning about where the company is going.

Ebert points out that Capital One established a strategic direction around knowledge worker collaboration and amenity-rich environments in 2000 to enable employee recruitment and retention. Although much has changed since, that direction sustained a four-year development program that transformed Capital One's Virginia real estate portfolio and culminated in a seven-building knowledge worker campus in the western suburbs of Richmond.

Chalkley recently joined BearingPoint after a career in the U.S. Army. He brings diverse expertise from other fields into his new CRE role. As he surveyed his CRE organization's ability to handle the volume of work, building a three-to-five year strategic planning process became one of his top priorities. He is certain that this effort will enable his organization to become proactive in addressing future work demands.

Have Fun in Really Exciting Work
Despite the pressures and challenges of leading a CRE organization in companies with high and increasing real estate demands, all are very happy to be where they are today. They invoke the "glass is half full" perspective. Where else could they be engaged in such exciting work? Each has stressed how they take the time to reflect on personal enjoyment of what they are doing. Enthusiasm and fun are infectious, even in high stress times. No question that the positive attitude of these CRE leaders is recognized and reflected in their world-class organizations.

Mr. Barry E. Beswick, BCCR, SLCR
Director, Corporate Real Estate
Capital One