EDITOR’S COMMENT “Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in.”
I couldn’t help hearing Al Pacino as Boris told us all to work from home again if we could. Team EG was just starting to trickle back to the office. We were just starting to get used to seeing each other in 4D and having those lovely little side conversations we just don’t have virtually. But, alas, once again we will mostly be connecting with each other through our computer screens and our office desks will start to gather dust.
It would be really easy to be depressed this week. The return of more stringent measures will mean less physical interaction with each other, the Bank of England has started investigating what negative interest rates might mean, redundancy consultations are seeing scores of industry professionals lose their jobs and sustainability conferences around the world have reminded us again that time is running out.
But, there is always a different lens we can apply to a situation. For every down there is an up. For every challenge there is an opportunity. And for every leader that starts on a downer, there is a message of hope. In fact, there are several peppered throughout this week’s issue. Here are just a few of my favourites.
1. EG’s interview with PGIM Real Estate boss Eric Adler reveals why a crisis is something for which we should be grateful. I know that sounds ridiculous given what I have just written, but Adler has weathered a fair few crises himself and knows what he’s talking about.
“This is a time when [junior professionals] are learning more than they realise because they’re seeing how to handle this uncertainty,” says Adler. “Some of the reflexes that they’re picking up now, they’ll carry with them for the rest of their lives.”
What we are going through today is teaching us a host of lessons. Lessons that those who don’t experience this crisis won’t understand. It will make more of us. Give us more skills. Make us more resilient.
2. Redundancies are an unfortunate given in times of crises. And, while figures are not as high as expected, there is inevitably more pain to come when the furlough scheme comes to an end in October, regardless of what new measures Rishi Sunak may bring in.
But, as we find out, out of adversity comes opportunity. Potentially an opportunity that you’d never quite had the guts or motivation to seize.
“[My] redundancy has been, in no way, seen as a negative thing to the people I’ve been speaking to since it happened,” says CBRE veteran Peter Wrigley. “If anything, it has opened my eyes to the fact that there are a lot of people I could work with that previously haven’t been an option.”
Sometimes, it seems, we all need a hand to force us.
That brings me to my final reason to be cheerful – for this week anyway.
3. I believe that every tough period we go through forces us to re-evaluate our behaviours, to understand how we got into this situation and to, hopefully, come up with solutions that move us forward, not backward.
Which is why I am beyond proud to introduce EG’s first Diversity & Inclusion Content Advisory Panel. A collection of smart, straight-talking individuals representing the broad range of roles in real estate and championing the under-represented. Together we’ll work hard to make sure that diversity and inclusion, equality and fairness is seen across the whole of the built environment and is reflected in the words and imagery in EG.
Together we will be the change. And the reason to be cheerful.
To send feedback, e-mail samantha.mcclary@egi.co.uk or tweet @samanthamcclary or @estatesgazette
