Failing Fast in real estate
A strange title, perhaps, for an article by someone who has just started a consultancy company. Failing sounds bad enough - and doing it fast sounds even worse. Please bear with me...
For the past four years I have been responsible for the global real estate and workplace services at Booking.com. This fast-growing tech company had around 50 offices and 3,500 employees when I joined it in 2012 and more than 190 offices and 11,000 employees when I left in 2016.
A/B Testing
One of the key success factors of major online platforms is that they run numerous experiments on a daily basis, which means that most visitors see the website in a (slightly) different way. This process is called A/B testing.
After testing the A and B versions of the website, they measure which version results in the most transactions. That version is implemented and the version that failed is discarded.
This means that every single change to the website is based on data. On success and failure, rather than opinions. The faster the experiments are run, the faster the company learns about what works and what doesn't. Consequently, the faster the visitor experience improves.
Learning in Real Estate?
Real estate is a very different market and is usually considered slow, due to long leases and large projects. But could it learn from tech companies like Booking.com? Could corporate real estate departments work with a similar innovation cycle? One of actively testing different solutions, measuring what works and what doesn't, and then implementing the successful ones? Real estate management based more on data and less on opinions?
I think so. Or at least I believe it's moving in that direction.
What do you need for A/B testing?
You need a significant number of projects to test different work environments. Booking.com opened roughly 60 offices per year and with a corporate mindset open to experimentation, we had plenty of opportunity to try different things.
But even if you don't manage several offices there are still opportunities to experiment. A work environment can be viewed as something relatively static, in which you invest once every five years, or so. It can also be viewed as something more dynamic, which changes over time together with the company. This dynamic view requires incremental changes that can first be tested on a small scale, rather than going for a big bang introduction of a completely new work environment.
You also need a system to measure the outcome of an experiment as objectively as possible. I still see lots of new work environments being implemented without a good pre & post survey, to measure whether colleagues feel happy, engaged and productive in their new environment. This approach makes it very difficult to determine which elements of the new work environment work and which don't. It eliminates the potential to learn and improve for the next office.
Finally, you need a flexible real estate strategy that adopts lessons learned in an effortless way. This ensures that new knowledge is constantly incorporated in a scalable way and that each new office provides the best possible work environment you can create.
Fail Fast!
If there is one important lesson I learned while working for Booking.com, it is that failing is an essential part of learning. Hence failing fast can be a good thing. As long as you make sure that every time you fail you learn something, it means you are learning fast.
I would encourage anyone managing work environments to try different solutions! Be creative and test on a small scale first. Then measure the results and implement those solutions that work. It's a lot of fun and will produce a dynamic and unique work environment that fits your company like a glove!
With Moke Consultancy I help companies manage real estate in a structured, creative and scalable way. One that allows you to expand rapidly, create work environments with strong identity and make decisions based on data. Curious? Let's have a chat!
