LETTER FROM RICK: The Personality of Post-Covid Office Space

By Rick Jarvis

I've been in the real estate business for 30 years –– besides myself, it is all I really know.

Real estate, residential or commercial, is the tangible manifestation of human behavior. Real estate is a lagging indicator, but it always represents the preferences of the humans it shelters.

And if you want to really see the case where real estate has become a manifestation of humanity, look no further than the ‘Work From Home’ movement spawned by Covid. 

Work From Home

In March of 2020, my team held an emergency meeting at the One South office to talk about this strangely named sickness that suddenly had markets in convulsing. As the calendar turned from January to February, I had watched the stock market tank, Twitter explode, travel bans spike, and politicians argue (even more than normal.)

Little did I know how much, and how quickly, our world would change.

So when I heard Capital One had sent its workers home as a test to see if they could, as an organization, function without everyone coming into the office, I figured it was time for us to do the same. If Capital One, with their thousands of employees and multiple campuses saw the need to shut everything down, we should probably do the same.

The Great (Inconsistent) Return

Fast forward to 2024. The whole issue of returning to the office is still up for debate. Jamie Dimon of Citibank (as an example) has been an outspoken critic of remote work –– and has on multiple occasions demanded employees return to their cubicles. Many other employers, large and small, have mandated the same.

Their views are largely based on the perception that working remotely and/or in a distributed arrangement is somehow less productive than when everyone sits elbow to elbow and interacts face to face. 

But is forcing everyone back to the office in an attempt to regain the pre-Covid office culture the correct decision? I’d argue it falls short.

Leadership Sets the Tone

Every organization has a leader, and it is not a stretch to say that a company or a team tends to take on the personality of those who call the shots.

My hypothesis: Show me an extroverted leader, and I will show you an extroverted company. 

Ever since the ‘end’ of Covid, I have been asking my peers how they are handling the ‘work from home’ vs. the ‘work from the office’ debate and what their stance is –– and while this admittedly is a wholly unscientific poll, I have found that leadership’s opinion of remote work is nearly 100% predictable by their personality. 

Jobs First, then People, then Personality

If you work retail, the job dictates the arrangement. You can’t help someone try on a new pair of shoes from your home office, and you definitely can’t install a granite countertop over Zoom.

But excluding the jobs that require someone to be physically present, what is the right balance of remote work for your organization?

Look no further than Insights® (or the personality assessment of your choice).  

If you are reading the Floricane newsletter, you should have a passing familiarity with the Insights® wheel and its colors, as well as the continuums of thinking/feeling and introversion/extraversion.

As a reference, I lead with a blend of Red and Blue energies, which makes me a bit of a data-driven ambivert.

I need time in the office to help implement some form of process and order, but I also need a lot of time away from unstructured interaction to write, plan, and think. 

When I first started One South, I spent nearly all of my time at the office -- because that is what leadership is supposed to do, right? Over time, I became increasingly frustrated at my inability to accomplish concentration-based tasks in a busy, growing work environment. 

The gotta-minutes nearly killed me. They are necessary for anyone in a growing business, but I did not realize how poorly suited my personality was to the interruptions that are inherent in management.

If I am being intellectually honest, I struggled in my role because I didn’t understand my own personality. It took several years and a lot of help from Insights® and Floricane’s team to help me find my optimal environment.

But I’m lucky –– I have the flexibility and the resources to craft my own environment. Many don’t have that option, and right now, are sitting somewhere they would rather not be. 

Office Space Is Downsizing

I cannot think of any industry whose need for space hasn’t shrunk since 2019. (Okay, maybe the medical profession, but that’s about it.)

Take a drive through any office park. You will see a bevy of ‘for lease’ signs, or a new apartment building going up where an office used to be.

The market is de-officing as we speak.

Why? 

Because there are a lot of folks who are both far happier and far more effective working from their extra bedroom, coffee shop, or from their sofa from 11pm to the wee hours of the morning –– and forcing those folks back to the office is the wrong decision. 

So How Much Space Do You Need?

So if you are struggling with finding the correct amount of space for your team as we exit the credit contraction of 2023, I would challenge you to examine the personalities of the people behind the tasks. 

As I said earlier, look to Insights®. 

If your team has a strong Blue energy preference, I guarantee you could use a lot less space –– like a LOT less.

If your team leans more into Yellow energy, you probably still need every bit of space you used to need.

And if your team lives closer to the middle, you can probably decrease your footprint by a third, if not a half.

‘Right-sizing’ your footprint is always important. When you are incorrectly ‘officed,’ it is a net negative to the bottom line –– AND it detracts from performance. 

Including your team’s personality in your analysis (not just leadership’s personality) will lead you to a much more accurate version of space for both you and your team. When you can spend less on space yet enhance your team’s performance, you win on all levels. 

Rick Jarvis is the co-founder of One South Realty, one of the Richmond regions largest residential and commercial real estate companies. A longtime friend and client of Floricane’s, Rick is more than slightly obsessed with using Insights® Discovery to better understand his behaviors, his team and his clients.

This is the first guest newsletter post celebrating Floricane’s 16th orbit around the sun in 2024. Future posts will feature former Floricane employees and interns, clients and community leaders, and other interesting, smart humans.

LETTER FROM JOHN: There is no free will

An article in the New York Times last week threw me into a brief existential funk.

The article –- “Robert Sapolsky Doesn’t Believe in Free Will. (But Feel Free to Disagree.” –- is a discussion with a Stanford neuroscientist and Macarthur Foundation “genius” grant recipient. In it, Sapolsky presents a provocative argument (because he has no choice in the matter, perhaps) that humans do not have free will, or agency. Our feeling of independent decision making, he suggests, is connected to actions actions that are determined by a mix of biology, hormones, and life experiences and circumstances.

So much for self-awareness and growth, right?

My first impulse -– as Sapolsky predicts in the interview –- was to dismiss his argument. As he says, it “completely strikes at our sense of identity and autonomy and where we get meaning from.”

For free will to exist, he continues, “you would be able to identify the neurons that caused a particular behavior, and it wouldn’t matter what any other neuron in the brain was doing, what the environment was, what the person’s hormone levels were, what culture they were brought up in. Show me that those neurons would do the exact same thing with all these other things changed, and you’ve proven free will to me.”

Walking the dog this weekend, I found myself second guessing everything. Did I take this particular route through this Northside neighborhood because I noticed the maple leaves were turning and independently chose to turn left? Or was it because my life experiences had imprinted in my cortex a predilection for autumn leaves? Or did the dog, whose free will is even harder to discern, pull me that way?

But then, there I was, walking down a quiet side street beneath a brilliant canopy of red and gold maple leaves listening to the quiet tap of Addie’s nails on the sidewalk, the cry of a hawk circling in search of a squirrel, and smiling at a memory of my old friend Michelle kicking leaves as we walked along a Fan sidewalk one October afternoon.

Did it matter why I chose the path I did, or whether the pleasant sense of solitude and memory were manufactured by biology and chemistry? The answer appears to be “sort of.” Or, “sometimes.”

“Every living organism is just a biological machine,” Sapolsky continues. “But we’re the only ones that know that we’re biological machines; we are trying to make sense of the fact that we feel as if our feelings are real. At some point, it doesn’t make a difference whether your feelings are real or whether your feeling of feelings being real is the case… Meaning feels real. Purpose feels real.”

In the self-awareness workshops I facilitate, I often end up discussing the whole “nature versus nurture” business. Sometimes I draw the infamous iceberg -– where our actions, and the experiences others have of us in the world are visible, describable, while beneath the water lies the other 90% of who we are, and why we do what we do. This, I think, is the stuff Sapolsky is trying to unpack. Our biology, the hormonal and chemical bubbling that goes on at a molecular level, the ways in which millions of moments over our lifetime –- a sudden burst of lightning, the death of a friend, a leaf floating to the ground, a memorable meal, a broken shoelace -– trigger synapses in our brain to form connections to other moments, other memories, and to shape everything that follows.

We are, in the end, marvelous constructs. And we have within us the ability to create new memories, fire new synapses, form new chemical connections that create new ways for us to be and to act and to grow in the world. Our daily decisions about how we want to be in our lives, with others, may be informed (or guided, or even determined) by chemistry or biology, but they remain wonderfully, uniquely ours.

On a second walk this weekend, Jack decided -– or did he? –- that we should collect leaves, berries and mushrooms. We stopped to evaluate neighborhood Halloween decorations. We stood and watched a particularly vibrant maple leaf spin down from above and settle at our feet.

In that moment, meaning felt real. Purpose felt real.

Kick some leaves this week, and find new ways to fire the synapses connected to curiosity, joy, connection and love. (You're going to do it anyway, so you might as well pretend it's on purpose.)

ORANGE COUNTY PUBLIC LIBRARY: It's alive!

Earlier in September, John took his daughter on a roadtrip to Raleigh for the Hopscotch Music Festival. ("Really, it was just to see Pavement and Alvvays. We had a blast," he said.) They managed to swing through Carrboro on the way home to check out the progress on the newest Orange County (NC) Public Library. John, Lesley and Serena have worked on two strategic plans for the library in recent years. It's exciting to see tangible progress on such a significant building for the library team.

UNIVERSITY OF RICHMOND: Mining cultural aspirations across campus

Culture is our experience of work: Cultural artifacts surround us. All of our workplaces are littered with representations of who we are, and of the stories that give shape and purpose to our work. Our experience, reinforced in recent months as we met with more than 400 employees from the University of Richmond Business Affairs Division, is that the most tangible, and meaningful, representation of culture is found in the day-to-day experiences of human beings at work.

Systems can amplify, and complicate, work: Something we often look for when we're in an organization asking questions are indications that existing systems and processes are either enhancing or disrupting the ability of people to do their best work in ways that allow for connection and belonging, purpose, autonomy and growth. (Hello, Dan Pink.)

Gathering data at the University of Richmond: Ebony, Julia, Kayla, Thea and I gathered evidence the old-fashioned way: we listened, and we looked. Almost 30 focus groups with almost every employee in the division, a walking tour of all of their work locations, and a survey that probed deeper into questions of core values, meaning at work, and opportunities for deeper inclusion and belonging translated into two guiding documents filled with anecdotal perspectives and aspirations of University employees. These documents -- almost 100 pages of personal stories and experiences, requests, ideas and solutions -- are the cornerstone of our next phase of work.

And now the hard part: Ebony and I will spend September with groups of employees -- more than 100 representing every level of work -- making meaning of the perspectives and stories we captured. We'll also be working to identify the most powerful and impactful moves the University can make to strengthen the culture of work, which is inherently about shaping the experience of people doing work together.

Letter from John: Think Days

I woke up the day after Labor Day, and I waffled.

I had recently blocked the first Tuesday of every month -– through next summer –- for a “Think Day.” I borrowed the concept from entrepreneur Sahil Bloom, who suggests using a day a month or quarter to just reflect, write, ask yourself some questions.

But I woke up with a full plate of tasks, and begin to consider surrendering this first “Think Day” in order to get things done. This, of course, is the sort of thinking that “Think Day” is designed to avoid.

Which is how I found myself spending a hot September morning outside –- in the shade of a local coffee shop, and then on the patio/deck outside of the VMFA –- thinking.

But also connecting.

Who would have thought that I would run into multiple familiar faces, or would have had time to read (and reflect on) half a book, or had a casual (but task focused) video call with a colleague, or enjoyed a quiet breakfast at The Village Café -– all before noon? (I also walked one kiddo, and drove the second, to school. And then got ice cream with both of them afterward.)

Who would have thought? Probably Sahil Bloom for starters.

It turns out that the day that almost didn't happen feels exactly like the sort of day I wish always happened. There was connection, reflection, variety, purpose, productivity. The dimensionality of life. It almost makes me second guess my calendar and how I'm using it. Or not.

The book I chewed through during my first Think Day is a book by one of my gurus, and one of his gurus. Peter Block (my semi-mentor) and Peter Koestenbaum published “Confronting Our Freedom: Leading a Culture of Chosen Accountability and Belonging” earlier this year. It’s sat by my bed since May.

Block surfaces an old idea of his: Managing at its worst is a flashback to bad parenting. Too often it is just an awkwardly executed system of control. The tension between freedom and management in most of our organizations is badly smudged, and too often barely visible if not constantly misunderstood.

It strikes me that there could be more visible, and intermediate, steps between absolute freedom and complete control, and that they both need to be more intentionally tied to purpose.

To the degree that our system of work feels increasingly untethered from our lives –- the experience of many during the past several years of disruption -– then perhaps some genuine transformation is required in the ways we ask employees to show up, do great work, and be engaged while they're at it.

Purpose and meaning –- and the experiences which give them life, texture, a sense of presence -– are how we often anchor the best moments of our lives. Why not also the best moments of our work? Why not absolutely the best moments of our work?

It was with this thought slipping around in my mind that I unexpectedly found myself bumping into and then chatting with Errol on the first day of his retirement from the Library of Virginia. We talked about road trips, pending solar eclipses, and the wisdom of our mentors. And then as we prepared to pivot back on our individual trajectories, he said, “Listen. That work that Floricane did with the Library over the years really was a net positive in so many ways.”

Boom. Connection, reflection, variety, purpose, productivity, the dimensionality of life. Meaningful impact.

And in the branches of the pin oaks baking in the summer sun, the rising symphony of cicadas completes the texture of my “Think Day” as I write this note.

MAIL CALL

We learned long ago that printed material -- particularly when created by our favorite designer, Ben Dacus -- leave a bigger, and more lasting, impression than random social media posts. This month, we dropped a few hundred reminders to our nonprofit friends about the importance of planning now to leap into strategic planning in 2024. (Pro Tip: Have a bored teen? Give them 300 oversized postcards, some markers, a list of addresses and stamps.) Coming up later this year -- Floricane celebrates 15 years of building connections, creating change, and making amazing friends.

"Sikre rejser" to Floricane's latest intern

We're saying goodbye to our intern, Kayla Maxey, this week as she prepares for her senior year at Boston University. She'll spend the fall in Denmark studying sustainability and strategy, and we're only a little jealous. Kayla spent 10 weeks with us interviewing almost a dozen of our past strategic planning clients, and taking hundreds (literally, hundreds) of pages of notes from focus group sessions for two of our current clients -- the University of Richmond and the National Association of Residential Property Managers. We asked Kayla to capture her personal Top 5 from her summer with Floricane.

• The importance of inclusion in strategy: This was reinforced through both my conversations with Floricane's past clients and my experience in the room with current clients. The inclusion of employees and stakeholders allows the people who are affected by the work -- who are often the people who do the work -- to have a voice and help shape an organization’s strategy.

• The University of Richmond Project: Being able to support the facilitation process on a current project with the University of Richmond’s Business Affairs division was really enjoyable. It’s great to see people progressively open up in conversation and to hear their observations about their work culture.  

• Understanding the team through Insights: Reviewing our Insights profiles with the Floricane team gave me a clearer understanding of other’s work preferences and personalities. This allowed me to align with their needs while also discussing how we can collaborate more effectively as a team, taking each other's preferences into account. 

• Insights reflections with John: Having a discussion with John after the Insights workshop provided me with a deeper understanding of my own work style and tendencies. It also helped me identify how those preferences show up for me, and allowed me to set some personal goals for the summer.

• A more human approach to consulting: Floricane’s approach to consulting is one I find to be very human-centric, focusing on developing a deep understanding of the organizations it supports and respecting that the people who do the work are often the ones who know the most about it.

Letter From John: Not What, But Why

In August of 2008, I was a husband and new father who had inadvertently found a home at what was once a small, family-owned stone quarry out in Goochland County. I liked my coworkers, and the work I did. I had good mentors, and meaningful friendships at Luck Stone. The economy was a bit wobbly, but in the grand scheme of things life was pointed in the right direction. Until it wasn’t.

I’ve been thinking lately about the birth of Floricane 15 years ago (this November). A recent Washington Post opinion piece by cognitive scientist (and violinist) Maya Shankarframed that abrupt life transition in a new way for me. Shankar writes about imaginative courage, but she also shares her personal experience with unwanted change— in her case, when a popped tendon in her hand ended her career as a violinist.

“The violin had defined me for so long, and without it, I felt stuck. I would later learn that this experience is known as identity paralysis — and it happens to a lot of us when we experience unexpected, unwanted change: Who we think we are and what we’re about is suddenly called into question.”

I came home from Luck Stone for the last time the morning of November 12. I was still a husband and a new father, but all of the other elements of my life had, unexpectantly, changed.

But this missive is not about what I lost, or thought I lost, in that unwanted transition. It’s about what I gained.

Shankar continues in her piece:

“I realized that what I missed most about playing the violin was that it had given me a vehicle for connecting emotionally with others. It turned out that this was at the root of my passion for music. And a hopeful message emerged from this insight: Although I had lost the ability to play the violin, I could still find this underlying love of human connection in other pursuits.”

At Luck, I had found a home, a community, work that I was becoming good at doing. But I also had found the beginnings of a purpose, one that surfaced in a more expansive and meaningful way when I started Floricane. 

At our best, Shankar suggests, we are not what, but why. Centering your life around what drives you, what lights you up, that’s the discovery Shankar unpacks in her second career as a cognitive scientist.

Reflecting on these past 15 years, it’s amazing and uplifting to see – and have experienced — the myriad of ways an unexpected change in the fall of 2008 catalyzed the passions I was just discovering and allowed them to deepen and flourish.

Today, I have so many ways to connect with new people and new communities, to uncover perspectives and ideas with organizations, to surface new ways to think about and act on the future. Every single day holds new conversations filled with possibility.

Shankar’s invitation: Look for opportunities to practice imaginative courage, remember that why you do something is more important than what you do and, whenever possible, try and seek out awe.

I’m pretty clear on my why. Perhaps it’s time to explore imaginative courage, and to bring awe back into my life.

-       John