Erik Jaspers, Chair of IFMA EMEA’s Executive Board, sits down with author and speaker Rex Miller to explore the shifting dynamics of hybrid work. They highlight the need for adaptable structures, smarter incentives, and the vital role of facility managers as change leaders.
In today’s episode, Erik Jaspers, Chair of IFMA EMEA’s Executive Board, joins author and speaker Rex Miller to unpack the evolving landscape of hybrid work. Together, they examine the push and pull between remote and office-based models—shaped by high-profile return-to-office mandates from companies like Amazon and Dell. Their conversation emphasizes the need to rethink organizational structures, decision-making, and incentives to support hybrid success. They also highlight the critical role facility managers play as change leaders, advocating for a collaborative, cross-functional approach to navigating this new world of work.
This episode is sponsored by ABM! Learn more about ABM here.
Rex Miller: [00:00:00] I like to think of facility managers as organizational chiropractors because whenever there's change, they experience all the misalignments
and which then results in drama, you know, entitlement or jockeying for space or all of that.
And so we have to redefine what we really do for a living.
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In today's episode, Eric Jaspers, who is the chair on ifma AMIA's executive board joins author and speaker Rex Miller to unpack the evolving landscape of hybrid work. Together, they examine the [00:01:00] push and pull between remote and office based models, shaped by high profile return to office mandates from companies like Amazon and Dell.
Their conversation emphasizes the need to rethink organizational structures, decision making, and incentives to support hybrid success. They also highlight the critical role facility managers play as change leaders advocating for a collaborative, cross-functional approach to navigating this new world of work.
Now let's get into it.
Erik Jaspers: My name is Erik Jaspers. I currently are active for IFMA as as acting chair of IFMA EMEA, and next to me is Rex Miller. Yes. Okay. We know you all, I guess, futurist and
Rex Miller: for a long time. Yeah. And
Erik Jaspers: for lifetime being associated to IFMA, I would say.
Right.
Rex Miller: Since 1981 or 82 when it was Facility Management Institute.
Erik Jaspers: Right. So we're going to have a conversation today and let's start, because [00:02:00] on the topic of hybrid Oh yeah. Hybrid work, workplace kind of thing. Right. I have the feeling that it's like we are going up and down and when you see companies operate and basically the management of companies operate, it seems like the one is going for the fool.
Let's say virtual play, the other say, well, everyone has to go back to the office like we used to do in the sixties of the previous century almost. Right, right. So what's your take on that? What's happening actually today?
Rex Miller: So, so currently we just saw Amazon mandate five days Dell computer as well. And then McKinsey's report about CEOs, the change in attitude from just a year ago, and how many expect within three years we'll be back in the office and we're all struggling.
And you see on LinkedIn the reactions of inhumane and yeah, you know, flexibility and freedom. We just haven't found [00:03:00] the balance yet because of the cycle that we're in, and there is a definite cycle. You know Jeffrey Moore's book, crossing the Chasm looks at the innovators. The early adopters. Yeah, the chasm.
Then the early majority. But I go back to a report from a futurist who is an EDS fellow. His name's Jeffrey Wacker.
Erik Jaspers: Yeah.
Rex Miller: In 2006, he reported this repeating cycle of disruptive technology. Yes. Starting with mainframes. Yeah. What he found is that in the first eight or nine years, the technology is stabilizing.
Yeah. Then in the second eight or nine years, it gets socialized and integrated. So right now our iPhones are second nature. Right?
Erik Jaspers: Yeah.
Rex Miller: Okay. 2007 is when the iPhone, so now we're in that second cycle where it's just second nature.
Erik Jaspers: Yeah. It's [00:04:00] like a little bit like the hype cycle of Gartner, where you basically see the same kind of lights, let's say romance, behavior,
Rex Miller: romance reality.
Erik Jaspers: Yeah. That kind of thing, right? Yeah.
Rex Miller: Yeah. Now. So to put us in the timeline, 20 11 is when Zoom was introduced. Yeah. 2017 is when teams was introduced. I know, we're just trying to get to the point where the technology doesn't suck as much.
Erik Jaspers: Yeah. Well, let's apart from AI then perhaps we just talk of the town today, of course, within the same cycle.
But at the same time, I think I. What we learned from this hill whole hybrid thing came about, let's say elevated in an elevated way when we were facing the covid situation. Of course, when there's no culture, right? Yeah. We were thrown
Rex Miller: into it.
Erik Jaspers: We were thrown into it, and that's why the technology at that stage was so much more, let's say, developing fast and value of those companies as well.
Now. My [00:05:00] question is, because we're talking about this, let's say bumping up and down behavior of companies in terms of office, virtual work office, virtual work might it not be uncertainty? 'cause one of the things that I seem to notice our about the conversation on going back to the office or not, is there's good elements to being physically together like we are today, right?
And very valuable. But they don't necessarily always apply when you say to all the people, go back to the office,
Rex Miller: right?
Erik Jaspers: That's one element. The other element is the world actually fundamentally changed by its virtual aspects, so you can't go back to history never,
Rex Miller: right? One thing we
Erik Jaspers: learned from history, you can't repeat history itself because the context actually changed fundamentally.
Rex Miller: Yeah.
Erik Jaspers: So how do you look at that situation? So perhaps you have some examples in what kind of circumstances you would say, okay, office should be dominant or [00:06:00] virtual should be dominant. What's your take on it?
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Rex Miller: So we're at a point where I think the tail is wagging the dog and the tail here is [00:07:00] hybrid or RTO.
Erik Jaspers: Yeah.
Rex Miller: But when a company fundamentally changes. Strategic change. We're now moving in this direction here.
Erik Jaspers: Yeah.
Rex Miller: That creates a domino effect that if you don't then fix the new decision making structure, because making decisions in distributed environment is much different than physical environment.
Erik Jaspers: Yeah.
Rex Miller: So we have to look at, well, how are decisions now made? Then you look at. Well, how does workflow differently?
Erik Jaspers: Yeah.
Rex Miller: Then you have to look at, well, are our incentive structures aligned for the behaviors we need? Yeah. In this new environment.
Erik Jaspers: Yeah.
Rex Miller: Then we have to look at do we have the right talent
Erik Jaspers: in order to get it done,
Rex Miller: and are we training?
So all those things. We haven't addressed yet, but we're still trying to mandate a solution. So we're so misaligned. Yeah. In what we want people to do and what we're. Ready to do so we're [00:08:00] outta sync.
Erik Jaspers: Yeah. So I like the example that you gave on the implications of things like how are decisions taken, right?
In the physical environment, they would be taken by a meeting, people being present around the table and go to kind of consensus and whatever kind of situation, and then decide. When you put this decision making process in the context of hybrid or virtual? Yeah, distributed, let's call it distributed.
Distributed. It tends to be, have to be different. Totally. It can't
Rex Miller: be the same. So now what we do is we look for outliers. Yeah. People who are further ahead. William Gibson, who's a great futurist, wrote the book Neuromancer, which the movie matrix is based on, said. The future's already here. It's just not evenly distributed.
So one outlier would be GitLab. So what GitLab has is this elaborate playbook on how to do virtual or how to do distributed. So, and we've [00:09:00] heard other people talk about that. We need to better define, you know, when you're distributed, we need to have a clearer understanding of roles, expectations, and process than we do individually, because we can pick up a lot just by.
Riffing or adlibbing, you can't do that in a virtual environment. So we haven't done that fundamental work yet.
Erik Jaspers: Yeah, and to your point it's actually now that you start talking about it and giving these examples, for me it's actually the question whether hybrid is the primarily FM thing, workplace thing.
Or not because when we talk about it in terms of physical space and virtual, that's something else. But effectively it is, has to do with change management because when you're deciding to go hybrid or not, it has implications for your base processes. It has to do with roles, new roles of people or right.
New behaviors within the context that you're creating for the [00:10:00] organization. And sometimes I think like we in FM and workplace, people are trying to, are utmost to basically try to discover what would be a physical setting while it's actually a organization-wide thing of change management. If you don't very much do that very much.
Yeah. Also, beyond the FM and beyond the workplace. If you not plan, if you do not plan for that, if you don't have that support, it's almost impossible.
Rex Miller: Yes.
Erik Jaspers: Right.
Rex Miller: It, I like to think of facility managers as organizational chiropractors because what they experience, whenever there's change, they experience all the misalignments and which then results in drama, you know, entitlement or jockeying for space or politics or all of that.
And so their role, we have to [00:11:00] redefine what we really do for a living.
Erik Jaspers: Right.
Rex Miller: Part of it is grief management.
Erik Jaspers: Yeah. Right? Yeah. Because you're going to say goodbye to good things.
Rex Miller: Yeah. So people are giving up things or losing certain things in, but gaining others. So managing the emotional process of that, but also too recognizing where we are in the innovation curve.
Right. So Jeffrey Moore's book, crossing the Chasm talks about innovators, early adopters, this chasm before you get to early majority, and then the tipping point is around 18% adoption. I think that applies inside a company as much as outside. Yeah. So when you and I are going inside, we don't go to the Gruffy executive with arms folded and said, you know, if the office was good enough for me, it's good enough for everybody.
We go to the people who are willing to take some risk, who think either instinctively there's got to be a better way [00:12:00] or. I'm so fed up. I want, I'm willing to try something new.
Erik Jaspers: Yeah.
Rex Miller: Pilot with them. Yeah. Because we don't have data, people who are looking for data that's majority or laggards. Yeah. One case study data.
We're, there is no data.
Erik Jaspers: No.
Rex Miller: And so now this gets into your style, my style of leadership. There's three different hats we can wear. One is the expert hat and the expert hat is that person who's really good at data metrics, case studies, delivery, best practices.
Erik Jaspers: Right?
Rex Miller: Then they're the visionaries. Who say, Hey, we've got to move in a new direction.
So how do I convince people to be willing to do that?
Erik Jaspers: Yeah.
Rex Miller: Then there are the guides. The guides are the people who we have no clue what the future looks like, but let's do it together. We'll learn together, so they create this [00:13:00] coalition. Process, stakeholder process of learning the new future,
Erik Jaspers: right? But at the same time, let's say the angle for the provider of workplace, so to say, I always said, well.
When we talk about workplace and change in workplace and swan fms do the physical stuff, but the, it does the virtual stuff. And when you see these examples of companies that are basically now like Microsoft and stuff like that, right? Are advancing the virtual workplace. The question is, in terms of change management, making this one thing, it's not about I either go there or there.
Right? Right. It's one thing and it needs to become one thing, but I, what I seem to miss out on is much of this realization that you have to do it together with people that you typically don't work with.
Rex Miller: Right, right. Yeah. Right. Yeah.
Erik Jaspers: And that's change management again. You know, because, [00:14:00]
Rex Miller: and stakeholders Yeah.
All these people who have a stake in the outcome. Yeah. Facility managers, we have to figure out how do we bring them together and the word buzzword is co-create, how do we create this together?
Erik Jaspers: Yeah. And, but it also needs understanding of what kind of company you are, what kind of activities is there.
Totally. Right. Right. And how to get them into the stakeholdership of the change in itself. Right. Well,
Rex Miller: it, and that gets to some fundamental questions. Does this strategy fit the business model? Right, the market strategy.
Erik Jaspers: Yeah. That's why all the other
Rex Miller: things we talked about, the culture.
Erik Jaspers: Yeah.
Rex Miller: Do we have the technology capabilities and the skills to actually do this?
Erik Jaspers: Yeah. That's why it is my notion that this. In this whole hybrid. And that's part of the uncertainty I think, in companies. If you don't level it up to the appropriate level where you're going to answer that type of questions and make sure that you have these kinds of conditions [00:15:00] in front of you to make the change.
If you don't reach that level, you're going to be doubting, oh, I, oh Shante shall we do this? Shall we do that? And that's what you actually see happening in many cases where you see. A CEO is just a man or a woman with a personal experience and says, well, I'm the po. I have the position, so out of personal experience, which is not the experience of others, I'm going to decide this or that.
Rex Miller: Well, and under stress, without that process of going into kind of uncertain change management, that's a different kind of change management, right? Than just moving someone from building A to building B.
Erik Jaspers: Yeah.
Rex Miller: So that uncertain change management under stress leaders tend to either crack down
Erik Jaspers: Yeah.
Rex Miller: The Amazons,
Erik Jaspers: yeah.
Rex Miller: Or they cave in.
Erik Jaspers: Yeah.
Rex Miller: The Silicon Valley approach and where we need to be able to get into is leaders need to be able to handle that tension, to let it evolve, [00:16:00] let the solution. Emerge.
Erik Jaspers: Okay, Rex, so
Rex Miller: now we gotta wind this down.
Erik Jaspers: I have a final question for you now. Okay. All right. After this conversation with, actually it was a conversation about uncertainty in the hybrid space, how to get, what advice would you have for any company or organization that is in this uncertainty stage?
Should we do this or that? How to, basically, not what you should do, but how to arrive at a sound. The decision where to go to?
Rex Miller: Well, I would start with finding people who are interested in that direction that you want to go. First of all, you and I have to have some kind of conviction as to what we think is right.
Erik Jaspers: Yeah.
Rex Miller: The next thing, we need to find out who else feels the same way. I call that a collection of the curious. Then move it into what we call the cohort of the committed and then experiment. Experiment. Yeah, experiment. And then out of that experimentation do the [00:17:00] things that work.
Erik Jaspers: Yeah. And to add to that, when you go to look for the interested look outside your own circle.
Oh
Rex Miller: yeah. Right. That's a good, very
Erik Jaspers: much outside into the business, into the it, into HRM, into whatever. Thank you. Nice conversation today. Yeah. This fun. Yeah. Thank you very much. Take care, Eric. Yeah, you too. You
Rex Miller: bet.
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