Ep. 11: Unispace’s Emily Watkins. The Future of Workspaces and Hybrid Working Models
In this episode, Darren Reinke chats with Emily Watkins, Regional Principal at Unispace. Emily discusses the future of workplaces, how companies are engaging employees in an in person/remote hybrid set-up, the impact of new workplaces on employees and leaders, and what leaders should be thinking about from a workplace perspective.
Unispace’s mission is to revolutionize the creation of the workplace. They are a global interior design firm who offer an agile, end-to-end experience rooted in industry-leading workplace insights and fit for today’s ever-evolving global brands.
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SHOW NOTES
How Unispace is Revolutionizing the Office Space [1:00]
How Companies are Reconfiguring Layouts to Promote Flexibility [5:44]
What Companies are Doing to Better Engage their Employees in this Next Normal [7:48]
Why Investing in Technology is Critical to Successful Implementation [13:12]
Why Focusing on Change Management Increases Engagement [14:46]
Maintaining Collaboration Within a Flexible Workspace [19:01]
Why Flexible Work Spaces are no Longer Limited to Tech Companies [21:17]
The Importance of Managing to Outcomes [22:34]
Why it May Take 5-7 Years for Flexible Work to become the Next Normal [24:30]
Risk Management Practices to Assess Your Company’s Real Estate Assets [26:45]
Emily’s Journey into Commercial Real Estate [31:28]
Emily’s Career Advice for Those Interested in Commercial Real Estate [34:55]
SHOW LINKS
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PODCAST TRANSCRIPT
Darren Reinke: Welcome to The Savage Leader Podcast, where I interview leaders from all walks of life so that you can walk away with tips to apply to your life and your career. But this isn't your traditional leadership podcast because I believe that leadership tips come from successful entrepreneurs and business executives, of course. Still, they also come from unexpected places, like Navy SEALs, successful professional athletes, sports coaches, musicians, entertainers, and more. So let's dive right into today's episode; my hope is you walk away with something tangible that you can apply immediately to your life in your career. Today's guest on the savage leader podcast is Emily Watkins. Emily is the regional principal at UNISPACE, a company that's revolutionizing the creation of the workplace. She also held senior real estate roles at companies like Gap, Charlotte Russe in JLL. Emily, thanks for coming on.
Emily Watkins: Thanks, Darren. I'm happy to be here. Happy to
How Unispace is Revolutionizing the Office Space [1:00]
Darren Reinke: Have you as well. So can you talk to me a little bit about what you guys were doing at UNISPACE?
Emily Watkins: Yeah, absolutely. So UNISPACE has actually completely revolutionized the way we create physical space for the workplace. And so what I mean by that is, traditionally, the process has been sort of very lengthy and cumbersome in terms of organizations getting into commercial space, whether that is hiring an architect, bidding out to contractors, identifying your programming and strategy for what your space should look like. And it's actually also kind of right for a lot of finger pointing in terms of, you know, oh, that's the architect's fault. Oh, that's the contractor's fault. And so what UNISPACE has done is really come in and integrated all of the workplace strategy, the architectural design and the construction, so that it's actually more of an iterative approach, as opposed to kind of more of a waterfall approach.
Darren Reinke: Yeah, it's such an interesting time to even have this conversation, because so much is happening in the marketplace with a shift to work from home, and now more of a hybrid model, and then just things seem to be changing day to day. So What trends are you seeing in terms of how companies are handling remote versus in person workers? Like, what are you seeing on the street?
Emily Watkins: So I mean, it's pretty significant. There's a lot of change going on right now. And you have companies on a lot of different parts of the spectrum, where you have some organizations that have just been sort of really out there in terms of being forward looking about thinking about abandoning the office. So you've got kind of that whole group on one side of the spectrum. And then on the other side of the spectrum, you have people who are kind of really skeptical around, oh, it's going to come back to business as usual. And we need to do it as soon as possible. And then you've got sort of everybody in between, right. And so the spectrum and of these perspectives is just so broad right now. And I think that it's, it's probably not going to settle for quite some time. So some things that we're seeing, and I'll give you just kind of a little bit of background on where space and physical space as it can support organizations and support their workforces has come is we went from like, oh, everybody's in an office to Oh, everybody's in a sea of cubicles. And the reality is that, especially given the sort of millennials, and Gen Z years in the workforce these days, these people have figured out actually how to work through their device. And because of that, this whole concept of Oh, no, now you need to have collaboration space, and now you need to have learning space. And then you need to have heads down focus space. The true reality is that over the past few years, we've seen that a lot of workers have been able to work differently, remotely as well as in person. And so that concept of having like a very distinct layout within your space where people go to a certain place in order to do a certain function has evolved a little bit more toward truly focusing on actual business outcomes. And so what we're seeing is the ability to create flexible environments for your organization, is what people need to do in order to actually handle this hybrid environment. So one, it's a flexible workspace. So even and I mean, like literally physically, the ability to actually expand and contract different spaces within your actual physical space. Doing that on the one hand, and the other one is actually kind of taking your real estate portfolio and adopting things like work from anywhere solutions, where instead of actually leasing all of your office space you lease a much smaller portion of office space. And now you actually enable your employees to work from different environments, whether it is co working, whether it's a serviced office, whether it's literally just going and booking conference rooms for a half a day. So that type of thing, kind of coupled with using the space differently. It's just created this massive shift in how we think about workspace.
Darren Reinke: Yeah, I remember in the late 90s, this'll date me a little bit. But as an analyst at Accenture at a college, having the just in time workspaces, I always appreciated coming in on a weekend, and being able to select the partners office that had this beautiful view of the San Francisco Bay, which is fantastic. But just seeing how that's evolved over time is fascinating. Can you provide a tangible example, obviously, without naming the company about what a company's doing in terms of reconfiguring around some of those collaboration spaces and more flexibility?
How Companies are Reconfiguring Layouts to Promote Flexibility [5:44]
Emily Watkins: Yeah, definitely. So one client that we have right now is in the middle of actually building out space, that has much more capability to involve transitions. So like picture tracking in the ceiling, and big panels that are either whiteboards or different types of heavy kerning, whatever that might mean, they've got like this different way of actually designating space as opposed to building out full walls. So for example, and this is a professional services firm, if they have a Friday, where they've got massive people coming into the office who literally want to be on their phones and want to actually have a station, they can expand the area where they have people seated, right. But then during the week, if they've got more kinds of client conversations or things like that happening, they just can slide these panels over and create bigger areas within their collaboration space, or within their meeting space. So that's like a really specific example of how you can create a more flexible environment, because you have to really think about what is it that your employees need to be most productive, so that they don't spend, you know, the first 20 minutes of a meeting, trying to figure out where to sit down where to get connected, you know, oh, I don't have this room, I do have this room. So that's an example of the actual space that we're seeing. And an example of how organizations are starting to manage that is putting in place different types of technology solutions that can actually help employees kind of quickly sign up for what type of space that they need, so that they can keep it sort of open desking.
Darren Reinke: But what about from a people perspective? Obviously, it's a pretty big shift in terms of just managing people who can come in how they're booking them using different technologies. But what about from a management people perspective? What are you seeing in terms of what companies and leaders are doing?
What Companies are Doing to Better Engage their Employees in this Next Normal [7:48]
Emily Watkins: Yeah, so it's a great question, because the corporate real estate leaders have never been more connected to the chief HR officer. And what we see a lot happening within our clients is they're working hand in hand with the chief HR officer in terms of creating policy, and identifying how they can better support employees. So it's so interesting to me, because I kind of correlate this to some of my background. I started my career in retail in, you know, construction and architecture and real estate for retail. And so, when you're thinking about those retail spaces, you're immediately thinking about the experience that you're creating for the customer. Well, the office for so many years has been kind of like this captive audience, right? When people had to go into the office, they didn't have another choice. So now you have a situation where you don't need to have a captive audience. So you have to think completely differently about how to engage your workforce. So a lot of this is incorporating the chief HR officer Chief Experience officers really starting to think about what are the implications about how I need to be engaging my workforce, so that they actually want to come into my spaces and collaborate with their peers. And so that's a very different situation that is just requiring organizations to build really different capabilities. And if they hadn't been 150%, focused on the brand they need to be now because that is really what starts to create a culture and create an environment where your employees actually want to come engage with you and want to come engage with your spaces.
Darren Reinke:Yeah, it's all about the employee value proposition. So it's not just how we project our brain externally, but it's about that internal piece in terms of so that we can recruit, engage and retain employees.
Emily Watkins: Exactly. And it has to be He focused on the same thing that you're leveraging to think about how you're engaging your customers, right. So whatever business you're in, in order to truly sort of create a positive culture, you have to have something that people can kind of hold on to. And that really has been brand. And seeing organizations that do this successfully. They focus first on their brand, and really engage their employees to create the right experience that is attracting their customers. So when you can do this seamlessly, you have engaged employees who are truly focused on, you know, exactly how to engage your customers.
Darren Reinke: So what else in terms of what companies are doing in terms of that piece in terms of new compensation models, new recruitment models? Like what are you seeing in terms of that people perspective? What's happening?
Emily Watkins: Yeah, I think this is one to watch, because it will continue to evolve. So I definitely think there's conversation happening about where people need to be right, and you see it all over the place, Spotify just announced that they are going to be 100%, employee choice on where employees work, that's a lot of people that work for that company that now have complete choice about where they work, they're not going to dictate any kind of policy. So you have some of these things out there that are truly attracting talent to those companies because of the fact that they are creating such flexibility. So that I think is changing the story a lot. And it's giving the employee a lot more of an ability to actually kind of have a choice in what's going to be best for them. So what that means is that a lot of organizations are now having to kind of help employees not necessarily about putting in place really prescriptive models about how they need to work. But they actually need to give them the opportunity to kind of leverage different types of what we in the business like to call kind of personas about how you're using space and how you're engaging with your organization. It's also kind of creating a new paradigm for managers to have to think about how to engage with employees who are not physically next to me. And I think, you know, a lot of companies who have implemented remote models have identified how to do this remotely. And they're going to have a bit of a leg up on this, because it's not necessarily the easiest thing to do, when people are just sitting there, you have to actually spend the time to kind of schedule it into your day as a manager to check in with your employees, and identify kind of what's going on with them and how they're doing. So it's creating new models that HR organizations are needing to figure out how to help their broader management set, their leaders kind of, you know, move, you know, evolve their own management styles.
Darren Reinke: That's really interesting, because I think, in a virtual environment, I think the best leaders, the best managers are still going to thrive because they have strong communication skills. But it's tough when that person is not sitting next to you. They're not that captive audience, as you mentioned, it can be a real challenge for leaders to adapt. But I'd be curious in terms of what are you seeing in terms of some of the training and development opportunities that companies are implementing to adapt to this new model? But also, I'm just curious about when you're not prescriptive at all. What does that imply from a collaboration perspective? Because you have random people in the office, you have people, some are in person, some are virtual, how do you make the playing field equal? So that's two questions. So maybe take those separately, if you don't mind?
Why Investing in Technology is Critical to Successful Implementation [13:12]
Emily Watkins: Yeah, so I think leveraging technology is one way that a lot of organizations are starting to kind of figure this out. And I think that's actually really important. Because you have to be able to capture the data about what your employees are doing in order to really be able to modify your approaches and be able to make sure that you're helping. So there's a lot of different apps that are out there now about how to kind of manage that both the logistics of kind of post COVID getting everybody back into the office, but as well as how do I leverage understanding about how my employees are connecting with each other, and using my own company's space in order to be successful. And so I think that's going to continue, like really making sure that that data is available, and that we're actually capturing that data. So I think that is going to be a whole new paradigm and how we actually can kind of tap into our organizations and help our organizations. So I think that's a big one. And then in terms of like, what different types of policies and things like that, that either HR organizations are putting in place.
Why Focusing on Change Management Increases Engagement [14:46]
I think one of the big sorts of focuses is really kind of focusing on change management, as a way to Make sure that you're actually making it real. And so what I mean by that is a lot of organizations say things like, oh, yeah, we did our change management, we had a communication plan, like, well, you have to engage people, you have to physically engage people in conversation. And I don't mean physically necessarily always in person. But you have to actually tap into people in order to kind of capture their feedback, and get them to start talking and provide dialogue about what's working and what isn't working. In order to make it real. People really want that authenticity, they want to know that their organizations care about them and care about the experience that they're having. And so really putting in place a true change management program to kind of get people through these different levels of how they're going to work going forward is I think, what we're seeing be really successful, because then people truly can see that they had to say, so a lot of things like town halls that are happening, you know, where people have an ability to kind of submit thoughts and ideas and questions and see that the organization is actually responding to those is really important, and doing it in a lot of different media, right, whether you do in person, whether you do remote, whether you're allowing people to kind of submit questions in an online forum that's then visible to everybody, like just creating more authenticity and engagement with employees has got to happen in order to make sure that people are going to be successful.
Darren Reinke: Yeah, as interesting as I find co-creation to be such an important piece, whether it's developing a strategy to get buy-in, or in this case, if you're creating just radically different employee and working models. So it makes me think of almost what you're talking about in terms of design, thinking about how companies use empathy, to reach out to their customers, to better understand what those pain points are. Looks like, sounds like what you're talking about is applying that internally, understanding what people are concerned about and how to develop new models that address those concerns?
Emily Watkins: Absolutely. And I think companies are often very good at doing this with their customers, but not necessarily applying it to their internal teams, right? Because it's, you know, you just don't think, Oh, I've got to capture that now. But when the role of the employee shifts from being required to be in the office, from a certain timeframe, to not required, and they can go where they need to be according to kind of what's, you know, going to drive their own productivity. That's where you have to really focus on the employee experience. And I think the companies that do it successfully believe that the employee experience is just as important as the customer experience, because the employee experience is also what is going to deliver the best customer experience.
Darren Reinke: And especially just with the rise of the millennials, and the Gen z's in terms of purpose, and they want to work for a company that makes a difference in the world, absolutely that much more important now than ever.
Emily Watkins: Yeah, So sustainability is another trend that's coming up that's been around forever. But now it's evolved. I mean, there's so many other pieces related to creating a sustainable environment and your brand showing up in a sustainable way for your employees that then kind of can manifest itself onto your customers, right. So obviously, beyond kind of the typical safety features that employees want to see, like, you know, touchless, right, so not having to kind of touch doors to go into restrooms, or, or that sort of thing, to touchless faucets to touchless elevators. So that's a kind of a trend that's manifesting itself into physical space. That's becoming really important around making sure that wellness is a part of that sustainability conversation. Interesting.
Darren Reinke: Another topic you talked about, about collaboration. So what are companies doing? Because obviously, it's so important, especially when there's so much disruption out there, we need to really tap into collaboration to create breakthrough products that can deliver on marketplace needs. What are companies doing to ensure that given that companies like Spotify are giving 100% choice to their employees?
Maintaining Collaboration Within a Flexible Workspace [19:01]
Emily Watkins: Exactly. I think having the right technology tools to properly engage the hybrid or remote teams is huge. And that also kind of manifests itself into the physical space. So organizations are really focused on how to create environments that drive more innovation. So that might mean that they have more kinds of full experience immersion rooms where you know, you have a whole wall that could be all digital and you have a lot of different panels. You can bring different teams in depending on where they are, where they exist, leveraging different types of online collaboration tools, you know, mural boards are a great example of that where you can actually utilize an online tool but you can also have teams that are sort of together in person that can be working on different Parts of the same type of solution. So those are technologies that you can actually sort of implement in a physical environment. So people can still sort of be connected with what's happening, and not necessarily feel like they're outside of the group, if you have a handful of people together in a room, and then you have multiple people tapped in, you know, that are remote. So I think technology is going to be really critical for that. And really important, how some of this manifests itself into the physical environment that we're doing is in things like creating those immersion rooms, or creating different types of environments that allow people to kind of go into a space and either focus on driving creativity, right, it needs to be bigger, it needs to be colorful, you need to upgrade lighting, right, as opposed to a space that's going to be more conducive for you know, a group that is actually kind of having a meeting at a table. So I think this kind of concept of thinking about how you incorporate technology into these different types of physical spaces is going to be really important going forward.
Darren Reinke: So as you're describing these different setups, these all digital walls, I'm sure a lot of people may be thinking, Well, that seems more like technology companies, Silicon Valley, these leading edge organizations, what are some things that maybe some smaller organizations, perhaps some that are not out front is much in terms of what can they do? What should they be doing?
Why Flexible Work Spaces are no Longer Limited to Tech Companies [21:17]
Emily Watkins: Yeah, so coming into a huge space with a full wall of, you know, some kind of fancy digital technology, that's not so hard as it used to be, right? I mean, the idea of just putting a bunch of monitors on a wall, that's actually a lot more doable than it used to be. And because the actual technology that you can implement in those types of environments, there's so much of that now, so many people kind of coming up with new solutions for virtual work and virtual models, that it's actually a lot easier than you think you don't have to be a big technology company that, you know, has incredibly big budgets in order to implement these types of solutions. And we actually have seen it, you know, we see it with a lot of smaller organizations who actually want to create these types of environments so that they can really make sure that their people are being productive. So it isn't just for those people that have two really big budgets anymore.
Darren Reinke: That's good. I think accessibility is really important. Absolutely. Absolutely. I want to go back to something you said earlier in terms of managing outcomes. Can you talk about that, and what companies are doing to actually do that?
The Importance of Managing to Outcomes [22:34]
Emily Watkins: Yeah, so the idea of instead of being focused on what we used to say, we're sort of like the personas of your organization, right, I have accounting that needs to focus 100% on, I have a desktop and I'm, you know, 100% with my eyes in it, right. So instead of sort of saying, this is a back office function versus this is a, you know, sales facing function. Now, the focus is a lot more on the work that needs to get done. So if it is related to kind of business goals, then you can really figure out, okay, if this is an organization that has more sort of project related work, where they've got six weeks sprints, versus instead of just looking at an actual function and saying, therefore that person needs their own desk, that is what kind of gets you to sort of shift the conversation. So there's still a lot of organizations out there that believe in this kind of one to one model, where I have one individual that has their own desk. But as companies have gone through COVID, and they've seen their real estate assets sitting empty, and they've calculated how much they're spending on those assets on an annualized basis, they're starting to realize that there can be a different way to look at this, right? So instead of focusing on this is what an individual does for eight hours of the day. It's saying, what are the goals of that organization? Over the quarter, right? And so it's really kind of just shifting the way you think about this, in order to make people more productive, and focus on what they're trying to achieve, as opposed to what their job description looks like,
Darren Reinke: which is that much more important, especially if the people are not sitting right in front of you.
Emily Watkins: Exactly, exactly. So really being more kind of goal oriented on what you're trying to accomplish as a business.
Why it May Take 5-7 Years for Flexible Work to become the Next Normal [24:30]
Darren Reinke: So what are some of the implications of this whole next normal, perhaps in terms of what's going to happen moving forward? It's smaller commercial spaces, it's more agility. What should companies be doing or thinking about to adjust to that next normal?
Emily Watkins: Yeah, so we see companies really looking at their whole portfolio and remember real estate portfolios, you know, they have often longer term leases that they have to be thinking about, so I don't think you're going to See, all of this manifests itself for probably another five to seven years as organizations kind of get through their releases of their portfolios. But there is a big focus on portfolio optimization right now. So how do I look at all of the space that I inhabit? How do I lay that according to kind of where my employees live, and according to kind of the work that they need to get done, so there has been a significant shift in thinking about that, in the past, it used to be, oh, I need an office, if I've got, you know, a new project, or I've got a business extension or something that's going on in a particular area. And that's really no longer necessary. There's so many different models out there where you can leverage space that isn't necessarily your own leased space. And what that is allowing organizations to do is kind of cut their portfolios, in some cases, up to you know, 40%, sometimes more, but it's allowing organizations to cut their portfolios and then reinvest in the spaces that they want to keep, in order to truly make them more engaging and more enticing for employees to kind of come in and interact with each other. And so that's actually kind of it's, it frees up a lot of capital for organizations to rethink that, you know, the other thing that is happening is organizations are implementing these work from anywhere solutions, that let them leverage space that is not necessarily their own. So that in and of itself is creating the kind of management that needs to take place. And so doing that in a way where organizations can see what their employees are doing, is becoming more and more important.
Darren Reinke: Yeah, I think, to most people, at least, if they're being honest, I wonder actually how many companies actually had a pandemic as part of their risk management strategy. But that's a topic for a different day. But it's interesting that you almost need to take that same approach now to real estate, because what you're describing is something very different five to seven years out than what we have now, or we had in the last few years. So what should companies be doing in terms of thinking about real estate assets from a risk management perspective?
Risk Management Practices to Assess Your Company’s Real Estate Assets [26:45]
Emily Watkins: Yeah, it's a good question. And we see some looking in more conservative ways. And then we see some people being really aggressive, and saying, you know, what, I'm going to cut half of my space. And I'm going to go, you know, to the other side of the spectrum, and then I'm going to learn from my employees sort of what they want, and how they're working and how successful they are over the next, you know, 12 24 months, and then I'm going to make other decisions to determine whether or not I sort of need to go back into space. So a lot of that is what we're seeing happening right now. And I think it's going to be really interesting to watch, because I know, organizations have had business continuity plans in place. But those business continuity plans have been a lot more focused on things like, “Oh, if there's a natural disaster, and I have a big earthquake, or whatever it might be right. And then my plan is I'm going to relocate all my employees to this particular area.” But there hasn't been any kind of planning that says, “What happens if 100% of my organization needs to quickly become remote, and then decides that they like it.” So that's exactly what we've just gone through. We've gone through an exercise that has really proven to every organization across the globe that they can be productive in a remote environment. And that has been pretty new to a lot of organizations. And so now, how do we react to that and find kind of like the right middle ground with identifying? Do we want to have a hybrid bottle, you know, do we want to actually go a lot more along the route of like what Spotify did and said that I don't know, nobody has to come in unless they want to come in. So I think we're gonna be in a really interesting learning environment over the next 12 to 24, maybe 36 months as we really figure this out. But I think the most important thing is for organizations to measure it, you know, they've got to make sure that they're tracking, how is this working for people, and not just, you know, a quick survey to identify if they're happy, it's, they really need to measure how their employees are doing against their business goals, if they're being productive, what's helping them be productive, what's challenging them. And so getting kind of that data around this is I think, going to be really, really critical in order to help support the conversation going forward.
Darren Reinke: Data is always critical. And it's interesting to think about what's happening, because it seems like this was only a conversation for bricks and mortar, retail companies, and now it's really in the boardrooms of organizations because they've had this just foundational shift. What's happened in the last year?
Emily Watkins: Absolutely. I mean, I love that analogy because I started my career in retail. And I remember very clearly the big threat that our online business was posing to our physical business. And so retail really has a leg up on the rest of us, I think, because they've already gone through this massive shift, where they have seen what being digital first really needs to be for their employees and for their customers. And so you know, this idea that it isn't either or it's all of it together. And so I think we can really kind of look at some lessons learned from retail organizations, and how they've pivoted to connect with their customers, the way we want to think about our employees. Because the reality is that the retail customer used to be the captive audience going into the physical space, if they wanted to engage with that brand, and they wanted to buy something. Well, it's been, what, 20 years now that they haven't had to do that. So it's a really good example of how a customer can engage with your brand, and needs to have kind of a customer journey that literally starts digitally, and probably ends digitally, but can leverage physical spaces kind of all the way in between. So that's something that's near and dear to my heart, because I've seen it and I've lived it. And you know, it was tough for retailers to shift and to think about how online and in store can coexist successfully.
Darren Reinke: Actually, I'd love to shift gears on that note, because it's interesting that when I went to business school, everyone's going into real estate or transitioning into real estate, and then it became everyone's going to technology. And now I think real estate is sexy again, just there's a lot of excitement there and so much change and opportunity. I'd love to hear a little bit about your career path and how you got into corporate real estate, and what are some of the opportunities and what excites you most about it?
Emily’s Journey into Commercial Real Estate [31:28]
Emily Watkins: Yeah, definitely. So I started my career, actually, with gapping on the project management side. So building out stores, that was actually how I started my career at the time, gapping was building about 600 stores a year. So it was just this crazy growth. And we had a really large organization in San Francisco that was actually getting all of that done. So that's where I started my career. And I moved into real estate, when there was a gap shortly before I got my MBA. And when I moved into real estate, I was focused a little bit more on kind of asset management and portfolio management and process. And that's where I got really interested in how to create a more efficient process around developing your real estate that was kind of both on the store side as well as on the corporate side. So real estate for retail was pretty fascinating, because it was really fast paced, and it was a really critical component of the business because you're building the revenue spread, right? The sooner you can get that store open, the sooner you can start earning money for the organization. So it was a really, it was a great place to kind of learn the business and grow up in the business. And from there, I moved over to JLL and held a really exciting role within their occupier group, developing new products and services as their director of innovation. And that was so much fun because JLL has always been a thought leader around developing new technologies and new ideas to kind of help service their clients because they've always been such a kind of customer first organization. And then from there, I went back to retail and worked for Charlotte Russe for some of my mentors from gapping, the first time around. And that was a lot of fun. At a crazy time in the business, though, when the retail world was sort of continuing to really go downhill from a physical space perspective, and you needed to be so on top of what you're doing in your physical environment. And you really needed to be rethinking how you were strategizing around your locations, because you had to incorporate the impacts to online that as an organization, we had never really done that before. So thinking about how a physical space can actually engage your customers in a way that can manifest itself into online business as well. So that was a really, really interesting time to be in that business. And then I went back to JLL. A lot of people that work at JLL ended up going back. It's a really wonderful organization. But I went back there to help build out their flexible space products and their flexible space business. So I'm a good example of, it's not just brokerage, right? It's not just transactions that need to get done within a corporate real estate environment. There's so many different facets of that world that are exciting and engaging. And more and more when you think about corporate real estate and office environments. They are really focused on the experience that you're trying to create for your employees because they are a great catalyst for attracting and retaining talent.
Darren Reinke: Sounds like a lot of fun, a lot of diversity in terms of the roles that you've had.
Emily Watkins: Yes, yes, definitely. I've never been bored. I'll put it to you that way.
Emily’s Career Advice for Those Interested in Commercial Real Estate [34:55]
Darren Reinke: So what advice do you have for people who would think, “Wow, that sounds really exciting,” if they want to get into this new line of work? What career tips would you give them?
Emily Watkins: I would say get involved with different organizations that are out there. Cornette. From a commercial real estate perspective, as you look at occupiers in office, I think ICSC in terms of on the retail real estate side, there's great organizations that are doing really, really good work and developing thought leadership around where the industry is going, I think that's a terrific way to learn, I think, take a class, reach out to people to kind of, you know, pick their brain, expand your network, and really put out there you know, who you're interested in connecting with and learning from, and get specific, right. So I want to talk to people that work at these specific companies so that I can learn more about this business, I have found that people in corporate real estate are really wonderfully, incredibly talented people, and they want to help and they want to engage. And they're really interested in mentoring people and talking to people and engaging people. There's a lot of different facets to this business. And so I think there's definitely a lot to learn, especially when you also then think about operating these spaces, and what it takes to actually focus on making a facility successful, facility management and Property Management both on the landlord side as well as on the occupier side. So there's a lot of different facets to it, which I think is really exciting. And it's a really great space to be in right now. Because it is absolutely in the midst of disruption. And I always love to run to disruption. Because I think it's a lot of fun, it's really interesting and requires that you have big thinking and that you get excited about doing something that could be very different every day.
Darren Reinke: Yeah, great advice. And just one point, I think is really interesting is just this idea of mentorship, and that it's really an honor to actually mentor other people. And I know when people have reached out in the past, hey, I'd love some advice. I'm flattered and humbled and happy to give my time.
Emily Watkins: I agree. And I think that we have a lot to learn from people who are asking us to mentor them as well. And I've always liked that mentality. When I was really young in my career, a woman that mentored me said, I expect to learn from you too. And I thought, really, how, what are you going to learn from me? You know, but I think that's more important now than ever. I mean, think about, you know, younger people who are digital natives, and how those digital natives can really help us think differently about being digital first, that's a huge agenda. That's kind of like on every organization's list of thinking right now. And a lot of that can kind of be accomplished through these different types of mentorship programs where, you know, you're learning from a younger generation that just has a different perspective.
Darren Reinke: Yeah, what a great example. Yeah, I think reverse mentoring is so important. I know, a few of my mentors, someone that mentored me, also look for me in that similar way. And I was blown away. But also another gentleman that I was mentoring. He's been incredibly helpful to me over the years.
Emily Watkins: Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Darren Reinke:Well, Emily, I know you're really busy. I really appreciate your time and some fabulous insights. So thanks for coming on.
Emily Watkins: Of course, always happy to.
Darren Reinke: Thanks for listening to today's episode of The Savage Leader Podcast. My hope is you walk away with tactics that you can apply to become a better leader in your life and in your career. If you're looking for additional insight in tactics, be sure to check out my book titled The Savage Leader 13 Principles to Become a Better Leader From The Inside Out. Also, be sure to subscribe to the podcast and I would truly appreciate it if you would leave a review and also rate the podcast. Thanks and see you in the next episode.