How To Right-Size Your Office Without Crushing Culture With Prof. Alana Dunoff – RFP 82 Transcript
Gordon Lamphere (00:04): Hi, I’m Gordon Lamphere, and welcome to The Real Finds Podcast, where we have real conversations with key entrepreneurs, activists, and researchers shaping the real estate industry and, as a result, our world. On today’s podcast, we explore the future of work with Alana Dunoff, a strategic facility planner with AFD Professional Services and a professor of facility management at Temple University. On the podcast, we dig deep into the strategies of successful return-to-work programs, effective methods to maximize organizational productivity using the built environment, and, beyond the fluff, what employees actually need in the workplace. It’s well worth a listen. Alana, thank you so much for hopping on the podcast today.
Alana Dunoff (00:59): My pleasure. Thank you for asking me to be here.
From Psychology to Facilities Planning
Gordon Lamphere (01:02): So what got you into the world of consulting and work? How’d you get into the business?
Alana Dunoff (01:11): I have my degree in facilities planning and management, so I was in the built environment world from the get-go of my educational career. I started in psychology, environmental psychology and social psych. I liked people, but I also liked architecture and buildings, and somehow those two worlds came together for me. That’s how I found my path in facilities.
I started consulting about twenty-three years ago, quite frankly, when I lost my job, and someone said, “Hey, can you do some consulting for me?” It kind of spiraled from that point, and it allowed me to add something else in, which was teaching. I always thought that would be fun to do. So between consulting and teaching as an adjunct professor, those two things married very well with having a family and all the things I wanted to design my life around.
The Wild West of Return to Office
Gordon Lamphere (02:14): So maybe you can teach us something here today. The world of return to office is all screwed up. I’m curious what you’re seeing from your perspective in terms of how organizations are handling the return-to-office process.
Alana Dunoff (02:30): It is really crazy. I think what has happened with return to office is that the horses have run wild. Some organizations have ranchers who say, “No, no, let’s corral them all and put them into the pen.” Others are like, “We don’t know how to capture the horses, so we’re still going to let them run wild.” So what’s happened is that we have a lot of variety, and I don’t think that’s a bad thing. The challenge is when an organization realizes that where they were isn’t where they want to be, and now they’re trying to figure out how to lasso up those horses and bring them back into the pen so they can be and do something different than before.
So it is a little bit like the wild, wild West, at least for the corporate and commercial world. Hospitals and manufacturing are like, “What’s return to office? We’ve been in. We were almost never out.” So it’s just one sector that’s still operating by its own rules.
Gordon Lamphere (03:33): So what are the challenges we’re talking about, and what are the most common ones?
Alana Dunoff (03:38): The first one, I think, is that for many years as we were coming out of the pandemic, employers were stuck with the fact that employees had the control, right? “If I leave, you’re not going to be able to hire someone else.” But we’re a couple of years out, the economy has shifted and changed, and the job market is different, so that control has balanced out. Still, companies are figuring out how to bring people back in a way where not everyone leaves. They want to find this balance.
If there’s anything COVID really taught us, it’s that maybe we were all working way too much. If you look at the rest of the globe, they have longer holidays, and here we never took our vacation time. So I think what we’re trying to figure out now is how to create the work-life balance that’s really necessary. That’s also being driven now by a new generation coming into the workplace that never knew anything different, other than that maybe mom and dad didn’t work in the office all the time either. And they’re saying, “I don’t want that. I want balance.”
So both of those things are coming together, and the biggest challenge becomes: how do we create places and spaces that are attractive to a new generation and that also support different ways of working in a hybrid, coming-in-or-not environment? Those are the conversations I think corporations are having, if they haven’t just said, “Everybody come back.”
Starting With How You Want to Work
Gordon Lamphere (05:19): So how do we have these conversations about flexibility and create a return-to-office process that isn’t putting a square peg into a round hole?
Alana Dunoff (05:33): I think the kinds of strategic conversations I’ve been having with clients are really just asking: how do you want to work? What’s really important to you as an organization? Work-life balance is important, but so is being successful. Companies are in business to make money. They hire people so they can have a product or a service that makes money. So we can’t lose sight of that at the same time.
That means coming to the table and asking, what does it look like? I think if organizations spent a little more time strategically asking how their mission can still grow while at the same time letting their knowledge force, the people who do the work, be successful. Happy people are productive people. So it’s coming to the table and having those conversations. I think we’re past the edict of “thou shalt.” Now we have to figure out this new way of balancing.
I think that means thinking about physical space, where people work, why people work in those spaces, and what those spaces look like. That’s going to require some dollars for organizations to make those transitions, and those are the things they have to decide. It struck me that a lot of companies were in a holding pattern for a couple of years, and now we’re starting to see, “Okay, is this our new normal? How do we right-size it?”
Lessons From a Kindergarten Classroom
Gordon Lamphere (07:03): So how do we right-size it? That’s a very complex process, but what are you seeing generally across the board? And how can someone take some of these ideas about flexibility and right-sizing, working within their organization’s values and needs, and apply them?
Alana Dunoff (07:22): I think the group that comes together to have those strategic conversations is really important. It’s having HR in the room and strategic partners in the room to really think about what makes sense for our team and our organization. What does it look like? How are we hiring people? Who are we hiring? Do we have a young organization? Are a lot of people starting to retire? So there’s some of that conversation.
Then it’s a great opportunity to look around and see the kinds of physical spaces that are working. I have this mindset that if you really want to know how to create a great work environment, go to a kindergarten classroom. It turns out the kindergarten classroom is a great little microcosm of how a lot of people are thinking about space, or maybe should have been thinking about space. In a kindergarten classroom, there’s a big giant mat on the floor where everybody sits. There are tables for small teams. There’s a desk for the teacher for one-on-ones. There’s a timeout space if you need a little quiet time. And there are creative spaces and technology spaces.
If we start thinking about the office with that mindset, that variety of spaces is what we should be planning for, because people are coming in for different reasons and they need different kinds of supportive spaces. We sort of said that after kindergarten, you sit at a desk with a flip top, and from that point on, that’s how you’re supposed to work. Then you’re supposed to sit in a cubicle, and that’s how you’re supposed to work. It turns out, no, not really. We could be working very differently, and we can incorporate strategies with different kinds of spaces based on the task, not “this is one size fits all.”
Better Metrics Than Butts in Seats
Gordon Lamphere (09:23): One thing I think has been a terrible one-size-fits-all metric is evaluating based on butts in seats, or some of our odd industrial-age metrics. How do we shift some of those metrics and evaluate things when we’re reevaluating our square footage and what needs to be in a workspace?
Alana Dunoff (09:52): It’s interesting, because I love data and metrics, and we say square feet per person is a great way to think about it. But I think it’s about pushing past that. I don’t even like to use the word productivity, because I’m not sure it’s about being productive. Companies need to innovate and grow to move forward. They need to be creative. If they stay in the status quo, that’s a pretty good indicator that the company is not going to be leaping forward. So maybe the measure is more about: are we innovating? Are we doing new things? If we’re doing the same thing we did three years ago, we see companies like that, and then we don’t see them anymore, because they’ve lost their traction.
So it’s about how we focus on success, and the real metric is the financial success of an organization. In facilities and strategy, that’s our job. The building is there to support the people who support the success of the organization. So some of those smaller metrics may not be so important anymore. We need to think a little bigger, and maybe eventually we come back to some of the smaller metrics. But right now I think it’s about: are we being successful?
Satisfaction of people might be another metric to consider. Are people feeling good about their jobs and the work they’re doing? There’s great research that says if you really want to know how people are doing, ask: do they feel fulfilled? Do they feel like they’re achieving and accomplishing things? So maybe we need to focus on the people work and not so much on square footage and numbers.
Where Organizations Are Getting the Investment Wrong
Gordon Lamphere (11:38): One of the things I’ve seen in your work that I found fascinating, and one of the primary reasons I reached out in the first place, is that you’ve done a great job talking about where businesses are investing and seeing results, and also where they’re overinvesting. Where are you seeing organizations getting the investment analysis wrong in the office, and how can we look at improvement?
Alana Dunoff (12:16): Let me think about this for a second. I think a lot of organizations have lost their way. They just haven’t figured out where to go now, and they’re hit with so many different things. Several organizations I’ve been working with have started to say, “You know what, let’s go back and look at our mission and vision and who we are. What’s our why? Why are we showing up in the first place?” That has opened the door to conversations about where we invest our time and where we invest our dollars. Are we this big? Are we that big? Can we function as a hybrid organization and be successful? Can we be remote and be successful? There are a lot of people who say, “I can be productive at home,” but that was never the point. So there’s been some tiptoeing by organizations around how to figure that out.
I think real estate has been a huge challenge for organizations that invested a lot in their buildings and physical space, and now those buildings are empty. They’re scratching their heads and having conversations like, “Wow, we need to shed space.” With one client, we looked at shedding a building from their portfolio. Today, it makes a whole lot of sense. In five years, it would be a really bad choice, because they’re going to grow and change, and they’d be landlocked otherwise. So they took the opportunity to reevaluate the lease and get more favorable lease terms, so they could at least manage some of those operational costs.
I think organizations now have to start investing in their physical space to keep their people, create new spaces for engagement, and keep the excitement up. We’re not investing enough in our physical space, which means we’re also not investing enough in our people, because they’re the ones using those spaces. And we have to get over the hurdle that we might have some extra real estate for now.
Alana Dunoff (14:32): I don’t have a whole lot of answers about how to shed that extra space. Someone suggested an indoor pickleball court, so maybe there are other things we can think about incorporating. But invest in your people and your physical space. And that doesn’t mean knocking down all the walls and starting over. There are small things companies can do to reshape their space that could be very valuable for their people.
Shaping Culture With the Space You Have
Gordon Lamphere (15:00): I’ll say this, it’s a complex world on our end. We’re working on almost a dozen conversion projects at some level right now, and I think it’s absolutely critical for all the organizations we’re talking to do exactly what you mentioned, which is look five and ten years out. Nothing’s worse than selling that building at a loss and then having to come back into the market three or four years down the road and negotiate with your neighbors. In terms of that, one of the other areas where we see constant negotiation and renegotiation is how we can better use the workspaces we currently have. You mentioned productivity and workplace culture. What are some of the steps organizations can take to shape their culture using the space they currently have?
Alana Dunoff (16:00): Asking is the best way. I spend a good chunk of the beginning of any process talking to leadership. I did a project recently where I talked to a hundred managers in an organization, which was a lot of meetings, but it was really insightful for spotting trends, understanding how people are working, and understanding the differences. This is an organization that’s very flexible and hybrid, so some people are coming in and some aren’t. What happens when they come into the office? If you’re coming in one day a week with your entire team, that’s really different than if you’re in the office three or four days a week, just doing your work. Understanding that variety and flexibility matters.
Having those conversations strategically has allowed me to say things like, “We need more collaborative spaces.” So what is a collaborative space? Some are scheduled spaces that have a door, and you reserve them on the reservation system. Others are open spaces, or even spaces with a door where you can say, “Is anybody in there? No? Great. The four of us are going to sit in there for 20 minutes to work together and then go back to our individual spaces.”
It’s also thinking about the technology that supports that, because inevitably you’ll have three people in the office and someone in California or wherever they are, and we have to bring them in too. So it’s about being a little smarter and investing in things like the really cool smart whiteboards that let the virtual person see what’s being written on the whiteboard at the same time, so they’re really engaged.
I’m also talking a lot about wellness spaces, which are part of that work-life balance. And the overall look of an office: a lot of offices are shifting to look more like your living room than traditional workstation cubicles. But one of the companies I work with said, “No couches. No one sits on them. They’re too familiar.” If you want a comfortable chair, have an armchair, something a little more comfortable, but not a couch.
Alana Dunoff (18:18): Wellness spaces used to essentially be a nap room or a lactation space. Now they’re going beyond that to think about how we engage people in a different way. I’ve been working with a company where I said, “What if in the break area we put a couple of puzzles on the table, or hung magnetic game boards?” There’s magnetic Scrabble and tic-tac-toe. They’re just moments to engage.
Even coffee is a moment to pay attention to in this new world order, because a coffee break is an opportunity to engage with someone and feel connected. One of the companies I work for is having a huge coffee issue. Huge coffee issue. Right now they have coffee urns, and Bob used to come in in the morning and make the coffee, but Bob doesn’t come in every morning anymore. So people don’t know when the coffee was made, and they’ve started bringing in their own individual coffee K-Cups, which completely defeats the point. A coffee break is meant to get you up, out of your chair, moving around a little, and going to see somebody. So we’re being intentional about coffee.
All of those small things where individuals get up, go see people, talk to people, and engage with people: those are the spaces that matter. If you’re coming in one day a week or two days a week, you’re coming in to be with people. So we have to create people spaces, not silo spaces where “I’m in my walls now, I’m going to close my door, I’m going to sit in my cubicle.” The spaces that matter now are spaces that let people connect and talk to each other.
What Really Matters in the Workplace
Gordon Lamphere (20:11): I remember working one of my first real adult jobs at a law firm. That’s a business you wouldn’t see as deeply creative, but one of the most interesting things I saw at the firm was the simple two to three o’clock period when everyone would go get coffee for their last jolt of caffeine of the day. Some of the most interesting discussions that drove the business forward happened during that time, on a linoleum floor with almost nothing you’d call high culture. But because it was a place situated perfectly for folks to gather, you had an unbelievably effective space. So how do we find spaces that are truly effective, and what ultimately really matters in the workplace? Is it high-end finishes? Great offices? Tall ceilings? What matters?
Alana Dunoff (21:25): That moment you were talking about, with the coffee at the law firm, those places are the things that matter. What I heard from a lot of managers was that the thing they miss most with hybrid, and not knowing when people are in or out of the office, is the pre- and post-meeting moment. Before a meeting, you’re walking to the meeting, you see someone, you chat a little bit. After the meeting, there’s the continued conversation, because sometimes the meeting isn’t really over. The topic isn’t finished, and you’re still yakking about it as you walk to the next meeting or go grab something. That’s where those innovative, unpredictable moments come from. For in-office people, that’s what they miss the most. When the Zoom call is over, it’s over. There’s no “I had one more thought,” or “Hey, I meant to ask you about this.”
That’s why we’re talking about these engaging spaces, like the coffee shop model. What happens when you go to a coffee shop? There are spaces where you can be by yourself, there are bigger tables, there are banquettes, there’s food, there’s coffee, and you can sit down and have a conversation. You can plug in and work, and you can see other people and engage. So it’s about breaking down some of those walls. It’s not about the pre-pandemic open office plan, and it’s not about having no walls. It’s about intentionally having open spaces that engage people when they need them, but also places to retreat to when they need quiet, heads-down work.
So the things that really matter to me: coffee. I was so shocked by the number of people who talked about coffee. The other really big thing I think really matters is culture. Culture has taken a huge hit in the workplace. That sounds like it has a negative connotation, and it’s not necessarily bad, but for some people it feels bad, because they don’t have the same warm, connected feeling. They used to know everybody in the office, and now they don’t. No one looks familiar.
Alana Dunoff (23:43): New hires. “I haven’t seen you in three years. How are your kids?” We haven’t talked about sports. All of those things make people matter and make a difference in an organization. So I think companies need to be more intentional in deciding how to embrace their new culture. If their new culture is hybrid and remote, what does that look like? How do you intentionally make people want to connect and belong?
In the end, we’re people. We’re humans, and people matter. The physical spaces matter, having a variety of spaces and flexibility, closed spaces, open spaces, that kindergarten classroom mentality. But it’s people who use those spaces. Organizations need to think about how to get their folks to feel like they belong again, that they want to be here, that it feels good to be here, that it’s not just about getting work done at home. We know everybody can get their work done at home. Fine, great. But how do we get them to want to go beyond that and stay connected? So create places for people, not just places for the laptop and the docking station. Let people do what they do best, which is engage, create, and innovate. Two brains are always better than one when it comes to thinking about what’s happening and going forward.
Perks That Actually Matter
Gordon Lamphere (25:15): Putting our brains together, there are all sorts of perks, and depending on your business and your employees, you’re going to offer various ones. But there’s a big difference between the nice-to-have perks and the perks that actually matter. What are the perks that are nice to have versus the perks that drive real, tangible value in the workplace?
Alana Dunoff (25:52): I’m not sure I know how to measure tangible value other than the end outcome. But it seems to me the things that matter are people’s ability to work, whatever that looks like. That mishmash is what’s hard to grapple with, because we used to say everybody works in a cubicle or an office, we’ve got a couple of conference rooms, and we’re done.
Food is a perk, right? Companies have said, “We’re going to lure you back in. We’ve always given you free coffee, and now we’ll have snacks or subsidized meals.” Do I think it adds value? If it brings people into the office, then I think it adds value. A super interesting one at one of my companies: free EV charging stations. Quite a number of people told me, “I come in once a week just to charge my car.” I was like, okay, I didn’t see that coming, but that’s great. To me, whatever drives people into the office is what gives the company value. Sometimes it’s training or happy hours. I see a lot more of those kinds of perks happening.
Sometimes it’s just refreshing the workspace. My mindset is that if I can make a space look a little cooler, hipper, and fresher, that’s going to attract new talent, and the people who come in once a week are going to say, “Actually, it’s kind of cool here.” So the small perks, those little things, start to add up. For me, if I can get people back into the office, whether or not they realize that’s the driving force, then that’s a good thing.
Of course, that also assumes they have the flexibility to create their own schedule. If I’m in an organization that says you’re coming in Mondays and Thursdays, I don’t have to push as much of a driver, because I’ve mandated it. But there’s a lot of blowback on mandated days, and I don’t think that serves organizations well. That’s not a perk.
Alana Dunoff (28:17): Another perk for organizations is thinking not only about the three-day week, but maybe longer days. Facilities is a great example. Facilities is in every day. They might see their counterparts come in Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, but they have to be in every day. What if facilities, or other support services groups that have to be in, changed their mindset to say you can work four longer days, say eight to seven or eight to eight, which makes up for it, so they can have a day off too? Creating equity for the people who can and can’t come in is another perk that adds value. It’s hard to put a dollars-and-cents value proposition on it, but if you have people coming into your office, working, and innovating, you’re going to see better outcomes.
The Final Four
Gordon Lamphere (29:24): One of the places we’ve had great outcomes in terms of innovation on this podcast is our Final Four. It’s a great way to wrap things up and to learn a little more about you and where things are going. My favorite question to ask, besides our final one, is: where do you think work is going, and what do you think will have changed the most about commercial real estate?
Alana Dunoff (29:53): Right as the pandemic was happening, people were saying, “Buildings are dead. No one’s going to be in the office anymore.” And I said, no, buildings aren’t going away. It’s not going to happen. I have a 35-year career, and the long view is that everything is going to change and nothing is going to change, because the pendulum is always swinging.
I think ten years from now, the driver of workspace is Gen Z. My students, seniors in college, want to be in the office. They want to learn from people. They want to grow. They want to be mentored, and that doesn’t happen if there’s no physical place to be. They care about sustainability, social justice, and work-life balance, so they’re going to be the drivers. I think companies, organically and intentionally, are going to figure out the right guardrails for being in.
Do I think the five-day in-office work week is gone in the corporate world? I would say yes, maybe. But Amazon brought everybody back five days, and they’re a big company. Now they’re laying off some people, but they’re a huge company, and they said everybody in. So I think we’re going to see everything, and we’re going to continue to see everything, which I think is great. We stop being so cookie-cutter and figure out what works best for our organization. And as an employee, I get to decide whether I’m the kind of person who always wants to be in, or whether I want a company that provides work-life balance. There’s value in that. So we’re going to see horses still running free, and I think we’re also going to see more corralling, until the next big thing happens. But I’m seeing a trend toward people saying, “I’m kind of tired of working at home,” so that’s going to happen organically too.
Gordon Lamphere (32:01): There are a number of clients we’re working with who are definitely getting a push from their employees that counters the “office is dead” narrative. Just as you mentioned, many employees don’t necessarily want to be in five days a week, but a lot of employees we’ve seen at our clients want to be in three or four days a week with some flexibility. How does an employer work that out in the best way possible? Do they create structure around it, and how would they best create that structure?
Alana Dunoff (32:47): It’s a strategic, top-down HR conversation, combined with understanding what your employees want. It’s a conversation. If senior leadership sits up in the executive suite and makes decisions on its own, they’re going to be wrong. They need to engage HR and management, the people who have boots on the ground and know what’s happening. From a strategic perspective, that’s where the meat really is.
I had one organization where fifty percent of leadership thought being in the office was great, and fifty percent thought it was not necessary. So, now what? The “now what” is that we do both. Creating policies that allow for that flexibility can be a little harder to manage, but that’s part of it.
It also requires training managers, because a lot of managers don’t know how to lead a virtual team. I had managers who said, “I really want my team to come in, but I don’t know how to get them to come in.” Or, “I’m getting pushback because I’m a new manager, the previous manager said they could all work from home, and now I’m a bad manager if I bring them in.” So there’s a whole training that has to happen. Becoming a manager doesn’t mean you know how to manage people. Organizations need to give managers that skill set: how do you manage a team with people all over the place who sometimes come in, and what does that look like? I think that’s another really important component.
Gordon Lamphere (34:44): Do you have any advice for folks managing fluid teams in particular? We have a lot of HR directors who listen to this podcast. What would be your two cents? How can we try to hold water in our hands?
Alana Dunoff (35:02): There’s some great leadership training out there in lots of different places. And even just spending a little time understanding that whether you have a fully in-person team or a hybrid team, every individual needs attention. One-on-one moments are really important. If you have teams, meeting with teams is really important. Being a manager means being active and helping individuals continue to grow in their work. That’s a skill not everybody has right off the bat, and it’s even more important when you don’t physically see people all the time. It takes a little extra emphasis and intention to be a leader and manager who says, “I’m going to spend 30 minutes with each of my employees.” If you have twelve people and you do that every week, that’s a lot, so maybe it’s every other week. But you’ve got to find ways to have those individual connections. If you only have team meetings, you’re not going to manage a fluid team well.
Gordon Lamphere (36:12): One of the things that’s fluid in life is that we start out with not nearly as much knowledge and wisdom as we could. We have a lot of younger listeners, folks in their mid-twenties who are looking at the industry and trying to understand how work works, or how commercial real estate works. The question we love, and that they love, is hearing advice from people who’ve spent more time in the industry. What would you have done differently at the start of your career, and what little tidbit of advice would you give?
Alana Dunoff (36:58): When I started, facilities management was a very male-dominated field, and it still is. I had a master’s degree, and I worked in the healthcare system, which was very male dominated, and I was scared. I knew my stuff, but I also got tested a lot. I wish I could have told my younger self, “It’s okay. Use your voice.” I listened a lot and I asked questions, but I wish I’d been more curious and more sure of myself. I was a little scared of my shadow. I’m not anymore. Now I have a lot to say. But I wish I had been more curious and a little stronger in my voice. I was entering a place where I was really trying to find my way, and I certainly have. But I don’t think I took enough risks when I was younger, and I wish I had done that more. And of course, curiosity and asking questions are probably the best things. Find a mentor, someone who can really help you move through the process. I wish I’d had that when I was younger.
Gordon Lamphere (38:16): We love asking questions. That’s one of the reasons we have this podcast. And one of the questions I ask, as an avid reader who loves books, though I’ll admit about half, maybe even sixty percent, of the books I read these days are on tape, which is less reading than listening: what’s a book or piece of media we should pick up to explore and learn a little more about the world?
Alana Dunoff (38:44): For recent books, I like Simon Sinek a lot. I find his work really helpful in synthesizing ideas, and I’ve been able to weave some of it into the strategic work I’ve done. Where we’ve been these last five or six years, around redefining our purpose and our engagement, he has hit the mark
Gordon Lamphere (38:51): I do as well. Yeah.
Alana Dunoff (39:14): for me very well from that standpoint. So that’s a big one for me. I wish I had more time to read than I do.
I was also thinking about some gems of books from back in the day that were very inspiring to me in my work. These are definitely very old, but Oscar Newman wrote a book on defensible space that talked about how we create safe spaces and places. And I still show my students a film based on research by William Whyte, an urban researcher who worked with the planning department in New York City. He did a research project looking at urban parks and spaces to find out what makes a successful space. It was done in 1969, so it’s old, and the film is kind of funny. And yet every principle in it is still relevant today. So it’s a great one to keep reminding ourselves about what really matters when it comes to space and place: access to light and sunlight, trees, water, access to people, and access to engaging spaces. Those are all things that still matter, whether we’re talking about inside spaces or outside spaces. We’re now creating living walls inside our buildings, right? We have all this biophilia coming in, because we like nature. We’re connected to it, so it makes for better spaces.
Gordon Lamphere (41:03): There’s been a lot of new research, but humans haven’t changed that much in the last several hundred years.
Alana Dunoff (41:10): No, we haven’t.
Gordon Lamphere (41:13): One thing we do like to change is our perspectives, and that’s kind of the whole point of this podcast. One of the best ways to do that is reaching out to great new people, and the men and women in the arena tend to have the best advice on who to reach out to next. Who should be our next guest?
Alana Dunoff (41:37): I’ve been thinking about this one, and I think you should have Paul Doherty on your program. Paul is a colleague of mine in facilities management. He’s an architect by training, and he wrote a book called Smart Cities: Reimagining the Urban Experience. He’s woven together technology, infrastructure, AI, and sustainability to think about how cities should think and be different, incorporating what’s happening going forward. He also has a global reach. He travels all over the world, and every time I listen to him, my brain just explodes. He has so many fascinating thoughts, and he’s really ahead of the curve on infrastructure, technology, AI, and sustainability. Building giant AI data centers is not the most sustainable thing in the world, right? So he’s talking about all of those things and how we think about places and cities again, and what that new experience should look like. I think Paul could be a great asset to the program.
Gordon Lamphere (42:56): We’d love to have him on, and afterward I’d love to get his contact information. There’s one final question we’ll ask you, and that’s: what’s your contact information, if somebody wants to reach out and learn a little more about you, and about facilities and workplaces and how to make their business a better place?
Alana Dunoff (43:18): One of the best ways is to reach out to me on LinkedIn. I’m Alana Dunoff, so find me on LinkedIn for sure. My email is also [email protected]. I kept it nice and simple, so that’s an easy one as well. I also have a business website, AFD Professional Services, so that’s another way to contact me. I love connecting with folks on LinkedIn, thinking about where things are going, and having additional conversations. This is a big world, with lots of cool people out there, so I’m happy to connect.
Gordon Lamphere (43:59): Alana, thank you so very much, and we’d love to have you on in the future.
Alana Dunoff (44:03): It would be my absolute pleasure. Thank you for having me. This was super fun.
Gordon Lamphere (44:06): Thanks again to Alana. We appreciate her insights. If you enjoyed the podcast, please give us a like, a five-star rating, and a review. Your comments, subscriptions, and interactions truly matter and help us continue to bring on quality guests. You can find us on YouTube, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. I’m Gordon Lamphere with The Real Finds Podcast. Thank you for listening.
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