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Editor's Eye on Baltimore: Resetting Space: A Conversation with Marty Brunk and Dominic DuBois of McGladrey
Posted February 3, 2012
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Marty Brunk
By Newt Fowler
A common perception is that organizations leave the City for Suburbia, not the other direction, so I sat down with Marty Brunk and Dominic DuBois and over some very good pizza, discussed why they moved their accounting firm into Baltimore.
For Us. Their lease was coming up in the County, so "we looked out over 10 years and started talking about where we needed to be," said Marty Brunk. When they surveyed their people, the desire to move into the City was underwhelming to be charitable. Given where everyone lived, the move would inconvenience most. So to do anything other than to stay in an office park required McGladrey to take a leap of faith. "We did it for our future," said Marty. "We relocated not for our clients, but to re-energize our team," said Marty. Looking back, Dominic DuBois found that "it made us more connected to our clients." There is something intangible that others perceive when you become a physical part of the City's fabric. Even though McGladrey had been around for years, being in the City "it puts you on the radar screen." While their staff has enjoyed the mix of retail and living in their new Harbor East location, "it has also been an incredible recruitment tool," according to Dominic.
Rethinking Space. But McGladrey did more than simply relocate to Baltimore; they also viewed this move as an opportunity to rethink how they use space to work. The lives of their workers in the County had been one of traditional office cubicles, "that were not inviting, dark and gloomy," said Marty. This didn't end up being simply an extension of the hoteling discussions held by other service organizations - how can we cram more workers into our space. "We tried to figure out how to decode how we would use the space," and they used their old office to try to prototype different designs. They looked at everything from light to how people actually worked together, "we wanted to bring accountants to a level of creativity," said Dominic. The result is that their new space is flexible, and while it has elements of a traditional office, much of it is adaptive, open, and designed for different approaches to work - from areas for heads down work to spaces for collaborating and meeting. And they ensured that the views and the light (truly a sense of the outside in) are shared by all no matter where they work within the office.
Looking Back/Looking Forward. When I had lunch with Marty and Dominic, they had been in their new space in Harbor East for a little over a year, so it seemed like a good time to sort through what they would have done differently and what they got right. "You can't plan ahead too much, in terms of getting your team ready, to get them willing to give it a chance," reflected Marty. But you also can't let the comfortable habits of the past and the uncertainty of the future affect your thinking. Marty explained that "we were doing this for our future." He continued, "It may not be right for [any given employee], but it's right for us." Their reflections were not on the space itself, but on the people and more fundamentally, shaping a collective conversation on where they wanted their culture to evolve.
Take Away. If we see our companies as ecosystems - we usually focus on those internal elements that affect its health (read: profitability) -such as culture, shared vision, leadership, mentoring... What we often overlook about "organizational ecosystems" is the effect of place - where they are located - on the organization. This is more than a debate over the benefits of a suburban office park vs. a downtown office building, or even about the design of the space itself. It requires an understanding of how location - where we work - affects an organization's DNA - not necessarily on the day it relocates (as the same people will show up) but as Marty indicated, 10 years into the future. At one level this discussion about how location affects a company's culture can be about recruitment - how do we compete against other companies to attract the "best" talent? But fundamentally it's about who (and what) do we see our organizations becoming? Does our organization want to become an extension of our community, which requires more than buying a table at a museum gala? It really requires each of us (and our organizations) to try to understand the effect we want our community to have on us, and the effect we want to have on our community.
To learn more about McGladrey: http://mcgladrey.com/
For comments about this article or thoughts on future conversations, let me know at: nfowler@rosenbergmartin.com
With more than 25 years experience in law and business, Newt Fowler advises many of the Greater Baltimore region's entrepreneurs and technology companies, guiding them through all aspects of business planning, technology commercialization, and M&A and financing transactions.
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