CoreNet Global

• GSBS and Big-D Construction for Achievement in Sustainable Design Collaboration
• Rand Corporation and DMJM Design for Achievement in the category of Not-for-Profit Organizations
• The Hearst Corporation with Tishman Speyer Properties, Inc. for Achievement in the category of Large Corporations and For-Profit Organizations
• The U.S. General Services Administration for Achievement in the category of Public Sector and Government
• Adobe Systems Inc. with Cushman & Wakefield for Achievement in the category of Small- to Mid-Sized Enterprises

Special recognition was extended to HOK and the City of Clarita, California and ABM AMRO for their initiatives. The award underwriters are Cubellis Associates, Haworth, Johnson Controls Inc., Metro Denver Economic Development Corporation and Tandus.

Following the awards, Mark Golan introduced the keynote speaker, Jerry Greenfield, the co-founder of Ben and Jerry's Homemade, Inc. and author of the best-selling book, Ben & Jerry's Double Dip: Lead with Your Values and Make Money. By embracing the idea of corporate social responsibility, Greenfield and his partner, Ben Cohen, built a $200 million dollar business known for it's world-famous brand of ice cream and its reputation for social and environmental integrity.

In his funny and insightful talk, Greenfield told the history of Ben & Jerry's from the meeting of Ben & Jerry in seventh grade gym class to the opening of their first ice cream parlor in the college town of Burlington, Vermont in May 1978 to the growth of the company into the successful global business it is today.

As the company grew, and founders no longer were scooping up cones but dealing with lawyers and distributors and large corporations, they decided the business was no longer fun (the reason they started in the first place) and decided to get out. On guidance, however, they decided that if there were things about how business was done that they didn't like, they could change it. So they decided to stay and see if they could make Ben & Jerry's into something to be proud of.

At this stage of the company's growth they needed to upgrade their facilities. Instead of turning to venture capitalist, they realized that they could make their community owners of the business, and that their community would prosper if the company prospered. So the first-ever Vermont public stock was offered to the state's residents at an affordable price. That year, 1 of every 100 Vermonters became owners of Ben & Jerry's.

The next year, they went national with their offerings, and in conjunction founded the Ben & Jerry's Foundation with the largest percentage of any company to date (7.5%) going to the foundation for the benefit of the community. However, they quickly learned that the need far exceeded the foundation's abilities to do good. In response, Ben & Jerry expanded their definition of business to incorporate the welfare of the community. Thus, they redefined their bottom line by creating a two-part measure of success: profit plus improving the quality of life for people in the community where they do business.

"The possibilities could be limitless," Greenfield stated. "It's a process of innovation and doing new things." As with all innovations, there will be failures and setbacks but they are all along the path to success. Today, Ben & Jerry's has 400 franchises and 16 partner shops-run by community-based nonprofit organizations serving people outside of the economic mainstream.

Greenfield joked about Ben & Jerry's being the target of media criticism accusing the company of "cynically manipulating customers into buying ice cream by doing good deeds," but teaches businesses that by addressing social and environmental needs of society, they can have true marketing, provide their products added value, gain a unique selling proposition, and attract and retain employees.

He concluded the session by reminding everyone about the ice cream that awaited them.

John Hickenlooper, the Mayor of City and County of Denver, Colorado welcomed attendees to Denver. Named by Time Magazine as one of the top five "big-city" mayors in the U.S., Hickenlooper is committed to increasing civic engagement and participation throughout the city and region. Hickenlooper listed several of the achievements he and 32 mayors in the Denver region were able to accomplish through collaboration.

"How can we make a significant change?" he asked. "We need as a country to step up and work together on a much more powerful level than we currently are doing." Denver and its greater area in Colorado are working together to make a significant impact on the environment by cutting greenhouse levels, reducing water usage, planting 1 million trees over 20 years time, maximizing land use, and getting people out of their cars. He explains, "What's good for our environment, clearly becomes good for our bottom line."

The Opening General Session was sponsored by Allsteel, Cushman & Wakefield, Forest City Development, Herman Miller, Grubb & Ellis and ProLogis.

Moderator: Eric H. Bowles, Director Global Research, CoreNet Global

Speaker: Diane Stegmeier, President, Stegmeier Consulting Group, and author, Innovations in Office Design: The Critical Influence Approach to Effective Work Environments^TM.

In "Preventing Workplace Strategy Failure," consultant and author Diane Stegmeier provided attendees with the benefit of her 10-year research study analyzing 15 critical influences that affect workplace strategy success, while offering attendees a chance to share their experiences through roundtable discussion.

"I began exploring seemingly appropriate workplace environment solutions that failed over and over again," Stegmeier told the audience. What she uncovered was pattern of failure that led her to identify a Critical Influence System -interdependent tangible and intangible factors that impact behavior in the workplace, enabling or hindering the achievement of organizational goals.

"The commonality was always this human resistance to change," Stegmeier noted and proposed that even reasonable, appropriate solutions will fail in the face of these critical influences.

Stegmeier identified and provided examples of these critical influences, which include: Vision & Mission, Core Values, Culture, Image, Leadership Behavior, Compensation, Rewards & Consequences, Technology, Knowledge Management, Organizational Structure, Autonomy & Authority, Business Processes, Communication, Performance Management and finally Physical Workspace.

Providing an example of Vision & Mission as a critical influence, Stegmeier told of a company whose mission statement was about building trusting relationships and yet refused to allow a long-time employee with an impeccable record to telework after he developed health issues.

Stegmeier went on to discuss Core Values as a critical influence on behavior and how culture as the social control system impacts employee behavior. She also touched on the importance of Leadership Behavior and how the key to making solutions work is so often leaders who are willing to act as guides for behavior.

"If leaders aren't using collaborative areas, then me as an underling wouldn't be caught dead looking like I'm not working by being in this space," she quipped.

According to Stegmeier, Compensation, Rewards and Consequences are often outdated and don't support the need for collaborative teamwork, but rather underline individual achievement through individual compensation for individual success. In addition, Technology and Knowledge Management may not always support collaborative workspaces or off-site access. In regards to Organizational Structure, Stegmeier explained that the decision-making structure often gets in the way of collaboration and workflow. Firms also may not provide the correct autonomy and authority for their employees to effectively utilize the workspace.

Business Processes also play a large role in workplace strategy success as many physical workplace changes are related to business process changes.

"The physical space could fail because the business processes failed," she said.

Communication, or lack thereof, is another major factor, Stegmeier told the audience.

"In general, communication happens too late, there's not enough of it and it's not reinforced," she aid. "The result is people feel you're doing a change to me versus you're part of an organization that is changing."

The audience enjoyed several break-out discussions around the hot button issues of workspace, including cost reduction as a primary driver for workplace change, environments that enable business growth and innovation and leveraging the workplace to attract and retain new talent. The results of these discussions were captured and will be shared with the attendees.

Moderator:
David Clute, Board Chairman, OSCRE/CCRE Practice Lead, Cisco Systems

Speakers:
Andy Fuhrman, CEO, OSCRE
Lora Muchmore, Director, Office of the Deputy Under Secretary of Defense (Installations & Environment)
Whitney Peyton, Senior Managing Director, Brokerage Services, CB Richard Ellis
Douglas Curry, CEO, Xceligent, Inc.

Opening the session, moderator David Clute provided an overview of the need for data standards in the real estate industry and the formation of OSCRE (Open Standards Consortium for Real Estate). He highlighted recent progress by the consortium, including the Commercial Information Exchange Standard that was published in February.

Andy Fuhrman outlined the value of data standards: improving quality and reliability, and lubricating the flow of information. According to Fuhrman, "most people want to get to the digital dashboard level," and take full advantage of technological advancements. He concluded by providing an overview of the nine workgroups of OSCRE Americas.

"This going to change the industry," exclaimed Whitney Peyton, who compared the initiative to the early days of Microsoft. According to Peyton, studies show that real estate agents currently see 20-30% of their time wasted chasing data.

Doug Curry pointed out that even the largest organizations in the industry have various levels and methods of managing data. "One of the biggest challenges," according to Curry, "is that we want there to be an ease of capturing data." The recently published Commercial Information Exchange Standard comprises about 300 data fields.

Lora Muchmore provided insight into the complexity of the $700-billion-dollar real estate portfolio managed by the U.S. Department of Defense. More than 2.4 million people live or work on DoD property, while over 450 separate management information systems are involved.

"It was data chaos," said Muchmore, who outlined the process of enterprise integration coupled with the implementation of Real Property Unique Identifiers (RPUID) that helped to streamline data management. Andy Fuhrman compared the property history stored by RPUID to automobile histories provided by CarFax.

In a closing Q&A session, it was revealed that the industry-wide adoption of OSCRE data standards will accelerate when compliance is required by clients.

Moderator: Doug Gatlin, Director of Leed®, U.S. Green Building Council

Speakers:
Randy Knox, III, Director of Real Estate, Adobe Systems
William Dugan, Managing Director Client Solutions Group, Cushman & Wakefield
George Denise, General Manager, Cushman & Wakefield

As a recipient of the 2007 Sustainable Leadership Award for Sustainable Development, Adobe Systems leads the way in employing sustainable practices in their organization, resulting in a LEED Platinum rating for existing buildings. Adobe's mission is to revolutionize how the world engages with ideas and information, which is exhibited in their commitment to sustainability.

This session provided attendees with information about the U.S. Green Building Council, its commitment to promote triple bottom line and LEED standards for certifying the greenest performing buildings in the world. After a brief introduction, the session was turned over to Adobe and Cushman & Wakefield to share how Adobe successfully met all the requirements for the Platinum certification for their headquarters in San Jose, CA, Adobe Towers. In the past five years, Adobe, in collaboration with Cushman & Wakefield, succeeded in realizing a 121% return on investment for their initiatives to become an example of what can be accomplished on an already existing headquarters complex.

It was noted that the general perception is that the large initial investment in energy savings is not worth the returns. Through the accomplishments of Adobe Systems, this perception has been proven wrong. Through benchmarking with Energy Star, updating water systems, providing a commute alternative program for employees, employing a recycling / composting program, installing motion detectors on office lighting, along with other energy saving initiatives, Adobe has realized $1.2 million in annual savings, which also has amounted to $15 million in increased building value.

In conclusion, Kermit the Frog summarized the entire project: "It IS easy being green."

Note: The Adobe case study submission for the Sustainable Leadership Award will soon be available on the CoreNet Global Knowledge Center.

Nearly everything of significance we accomplish is done in cooperation with other people. Sought-after coach Scott Hunter describes how we can create and maintain rich, meaningful, quality relationships with others.

Gregg Weisser, JP Morgan Bank, introduced Hunter to the large audience who listened to this inspiring session.

Hunter stated that the intention for most businesses was to have a group of enthusiastic and positive people working together to achieve a common goal, and that a lot of companies aren't attaining that goal. All things being equal or not, he said, people will do business with people they like; therefore, our greatest asset is creating relationships.

Hunter helped the audience unravel the whole phenomenon of how to create rich meaningful relationships with the people in their lives. Hunter started his career as a member of a rock-and-roll band and explored various other professions until he became a lawyer. A defining time came for him when he was divorced, had no friends and even his children didn't like him much. As with the saying, "When the student is ready, the teacher will appear," Hunter took a good look at his life and knew he wanted more. He retired as a lawyer at the top of his game, citing that what he was learning about himself and others was more exciting. What he discovered was that relationships were the key to happiness, and ever since has been exploring and teaching relationship theories.

For the next hour, Hunter discussed our listening techniques and how our paradigm determines who we are and how we can become more fulfilled and valuable people. He says that our ego just wants to survive but that it's not easy to listen and relate to other people when we are listening to the 60 to 80 thousand thoughts we each have ever day inside our heads.

Hunter concluded by imploring the audience to: Look for the gold in everyone and you'll find it!

He also stated that we all get to decide the paths of our lives. Along with that, Hunter outlined principals to remember:

1. You'll always find what you are looking for (good or bad)
2. People show up in your conversation as who you believe them to be not who they really are
3. Who people are and how they behave are separate and distinct
4. Giving and receiving are one and they occur simultaneously

His final message was that it is important to take responsibility for what comes out of our mouth, and be conscious of how you listen.

Moderator: Colin Coyne, Chief Operating Officer, Melaver

Speakers:
Ken Hagaman, Director of Real Estate Services, Anixter International Inc.
Jack Rizzo, Managing Director, Global Development, Prologis
Steve Hess, Senior Director, Real Estate Development, Exel
Ken Hall, Managing Director Global Development Europe, Prologis

Anixter and Exel have partnered with Prologis to provide warehouse and distribution facilities that align with their corporate goals of embracing sustainability in their operations. In this educational session, the participants each introduced their organizations and stated why sustainability is important in their respective businesses.

As global companies, implementing sustainability worldwide is of utmost importance. In this panel discussion, sustainability, social and environmental responsibilities, and efficiency of operations were discussed from a U.S. and European perspective. The business bottom line drivers for embracing sustainability include conserving energy, consumer/customer needs and demands, the "people aspect"-those who work in sustainable facilities, certification requirements for sustainability, and the value creation for sustainable properties. Greenhouse emissions, fossil fuel use, noise pollution, and climate change are some of the environmental factors that drive the move toward sustainability.

In conclusion, the panel left the attendees with three main points to take away from the session:
1. Consider sustainability as a value creation for your organization.
2. It's not what you do, but what happens upstream with your suppliers and downstream with your customers.
3. Europe is ahead of the U.S., and sustainability in Europe and the U.K. is far advanced to what we are seeing in the U.S.

Peter J. Miscovich, Partner, Deloitte Consulting

Jim Hartzfeld, Managing Director, InterfaceRAISE

Mona Amodeo, Ph.D., Senior Partner, idgroup

Dan Heinfeld, President, LPA

The objective of this session was to learn how two very different companies-one a major carpet manufacturer, and one an architectural firm-have created organizations that are committed to environmentally responsible practices from the inside out.

This session presented the InterfaceFLOR and LPA stories, pioneers of green sustainability, who demonstrated that business is responding to environmental challenges in new and innovative ways.

The film An Inconvenient Truth, and recent reports coming out of Belgium leave no doubt that Earth's biological and social systems are in peril. Unfortunately, the environmental movement of the 1970s left many businesses resentful of imposed regulations that affected the bottom line and whose effectiveness was constantly called into question. As we confront these serious issues again, questions arise as to whether this new Green movement represents possibility or propaganda. The presenters in this session made it clear that the new corporate responsibility and sustainability represent nothing but possibility for those willing to put on a "new set of glasses to see sustainability" with both rationality and creativity.

Mona Amodeo cited Paul Hawken's new book Blessed Unrest. This exciting new work is subtitled How the Largest Movement in the World Came in to Being and Why No One Saw it Coming and is a follow-up to Hawken's groundbreaking work The Ecology of Commerce that became a business-school standard soon after it was published in 1994. In Blessed Unrest, Hawken cites the growth of environmental groups with more people involved than ever. This, plus a host of other new works that link compliance with responsibility are a clear indication that the world is waking up and things are going to change, Amodeo asserts. Not only is it the right thing to do, she stressed; it is the smart thing to do.

Amodeo told the audience that Ray Anderson of Interface challenged his company to view sustainability as value-laden proposition. Jim Hartzfeld took the microphone and pointed out that humanity is facing historic and accelerating trend, but that it also is something that reaches beyond philosophical concept and requires more than technological responses. He stated that sustainability must become a core value, and that it can, and, if done correctly, will translate to market profit.

Interface began its mission by formulating a clear vision-to be the first company in which its deeds shows the entire industrial world what sustainability is in all its dimensions. This vision includes the elements: people, processes, products, places and profit. Interfaces' goal will be met by the year 2020 and, in doing so, Interface will show that "we all become restorative through the power of our influence." Anderson chose to view new global challenges in terms of the tried-and-true efficiency curve. Companies in all stages of growth and development can embrace this approach as it only involves an examination of how a company can eliminate waste and duplication. Amodeo pointed out that Anderson was guided by two key questions: was it important and was it marketable?

Jim Hartzfeld strongly cautioned that leaders must define sustainability for their own company. He outlined the following steps: 1. Define the brand 2. Communicate the brand 3. Live the brand. He suggested that businesses begin their journey toward sustainability by first identifying vision gap within their company. As we have heard many times at the Denver Summit, he emphasized that sustainability can become a powerful source of competitive advantage for companies.

Dan Heinfeld, who spoke next, said that sustainability is the right thing to do and the smart thing to do, but you have to be sustainability if you talk sustainability. As a business case, you must ask if it is practical and if it is great design. He provided examples of 3 buildings, Ford Motor Company, Toyota, and Wal-Mart, that LPA has recently been involved with and how these buildings have been made better with sustainable business practices.

Heinfeld requested that all businesses start to ask themselves what they could do to become more sustainable in the future. He reminded the audience that many improvements are free. He expressed his belief that we need to start building form and structure to optimize sustainability, and take advantage of available conservation measures. For example, Heinfield shared, we could build more non-air conditioned buildings that take advantage of breezes for cooling and sunlight for warming the buildings. In conclusion, he stated that businesses should keep asking themselves the question "Is it better for the planet?"