Lorri Rowlandson is the Senior Vice President of Strategy and Innovation at BGIS, a global leader in facility management, project delivery, energy and sustainability, asset management, workplace advisory, and real estate services. She is a keynote speaker and industry thought leader, with over 28,000 followers on various social media platforms.
Lorri has a passion for mentoring and personal development, especially when it comes to women in the outsourcing and expense management solutions industry. She has a free resource library, www.lorrirowlandson.com, and is also the host of the Leading Innovation at Work podcast.
Here’s a Glimpse of What You’ll Learn:
- Lorri Rowlandson shares how Canada is handling the pandemic and what it’s like to work from home
- Why Lorri is passionate about mentorship and why it’s helpful for women to have mentors in their careers
- How to be a good mentee and the value of the mentor-mentee relationship
- BGIS and the role Lorri plays in the company
- How BGIS helps their clients innovate through the use of data
- Strategy and innovation trends in facilities management today and how the office space might look like in the future
- Lorri talks about her book, The New Normal: How Covid-19 Has Changed The World, Forever
- Lorri explains why now is an exciting time to be in facilities management
- How Lorri got into real estate management and the importance of loving what you do
- Lorri’s top book recommendations
In this Episode:
Almost everyone in the world has had to pivot the way they do business as a result of the continuing COVID-19 health crisis. Business owners are now trying to see how they can make use of their space efficiently without sacrificing safety. They’re also starting to ask the question: are physical offices still necessary today?
It may seem like it’s the end of the line for those in the facilities management but according to Lorri Rowlandson, now is actually an exciting time for the industry. Why? Because facilities management is in the cusp of making breakthroughs with innovation and strategic solutions that will not only affect the present but will set the precedent for how offices and buildings will be designed in the future.
Join Greg Owens as he talks with Lorri Rowlandson, Senior Vice President for Strategy and Innovation at BGIS in this week’s episode of the Watching Paint Dry podcast. Tune in as they discuss why Lorri is passionate about mentorship, how BGIS helps companies and organizations innovate their facilities through the use of data, the topics she tackles in her latest book, and why it’s an exciting time to be in the facilities management industry.
Resources Mentioned in this Episode:
- Lorri Rowlandson on LinkedIn
- Lorri Rowlandson’s website
- Leading Innovation at Work podcast on iTunes
- BGIS
- The New Normal: How Covid-19 Has Changed The World, Forever by Lorri Rowlandson and Barbara Rowlandson
- Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari
- Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow by Yuval Noah Harari
- 21 Lessons for the 21st Century by Yuval Noah Harari
- Rethinking Real Estate: A Roadmap to Technology’s Impact on the World’s Largest Asset Class by Dror Poleg
- Greg Owens on LinkedIn
- McCarthy Painting
- McCarthy Painting Contact No.: 415-383-2640
- McCarthy Painting Email Address: info@mccarthypainting.com
Sponsor for this Episode:
This episode is brought to you by McCarthy Painting, where we serve commercial and residential clients all around the San Francisco Bay area.
We’ve been in business since 1969 and served companies such as Google, Autodesk, Abercrombie & Fitch, FICO, First Bank, SPIN, and many more.
If you have commercial facilities in the San Francisco Bay Area and need dependable painters, visit us on the web at www.mccarthypainting.com or email info@mccarthypainting.com, and you can check out our line of services and schedule a free estimate by clicking here.
Episode Transcript
Intro
Welcome to the watching paint dry podcast where we feature today’s top facility managers, property managers and property owners talking about the challenges and opportunities of managing hundreds of thousands of square feet of real estate and how to beautify and improve their properties. Now, let’s get started with the show.
Greg Owens
Hello there. This is Greg Owens, and this is the Watching Paint Dry podcast. And we are continuing our series where we talk to building owners, facilities managers, and the people that support building owners and facilities managers. And what I am in Asheville, North Carolina right now normally I’m in San Francisco, but San Francisco’s very filled with smoke and my mom lives here. And so I came here and this is August 24, and 2020. And we’re still, at least America is still heavily into in this pandemic. And travel was very interesting to get here. I had to get tested in order to come and just see my mom and that kind of stuff. So it’s everything so much more complex. This episode is brought to you by my company McCarthy Painting. And this, my company does painting projects throughout the San Francisco Bay Area. We’ve painted all kinds of companies including FICO, Google, Autodesk, and many other types of commercial projects plus residential projects throughout the San Francisco Bay Area. You can find out more at info at McCarthypainting.com. I’d also like to say sometimes I have Katrina is also on call and sometimes she chimes in and ask some questions. And today I’m really excited to have Lorri Rowlandson. Senior Vice President of strategy and innovation for BGIS. Welcome, Lorri.
Lorri Rowlandson
Thanks so much, Greg. Thanks for having me on the show.
Greg Owens
Absolutely. And you are first Canadian, you’re in Toronto. How are you, your family and things going on? There’s this pandemic over for you guys, or is it still sort of a mess like it is here in America?
Lorri Rowlandson
Yeah, it’s a great question. I would say it’s different depending on what part of the country that you’re in. But we locked down pretty early and we’ve been pretty diligent about it, we’ve opened up and, you know, carefully and slowly, we’re still really enabling a lot of people to be able to work remotely as much as you can, but you know, you can go to a restaurant and sit on the patio and just some things that we’re just starting to graduate into them, we’re keeping a close eye on it. Because, you know, the doctors tell us that the second wave potentially could be bigger if, you know once people get together, I’m extroverted. I can’t wait to get out. But I also want to be careful. And with our enthusiasm to get back out there in the world, we have to be careful that we’re not going to create another problem. So we’re being cautious, but we’re gradually opening up again.
Greg Owens
Yeah, right. Right. And how has it been for you working at home? Yeah, I see you have quite a few different distractions behind you there. And for me, it’s been tough to work from home because I think like you being a little bit more extroverted I, I find I work better around people, actually, in a lot of ways.
Lorri Rowlandson
Yeah, it’s been a little bit of both. I think, before we used to always complain that the office was an interruption factory, and we could never get any work done and there was no meeting rooms. Whereas now we’re working at home and I miss my colleagues. So I think if we could find some way that was a balance in between, it would be ideal. So I’ve been able to work remotely, but it has been fairly solitary and the nature of my work, I do prefer to collaborate in person, and you really get energized with those interactions, because all of us are always smarter than any one of us. So, anytime you get together and you can build on each other, then you you get a great work product. So I missed that part of it. And at home, I do have a lot of distractions. I have a jack Russell Terrier, who, in the last three or four months thinks that I’d be here to serve her every day, and she demands treats every 30 minutes and walks. So that part of it has been a little bit of a challenge. But you know, these are things that we can navigate through. And I think that there’s a lot of things that I have learned and benefited from in the last few months as well that I’ll continue forward into whatever the new normal is going forward.
Greg Owens
Yeah, that’s great. Any any particular items around learnings from like working at home and that kind of stuff that you really sort of like, like really made a difference?
Lorri Rowlandson
Yeah, I would say before I used to do a lot of teleconference calls if I couldn’t be there in person. And we have really become masters of zoom and teams and those types of tools. We use teams in our in our inside our company, and I have become a master at teams. And I don’t think you could ever take that away from me now I really enjoy it. And I’ve just started to experiment with some of the plugins that allow you to do ideation sessions in collaboration with different types of tools. So that’s been fantastic. And I don’t think I’ll ever go backwards on that. And I don’t think I’ll ever do a teleconference again, it just feels too two dimensional compared to the incredible rich experience that you can deliver through a zoom or a team. So that’s been a great new set of muscles. I’ve been developed over the last few months that I’ll continue with for sure.
Greg Owens
Right, right. And you and I share something else in common we both I saw in your bio, that you have a passion for mentorship, and, and that kind of thing. And I also I belong to an association of entrepreneurs called entrepreneurs organization. And through that I have had a tremendous amount of opportunities to be mentored mentor. And also like teach, I facilitate and do speakings like you do to have around the subject of mentorship and how to be a better mentor and how to be a better men T. What’s your what’s been your experience and where where does that fit into your career?
Lorri Rowlandson
Yeah, I always try to pay it forward. And I have a real soft spot for millennials and Gen Z’s and really helping them. I had a lot of help when I was early in my career, and I really wanted to pay it forward. And I just I’m so impressed with The talent didn’t in anytime you can help them overcome an obstacle. It’s just so rewarding. So, especially women in our profession, I help and I’ve mentored both men and women, but I really got a soft spot for helping to develop women. I started an International Women’s Day event at our company. I was the first woman in our leadership team. And really, I’m so proud now that it’s a global event. And if continued to help, you know, provide a support structure, a coaching and mentoring development. I think sometimes women leaders need slightly different types of coaching sometimes. So just a passion of mine and it’s just something I really want to, to do to pay it forward.
Greg Owens
That’s, that’s great. Yeah. And it’s a subject that I’m incredibly passionate about and like to learn more about because there’s I too was I was not very good at school and that kind of thing, but I was always really good at sort of like learning from others. If somebody had paved the path already my brain for whatever reason, really valued that greater than if I had read it in a book, or was told about it right if I can ask questions and, and really sort of feel their experience in a way, you mentioned, sort of a difference in in sort of mentoring any any thoughts on mentoring women or what your, like secret sauce is that you found that like, and why that works better? From your perspective?
Lorri Rowlandson
Yeah, as far as from a mentoring perspective, I just I always try to understand a little bit about what problem they’re trying to solve or where they’re at and understand what holds them back. So sometimes mentoring gets into the psychology of the individual. So it becomes quite personal. Yeah. You know, we are two halves of a whole so our home life and our behaviors at home, outside of work often carry into work and vice versa. So often something that you’re solving Something that’s pervasive in their life. It’s not just demonstrated in their work life, it’s something that is at home as well. So you have to solve them as an entire package is, I find really key. And then the other thing I really look for in women especially is a lot of high performing. Women have either two things perfection paralysis, or they’re afraid of feedback, and they become high performing workaholics to avoid that type of feedback. And so I try to get them to feel more comfortable with constructive comments and criticisms, and not try to overcompensate for it either through perfectionism, or becoming workaholics because it’s not sustainable. And so often, those traits are used to disguise some other thing that they’re not comfortable with. And you really need to unpack that to really understand the person and, and help them it’s so it’s there’s some psychology involved as well. I’ll say
Greg Owens
Yeah, I know you’ve gone deep into that, too. And that’s, that’s wonderful because, and Katrina here, and I were, we’re just talking about how one of the roadblocks to getting things done is that sort of perfectionism and sort of that want to do a really good job. And then I hear what you’re saying when it comes to being concerned about feedback. And so then you overdo the project in a way, right? Like and, and sometimes there’s something to be said for, like getting it, like, like I do this a lot personally is, is I’ll bring something like maybe it’s 80% there, and I’ll present it to get the feedback right away, because I don’t know where to go left or right, actually, right. And that feedback is so important in that process.
Lorri Rowlandson
You got it exactly. And also to make sure that you land it on the day, right is and it’s also helpful when you go into the meeting with advocates. So if you can pre socialize and have some advocates that have been Through it becomes peer support in those meetings for a decision. So pre socialization is really key. And plus you’re bringing people into the inner circle, they feel special, you know, and and also, if you’re in the wrong direction, you can course correct before the big day where people are hearing it for the first time. So all of those are really, really key tips. It’s great. I totally agree with your approach.
Greg Owens
Yeah, that’s, that’s wonderful. Any tips to people wanting to be a good mentee? Because I think I sometimes feel like there’s not enough emphasis on how to how to show up and be a good mentee. And what’s what is your experience of how that what looks good to you?
Lorri Rowlandson
Yeah, this is a great question. And I would say the mentee, meaning the person that’s receiving the feedback, first of all, let me back up for a second. I think as a mentor, and a mentor and a mentee relationship. I’ve always found it mutual and I always try to Set it up in a way where I’m learning from them as well, because, you know, I’m from a certain generation, they’re often from a different generation. And I learned different things from them. So I forced them to teach me things as well. So it’s a bit more reciprocal. But from a mentee, when you’re really trying to get career coaching, I would say often the time you don’t know what you want to be when you grow up, or you’re not sure where you want to go. So just to be open, you know, you have to take a leadership role in in where you want to go. So have some sort of structure as to what problem you want to solve. You know, the mentor doesn’t have a magic wand and can tap you on the head and solve everything you need to, you know, read your mind. You need to take a leadership role and what kind of an outcome or what kind of advice you need. As part of that experience. The mentor can talk about anything. You need to guide them to be very specific as to what areas or what problem you’re you need. To solve and be good at articulating that, and then that gives you something to rally around in your discussion. So that’s, that’s probably the, the, the, and then I guess the the second part of that is around career and, you know, taking a leadership role in your career, understanding what kind of skills do I need to get to the next levels, so somebody isn’t going to solve that for you, at least come forward, develop some sort of a hypothesis, and then go to the mentor to validate that and get advice around. So you could both rally around the using finger quote, scare the problem that you’re solving. Does that make sense?
Greg Owens
Yeah, absolutely. And it’s something that I I share all the time in some of my workshops and that kind of thing of how to be a better men key is, is you what you’re saying is you have to be a leadership. Have your you have to have bring leadership to yourself, like what is it you want it? What is it you want? have become what are the traits you want to like build upon? What are your strengths? Where are your weaknesses and, and then sort of round that all out, sort of sort of move everything forward.
Unknown Speaker
There’s also, I’ll go ahead.
Lorri Rowlandson
And you know what, Greg, I think sometimes a lot of people are seeking a mentor because they don’t know what to do next, they’re struggling with like, I don’t know what I want to do when I grow up, like they’re, they’re struggling for that. That’s okay. And by the way, most people go through that at some point in their career in their life. Just if you don’t know what you want to be when you grow up, or if it’s not that finite, yet, at least have something that you can rally around. So I really want to do something I want to be in engineering or like, just find something that you can rally around or I want to do something in this field, or I’m not sure if I should do it in this field or not. At least come forward with something that you can start with, even if you’re not on firm ground is to what position Exactly. You want to go to Next,
Greg Owens
right and I tried to tell them to like you’re so young you can in demand, no matter what age I mean, even up into your 70s you can try new things and try it out and see if you it doesn’t have to be like the rest of your life. You can like hey, I really think I might like this industry or something like that and go into it and give it a try for a few years and gain that experience in that direction.
Lorri Rowlandson
You got it, Greg. And in fact, I would say that’s more applicable to Gen Z more than ever then even people in our in our career demographic, because of the amount of change that’s coming down the pipe. I read an incredible statistic. That in we will go through more change in the next 10 years than we have in the last 40 or 50 and 80% of the technology we’ll be using by 2030 hasn’t been invented yet and 85% of the jobs by 2035 haven’t been invented yet. So I always encourage a continuous love of learning, and you have opportunity to retread your career. In fact, expect to retread your career. The things that we’re learning now in school will be outdated within 10 years. And if you’re at the beginning of your career, you need to expect to retread yourself, meaning really reinvent yourself. And that means you could, you could even have a completely different career path because of the amount of learning and change that’s coming. So I love what you said, Greg, and I think it’s even more relevant for that generation that’s entering the workforce now.
Greg Owens
Yeah, and even look at what’s happened in the last like four to five months of during this pandemic, and you started this off and how you had to retool how you do things in your own company and in your own life in a lot of ways and myself too, because I was I was on a speaker circuit in a way and, and going I had trips planned to Australia and to South Africa, and to London and all of that got wiped out. But we’re finding ways to use the technology that’s right here in front of us and, and get better at it so we can deliver a really good experience and deliver value. And I think you’ve, you’ve also gone down that and I think zoom is now the number one implemented. New technology, like the fastest technology ever has been implemented in people into people’s lives.
Lorri Rowlandson
Yeah, and I can’t do without it. Now, it’s funny to imagine five months ago, and I can’t live without it. So we did go through we are capable of a lot of change in a short period of time. Our amygdalas generally don’t like that, but we are capable of it. And I think once we push through that change, it’s sort of like starting a new fitness routine, you’re pretty sore or you’re, you know, not comfortable with it, the first few tries and then all of a sudden, you can’t do without it. And I think that if we can push through the other side of change The benefits are really remarkable.
Greg Owens
That is great. This is great. I can talk about this subject all day. I’d like to jump into finding out about what is big is your role there and what you’re seeing out there as far as like innovation strategy and the different things again, and let’s start with what is BGIS, yeah,
Lorri Rowlandson
yeah, sure. So BGIS is a small global facilities management company. So I work with engineers, all around building engineering. We’ve got about 8000 employees globally in Canada, the US, Australia and New Zealand and more recently in Europe. So we’re not as big as our biggest competitors, but we are tech we are engineering driven. We’re technically lead. We’re not brokerage lead. So we’re quite a different offering out there in the industry. Yeah. Yeah. So I work with engineers. We like to measure everything we like to close the loop and You know, use data and insight day to day to date all the time. And it’s really interesting. So my role is around strategy and innovation. I’m the executive sponsor for innovation. It’s interesting taking such an ethereal topic. And then how do you make it practical. So we’ve got a term called practical innovation. And when we deal with our clients, you know, instead of talking about these really far out their ideas, we help them with their longer term roadmap, but we help them with short term, practical steps that like Lego blocks that add up to progress. So I always try to think of things that will help them make progress within their immediate fiscal year or the next fiscal year because there’s also a CFO that has to sign off on their innovation, right? And then we measure and we use a lot of metrics and hold our ideas accountable for progress. And I think again, that really differentiates our innovation offering out there. So it’s not just an idea, it actually makes a difference. And so when I look at innovation programs, different from customers and different clients, I look at the idea. And then I asked what difference it made. And that’s, again, working with engineers will rub off on you that way. And I always try to move the needle in the immediate horizon and take those steps toward so we design roadmaps and what matters. A lot of Of course, prop tech and buildings and the workplace is enabled by technologies. And there’s more and more of them coming. What we do is we start with understanding what problem we that we need to solve a problem could also be an opportunity. So what are we solving, and then find the solution that fits that problem or solves that problem. And you have to do that you have to have that discipline because there’s so many shiny objects out there. There’s so many, like sensors can do everything. There’s so many technologies that can do so many things. And that’s cool, but you’re not doing this to be cool. You’re doing it to create some sort of an outcome. So quite often what I do is I back the bus up a bit so that we understand what outcome we want, what problem we’re solving and how we measure success. And then we help them find solutions that address those situations if that makes sense.
Greg Owens
Yeah, it does. Do you have a like a case study or a simple one that you’ve gone into where you made a difference in you, and it was something, you know, innovative, but not too far away from what they were already doing or something along those lines?
Lorri Rowlandson
Yeah, so one of our clients, we had just one off the top of my head. God, there’s so many. I’ll pick up pick a pretty mainstream one. We had a client that wanted to go through a big change in the way that their facilities were run and the way you know the amount of space that they were using and how they were using the space and they were really interested in These new light bulbs that give you heat maps of where people are on the floor. And so they brought us in, and because we would install them and do that sort of thing, but I said what, what kind of outcome? Are you looking for that? And it turned out that the heat maps are kind of cool. And they laid up and they kind of look like, mesmerizing, you know, they’re sort of like a lava lamp on your computer. But they actually didn’t translate into any analytics. And I said, No, you want to know the data, so that you can inform your decisions and provide evidence. So maybe that’s not the kind of sensor you need. Maybe you need this type of sensor. And we are technology agnostic. That’s the other thing. Unlike our competitors, we don’t buy prop tech companies. We intentionally stayed objective so that we can help recommend the right solution to our clients. And we, you know, I also look like sensors can do everything so occupancy sensors, they can count People in and out, you can put them at a work point they can recognize, okay, what floor is Katrina working on today I want to go sit by her or, you know, they can do all kinds of things. But depending if you have a union environment, depending on how much capital you have, depending on what kind of data you want. And so what we did was we helped them take a step backward, and then take two steps forward, to really make sure they were investing beyond the pilot in a much more meaningful technology that will give them the empirical data that they needed, that would inform their decision. So the goal is not the dashboard. The goal is to affect the decision and you need the data that that not only can demonstrate the business case and support the business case, but also a year later, when the CFO calls you and goes, you know that all that money you spent, show me that it did a good job, then you have the evidence to be able to demonstrate that you are aligned with the business case and the business outcomes that were expected to be achieved from that investment. And so again, that engineering Thinking around closed loop innovation is it’s really where we how we design programs.