Client Conversations:
Agency Insights with
Nicole Duncan
Founder and CEO
CR Commercial Property Group
The Client Conversations: Agency Insights With series will feature video interviews with some of the brightest minds amongst the agency leaders – who will be sharing their insights, discussing trends, and addressing challenges within the agency landscape.
What are people in the industry most interested to understand in 2024?
Nicole: I think they’re all planning for next year. We’ve got the yes vote, we’ve got the Melbourne Cup, we’ve got Christmas coming, we’ve got January. And I think that momentum has already started. I think people are wanting to get their minds around “what the heck do we do next year?” in terms of their offices, their workplace policies, as far as flexible working is concerned. Where the economy is going particularly in the next 18 month, I have certain views on that particularly in relation to the commercial property market, where it’s the greatest time for any tenant to be dealing with this current environment. You don’t get this very often, so it’s a good way to reduce their bottom line. I think China’s gonna play an impact on where people think over the next 18 months, if it isn’t in their thinking, just in general it should be. The wars – we’ve got that terrible situation last night which has happened. The commercial property market itself, and how are we going to reduce bottom lines. We are starting to see and hear about some redundancies being made in the last two weeks and each Friday we’re hearing more and more about redundancies happening. So, I think people need to be more cognisant of that.
The big trend seems to be generally, but not exclusively, towards being back in the office, what do you seen as the benefits of a hybrid approach?
Nicole:
Well, I think there’s several responses to that, Ed. Firstly, you’ve got to look at what’s happening in the world, and not just Australia with the hybrid approach. England is doing something very different to Australia. New York, United States is doing something very different to Australia and England, and Australia is approaching it in a different way. So I think you need to see what the world is doing. What is working over there? What could work here? The main thing is trying to find out for each organisation, they’re all different. Some can cope with people coming back into work, some can accommodate people working from home. It depends on the industry, the culture, the organisation, the size of it, and the job description itself. There’s bits and pieces that make up this puzzle rather than saying what are the positives of hybrid? What we’re seeing in the last month is most of our clients are looking at a four-versus-one day – four days back in the office and one at home – rather than what they call the ‘T.W.T brigade’ which is the Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday mob. There’s a reason people take the Friday and Monday off – and I don’t want to be too obvious about that but I will talk further about that. I think the hybrid workplace policies from people and culture that are involved also need to be more scrutinised and looked at and made sure that they are filtering what is right for the organisation? We need to be looking collectively, not individually, and that’s the problem that has developed post COVID. So to get that the answer to your question, which I will give when we meet at the Symposium , and the positives of that – we need to look at all those factors first.
What do you think is the most unique about the CRCPG approach to hybrid?
Nicole: Three things. The first thing is that I am a strong believer that the CEOs, and I mean the CEOs, I’m encouraging them and we are encouraging them to get amongst their staff to, to speak with them to understand their pain points. There’s a an unemployment rate now which stands at about 3.7% and so we are aware of that – you’ve got to retain, you’ve got to attract the right staff within your organisation. You’ve got to, the term I’ve coined, is earn the commute. Which I’ve got to say, Ed, it has been used by a few other people but it did come from me. Earn the commute. So given all those things, you have to have an environment within the office that is enjoyable for all types, levels, personalities, the introverts, the extroverts, the wiser generation – let me call them that because I’m part of it – the younger generation, then the X, Y, Zed generation. There has to be a model that excites people to come into the office post-COVID and understand the benefits of being together. It has to be flexible,and it has to be more home-like, we’ve got a model tha we’re starting to introduce and it’s it’s working very, very well..
Which KPI Is the most important to you and why?
Nicole: I look, I think that’s too generous to question to be honest with you. I think KPIs are very, very individual to each organisation – particularly to the culture – and I think they have gone out the door since COVID. I think no one has rethought the KPIs enough. It’s a major issue because it’s got to be the senior management team, the executive leadership team that understands what those goals are for each individual. And half the time now, post-COVID, I don’t think they understand what the goals are and what people are doing and what frustrations they’re having at home. They’re not there being a part of them and seeing where those gaps are. It’s a very hard question to answer because it’s very individual but I think there’s some laziness that has developed in identifying which KPI for that organisation, and for that employment, and for that team is irrelevant. It’s been a slack situation from a lot of leaders, they can’t blame the younger generations all the time.
How do you go about your scaling resilience strategies?
Nicole: I think, again, that that comes back to this original question you asked earlier where you need to entice and attract people into the office in order for the fallout of those resilience strategies to be relevant. The productivity levels which – which you keep saying there’s another productivity report coming out and and yep, it’s showing this person’s doing that level of work. Yes, they’re on the computer for X amount of days and some jobs you know, it’s down to the sales, very easy to monitor that if you’re in a call centre – we do quite a few call centres. And of course you can do that job from home and that’s fine but the productivity measurement scale, which is a major part of a resilience strategy, is the number one problem that needs to be redefined post-COVID.
The second is about creating leaders and this is one of the things I’m most passionate about. I wish to heck I was back in my 20s, because I can tell you if I had an environment like this where unemployment employment was like it was and if you’re in the office five days a week, you are seeing some of the senior leadership teams in there. If the CEO spent the time to walk around and talk to some of these people and ask what they’re doing in their job, why are they coming in? What do they want to do? These are the people that are going to be the future leaders of any organisation because they’ve got that mindset. They’re obviously career focused. That doesn’t mean everyone is – people who aren’t career focused, it’s like the guy from IBM said “If you want a career come into the office”. If you don’t that’s cool, stay at home, your choice. So the choice is yours. But if you do want a career – I was always very hungry in those days, that’s just my DNA – but that doesn’t mean everyone is the same. If you are, we have to have people being able to lead these organisations through and they can’t do it on no experience. People pay me for my experience and the only way I can get that is to get older and solve problems. And that’s really the most valuable thing, because unless you you’ve identified those problems and had to solve them yourself and gone through sometimes quite a lot of pain, it’s tough.
And the other is for people to be flexible. They’re saying they’re being flexible by working from home but actually not being flexible for the corporation itself. It’s the adaptability of some of these people that also needs to be reinvigorated and they can’t do that if the leadership teams are going to sit on their bottoms and do blooming nothing. They have got to get out there and be focused on it and be interested in that generation.
Do you think there is an absence of talent nurturing by the leadership generation of today?
Nicole: This is one of my most passionate points. I think that leaders have to take a sense of responsibility for invigorating their staff, for getting them enthusiastic, for bringing them in. You’re gonna look at models and say, yes, we’ll put on coffee and tea, and we’ll do a pizza night and we’ll do this and that. It’s actually not that. People who really want to learn, who are genuinely interested in their company or their career or what they’re doing, they need to be absolutely – to use your word – nurtured. And there’s not a lot of that happening. But I think that’s the big difference between the senior management, middle management, and below. There’s a very, very distinct gap in a lot of organisations, not in all, but in a lot of organisations. And it’s got to be closed, it’s got very relaxed and no one post-COVID cares about it enough to move us forward into the next generation. Unless we deal with it now we’re going to find a situation where the next 18 months is really, really tough. There’s a lot of people your generation, as you keep hearing, you haven’t seen a recession, you haven’t seen the mortgage rates up at 17%. You know, you don’t own a home. You don’t do this. I mean, the younger generations hearing all of this, it means nothing to them because they haven’t lived through that. So it is up to our generation to guide them through that to try and help them if they’re interested. But frankly, there are some that just aren’t. I will share half a dozen stories of people trying to say they work at home the whole time. I got friends that have got daughters working in large organisations and I’ll say to them “Oh, what are you doing today?” and they’ll say “So-and-so is working from home today. So it’s great – we’re gonna go and have lunch, do a bit of shopping, she needs some dresses for this…” and you wonder why I’ve been so outspoken on this. It’s hard, there’s got to be a meeting of minds between, if you looked at it in simplistic terms on one end of the scale to the other end of the scale. It’s very unbalanced at the moment.
What’s your advice to Australian agency professionals who want to be the best in the business over the next few years?
Nicole: As I’ve covered a wee bit the CEOs need to get more involved, they need to take control, they need to get some what sees, frankly, and demand when people are coming in. But they need to provide the right environment. Demand might be a wee bit of a stronger word but that’s a sense of frustration coming from me. They need to be watering down. It’s like watering your plants, they’re never gonna grow unless you water them and you fertilise them and you feed them, they’re not going to grow. And some will always turn into weeds, some will turn into beautiful blooms. And some will be those flowers within that that paddock that you have to have for the others to be sustainable. But unless those seas CEOs learn how to water and feed them, we’re gonna have big, big problems coming up in the next 10 years with leaders of organisations and how it’s going to work. And now’s the time to be fixing that. But it has to come from the top, in my opinion.
To what extent do you think the middle management acts as a barrier between the top and the bottom?
Nicole: They’re one of the biggest problems. They are very self focused. They are generally the ones that have kids going to school, they need to work at home, they need to make their life liveable – all of that sort of thing. But it’s not all about them. And they’re the ones that create the policies for the flexible working. Now they’re gonna hate me saying this, hate me saying it, because they’ll feel I’m attacking them and how do you balance all these things up in the air and childcare is expensive. I’ve had all the criticism online, I get all of that. But that’s okay. You still have a choice – if you don’t want to be paid the big salaries and you want to work at home, and you want to be a mum, or a dad, or a carer or whatever it might be, that’s okay for a period of time – but that shouldn’t come at the cost of those below you and, frankly, those above you who are relying on you to provide the right solutions for the organisation moving forward in the next five years.
What’s the best way that technology has impacted your workplace?
Nicole: During COVID it certainly improved our ability to have these Zoom calls, to have the Teams calls, to do all of that. I think it certainly has improved that but I think in actual fact, quite frankly, they’ve got slack, too. It was easy. It was great. They got everyone working from home, but they’ve sort of stopped they’ve got over that. I think there’s got to be more focus on the technology back in the offices. It’s got to be more advanced, more refreshed, and then we will get back. We were heralding IT during COVID and what of a brilliant job they all did, and they did, but I think they’ve got to reinvent themselves in this new generation.
What are you looking forward to most at Agency Symposium 2023?
Nicole: I really, really would love to talk to middle management to senior management and I’d like to understand their pain points. I’d like to understand what they’re experiencing within their organisation. I’d love to share some of my views to see whether that resonates with them. I’m very much a people person, I’m a listener. I’m thoughtful and passionate. I hope that comes across because I am passionate about what I do. And I just love to to hear whether they agree or disagree with me and whether they think there’s a better or different way forward. That can be discussed that we can get out of this Symposium moving forward.
The Agency Leaders Symposium, 28 – 29 November, will bring together the region’s most senior gathering of agency executives from ANZ’s leading organisations to discuss the next generation of AdTech, collaborate, share ideas, and stay on top of the industry’s latest game changers.