Power Reads: 5 Interesting Articles That Will Help You This Week

Each week, I select a few articles that rise above the fray and hopefully help you on your journey in leadership and the CRE world. They pull from one of four "corners": corporate real estate, technology, management science and anything positive. Each day we can become a better version of ourselves.

1. Hybrid Work Is Doomed

I noticed the shoes first. That I was wearing them. Real shoes, the leather kind, with laces. After a year and a half, I was finally returning to the office, and that meant giving up the puffer slippers and slides that had sustained me for so long. Real shoes, I quickly remembered, are terrible. Likewise pants. Likewise getting to work, and being at work. Whew.

“That was summer 2021. I’ve since acclimated to the office once again: I don the uniform; I make the commute; I pour the coffee; I do my job; and then I go back home. There are costs to this arrangement, clearly. I lose some time—time I could spend working!—transporting myself, in shoes and pants, from one building to another. I miss the chance to finish household tasks between my meetings, or fix myself a healthy and affordable lunch. As a university professor and administrator, I have more flexibility than most professionals, and I’m not required to go in each and every day. But even so, I have less control over each hour of my life than I used to—a fact that could very well be making me less productive overall. Indeed, it’s possible, or even likely, that my employer—and yours—could help their workers and the bottom line, simply by allowing us to work from home or come in on a hybrid plan. Remote, flexible employment might be a win for everyone.”

But actually, it isn’t. A rational assessment of your time and productivity was never quite at issue, and I think it never will be. Companies have been pulling employees back to work in person irrespective of anyone’s well-being or efficiency. That’s because return-to-office plans are not concerned, in any fundamental way, with workers and their plight or preferences. Rather they serve as affirmations of a superseding value—one that spans every industry of knowledge work. If your boss is nudging you to come back to your cubicle, the policy has less to do with one specific firm than with the whole firmament of office life: the Office, as an institution. The Office must endure! To the office we must go.

2. Industrious Bets On New Office Lure, the ‘Work Club’: Desk, High-End Eatery and Full-Service Bar

industrious

Industrious, a flexible space provider that counts brokerage giant CBRE among its investors, is joining a major real estate owner, Nuveen, in opening what’s billed as the latest lure for office workers: an upscale workplace lounge concept in New York that includes a full-service bar, restaurant and coffee shop run by hospitality group DMK. There’s even a park.

“The partnership represents the latest iteration of attempts seen nationwide to feature amenities and other offerings to entice workers back to the office. This concept also aims to help landlords such as Nuveen, the property arm of teachers retirement fund investor TIAA, find ways to use space to lure more than just building tenants.”

Described as “the first-of-its-kind collaboration between a leading workplace operator, landlord and hospitality group,” the partners on Thursday opened an 18,000-square-foot flexible “work club” at Nuveen’s renovated The Gardens building located at 780 Third Ave. in the Midtown East neighborhood of Manhattan. Called The Clearing, the space includes a 12,000-square-foot publicly accessible park as well as DMK’s restaurant and grab-and-go offerings, providing access to shared work spaces and meeting rooms with “fine dining,” classes and events “all in one place,” they said in a statement.

3. ​​​​Working from home has become a perk like free lunch, and it could be replacing higher salaries

Workers who aren’t afraid of being laid off in this economy have another question: How do I get a raise that keeps up with inflation?

“The Bureau of Labor Statistics’ June job report, released today, shows workers’ wages continue to lose to inflation; average hourly earnings rose by just 0.3%, and 5.1% year over year. Accounting for inflation, that’s negative, Fortune reported. ”

The widespread shift to remote and hybrid work during the pandemic has coincided with the labor shortage and associated Great Resignation, when workers have taken advantage of the most power they’ve had in decades. But what if remote work is keeping salaries down, too?

4. Lonely Last Days in the Suburban Office Park

The wooded campus that once housed the global headquarters of Toys “R” Us in Wayne, N.J., is 85 percent vacant today. On a weekday, the parking spots for 1,900 cars are mostly empty. The helipad is unused. So is the corporate dining hall, with its views of the serene grounds. Hundreds of cubicles — the spacious old-school kind with the high walls, not the little hot desks popular with employers today — sit empty as the property awaits redevelopment into something entirely new.

“The site, first built for the chemical conglomerate American Cyanamid in 1962 and later bought by Toys “R” Us, was a grand version of an idea that ruled the postwar American workplace at varying scales: the 200-acre secluded corporate headquarters, the leafy 50-acre research campus, the three-acre spec-built office park shaded by a bit of tree canopy.”

These places were decidedly suburban in nature and car-dependent in design. In every form — executive park, business park, corporate park, innovation park — the park was an essential part. “Pastoral capitalism,” the landscape architecture scholar Louise Mozingo has called it, naming the very American belief that office workers would do their best work if they could look out at manicured nature instead of the frenetic cityscape.

5. Be the Most Persuasive Person in the Room: 9 Things Highly Influential People Always Do, According to Science

Every successful person I know is extremely good at persuading other people. Not manipulating or pressuring, but genuinely persuading: Describing the logic and benefits of an idea to gain agreement.

“When you think of it that way, everyone needs to harness the power of persuasion: to convince other people your idea makes sense, to show investors or stakeholders how a project, or product, or business will generate a return, to help your employees understand why they should embrace a new process.”

Having the ability to persuade is critical in every career. That's why successful people are extremely good at persuading others.

Your success blesses others. I wish you a great and hugely impactful week!