The team are currently preparing for an executive vision workshop for one of our clients, which means much of their attention at the moment is focused on conversations with members of the client leadership team. These interviews are part of the preparation for the session, but over the years we’ve come to see them as something much more important than that. In many respects, the workshop has already started.
When you bring a senior leadership team together, particularly around a subject such as future ways of working or workplace strategy, you are asking people to step away from the demands of running the business and think differently for a few hours. That takes some preparation. Most executives spend their days dealing with immediate priorities, clients, people, financial performance, operational issues, and an endless stream of decisions.
Asking them to walk into a workshop and immediately switch into longer-term strategic thinking is a fairly big ask.
The individual conversations beforehand create some space for that thinking to begin.
We usually want to understand how each leader sees the organization today, what they believe is changing, and what they think the business will need over the next several years.
We will talk about growth, people, culture, operations, technology, clients, and the challenges they are seeing within their own parts of the organization. The workplace is obviously part of the conversation, but the discussion is usually much broader because the workplace ultimately has to respond to what the business is trying to achieve.
One of the most useful things about these conversations is seeing how differently leaders can look at the same underlying issue. That is entirely understandable because each is viewing the business through the lens of their own responsibilities. One may be thinking about growth and operational flexibility, another about talent and employee experience, another about capital investment and long-term commitments, while others may be focused on technology, organizational culture, collaboration, or how effectively expertise moves across the business.
Those perspectives are all relevant, but they do not always arrive at the same starting point.
That is one of the reasons the pre-work matters so much. Before the leadership team comes together, we can begin to understand where those perspectives naturally align, where they differ, and what sits underneath the differences. Often, people are not disagreeing on the overall ambition. They may simply be approaching it from different parts of the business and using a different definition of what success looks like.
The interviews also give each executive an opportunity to consider the future without having to immediately reach a group position. A one-to-one conversation is very different from a leadership meeting. People can explore an idea, express a concern, or talk through something they are still forming a view on. That openness is useful because it gives the project team a much better understanding of where the organization really is before everyone comes together.
As those conversations progress, the questions often become more interesting. They may begin with something very practical such as office attendance, the amount of space the company occupies, or whether employees should continue to have assigned desks. As we explore the subject, the discussion usually widens. How do we want teams to collaborate?
Where are we losing opportunities for knowledge exchange? How are younger employees learning from more experienced colleagues? What does managing a distributed team require from our leaders? What do we want people to experience when they come into the office?
Those are the conversations that begin to move the thinking forward.
Across a series of interviews, patterns begin to emerge. There are usually areas where the leadership team is already closely aligned, even if they have not yet discussed the issue collectively. There may also be areas where people are looking at the same challenge from quite different perspectives. In some cases, what initially appears to be a workplace issue turns out to be connected to a wider business question around growth, organizational design, talent, operational resilience, or the way teams work together.
Understanding that beforehand makes the eventual workshop much richer.
It also means the workshop can be designed around the organization rather than around a standard agenda. By the time the interviews are complete, we should have a good sense of the subjects that need discussion, the areas where the group is likely to find agreement fairly quickly, and the questions where some healthy debate will be useful. We can also begin to form hypotheses based on what we have heard and on any other evidence being gathered through the project.
That preparation matters because time with an executive team is valuable. When you have the right people together in one room, you want to use that time well. If the first hour is spent discovering basic facts about the business, understanding everyone’s starting position, or working out what the key issues actually are, then a significant opportunity has been lost.
The pre-work allows the conversation to begin further down the road.
It also helps leaders start considering the art of the possible. Most workplace projects begin with the existing situation because that is what everyone knows. There is an office today, there are leases, desks, meeting rooms, policies, attendance patterns, and established behaviors. Inevitably those things shape the initial conversation.
Good preparation gradually widens the lens. Rather than only thinking about how to modify the workplace that exists today, leaders can start considering what the organization may need three, five, or seven years from now. They can think about how work itself may change, where employees will need to interact, what technology will enable, how teams will be organized, and what role the office should play in supporting all of that.
That shift in mindset rarely happens instantly. People need some time to think about it, particularly when the implications affect people, operations, real estate, technology, and culture all at once. The conversations beforehand give those ideas a chance to develop so that, when the leadership team eventually comes together, people are already thinking beyond the immediate constraints.
From a facilitation perspective, the pre-work is equally valuable because the team arrives at the workshop with context. We have heard the different viewpoints, understood some of the sensitivities, and identified the questions worth exploring. That allows us to bring the right evidence into the room, challenge assumptions where appropriate, and help the group focus on the decisions that matter.
Every organization is different, so the purpose of the workshop is to bring the collective experience and judgment of the leadership team into the process. Our role is to create the conditions for a productive discussion and help the group work toward a shared direction.
When the preparation has been done well, the difference is noticeable. The conversation can move more quickly into the subjects that matter, and the leadership team can spend its time exploring choices, considering the implications, and building greater alignment around what the future workplace needs to achieve.
The outputs will vary. They may include guiding principles, greater clarity around future ways of working, or priorities for real estate, technology, and change management. Often, one of the most valuable outcomes is a more consistent understanding across the leadership team of what they are trying to achieve and why.
That shared understanding matters because the decisions that follow can influence significant investment, the experience of thousands of employees, and the way an organization operates for years to come. Against that backdrop, the time spent on interviews, evidence gathering, and thoughtful preparation is a relatively small investment.
So, as we prepare for another executive vision workshop, the reminder is a useful one.
By the time everyone walks into the room, the workshop has already begun.
If you have an executive strategy workshop coming up, give as much thought to the conversations that happen before the meeting as the agenda for the meeting itself. The quality of that preparation has a significant influence on how far the leadership team can move the conversation when everyone finally comes together.
Artificial intelligence has become part of almost every conversation about the future of work.
Over the past year I've been asked whether it will change workplace strategy, whether it will replace parts of the consulting process, and how organizations should begin using it when planning their workplaces. They're all worthwhile questions.
There is little doubt that AI will become another valuable tool for workplace professionals.
The ability to analyze large volumes of information, identify trends and test different scenarios far more quickly than we've been able to in the past will undoubtedly improve the way many organizations approach planning. What interests me more, however, is something that receives far less attention.
Throughout my career, I've found that the quality of a workplace strategy has never depended on the sophistication of the tools available. It has depended on the quality of the evidence used to inform the decisions. That was true twenty years ago, it remains true today, and I suspect it will still be true long after today's AI platforms have evolved into something entirely different.
Technology has always made analysis easier. The challenge has never really been analyzing information. The challenge has been making sure we're analyzing the right information in the first place.
Most organizations already possess an extraordinary amount of workplace data. They know how many people badge into the office, which meeting rooms are booked most frequently, how desks are being utilized and, increasingly, how employees move around the workplace during the day.
AI can certainly help make sense of those datasets, and in many cases it will do so far more efficiently than traditional methods. The challenge is that workplace strategy has never been driven by data alone.
Understanding how people actually work requires context. Occupancy figures don't explain why teams choose to collaborate in particular ways. Utilization reports don't reveal where knowledge sharing happens naturally or where it breaks down. Even employee surveys, while incredibly valuable, only represent one part of a much broader picture.
This is why we've always invested so much effort in speaking with employees, interviewing managers, engaging leadership teams and understanding the objectives of the business before drawing conclusions. Every one of those conversations adds context that simply isn't visible within a spreadsheet or dashboard. Over time those different perspectives begin to form a much clearer picture of how work is actually carried out and, just as importantly, how the workplace can better support it.
That process has become a fundamental part of the way we approach workplace strategy because organizations are rarely trying to solve a single problem.
A leadership team may believe they need to encourage greater office attendance, while employees are looking for more autonomy over where they work. Real estate leaders may be focused on reducing operating costs, while business unit leaders are concerned about collaboration, onboarding or innovation. None of those objectives are mutually exclusive, but they do need to be understood together if the workplace is going to support the business rather than simply respond to one isolated issue.
AI has an important role to play within that process.
Once reliable evidence has been gathered, AI can help identify patterns that may otherwise have been overlooked. It can compare scenarios, accelerate analysis and help workplace teams evaluate options more quickly than ever before. That creates real value because it allows more time to be spent discussing implications, refining recommendations and engaging stakeholders instead of manually compiling information.
What AI cannot do is decide which outcomes matter most for your organization.
Every business has its own culture, leadership style, operating model and ambitions. Those are strategic decisions that belong to the organization itself. The role of workplace strategy is to understand those ambitions, gather the evidence needed to support them and translate that understanding into practical recommendations for the workplace. In many respects, AI reinforces the importance of that discipline rather than reducing it.
The better the evidence, the better the analysis. The better the analysis, the greater the confidence leaders can have in the decisions they're making. If the underlying evidence is incomplete, inconsistent or based on assumptions, AI simply allows those assumptions to be processed more quickly.
Over the years I've seen organizations make significant workplace decisions based on surprisingly little evidence. Sometimes those decisions worked because experience and instinct happened to point in the right direction. Oftentimes they created challenges that could have been avoided with a deeper understanding of how people worked and what the business was genuinely trying to achieve.
That experience has shaped my view of workplace strategy more than any technology ever has.
AI will continue to evolve at an extraordinary pace, and I expect it will become an increasingly valuable part of every workplace strategist's toolkit. I'm looking forward to seeing how it improves our profession because there are already areas where it can save considerable time and provide meaningful insight. The principle that sits underneath it all, however, feels remarkably familiar.
Organizations still need to understand their people. They still need clarity about their business objectives. They still need evidence that reflects the reality of how work is performed, not how they assume it is performed.
When those foundations are in place, AI becomes a genuinely powerful capability.
Without them, it simply reaches the wrong conclusions more efficiently.
One of the things I've always enjoyed about workplace strategy is that, every so often, the data quietly undermines the certainty of the headlines.
For the past three or four years we've been told, almost weekly, that the great return to the office is either gathering unstoppable momentum or destined to fail spectacularly. Depending on which article happens to appear in your feed, remote working is either breathing its last breath or the office has become obsolete. The conversation has become increasingly polarized, with both sides finding evidence to reinforce their own position while conveniently overlooking anything that doesn't.
Then, every now and again, a piece of independent research appears that isn't trying to prove a point.
Last week Professor Nick Bloom shared the latest figures from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, showing that despite the highly publicized return-to-office mandates, a greater proportion of Americans worked from home during 2025 than they did in 2024. Bloomberg reported much the same findings. The increase isn't dramatic, but it is enough to make you pause and question whether the narrative we've all been hearing really reflects what is happening across the wider economy.
What interested me wasn't whether this somehow proves that remote working has "won". It doesn't. Equally, it doesn't suggest that offices have become any less important. What it does suggest is that we may finally be reaching a period where organizations are settling into operating models that genuinely work for their own circumstances rather than reacting to headlines or following whatever the latest trend happens to be.
That certainly reflects the conversations we've been having with clients.
Over the last year or so I've noticed something interesting. Whether the discussion starts with a lease expiry, a relocation project, rapid business growth, an office that feels too full, or one that sits frustratingly underused, the conversation almost always ends up in the same place. Clients are no longer asking whether hybrid working is the right answer. For most organizations that question has already been answered, at least for now.
Instead, they're trying to understand whether the workplace they are investing in is actually aligned with the way their business operates today, and perhaps more importantly, how it is likely to operate over the next five or ten years.
Those are much more interesting questions. They're asking whether they have enough collaboration space rather than enough desks. They're trying to understand whether a relocation should simply recreate the office they already have or become an opportunity to improve the way teams work together. Others are questioning whether they're about to invest millions in real estate without really knowing how much space they'll need once their business evolves over the next few years.
On the surface those sound like completely different challenges, yet they usually lead back to exactly the same place.....
What does this business actually need from its workplace?
I've often found that once you can answer that question with confidence, many of the other decisions become considerably easier. The discussion moves away from opinions about attendance and towards evidence about work itself. Which activities benefit most from people being together? Which tasks are equally effective elsewhere? How do teams collaborate? What kinds of spaces genuinely support those interactions? Only once those questions have been answered does it really make sense to decide how much office space is required, what it should look like, or even where it should be located.
Maybe that's why the latest statistics don't surprise me nearly as much as they seem to surprise some commentators.
Different organizations will continue to arrive at different answers because their businesses are different. Their cultures are different. Their clients are different. Their people are different. Expecting one universal solution was probably never realistic in the first place.
What does feel different today is the quality of the conversation. Compared with two or three years ago, there seems to be far less interest in debating whether people should work remotely or from the office, and far more interest in understanding how work is actually being carried out and what that means for future investment decisions. To me, that's a healthy shift because it moves the discussion away from ideology and back towards business.
Perhaps that's what the latest data is really telling us. Not that one side of the debate has finally won, but that many organizations have recently stopped arguing altogether. Instead, they're getting on with the far more valuable task of understanding their own business, making evidence-based decisions, and creating workplaces that genuinely support the way their people work.
Personally, I think that's where the workplace conversation should always have been.