Intro: 

Hey friend, I'm Sid Meadows and I'm a business leader and longtime student of the office furniture industry and I'm glad you're joining me for this episode of the Trend Report and I really appreciate each and every one of you tuning into these conversations. And I got to tell you I'm super excited about today's conversation and to welcome David Stella with Cresa Real Estate to the show and I'm confident we're going to have a really interesting, fun, maybe dynamic conversation today as we explore the post-COVID workplace. My goal is really simple and that's to provide you with valuable insights, information, resources and tools to help you grow and your business grow. So let's dive into this conversation.

Sid:

David, welcome to the show, and I want to get started with straight out with a question what is workplace strategy?

David:

Workplace strategy, in a nutshell, is helping clients understand their post-COVID world of office space, and it's the systematic process of really understanding the need and the use of space. Now that we've passed the pandemic, it's a whole new world for us, and so it's been a real fun and challenging experience to help clients navigate this new world of work.

Sid:

So how did you get into being a workplace strategist? So tell us a little bit about your journey.

David: 

Well, as far as I know, there's no degree in it, but I started my journey 120 years ago, I like to say, as an architect, and I have an architectural background and worked for 30 years in the interior design industry, focusing mostly on office design and corporate interiors, did a little bit of retail as well. And I was working here in Atlanta with a local dealership and they wanted to try something different and they said let's find a new place for you to do design based selling, which is a little bit different. This was 10 years ago in the furniture industry, and so I did that for several years for a local dealership here in Atlanta, and then I was working along and my boss brought me in one day and said you know what? I think you've kind of tapped out here and we want to move you in a different direction. And so they had some business acquaintances in the consulting industry that was really focusing on real estate consulting work and they wanted to bring in a designer to kind of look at that component.

You get all this great data, you understand all this interesting information, but then how does it translate into space? So I did that and I did that starting in 2017. And I've been there ever since and really it's been kind of learning along the way, which has been a lot of fun.

Sid:

So you left the deal. You were architect, worked in interior design, went to the dark side, or the dealer side, as I lovingly say. Right, stayed there for a few years doing design-based selling. Then went to Cresa Real Estate, which is a really large multinational right Real estate firm yeah, global real estate firm and you live in Atlanta and you've been there for several years now. So I'm curious, David, is workplace strategy first off. It's something that we hear talked about a lot right, especially on the furniture side, we hear workplace strategy.

Workplace strategy Is it something that is more analytical or data driven, or is it more theory-driven? When you're talking to your customers about the strategy for their work environment, 

David: 

Yes, I guess that means both right. I guess that means both Okay, yes.

I like to say data drives design. So it's a little bit different than maybe some approaches where it's really programming. You know, the client says I need six offices and five workstations and blah, blah, blah, and they give you the program and you spit out a space. We don't do that. We really are asking the why. Why do we need space? What's the workplace philosophy? We use this term a lot. It's really the descriptor around what do I believe in as an organization, around place and space and my people and how do I work.

Sid: 

And so there, is a lot of theory, involved A lot of clients don't walk around thinking, geez, how do I work?

David: 

They're driving and running a business, so our job is to help them spend a moment, take a moment in time to really think about. Well, what are we culturally?

Sid: 

What do we?

David: 

Believe in what drives our people, what makes us successful. But then we have to not just use the theory, but we need to have the data, because the data informs clients on where to go next. So the mining of data, and not just any data. We're not looking at trends. We're not looking at global surveys. We're looking at client data. What are our people are looking for? What do we see in metrics? What can we use to measure space and how things are getting used? And let that inform the way the future workspace evolves.

Sid: 

Okay, that's great and I appreciate that, because I'm certainly not a workplace strategist, right, I'm a furniture guy. But Okay, that's great and I appreciate that, because I'm certainly not a workplace strategist, right, I'm a furniture guy. But I have a couple of questions. You do questionnaires, you ask all kinds of things in order to get the data that you're looking for, so that you can marry the two of what the company's vision is versus what the employees are saying they would like or what they need. So I'm really curious about, on the data side, can you give us a couple of examples of the types of questions that you would ask somebody during this process?

David:

Sure. So you know, this is always the kind of the problem where you know if you ask an employee what they want, they're going to say the bowling alley and the hot tub, right. So obviously we have to stage and answer questions that give us data that really give us valuable insights. So these are really not opinion questions. This is not what your favorite color. This is really trying to understand processes and how do you work. 

Yes, there are some questions around. You know basic things like what's your commute time and you know how much time do you spend doing this activity and what groups do you talk to, and so there are some of those basics, but it's a lot of. It has to do with personas and preferences, and so this is around understanding kind of the ethos of people. We start to look for patterns in the questions to give us profiles. Profiles help us categorize behavior and thought. So we have two different basic profiles. We use mobility profiles and activity profiles, and mobility profiles is how often am I coming into the office and why, and activity profiles is when.

Sid: 

I'm in the office.

David:

What am I doing? And what this starts to do is give us patterns and ideas around how people work, and what's really fascinating is to understand that sometimes, attendance and onsite activities are different than the needs of the business and the needs of the people. 

So, for example, we're working with a software company here in Atlanta and the development of software is a different process than an HR professional, for example. So this particular company is using agile software development as opposed to waterfall, which means they're doing it in sprints. This is 250 software engineers broken down into smaller chunks, three chunks, three trains, they call them, and each train has scrum teams of about seven to 10 people and there might be six or eight teams within the train, and there is a natural process to writing software and it starts with everybody in a big room and we are looking at the big picture. What are we doing for the next three months, six months? Then we take individual scrum teams and we break out in a couple weeks and we spend time blocking and tackling and understanding who does what's next, and then we break up as individuals and write code, and each one of those moments in time requires a different environment. 

So what was happening was we have a CEO who's like rightfully so saying I want everybody in the office two days a week. Why? Well, there's a lot of good reasons. Why are better together. It's that simple, right. There are so many great biological, physiological needs for human connection. This is all, Bernie brown, good stuff, right, yeah yeah, so coming together it makes sense so his intention was correct.

it was the timing that was wrong, because when I'm writing software for four weeks, the last thing I want to do is drive into the office on a Tuesday morning, scramble to figure out what I'm doing because I'm still doing individual work and then go home and spend another two hours in the car. So what we did was we married the process to the attendance. We said everyone comes in for three days big group meeting. We need a large multipurpose space, everyone in the room. Then we need about 10 to 12 smaller eight to 10 person conference rooms with video capabilities to talk to our engineering friends over and across the sea. And we'll do that for two weeks and then for four weeks everyone stays at home because we're writing software and we're focusing and we're channeling and we don't want to be in the office to be distracted. 

So what did that do to the space? Well, it means we need a large multipurpose room. We need 10 to 12 conference rooms and we went from 200 workstations down to 10. Why? Because we don't need to sit at a cubicle anymore. We or at home.

Sid: 

So what happened? Lots of checkboxes.

David: 

We've got a CEO happy because there's 50% attendance, which is what you want. You got lots of happy engineers because they're coming in for purpose. They're not just showing up randomly on a Tuesday and a Wednesday, they're coming in for a specific reason. We've got a lot of other happy non-software engineers. Happy because now we get all the engineers together so HR can do their thing and the finance team can do their thing and help engage with these people. So we started to do a lot of checkboxes. We started to look at how do we create environments that serve and still function in this post-COVID world and utilizing our home environment for when it's needed and when it's a problem.

Sid: 

So that is absolutely fascinating, because I don't think, when I think about office design, I would have not done what you just described. Right, I would not thought about that, and I'm sure there are a lot of workstation manufacturers that are not a fan of that design that you just talked about, right. But I love how you described what you went through and what you learned through the process of understanding how people work, what's needed for the business and, honestly, how the business functions, and you met every box. So, david, if you had to phrase it, what type of design would you call that? I wrote down activity-based design, but does it have a kind of a phrase that goes with it.

David: 

The phrase we use is dynamic work environment, and dynamic work environment describes a new set of agile planning arrangements and seating arrangements. It's a whole new kit of parts that companies get to play with. What do we have? Before, we had three different general concepts. We had traditional or cellular design. This was ring around offices on the perimeter. This is everyone else inside. This is all about hierarchy and status. The important people are in the corners. This is all about hierarchy and status. The important people are in the corners. Your title dictates your space.

15, 20 years ago, we shipped it to open office. Open office, as you know, is the panel manufacturer's dream. We flipped the model. We put all the offices in board. We put all the people on the edges along the glass line. We did this with the democratization of the office To bring the people who who are sitting there most get in the most office space, the most light, sure, and we made them all in one happy zone so that we could be collaborative, to cross the aisle, hold hands, swing back and forth and sing Kumbaya and collaborate. 

And what did we find out? Well, that it didn't work because we forgot about people. We got rid of the hierarchy in traditional design but we replaced it with the design for space around the rara, the extrovert and we didn't realize that 51% of the American workforce are introverts and this space was a disaster for those folks. It was everything uncomfortable for the person that actually needed the exact opposite. So then COVID hits and guess what? Those 50 people 49% went home very, very happy because they create their own environment, they can create their home office, they can make it quiet and dark and secluded and anything they wanted. And so this was a huge hit and you saw people really embracing Not everybody, sure, quite a few. Then we come out of COVID and now we're dragging people back into the office. 

Yes, we are there's resistance, but it's really interesting to look at some of the data around return to office globally. If you look at different regions of the world, you see different patterns. If you're in Asia, return to office is around 90%. Why? Well, because they have a communal culture. In general, they have much less home space to have an office.

Sid:

So for them it made more sense.

David: 

In Europe the return to office is roughly 70, 75%. Why? Because they have an extensive and expansive public transportation system, so getting there is pretty easy. In America, three years later, we're still hovering somewhere around 50%. Why? Because we have huge home offices and we have lousy canoes and we got used to it. So now you're starting to see kind of big global patterns emerge. Now is it trending up? Yes, we are slowly but surely ticking up to higher. But it's also a little bit about media. You know the media is very excited to hear. You know it was just like tax season, right? You know, every April 15th it's, oh, the drudgery of the tax return. You know it's the yearly cycle. We had the yearly cycle of, you know, labor Day.

Sid: 

We're all coming back to the office.

David: 

We heard that every single year. So there's a little bit of this kind of mantra around coming back Is it happening as fast? Or is it? Some companies, yes, they're coming back and they're pushing that, but not everybody. So there's still this kind of vagueness of like, well, we should get back, but we don't know how to get back and why should we go back. So this is the questions that workplace strategists really uncover.

Sid:

So I appreciate that explanation and I love the dynamic work environment. That's what you're planning, I think, for the furniture sellers that are listening. It gives us a really good idea of a glimpse of it. I would also assume for this customer that you mentioned, the software company, I assume it was able A it sounds like it made their work, keep their people more productive, happier, created a better culture. But from the financial aspect of it, it also sounds like they saved quite a bit of money on real estate, and one of the biggest expenses in the business is the space. So they were able to reduce the space but yet get make their people happy and get what they wanted out of it.

David: 

Yeah, absolutely so. Of course there are business side benefits, right.

So, let's look at the business side too. I mean, we are fundamentally at Crescent. We believe in a people-centric approach, right? So the needs of the people come first and highest, and I think that's an important detail, right, it's not about cost savings, this is not about efficiency or packing them in or squeezing folks. This is really about creating optimal work environments for people. That is what we truly believe in. So we have to start with that foundational preference, but then we start looking at things like yeah, it turns out yeah, you could potentially save a lot of space.

This software company went from 65,000 square feet down to 40.

So that's a significant savings and what they were able to get was a higher quality environment. So what dynamic work environments? Fundamentally is, it's the sharing and caring model, is using space on demand as needed. It's the Netflix way of doing space. Gone are the days where we would sit in front of a tv and wait at seven o'clock for our favorite show to come on and then run to the restroom with the camera. No, who does that anymore? It's crazy, right? Nobody, well, nobody. We look and use TV watching when we want, how we want, at what time, whenever it's available and when we need it.

Sid: 

And I'm going to add to that on whatever device you want to watch it on.

David: 

Exactly. So what happened? What changed Technology? So why are we back at dragging people into a 20-year-old model workspace?

Sid: 

It doesn't make sense.

David: 

You know, COVID is not the changing force around these new concepts. We've been looking at dynamic work environments for years prior to COVID. Covid was an accelerator, but technology was the enabler. Technology is what's changed the game for us. We can work anywhere. Now We've got these little devices right.

He's holding his phone up there, by the way, we can work in airplanes, we can work at Starbucks, we can work at home. So why is it that we are going back to these old ways of thinking? We have to embrace technology. Like we're no longer using the fax machine, we're not bringing it back, so why would we ever consider going back to an old, traditional designed office?

Sid: 

It doesn't make sense. No, it doesn't make sense, and the way you eloquently said it, I mean it certainly clears a lot of things up for me, because I'm a very tactical like this is what they need, this is what we give them, kind of thing Right, and you're way up here. Obviously, you guys listening can tell David is certainly an expert in his field and understands this, which is why I'm so glad that he's here to share his insights with us. But what kind of pushback do you get from business owners about this dynamic work environment?

I think the pushback is fundamentally the unknown. So one of the things we have to do is really start with what is out there. What are our options, what are other competitors doing? What are the new ways of thinking about space and place?

And this is education, you know this is, you know, one of the pieces that I really enjoy. I like that kind of revealing of new ideas and hopefully having that, you know, aha moment for a client. But people don't know what they don't know, so part of it is just going back to, or understanding an old way of thinking. So we have to kind of almost retrain or reeducate and then we start there and then we start looking at where are some of the pain points for clients. You know, we don't know the future and we just went through this massive experiment called COVID. So we're looking at patterns and we're seeing things like well, what happens if this giant group of software developers change their mind and want to come back all the time? Or what if we have a merchant?

acquisition that we didn't know was coming in two years, or heaven forbid. Covid-20 shows up now. What do we do? So part of what happens around space is not just a new way of thinking about it, a new purpose, but a new way of playing and changing. So we're really building architectural overlays of reconfigurability and modularity, and we really do it this time. So, in other words, the idea that we change, we use space differently. We engage with space as we need it, but nothing in the space itself changes. It's stagnant, it's static, it's fixed.

So part of this concept is move it all around, and the furniture industry kind of does that.

Sid: 

Okay, I'm going to stop you for a moment because I want to get to this very much so, but I think it's fascinating to hear your perspective on things. How did you get interested in this, or how did you learn about all of this?

David: 

How did you get interested in this or how did you learn about all of this? Well, I mean, I think part of the joy of the design, foundational education, is to really think and be creative thinking and think outside the box, and my experience along the way has really taught me new things. Obviously, my stint in six years in the furniture industry was eye-opening because I worked the largest design firm in the world. We eye-opening because I worked the largest design firm in the world. We all know what's done. That one is and we didn't really understand the mechanism around contract furniture. We didn't understand how it got made.

Sure, we didn't understand how it was produced, procured, how you installed it, all the complexities around that piece and when we're looking at dynamic work environments, the big change, the big factor that makes this is a furniture, because it becomes the driver for reconfigurability and modularity. It allows us to actually change our space and make it hackable and make it we can modify it and we can, and clients and leadership teams love this because it gives them an off ramp if something goes wrong or they make the wrong decision or we didn't really anticipate these changes, so it's their kind of release lever in case something unpredicted happens.

Sid: 

But for you personally, this all started when you were in school and really leaning into creativity and then listening and seeing what's happening in the world around us to understand how to bring this to your customer. Because I can imagine that maybe you get a little bit of pushback from people about these ideas of go from whatever 65,000 square feet to 25,000 square feet I mean, I'm sure that wasn't the exact number you said, but you get my idea that I'm sure you get a lot of pushback from people on this.

David: 

We do, and that's why we rely on the data. The data is the evidence.

Sid: 

You said it earlier data informs decisions.

David: 

Data drives design.

Sid: 

Yes, data drives design.

David:

So when we're looking at evidence-based solutions not just my personal opinion or what the latest trend is or what the height adjustable tables we're doing that's all nice and interesting but not relevant because the data drives the design. So we use the data really as our foundational evidence around change. And you know we also look at tailored approaches. This is not a one size fits all. We're not taking one set of rules and just changing it to another set of rules. We're looking at a tailored experience. So we usually go by department, departmentally needs. So in this particular case, this software company here in Atlanta, their engineers are going to inhabit their space very differently than their IT folks, who actually need more permanent spaces and more traditional office setting and their universe is different, and so we really change that approach depending on the needs of the group. We're also looking at things more on a diversity and a spectrum of equity in terms of architecture.

Sid: 

So this isn't about policy.

David: 

This is about understanding the biological and the human experience differently. We had that open office experience where everybody had a key thing. We call this the warehouse of workers. The rows of cubicles, the rows of lighting the same for everybody. It is literally just everyone sitting in parking. What we're doing now with Dynamic is that you choose your own adventure. It is your ability to find the environment that works best for you. It might be the best time of day, it might be the best physical space. Maybe it's a quiet, dark space, maybe it's a vibrant space. It might be a functional need. I need to be with my team, my group, myself. It may be acoustical needs for privacy and quiet, the employee experience. So much more choice to really find the best working environment.

It might be at home, but at least it's not going to be coming into the office and it's a one-size-fits-all I get a workstation, I get an office or I get a conference room, and that's what we have now.

Sid: 

And your workstation is 66 inches or 42 inches high, it's got two or three work surfaces, it's got a pedestal. It's got a pedestal, it's got a keyboard tray. So it's gone from warehouse of workers to flexibility and choice to choose how you want to work. So I want to bring us into the furniture conversation a little bit more. So what role, in your opinion, does the furniture world play in this entire discussion?

David: 

does the furniture world play in this entire discussion? Well, you know, I go to Neocon every year like a good designer. I've been doing it for 20 years.

And I look for what the furniture industry is coming up with with concepts and ideas, not necessarily the latest mesh back chair Like we got that. That we understand. But we want to see furniture solutions that are holistic, that are designed as a system, that are truly a kit of parts and are designed to really actually move. And there are glimmers of hope. But I have to be honest, I feel like the furniture industry needs to step up because I understand we all went through COVID. I understand that you're a panel-based manufacturer and your whole assembly line is creating panels, but we're not doing that anymore. We need to now create new ethos around dynamic work environments. That's a true kit-of-parts solution that is designed to be movable and interchangeable, that is designed to be reconfigurable and that is really easy for the end user to do.

I love the conversation around demountable partitions. We've been hearing about demountable partitions, ooh, every day. It's cheaper than the Look. We all know the reality. They're not really laid out and designed to be moved, so that's the designers. But then we have to have a product that actually is not 10,000 little parts, so it is a modular, framed, systemized, stackable, easy, reconfigurable product.

And so they're getting there and we're starting to see big companies like Amazon and others using this real system of demodelable partitions to their advantage, and so they're laying them out correctly and they're using the right product. So we're getting there.

Sid: 

So you use the word mobility multiple times Immediately, we think when I hear the word mobility, I think about it's easy to move. Well, it makes something easy to move means it's on casters. Are you talking about something that is on casters, that needs to be moved, or just something that can be easily taken down and move somewhere else and put back up?

David: 

Yeah, a little about casters, yes, but we're also looking at technologies that keep us untethered.

So first of all, we start redefining occupancy, not based off of seat count but based off of work point, and a work point is anywhere an individual with a laptop can get Wi-Fi and power. So a conference room table that has eight seats is eight work points because we come in and we're working. So we have to start looking at a little bit different definition of where do I work. It's not necessarily in a six by eight box cubicle with panels around it, or 10 by 12 office with the desk in it. Those are also one point, one point, but we have lots of choices to work there. So that's part of the calculations of where can I work, and it starts to give us more options and more places to play.

But the other part that I think is fascinating is well, how do you do that and move it all around? I got to get a power cord somewhere. I got to plug it in. So now we're starting to see and there's a specific manufacturer that's really getting there and that, to me, is where things are really getting exciting. So we have the ability now to pick up a battery and stick it in a height adjustable table and it goes up and down for eight hours. Or we can stick it on a conference room table that doesn't have a plug in the floor, plug in and work for eight hours. We can now stick this battery power in a mobile monitor and roll that around. And now my couch with my laptop table has a screen Now I'm working with my laptop table has a screen now I'm working. So this is changing the game of the ability to move things around, because we're not stuck wherever the power plug is. We can actually go anywhere.

Sid: 

It's truly untethered, as you talked about earlier.

David: 

Truly untethered. It's the product line. Yeah, yeah, oh is it a product line. It is. Oh, I didn't know that. Sorry, I didn't know that. Sorry, I didn't know that. Technion Untethered yeah.

Sid: 

Technion Untethered Okay.

David:

It's brilliant and interesting.

Sid: 

Well, we'll be sure to drop a link in the show notes to that product so people can go check it out, and this podcast is not sponsored by Technion Untethered.

David: 

I get nothing from it either.

Sid: 

This is not a paid ad, no, but I am curious. Let's go back for a minute. You talk about the office furniture manufacturers. That, in your view. I'm going to frame a little bit of what you said. We're not moving fast enough, we're not changing fast enough, we still are thinking about the gray cubicle box and the one size fits all versus the dynamic workplace. And you said something and you almost said it now, but you said it in our pre-discussion and I'd like for you to say it again about the furniture manufacturers.

David: 

Oh no, I want you to say it.

Sid: 

Okay, I'll say it. I'm not afraid. The people listening know that I'm not afraid to say controversial things. So David shared with me in our pre-call, and I'm going to quote him, that the furniture world needs to quit playing it safe. Tell me what you mean by that.

David: 

Well, you know, it's a lot of it's safety in mass right. We talked about this 100 years ago when Knoll came out with A3, which was their antithesis of the open office, with the tents that go around the cubicle and this idea of trying to huddle in. That was revolutionary at the time. Right Now, okay, it wasn't particularly successful product line, but it showed innovation and it showed a commitment from the manufacturer to push the envelope and to solve a problem which was open offices are too open and how do we create something in between? And I miss those days, sid. I miss those days of innovation and pushing boundaries. But now there's no excuse. We actually have a real need and what's happening, I feel, is it's hey, I'm set up to make panels, so I'm going to keep making panels as opposed to going. The panels are a dinosaur. We need to move on.

Sid: 

And the market share of people buying panel system is continuing to decrease, right, and they're buying more ancillary products. They're buying more untethered things, as you've talked about, right, so the people making are vast, but the market share, people buying continues to shrink. So more and more people are fighting for a limited market supply, right, but you reminded me of something, so we'll play just fairness to all the not all, but some of the brands. Most of the listeners know I worked at Hayworth for many, many years. You worked at a Hayworth dealer for many years. So back in the 1990s some odd like 98, maybe early 2000s, I don't remember exactly the timing Hayworth brought out a product line called Crossings.

David: 

Yeah.

Sid: 

And it was all mobile metal, metal paint, weird mdf shaped work surfaces, screens, and those of us that have been selling unigroup in places, right, we're like what the heck is this now that product is gone. But what you're saying back then for hayward, just like for noel, it was very innovative, very revolutionary. What you're saying is we need to go back to those times now, because the workplace needs those types of innovative products.

David: 

It's no longer just an idea, it's an actual solving of a new problem, and I feel like the furniture industry plays it safe. They are issuing another again back chair like okay, guys, really we can do better. We we have to do better. And what I do as a designer is I have to take parts and pieces from three or four different manufacturers and hobble together a solution as to creating an entire ecosystem around a solution, and that's what I'm waiting for the manufacturer to show up with. Here's the solution that really does everything we needed to do, and then some battery power, mobility, flexibility, kit of parts, easy reconfiguration, easy plug and play. It can be done, but we need a manufacturer to just and I believe that if someone shows up, if a manufacturer shows up with this solution, it will be a rock star, because I think this is an actual need, not a theory, not a forward thinking A3, but a need. Now I'm hoping it comes. We'll see in June it's coming.

Sid:

We sure will, won't we? Okay? So I understand what you're saying, but as a small business of a brand that sells unique products there are a lot of us out there I don't want them to come up with the one-stop shop for you. I still want you to have to come to the innovative small businesses that are risk takers that will show unique and different things, right, so I don't want them to come up with it. Sorry, guys, but somebody is going to come up with it. But we also understand the product development cycle. Time is 12 to 24 months Once they decide they're going to do it. But before they decide to do it, there's years worth of skunk works and research and development and testing and spending millions of dollars to is it really real, before they even say, hey, yes, let's go. And then, once they say, yes, let's go, it's 24 months at least before it's actually really to market.

David: 

Yeah, and it's, you know, it's a, it's a dinosaur approach, right? I mean, these bigger manufacturers just are not as nimble as the smaller ones, right? And so I you know, maybe in my third iteration of my career I'll be a product development person, because I really love the mechanic furniture and also understanding it on a user side and on the dealership side how do I actually move things around?

And then I also want the experience to be something that is truly remarkable and is really supporting these concepts and the needs, and I think that's where the furniture industry needs to step up, because it's time. It's time. It's been too long. Okay, we're past COVID now when are y'all? So let's hope someone raises their hand in June. We'll see what happens in the economy.

Sid: 

It's going to be very interesting. You're going to have to have a follow-up with me. Let me know if you saw something you got to be sure you stop by our showroom and tell me if you saw something that was revolutionary. So, david, as it relates to this whole conversation, the things you've been talking about and the furniture world needs to quit playing it safe and mobility, and the dynamic work model or the dynamic design Are you the outlier in this or in your industry, your community of workplace strategists? Is it 80, 20, 80, 20, 80% agree with you, 20% don't, or vice versa. But I mean, where is the industry from? Workplace strategy as it relates to this conversation, and I'm sure it's a guess, but Well, the term workplace strategist gets tossed around quite a bit.

David: 

You know every design firm has a workplace strategist right. Every major real estate brokerage firm has a workplace strategy team and group. I feel like there are levels to every industry's nomenclature. I feel that and when I was in the interior design industry you know you feel like interior design is the most important thing. It is critical to a project. Then when you go into the real estate brokerage side of things, you realize it's a very small sliver of a much bigger process. You start to learn things around like labor analytics and psychographic information. Now you start looking at other type of consultative services around finances and feasibility studies, and there's just so much more meat on the bone.

Yes, design is important, but it's the end result of all the studying and thinking. So I would like to think my gut feeling is there's not as many workplace strategists in the way that I define. So in other words, there's probably not that many people working at such a diverse, dynamic level of thinking. Because we're forced to. We have to think laterally and horizontally and in all directions, because that's the nature of what we do in a real estate brokerage side, and so we're forced to kind of think outside the box, but I would imagine that this is not unusual.

Concepts, right, these are. And how do I know that? Well, we are looking at our competitors, right, so we see, and they are doing similar things. What I think we do best at Cresa here's my Cresa plug is we found a way to do it in a simple way. Design firms and other brokerage houses got things pretty complicated a lot of different terminologies, too many different subcategories. We tried to really keep it simple and clean, keep it down to a few factors and a few ideas, because clients were just overwhelmed. When we first got out of COVID and we were starting to really discuss these conversations, we botched it. To be honest, it was too many new ideas too fast.

What we learned was to pace and to simplify and to go at a very programmatic approach, a very systematic approach. That helped clients absorb new ideas. It gave us a chance to go on that journey with them and really be uh, we call it mutual exploration. We're really learning from each other, back and forth, back and forth. So I think that people you know who think in in this arena at this level I think are are fairly consistent with the philosophy. We just approach it all a little differently, but it's not. It's not wildly different is what I'm saying. How you apply solutions, of course, is every man's game and every woman's game right, so we're looking at those, depending on the existing conditions. I love getting into the mindset of executive teams who think and feel differently and different industries. We're doing a couple of non-profits right now. They're fascinating. They, their whole ethos is so different than typical corporate America. 

So you have to pivot as a workplace. You have to be able to resonate and connect with new ways of thinking, different approaches to the corporate structure, so they play differently, so you have to play with them, and I love that part of our job. We're continually evolving our approaches, betting on industry and unique needs of individual clients and specific conditions around the project at hand.

Sid: 

Well, so I have two things I want to comment to that. The first one is what I I'm going to recap. What I heard you say about this is that there are a lot of different business models, have workplace strategists or workplace strategy as part of their business offering or their business package, right? Or a business unit Could be real estate, could be interior design firm, could be a dealership, could be a manufacturer, and you're all looking at it from different lenses and may come up with different solutions, but I think the concept is still, which leads me to my second point. The concept is still there, which is what you're doing is truly solving workplace challenges and the problems, the business problems that these companies have, through looking at it in different ways, using data as a guide to really help solve the business problem, like you described with a software company.

David:

We are true consultants, but we're not Deloitte. Deloitte does all this work and hands you a big, giant report and says good luck. We are consultants that hand you a report and then we translate that into the physical world. So we take the journey with the client and we keep going because that's the joy for me is to see the physical world. So we take it the journey with the client and we keep going, because that's joy for me is to see the end result.

Sid: 

Sure, that's the best part.

David: 

It's the best part, right, Sid? So you've got all this great strategy phase and you're discovering and creating new ideas, and then you get to really design and do conceptual work. Sure, and we do furniture design, we do like floor plans and layouts and finish palettes, and then we pass it to our design friends and and really let them continue to march. But then we're still there for the journey, right we're still paying attention, making sure all the work we did in the beginning gets really uh, produced at the end that's so awesome. 

It's fun. It's fun. We also do a lot of consulting work around change management.

Sid: 

You would have to. You would have to.

David:

It's almost like a basic necessity, because these ideas are so different. If your population is not prepared for change, it will fail. You could do everything right I say this to executives all the time. You could have the perfect design, the perfect location, the perfect building, the perfect on budget Everything can go great, but if your people don't adopt, we have all failed. Yeah, and so we really have to look at change management as the piece that goes along with the strategy work, because it really brings people along.

Sid: 

So when you're doing this work, you're right, change management is critical. So when you're doing this work, because you're right, change management is critical, but when you're doing this work, how much of a role does the generational gaps or the age of the employees play in some of the decisions that we make, or you make? Because we hear a lot about the boomers, the Gen Xers like me, and then the millennials and then the Gen Zs like my kids, coming into the workplace. What role does that play in some of this decision making?

David: 

Huge because it depends on the population right. It also depends on a succession planning. Where are we going? So right now we're working with a client in Orange County and the leadership team has said look, our senior staff, they're all leaving and so they're important, we need to listen to them, but actually they're really not thinking like our younger generations. So as much as we love our senior staff, you have to take some of their commentary with the grain of salt, because we have to actually look at the folks who are coming, because they're the new leaders and the new drivers. So every generation as you know all the research has been done is thinking and and reacts differently. I mean, I don't know how old you are so I'm not going to ask but I'm not enough to be able to see people like I don't.

I can't relate to these young folks anymore. Right, so, that's a reality and so? But who's making the decisions? Senior executives, who tend to be in older generations. So we need to educate them on how younger people think, which means we have to know how younger people think and how they engage in environments and what makes them successful. Younger people. That's all part of the mix, and so, of course, we ask you know we look at demographic information? Of course we do.

Sid: 

And we also expand it to go beyond.

David: 

We're looking at other factors that are more controversial DEI-type questions around sexual orientation. We're talking a lot about mental illness and mental concerns, so we're asking more difficult questions because we really want to make sure we understand the population.

Now some executive teams are uncomfortable with that and some are happy to engage in more broader questions. But these are relevant because what we're trying to do is fine-tune the user experience to make sure that we are thinking about people as individuals first, not as clumps, and we did that with the warehouse of workers. Everybody is going to thrive in the open office and that was it and there was no choice. So we're really looking in terms of making sure we're thinking of things like tactile surfaces and light levels, the ability to turn and dim a light switch. You know we didn't do that before it was all warehouse lighting on all sitting on. 

We're looking at things like motility and movement and trying to understand people's needs, how they perceive the world. You know that one employee that's hearing the hum of the HVAC and complaining about it. They perceive the world differently. We need to be more attuned to providing choice and the ability for the individual to find comfort, safety and strength in where they work. And that's a hard and tall order, but it means understanding the different levels of people, both in terms of the demographics and how they perceive the world. 

And I love this approach because it starts to make things much more human-centric, which is our big philosophy.

Sid:

Well, you said that. You said that in the beginning and you've actually said it a few times. Said that, you said that in the beginning and you've actually said it a few times the workplace is about the people and it's got to stay focused on the people for the people to succeed. And if the people succeed, the business succeeds, the business meets its goals. And it's got to be focused on the people. I mean, I've learned so much in this conversation with you I have no idea how long we've been going, which is absolutely okay.

But I got another question. So we and I think I know the answer to this question, but maybe I don't Is the high. Let's talk about the hybrid workplace, cause we hear a lot about hybrid workplace and this and that, and I actually had the opportunity to tour an end-users facility in January and on a Monday out in California and I walked in and it was like a ghost town. I like walk on a floor and there's 50 high adjustable tables and not a soul on the floor Right, and I made a comment like where's everybody he goes? Oh well, it's Monday, and people come in on a Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursdays. You're required to work three days a week, and so Mondays and Fridays this place is a ghost town, and so we talked about how he manages that and blah, blah, blah, which to me, that's my definition of a hybrid workplace. But what you described about the software company, I don't know that. I think of that as a hybrid workplace. So my question for you is is the hybrid workplace really real?

David: 

Yes.

The short answer is yes, but terminology here is important. Hybrid is a word that gets thrown around like Kleenex, I mean, it's a brand now but the way we define this spectrum of some amount of time in the office and some amount of time out of the office is flexible work. And within flexible work there are kind of three basic models. There is on-site co-located, we call it, which is mostly in the office, then on the office spectrum is remote first, which is mostly out of the office, and hybrid is the middle ground. Flexible work concept. It's basically the 50% in, 50% out. But what you're describing is the next level that we're really getting excited about, which is hybrid work scheduling when people show up. And that makes all the difference, because we're working with a client in Florida right now who has 100% assigned seating, which is a seating model, even though their people are only there three days a week, just like you exactly.

So, what happens in those two days when no one's there, it becomes a ghost town. So what we're trying to explore is why do we have this cubicle box or this office space that's just waiting for someone to show up and not getting used? And, by the way, we're paying for that and operating costs and air conditioning and building costs and rent and all the things that are associated with physical environment. So what this is with dynamic environments is trying to shift the mentality Again it's that on demand as needed use when you need it. 

Come in when you need it, but don't come in haphazardly. Come in with purpose. So, just like the example of our software company, they're coming in for a reason. We have to be here to get what we need to spend a month at home to work. So purposeful presence is a term used by Leesman. This is a global workplace consulting company.

Sid: 

And.

David: 

I love it. Purposeful presence is really using space smartly and we have people who are like, well, I only come in Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday because that's the mandate, and then you get that Monday, Friday and there's nobody there. Sometimes we have companies that say, just come in three days a week, so they'll come in whatever three days they want to work, but then their colleagues aren't there because we really haven't coordinated anything. So basically I'm working alone in the office. What was the point of driving in? So? Purposeful presence is coming in with a need and with a mission, with the right people at the right time. So it requires more work. It requires leadership and department leaders and directors to pay attention, because we want to make sure that we want to earn the commute. 

I love this Earn the commute. We want to drive in because we know we're going to get something we can't get at home, whether that's information, knowledge sharing, mentoring, social activity, connection, culture. All of those things happen in person best, but you can't just let it maybe happen and you can't just reserve the entire place for what something might show up. You have to really utilize square footage in a much more effective way and therefore you have to plan for it, and now we use technology tools to help us manage it. So these are room reservation systems and sensor technologies that are really paying attention to how spaces are getting used, so we don't again think well, we use that, use that, we use that room all the time, do we are we sure? Well, sensor actually says no and that says that only two people are showing up as opposed to six maybe we should reconfigure it. 

Oh, we can now, because we designed it to be reconfigured when the need arises. And that's not spending six months knocking down drywall and 12 months to order new furniture. That's using what we have and reconfiguring it. So there's the magic. So this is really. You know, data doesn't stop once we have movement. Data keeps going. We need to continually reassess and evaluate our spaces to make sure they're really working, because it's a huge investment. Sure, get it right. We want to serve and have that space serve appropriately.

Sid: 

So I haven't been into an office and I couldn't tell you how many years. Yeah, which is OK. I'm very comfortable working from home and my four walls. We get along really well, you got a nice plan. 

Yeah, yeah, I got a plan. I got a nice plan. Yeah, yeah, I got a plan. I got a picture. I got a light right. I got all the good stuff Access to natural light out my windows, right. There you go. But I got a high-disposable desk and a good ergonomic chair right. But I think about going into an office with intention, as you talked about earlier, and I get there and the community that I want to be with is not there that day because there was no purpose around other than, oh, it's Tuesday, I want to go into the office today and then you miss out on. I think one of the biggest benefits of an office space is the community, is the people, is the gathering and the connection that happens when you are there in a space. So I love purposeful presence so that you know when everybody's going to, because I don't mind working from home, but I can imagine sitting on a floor that's designed for 60 people and there's two of us there.

David: 

How eerie that must feel and wasteful, because why did I come in and sit by myself? I could sit by myself at home? Correct and wasteful. Because why did I come in and just sit by myself? I could sit by myself at home? Correct, absolutely. And I I think that's really you know, I I have clients who say well, you know, the office is dead. The office is not dead, it's just redirected. 

It is serving a different need because the technology and we've already proven this we all know we can work it all. We can all work at all. We did it for two years in covid and none of these companies went out of business. It can be done. But should it be done? And the answer is no. The answer is we need connection with people, physical, not in a little zoom box, yep, physical, face-to-face connection. We are biologically wired for that. So this, this is not going away. But we have to do it with intent and we have to have the environment serve that intent. So the process of workplace strategy is understanding the why. What is the why for space? Once we know the why, we can design accordingly. We have to listen to our people, we have to listen to the data, we have to use these tools to create environments that make people successful and when we do that we've got successful businesses. 

We have have the employees stay and if they stay they're making the business thrive and we can also maybe save some money and maybe save some space too, Like there can be other benefits to these great new, dynamic work environments. They are smarter in how they use space.

Sid: 

So this has all been very fascinating and I'm going to listen to the episode probably three times and take multiple notes and get more notes than I have currently right now. But what advice, outside of playing safe, would you give to the furniture sellers and the furniture people listening to the show? What advice would you give to us about what we should be doing to help support what you're doing?

David: 

Oh, you know, I feel like the concepts around furniture start in the process of discovery early. So build relationships with these strategists around the country and around the world, listen and learn from them, become part of their process, become integral in the solution making. I love working with furniture designers and dealerships here in Atlanta way early to start covering up and understanding what's available and I know furniture pretty well, but I don't know everything, of course. So become that partnership and understand that there is a real need for the understanding of how the furniture solutions marry to that particular project and problem solving. And I think once you build those relationships, you're going to be successful in many ways. And the manufacturers, like I said, step up, take a risk, push yourselves, see the bigger picture. I hope they step up, you know, take a risk, push yourselves, see the bigger picture, I hope. I hope they're doing it now. We'll see, but I think that's a big part of it, because we we can only do, we can only work with the parts we have.

Sid: 

Sure.

David: 

So hopefully we're going to have more places and more things to play with.

Sid: 

So to the sellers that are listening, the dealership sellers, the independent rep sellers that are listening, what I heard David say was we need to become more of a consultative sale. We need to be sharing information, sharing ideas, not trying to sell the latest and greatest meshback cash chair right Features and benefits. 

Yeah, we need to forget all that. We need to build relationships and really try to be consultative to what you're consulting to with your clients, because we never know what your needs are. And I will also say, at least from my perspective, I don't know how often in my dealership past or in my manufacturing world that I truly called on a workplace strategist. But one of the biggest challenges facing the sellers of the world today is access, and that's access to the architectural and design community, to the specifiers of our product. It becomes very difficult. You know, we get there's an hour long slot once a quarter and four manufacturers share it and we get 15 minutes each and it's impossible to share who we are, what we do. 

I wrote an article about this called 15 minutes of fame. You know we do. It's impossible to share what we do. So I say all that and we love the A&D community and if you're an interior designer working at a firm and you want to come on my show and talk about how we work with the A&D community today, I would love for you. That's a shout out to anybody that's an A&D person that would like to come and talk about this, because I would love to talk about this. I think it's one of the biggest challenges facing the sellers, right? But I say all that to say, David, is there that golden gate around workplace strategists, the way it is around the interior design community? Are you guys easier to get to? I hope so, Okay.

David: 

So this is a long, this is a whole other episode, like you said, but there is a definite change in the interior design industry. 

I have been in the industry for over 30 years and you know when I was a young'un we were the project managers we were the furniture experts, we were more than just cranking out a set of construction drawings, and what my fear has become is that the furniture specification and knowledge is another critical component to successful interior design, and it's a lost art. There are fewer and fewer interior designers, in my opinion, that know how to actually specify furniture and understand the process. So what I'm seeing in the dealership side is that designers will put together lots of Instagram pictures on a page. 

Some of them are, you know, stuff from Wayfair, which are not even commercial furniture and hand it to a dealership, and the dealership has to kind of translate that into something. So this is becoming a lost art in the interior design. It's a skill set we've given up, along with project management, which we gave up, and I know this is going to be controversial, but I miss the days when we were really the quarterback for all these different universes around the design process. Now I feel like the industry is pressured to just do what it does best stamp a set of drawing and crank out a set of CDs faster, cheaper, faster, cheaper. 

And the other thing that's not being happened to young designers is the understanding that the furniture industry is not a salesperson. They're your business partner. You need their resource. You need the carpet reps information about you know, nylon yarn. You need the dealership's understanding of timelines about furniture. You need to understand where lighting is specified and where it comes from. If we are not, as designers, embracing these people as our business partners and tools for success to our own clients, we've missed a huge opportunity to service our clients best. 

And that too, this limited, restricted access, this 15 minutes of fame it drives me crazy Because when I was a younger designer when I was a project manager at Gensler back in San Diego, we opened that door to our partners and we made sure that we took care of them and they took care of us and we made better designers and we serviced our clients better. So that's a whole different conversation, but I really do hope that there is a renaissance around the understanding of how critical that these skill sets of our suppliers and our product specialists and our dealerships provide us, because we can't know everything as a design.

Sid: 

So what I appreciate about what you just said is that those of us that sell the tangible product you reference carpet, tile, lighting, furniture, all of us that are in this category I typically say furniture, but all of us that are on this side of the fence is the better way to say it is that we are your business partners and thank you. Thank you for saying that You're not a vendor.

David: 

I hate the word vendor. It belittles anyone that's taking care of this industry business partners. I really truly believe in that wholeheartedly, and and if I am taken care of by my business partner and they've invested in a project, you bet to sure as hell I'm going to take care of them because it's a relationship and we need each other and so if we in those terms, it's a win-win for everyone. Look, I get it. You make money, you feed your family with sales. Completely understand that as a designer, it is my job to be respectful of your time and your commitment to me and my client. So if I see you as a business partner, I will make sure I'm not flippant or wasteful or I'm not valuing your time in the process. 

I really truly believe in that partnership concept and I just wish that was more prevalent in the design industry and more taught by senior designers who had to live through. You know I need you phase because it was a different world 20 years ago.

Sid: 

You know, we'll see what happens.

David:

I'm hoping it changes and continues to evolve.

Sid:

So, David, I cannot tell you how excited I am that we had this conversation today. I mean, we covered so many topics and all very informative. I learned a lot. I appreciate the advocacy that you have for us as sellers. I also appreciate how you challenged our side of the industry to do better, to think differently, to step up and be brave and to share new things and new ideas and bring it out. Let's go. And so I really appreciate that. I appreciate you being an advocate for us and I can't wait to opportunity to actually meet you in person, though I think we may have met in person once or twice before. We talked about this on our pre-call. We think we know each other from past lives but can't really pinpoint it. But we're going to find out for sure, hopefully one day. David, thank you very much for being here today. If our community would like to get in touch with you, what is the best way for them to do that?

David: 

You can email me at dstella@ Cresa.com. That's C-R-E-S-A.com.

Sid:

I would love to hear from anyone and thank you for this time. It's been amazing. We're going to drop your show notes. We're going to drop your email in the show notes along with your LinkedIn profile. Please, if you're listening and you reach out to David, let him know. You heard him here on the Trend Report. David, once again, thanks for being here.

Outro:

Thanks all of you for listening into this conversation today. Hope to see you again in a couple of weeks and go out there and make today great. Everyone, take care, thank you.