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. Not Your Average Joe

I felt my blood pressure going down every minute of this conversation. Joe was 100% focused. Joe listened intently to what I had to say. Joe asked ME all kinds of questions starting with family. He wanted to know about my wife Karen and all about my kids. His approach was disarming in the best kind of way.

What in the world? A power player at such an important company taking a personal interest in me, a humble real estate broker. Soon, I was smiling and even laughing as Joe shared funny anecdotes about his past. He had been General Counsel at Volkswagen US for many years. He retired and went to work for a law firm. He told me keeping time at the law firm “really sucked.” He got offered the job at Porsche, he said, and the funny thing is, “I would have worked for free to be at this great company.” He looked like a kid in a candy store and I will never forget the…pure joy in his countenance that day.

You can imagine my relief that Joe Folz was not a good guy, but a GREAT guy. I immediately loved him and his endearing personality to this very day. I would run through a wall for him. I’d jump on a Delta jet anywhere in the world at a moment’s notice. Joe won my heart and loyalty in a few minutes in the Porsche boardroom. And I was his service provider.

2. Major employers scrap plans to cut back on offices - KPMG

Most major global companies no longer plan to reduce their use of office space after the coronavirus pandemic, though few expect business to return to normal this year, a survey by accountants KPMG showed on Tuesday.

Just 17% of chief executives plan to cut back on offices, down from 69% in the last survey in August.

“Either downsizing has already taken place, or plans have changed as the impact of extended, unplanned, remote working has taken a toll on some employees,” KPMG said.

3. Amazon Global Real Estate Chief: Company To Return To Office ‘Pretty Much As We Were Pre-Covid’

Amazon occupies more than 44M SF of offices across the world, and like many workplaces throughout the last year, they are still mostly empty.

Roughly 90% of the company's office-using employees are working remotely today, but the company hopes to bring people back by the fall, Amazon Vice President of Global Real Estate and Facilities John Schoettler told Bisnow in an interview Monday.

The shift to remote work during the coronavirus pandemic has led many companies to rethink their office needs and downsize their footprints, causing concern for office building owners. A CoreNet Global survey in January found that 59% of businesses expect their office footprints to shrink. But the Seattle-based e-commerce giant isn't one of them.

4. Google’s $7 Billion Real Estate Plan Shows Not All Tech Firms Want To Go Fully Virtual

FEATURE CHINA/BARCROFT MEDIA VIA GETTY IMAGES

Even the virtual world requires a physical footprint.

On Thursday, Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google and its parent company, Alphabet, published a blog post announcing plans to invest $7 billion in offices and data centers this year across 19 states. The plans include over $1 billion earmarked for California and the expansion of offices in Atlanta, Chicago, New York and smaller cities.

The investment will help Alphabet expand its reach across the country and bolster the data centers that enable online search. While massive, it nonetheless marks a drop-off from Google’s prior spending; the company set aside $13 billion and $10 billion for similar expenditures in 2019 and 2020, respectively.

5. What a Year of WFH Has Done to Our Relationships at Work

We know it’s been a while, but do you remember bumping into colleagues in the office hallway, chatting about weekend plans or a big project you’re working on? Do you recall finding yourself in the right place at the right time, giving someone a missing piece of information or introducing a colleague to someone new? If you’re like many people, you may not have realized how much these conversations mattered until you found yourself working from home.

These informal interactions are key to what’s known as social capital — benefits people can get because of who they know. You rely on your social capital every time you’ve hit a dead end and someone pitched in to help you, even though they didn’t have to. It shows up when you need expertise and someone you’d only met once was able to offer it.

You also help others build their social capital when you go above and beyond to support them with knowledge, mentoring, or kindness. And the reason you can turn to someone else and offer extra help is that you’ve built a base of familiarity and goodwill through these unplanned interactions that once filled our workdays.

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

Ken Ashley