Successful organizations, over the last decades, have shown a remarkable ability to adapt to new ways of doing business, improve processes, and increase productivity. Just by looking at a few examples of common business operations - project management or workforce planning for example – we can illustrate that: organizations move freely from project management approach to project management approach, adopting changing paradigms and methodologies (e.g. scrum, waterfall, agile, etc.) with ease. Changes in the workforce and shifting priorities have led to significant developments in our workforce and impact how, where, and when people show up for work (home office, open concepts, flexible hours, etc.).

Today’s global leaders look and feel significantly different than the organizations they were 20 years ago, and if anyone would look at a firm and see rows of 6 feet high cubicles, time stampers, and even desktop computers they would immediately think how outdated that organization was. And – if they are looking for a job – run away as fast as possible. Organizations have evolved impressively and almost all aspects of a successful business have been subject to change. In short: successful businesses know how to implement change and do so freely.

 

If we are the most innovative economy out there, why are we still building our buildings like 75 years ago?

How come that those exact same organizations, with change and innovation so ubiquitous, still approach their built environments like it was 1950? What if someone told you that even the most dynamic companies still utilize outdated techniques and materials that are seriously underperforming, flawed to begin with, and then virtually hinder the organization’s innovative development by binding them to standards unfit to support it?

Organizations go through significant changes in their built infrastructures (i.e. buildings, offices, conference rooms, etc.) every 5 to 7 years. This life cycle may be shorter or longer for certain industries and geographical regions, such as healthcare or education in high growth areas of the country, but it is generally accurate to assume 5 to 7 years as an average. 

Why is this? It is because an organization has to make decisions about design and usage ahead of time, to create a space that will support the organization’s operational requirements now and in the future, understanding that changes will have to be accommodated. And because it is impossible to know what those changes will be, leaders fail, by no fault of their own, to complete the impossible task: to foresee the future.

Generally, it takes about 5 to 7 years for innovation and progress to outpace leaders’ ability to predict and forecast, meaning that the space will then not support the operational requirements anymore. So, organizations have to go back to the drawing board every 5 to 7 years, doing it all again. And again. And again…

So, what does that mean for an organization? In a nutshell, it increases the overall cost for construction and, worse than that, it leads to inefficiencies difficult to identify or even quantify. Somehow, because it has always been done this way, we have turned blind to the blatant lack of efficiency and ineptitude of how construction works today. In the first graph, we see two trends against the two axis Change and Time. One trend, the green arrow, shows how our organization develops over time – we change constantly, become better and more productive. The other trend, the blue arrow, shows how our built environment evolve – it in this case, doesn’t. It stagnates. As a result, we continue to increase the delta between the blue and green arrows, creating a significant gap between what we do as an organization and what the space was designed to do – signified by the red shading. Ultimately, when this delta gets wide enough to justify a construction project. But the high costs, both apparent and hidden, associated with construction, organizations continue to put off the investment – until the organizations has no other option than to swallow the bitter pill of a major renovation. And that is when organizations find themselves in a hostage-like situation with construction. And, to make matters worse, once renovations to close the gaps are complete, organizations restart the same cycle again, operating on the very same, flawed premises.