Bookmarks: 5 Interesting Articles That May Help You This Week

Each week, I select a few articles that rise above the fray and hopefully help you on your journey in the CRE world. They pull from one of four "corners:" corporate real estate, technology, management science and anything positive. I welcome your comments on these articles.

1. Why Open Offices Aren’t Working — and How to Fix Them

In the mid ‘90s, the Italian designer Gaetano Pesce made a bold attempt to rethink the office. He created one in New York City that was more akin to a lounge or a coffee shop than the cubicle farm that was the norm for the day. Workers signed out a laptop on arrival, and then sought out a nook in which to work. Pesce’s creation paved the way for a brave new world where walls, physical and mental, were broken down. And since that day, workers have been more, and since that day, workers have been more and more productive and innovative.

Yeah, not totally.

By now most of us know that the promise of the open office as some kind of paperless and idea-percolating Mecca hasn’t quite played out that way. For one, there’s the lack of privacy, the excess of distractions. Sometimes those just make it hard to get your work done at the office.

Today’s guest has been studying why open offices are practically more closed and disruptive than they were made out to be. And his research identifies new technologies that are pointing to better ways to make the most of the office. Ethan Bernstein is a professor at Harvard Business School, and he’s a coauthor of the HBR article, “The Truth About Open Offices”. Ethan, thanks for being here.

2. Jeff Bezos Banned PowerPoint and It's Arguably the Smartest Management Move He's Ever Made

Jeff Bezos recently banned PowerPoint from meetings at Amazon, insisting instead that meetings start with the attendees silently reading a hard-copy document containing the information needed to discuss the issue.

This is not surprising, considering there's significant scientific research that the use of PowerPoint reduces organizational intelligence. However, replacing PowerPoint with "briefing documents" (as Bezos has done) isn't just good science; it's also an incredibly smart financial move.

Did I mention that it saves time? Good, because as I've pointed out previously, the average executive spends around 50 percent of his or her time in meetings (one third of which are totally useless). This is a huge productivity drain, above and beyond PowerPoint's infamous ability to reduce organizational intelligence.

3. Five hundred goats save the Ronald Reagan library from wildfires

Diligent work by a team of 500 goats has helped save the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library from wildfires that are ravaging parts of California.

The library deployed the goat squadron during the spring in order to munch their way through around 13 acres of scrubland around the library that could’ve provided tinder-like fuel to a wildfire.

This preventive action created a fire break between the library and the Easy fire, which has menaced thousands of homes in the Simi Valley near Los Angeles. More than 1,000 firefighters are tackling the blaze, which caused flames to approach the presidential library from a nearby hillside. Treasures saved include a piece of the Berlin Wall and Air Force One.

4. ’Tis the Season for Surge Robots as Holiday Hiring Finds Automation

The holiday hiring frenzy is under way and robots are joining the rush to seasonal jobs.

Retailers and logistics operators facing a tight labor market are ramping up automation at warehouses for the holidays, when online order volumes can surge tenfold as consumers load up digital shopping carts in the weeks around Thanksgiving and Christmas.

To cope, some businesses are ordering up extra fleets of collaborative robots, or “cobots,” that use cameras, lasers and sensors to navigate warehouse aisles and lead workers to the right shelves or to shuttle bins full of products between workstations. Many are available for lease.

Rick Faulk, chief executive of Wilmington, Mass.-based Locus Robotics Corp., said demand for what he calls “surge robots” to bolster the armies of seasonal warehouse workers has grown this year, and the company is sending more than 500 of them to its logistics and e-commerce customers.

5. CEO of biggest US mall owner says retail industry is ‘reaching the bottom’ of bankruptcies

The CEO of the biggest mall owner in the U.S., Simon Property Group, says the retail industry looks to be “reaching the bottom” of a tumultuous wave of bankruptcies.

“We are having a high bankruptcy year. ... There’s no denying that,” David Simon told analysts during a post-earnings conference call on Wednesday morning. “But I think we’re kind of reaching the bottom in ... 2019 on that stuff. It’s rivaling what happened in 2017. So, it’s not like something that we haven’t experienced before. But we know [what] we have to do.”

Simon shares were last down about 3.5% Wednesday afternoon, having fallen about 12% this year.

The CEO’s comments come on the heels of Forever 21 and Barneys New York, among other retail chains, filing for bankruptcy this year. So far in 2019, U.S. retailers have announced 8,993 store closures and 3,780 store openings, compared with 5,844 closures and 3,258 openings in all of 2018, according to a tracking by Coresight Research. The consulting firm expects closures could still hit a record 12,000 by the end of this year.

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

Ken Ashley