Successful facility management depends on more than a good strategy. Wayne Whitzell and Amanda Muzzarelli discuss why leadership, institutional knowledge and operational execution determine whether organizational strategies succeed or fail.
Strong strategies don't fail because they're poorly written. They fail because they weren't designed with operational reality in mind.
In this episode, Wayne Whitzell, Senior VP Strategic Accounts, SOLID Surface Care and First Vice Chair on IFMA's Global Executive Board, sits down with Amanda Muzzarelli, Global Operations Director at Macro, to explore what separates effective facility management leaders from reactive ones. Together, they discuss preserving institutional knowledge, creating psychological safety, developing future leaders and why understanding day-to-day operations is essential for successful strategy execution. They also examine how AI may reshape facility management workflows and why curiosity and leadership remain the profession's greatest competitive advantages.
Timestamps:
Resources from the episode:
Amanda Muzzarelli: [00:00:00] Role clarity is a gift, and if, if you're an FM today and you're sitting there and you're not sure where your role ends and where your boss's starts, I would start having those conversations right now.
Host: Welcome to Connected FM, a podcast connecting you to the latest insights, tools, and resources to help you succeed in facility management. This podcast is brought to you by IFMA, the leading professional association for facility managers. If you are ready to grow your network and advance in your career, go to ifma.org to get started.
Strong strategies don't fail because they're poorly written. They fail because they weren't designed with operational reality in mind. In today's episode, host Wayne Whitzell, the Senior VP of Strategic Accounts at Solid Surface Care and the First Vice Chair on IFMA's Global Board of Directors, sits down with [00:01:00] Amanda Muzzarelli, the Global Operations Director at Macro, to explore what separates effective facility management leaders from reactive ones.
Together, they discuss preserving institutional knowledge, creating psychological safety, developing future leaders, and why understanding day-to-day operations is essential for successful strategy execution. They also examine how AI may reshape facility management workflows and why curiosity and leadership remain the profession's greatest competitive advantages.
Now, let's get into it
Wayne Whitzell: Welcome again to the Connected FM podcast. Boy, I, I can't tell you how excited I am of this series we've got going on, because it's subject matter expert after subject matter expert that I'm, I'm getting this ability to talk to and learn from and, and, and bring all of you into these conversations.
And today is, is certainly no different in that series of experts. Today we [00:02:00] have none other than Amanda Mazzarelli on with us, and I'm very excited. Amanda, say hi to the folks
Amanda Muzzarelli: Hi, everybody. Glad to be here.
Wayne Whitzell: So, Amanda you know, I, I, I sometimes you have people like Amanda that are not gonna toot their own horn and so forth and be humble and then not brag on themselves.
But I will say that Amanda's resume and experience is pretty impressive, and I, I, I hope to carve out some knowledge in this brief period we have together out of your extensive history and, and experience. But I, I, I'll, I'll say that , my first experience with you really was on DJ Mikey P's podcast for Eptura, the Workplace Innovator series.
So that's the first place where I got to know you virtually without actually getting to, to know you personally.
So, tell us a little bit about your career and some of the things that you've done, Amanda, that, that's led you to this point.
Amanda Muzzarelli: Well, thanks, Wayne. It's kind of funny. I started my career in public affairs and communications.
I did not start in FM. Everybody talks about falling into it. I was, I was lured in. [00:03:00]
Wayne Whitzell: I like that.
Amanda Muzzarelli: I was lured in. I had, I had spent 10 years in public affairs and PR marketing, and I had been a speech writer for executives. And then there was this great opportunity in New Jersey that the organization had kind of reached out to me and said, "Hey, would you like to move to New Jersey and, and be a manager here?"
And I said you're talking about a public affairs manager, right? Oh, no. No, this is administrative services, which I had kind of read into as this is the department of no. This is the department of no. But then I talked to some people, said it's a leadership position. It will really help your career, so I went for it.
So I spent five years out there in New Jersey, responsible for some functions of ad services, which is basically your FM, your mail processing fleet, technology deployments, all that stuff. And then I got pretty good at it, so they [00:04:00] gave me the whole East Coast, and that was, that was interesting because it was a, a big time of change, and consolidating offices and, and those type, that type of work, which is a little more real estate focused.
From there, I got pulled back to corporate, lots of different things, enterprise roles facilities management for the enterprise. And then after that, I moved, and I, I did some consulting. So I did the client side of the business, and then I did a consulting role where it was m- my job to kinda help clients meet their suppliers through the RFP process, and evaluating those and, and negotiating contracts.
And now I have the opportunity to work for a provider, Macro. So now I, I'm really enjoying the opportunity to see FM from different sides of the table or spectrum.
Wayne Whitzell: Boy, what a, what a skill set and [00:05:00] experience to have the, to look at things from all these different viewpoints and perspectives.
It k- it kinda reminds me, I s- I saw the other day, I love this, I'm totally going to steal it, but I don't know if you've ever seen it, but it's a it's a picture of a cylinder, and on one side the, the s- light is shining on it, and it casts a shadow in a rectangle shape. And people there are saying, "It's a rectangle."
And then on another side, it's casting a shadow in the shape like a circle. Says, "No, it's a circle." But it's actually a can. It's a cylinder. So you're actually, you've seen the rectangle, you've seen the square, and you've seen the the, the circle and the cylinder of, of FMs. Yes. That makes you- I
Amanda Muzzarelli: am getting a good tour of all the different facets of FM
Wayne Whitzell: that makes you pretty, pretty deadly. I mean, that's something you've got some serious experience there. You know, there's, there's no, there's very little wool, I think, that could be pulled over your eyes at this point in your career, having, having experienced all of those angles.
Amanda Muzzarelli: Yeah. Yes, most likely.
Wayne Whitzell: Yeah.
But boy, I, I'll tell you, w- with, with you, what I look forward to... And there's a handful of people that [00:06:00] when I see the LinkedIn post come through, it's not this kind of thing, "Well, okay they're, they're my b- friend, so I'm gonna like it," or whatever.
I'm like, "No, I'm gonna read this thing really. You know, I gotta dig into this." And you've, you, I call them bomb drops. And there's a few people out there that, that, that, that do that. I put you in the category of like a Grant Sommerfeld or a Kim Frickhofer, you know, where there's these so pithy and, but, but jam-packed with knowledge.
And I actually f- I wrote down a couple here. I, I wanted to, to run this one t- by you just to get your thoughts here. Supplier staff turnover is one of the most underrated early warning signals in FM. One account manager change, that's operational noise. Two account managers and three technicians in 12 months is a different conversation.
Institutional knowledge of a building lives in people. I love that line. The undocumented maintenance history, the occupant quirks, the workarounds that keep systems running between capital cycles. When that knowledge walks out the door repeatedly, service quality degrades behind the scenes before it degrades on the [00:07:00] floor.
Boy, a lot of people are talking about this concept because obviously the silver tsunami and other things. But h- how, how would you advise an FM team... Let's say it's an internal FM team that works for the demand organization direct, not outsourced. And they've got a few older, you know, Toms and Sues that are working there that knowledge is living in them, that building knowledge.
How would you advise them to proceed with extracting that knowledge, and, and what would that look like? What's that process?
Amanda Muzzarelli: Hmm. Well, I think it's a matter of actually listening to these people who have that insider knowledge. Think about how many times an employee might have a great idea, but if they don't have the right leadership environment, they may never bring it up if they don't feel like they're gonna be heard, or if they feel like, "Oh, I'll bring it up, but nah, nothing will ever happen with that."
So you have to first, from leadership perspective, create an environment where your people are willing to and desire to [00:08:00] talk to you. That's that psychological safety. I think that's how you first, you, you lay the, I guess, the groundwork for extracting the knowledge. Extracting sounds so mean, but uh, but really that you can welcome what knowledge and what people have learned.
I think it's important to pair up experienced technicians with people who are just coming into the profession or may want to move over into a technician position, but they've been a coordinator or something for several years, and now they have this curiosity about what could be next. Pair those people up so that they can learn directly from the source.
Better yet would be to have recorded interviews like this one where you, you talk to the person about some of the things that they've seen over and over again, the workarounds they've had to do, and what would fix some of those problems. I, I think that's how you... You just have to talk to people. I, I remember somebody asked me once, "How do you [00:09:00] engage your employees?"
You talk with them.
Wayne Whitzell: Right.
Amanda Muzzarelli: You ask them questions about how things are going. You get to know them and, and, a- and you, you engage with them. And the more you can listen and take your notebook The more you're gonna learn from those people
Wayne Whitzell: You know, it's, it's anybody that's been following the podcast series this year will pick up on certain threads that run through everything.
I mean, you mentioned the psychological safety issue. You, you mentioned, you know, the, the talking to your employees welcoming this information. I, I don't know whether it's because subject matter experts like you arrive at this knowledge from experience or if it's because I'm just picking great people that know that for the podcast.
So, and that's probably a little bit of both, but, but that, that concept of psychological safety when it comes to this specific thing of getting that knowledge out of the person before they move on or, or retire, whatever the case may be I've experienced folks that are very protective of their knowledge because it is a job [00:10:00] security.
I, I know how to bang on the boiler just the right way to get it to work, and nobody else knows where to hit it with a hammer but me, so to speak, right? And that, that... So if you start to look at root cause issue, to your point, it's not that you just don't have the information, it's that you haven't created an environment where that person feels like they can give that up.
So there's even a layer, like you're describing, behind just getting the information, and, and I would venture that has come from your many facets of experience in, in, in FM from, from g- from getting to that point. I think to, to me, we, we make jokes about it now, and I think a lot of the people we're talking to are saying, "Look, we've got to get..."
I mean, we've been saying this for a long time. We've got to get out of the tactical mindset. People hear me that, say that all the time, and that it's not a, a, a badge of honor to have survived another flaming Monday with, with, with problems. And, you know, as, as someone that has s- you know, scaled things globally you know, there's the, there's the granular things that we have to deal with in FM and the problems on site and so forth, but boy, talk to me about what that's [00:11:00] like at scale, where you've got distributed facilities o- over regions and g- and the globe of really trying to o- organize this in, in a way that you're getting the information that you need.
And, and, and tell me this, how would you share that, those best practices across the enterprise that you're learning?
Amanda Muzzarelli: There's a lot in that question. There's a lot there. As far as how you stay strategic when everybody seems to get pulled into the tactical, you really have to know about boundaries and where they are.
You have to make sure you know who's... You know, role clarity is a gift, and if, if you're an FM today and you're sitting there and you're not sure where your role ends and where your boss's starts, I would start having those conversations right now. A, a lot of FMs do get pulled into the weeds, the weeds, the details because they are experts.[00:12:00]
However, they have engineers, technicians, assistant managers, and, and who can also do these types of things. And when you look on a global scale, the, the best lesson in a global organization is if it, if the whole globe is your responsibility, you can only live in one place at one time. You can't get in the weeds if something happens at Amsterdam and you're in the US.
You can't. It's just not you can't see it yourself, so you have to make sure that those relationships of trust with your teams exist so that you can trust, of course, but verify. One way that you can let go of the details is to ensure that you have systems in place That allow people to report the details and document what's happening, where it becomes a, a trusted archive of the things that worked.
And you don't just have data and metrics, and those are all very important, but making [00:13:00] sure that there is a, a way to collect that information, to make sure people are adhering and being very clear, roles, responsibilities, expectations, and actions they should be performing. You don't have to tell anybody how to do it.
Just say, "Here are the things that need to be done." A- and then letting people just do their jobs. I think that's a hard thing, especially in facilities management because a lot of us have been so tactical, so on-the-ground focused for years, that when you get that next leadership role, it's a little harder to, to let go of that.
But that's where you have to start working on your leadership skills as much as your technical skills.
Wayne Whitzell: Boy, I, I love that term, role clarity. And, and that's, that's, that's role clarity not just about what the roles are of your lieutenants and the other people on your team and your boss, but your own role.
And I... What you touched on, I, I think there's a term for this. I don't, I can't think of it off the top of my [00:14:00] head, but it's, it's the I th- the leadership trap, I think it might be called, something like that, where you've moved into that first l- role from technician to leadership, from tactical to leadership, and it's very tempting to go over and reach back at the things you were doing that you're good at because it feels good, you're safe, and so forth.
But it's it's the old, "What got you here won't get you there"-
Amanda Muzzarelli: Yes ...
Wayne Whitzell: kind of thinking. And to me, I don't think you can flip a switch in a person and they become that. I think that that is where mentoring becomes critical, where you have a, a leader you're working with or under and that person, she pulls you over and says, "Look, you know, you're trending toward this kind of career.
Here are some of the things I have to deal with and how I do it." It seems to me like that's, that's incumbent upon not just welcoming the knowledge that's in these, in individuals' heads, but as you mentor them, it's incumbent upon those in leadership now to, to provide a safe transition between that role and a more a role where they're managing one to many [00:15:00] instead of- Mm-hmm
I'm the guy that they're, that's, that's checking the, you know, the, the, the expiration dates on the fire extinguishers because I'm good at it and, and I'm a global FM.
Amanda Muzzarelli: Yeah. It, that, that is, that is tough. Yeah, there's so much to making sure you're mentoring. One thing I've found, especially early in the leadership journey when you're leading and maybe you don't have any official training, maybe you haven't sought out some systems and books and, and maybe your company doesn't have a way of doing things That it's really important to reflect and think, "Why did I make the decisions I made today?
Why did I react the way I reacted today to something? What, what brought me back into the weeds? What was, was it some kind of underlying fear that something wouldn't be taken care of? Do I-- do you not trust the person you're working with so closely?" There are all these, In leadership, there are all these kind of [00:16:00] opportunities to reflect and see what is it about you as a person, as a human, that is creating this, this situation, whether you're falling back into the weeds or where- whether you're reacting in a way that is not engaging with your people.
There, there are a lot of opportunities for that. But I find that the more you reflect, the better you are to write down and say, "I now understand why and how I do the things I do," instead of, "I just show up and do with-- do things."
Wayne Whitzell: Boy, I, I, it, this-- We're, we're getting to the heart of why I love doing this because we can talk about chiller maintenance, and we can talk about HVAC set points, right?
We can talk about using agentic AI in FM, but you went right to the human aspect of this. This, and this is, this is what's undergirding everything that we do, and this is why FM is such a, a wonderful field and why [00:17:00] I'm so dr- have been so drawn to it all these years, is that there's an M inside the FM.
There's a person. There's... And, and the question you just said is a philosophical question, right? It, it's, it's not only taking the time to do those things, to ask those questions. It's like, why did I react that way? What is my fear? And, or why did I get angry? Because typically, right under anger is fear. And then what do I fear?
And, and identifying that takes some time and to step back and to, and to do that, but you'll just be doomed to repeat the same Groundhog FM Day- ... over and over again unless you break out of that cycle. And, and that's a distinctly human thing y- y- you, you, you s- you said to do. Now, you could certainly make that, you know, journaling.
There's some people that say to do all of that kind of stuff, but I think that's what separates, The you know, you can have executives that have zero self-awareness, and they operate with sledgehammers and not with scalpels. And they're just gonna bulldoze everything that they do, but there's a, there's externalized and cost of [00:18:00] collateral damage to that.
But you're saying let's start with oneself. Radiate from there. What, what is it that, that, that I can do? Why did I react? Why did I feel I had to put my hands on that thing instead of letting, you know, Sue or Sam do it? And I think that's a very healthy thing to do. But I think we're so, again, so tactical and in a cold sweat every day, we just ke- we just keep doing the same thing over and over again- Yep
to justify our existence to the demand organization.
Amanda Muzzarelli: Yes.
Wayne Whitzell: Yeah. For sure. Since we mentioned strategy or you mentioned strategy, I'm gonna quote another piece here from one of your posts here, and I h- but I'm not making you blush here or whatever, but these are... I love these. So you did, did another podcast and, and the, the title up they had on their thing was, "Most organizations don't have a strategy problem.
They have an execution problem." And your quote here is "Operational reality should not be an impediment to executing strategy, but it often is because the strategy wasn't developed with operational reality in mind." Oof. "Separating [00:19:00] strategy development from execution teams without a structured feedback loop is a recipe for chaos during transitions of every kind."
And, and then the other piece from the podcast host was, "Why enterprise transformations fail after the strategy phase when decisions made at the top collide with operational reality in the field." Now, this is something that- A lot of people have lived through, or I should say they, they've survived and, and, and left with an emotional limp.
And, you know, you could, you could say, "Well, look, we just need to overlay change management on something like this." But, but to me, it's operating things in vacuums and providing... Everyone has great ideas, and type, get a bunch of Type As in a room, and they're gonna come up with a great strategy and so forth.
And they could, they might even come up with an implementation plan and a balanced scorecard and so forth. But the, the, the, the connection between those things is, is I almost ca- call it you have to splint that. There has to be more than just a plan [00:20:00] on paper. There needs to be active involvement with leadership to drive the change, to be involved in the organization, especially in, in, you know, the things that we do in terms of FM.
But, but talk to me about that gap between the, the, the heady world of strategy and the C-suite and the, at the executive levels and maybe even at the top levels of a facilities department and then the real-world implementation. Why, why do you see there's that gap between strategy and operational execution of the strategy?
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Amanda Muzzarelli: The, the easiest answer is that the strategists never talk to the people who are actually doing the work, or they didn't get en- they didn't get enough, I wanna say, field intelligence or a good understanding of what the work is and what the people on the ground are experiencing day to day. And when you think about it, okay, the C-suite is not gonna go down and see what the, you know, cleaning supplier's doing, and they're not, and they're not gonna understand that the cleaning supplier can't effectively clean the floor because they really picked the wrong material for this type of, you know, traffic flow and, and that kind of thing.
I, I'm sure you've encountered that type of thing where they didn't im- the str- strategist didn't select the, the finishes but they also didn't make it clear that the finishes need to jive with the [00:22:00] actual day-to-day use of the bu- I have seen some things. You would not understand.
Wayne Whitzell: I
Amanda Muzzarelli: have seen things that, that the architects and the building and st- construction people have done with never talking to facilities management.
Some of the beautiful wall coverings they've selected for restrooms, just absolutely beautiful.
Wayne Whitzell: For about 10 minutes. Completely
Amanda Muzzarelli: destroyed. Yeah. Completely destroyed after, you know, a good couple months of hand dryer blowers and- Yeah ... and water drips. But it, it's, it's because there isn't necessarily that how is this form going to function- Oof, oof,
Wayne Whitzell: ooh.
Somebo- somebody write that down. How is this form going to function? Uh-oh. I, I, I'm stealing that. It's official. I like that.
Amanda Muzzarelli: So I think that really is the gap. A- and what's really beautiful about facilities management as a career field, I think that people who come in as technicians, [00:23:00] come in as coordinators, they can grow up in it and they can learn to...
They can take that experience from the front lines and contribute that to the team, contribute that, contribute that in a way that it will get funneled up to where it needs to go, so when the strategists are making those decisions and plans, that they can consider those things. And that, of course, is a leadership responsibility to make sure that they can get the ground intelligence back to the, back to the execs.
Wayne Whitzell: Yeah, that ground intelligence gathering is so crucial and, and I, I, I've seen, I've seen organizations gather the info, but what they missed was the shadow systems, that there are these kind of side systems, shadow systems that people build because it's, "It's just too complicated to do it the way you want me to do it, so I've been doing it this way," and it's been great, and things have been getting done, and there haven't been problems.
And then all of a sudden, that person gets poached by another company, and no one knows what's [00:24:00] happening in that, in that area. So, that to, to me, again, that harkens back maybe to the do you really wanna know? Because you, you... If you really wanna know, you've gotta give these people, again, a psychological safety to say, "Well, I actually have been doing it this way, and I haven't been doing it in Coupa."
I have, I have-
Amanda Muzzarelli: Right. Exactly. I haven't been doing it in the system that you gave me and want me to use
Wayne Whitzell: Right. Takes me 72 mouse clicks to do it in Corrigo or Mou- or Coupa. I'm just making names up here. I know. It's, you know, it's but it, it's, it's just, you know, or Salesforce or whatever it is that... But it, you know, maybe, maybe you want to take their input and redesign your, your portal.
Maybe you wanna change the way things are in there. You're just not listening to it that way. But I think other times it could be training, too, is another thing, that they, they've, they've... It's, it's not that they're doing it because it's just more efficient. No one's ever shown them how to do something, and they have made it far more complex than it has to be.
But again, we haven't had these conversations. We, it's almost like we start the engines and go, and every day we're just kinda keeping the lights on in the building [00:25:00]
Amanda Muzzarelli: Yeah. Yeah, because that ultimately people are like, "If the building's not running, then, you know, why are, you know, why are we here?" But I do think, you know, the answer to the data entry or the, you know, ticketing system really eventually, I'm so excited about AI because of this.
I knew we weren't gonna be able to get out of this conversation without talking about it.
Wayne Whitzell: Of course.
Amanda Muzzarelli: It, voice-to-text and giving, you know, commands for an agent to do something it can fill out all those forms. It, it, it can. I set up an agent the other day just, you know what, just really light touch on, on Claude to round up some quotes for me for moving, like move quotes for, with my personal household to go to the, you know, U-Haul site and put this data in and bring back, you know, bring back the quote.
And it did all those things. Mm-hmm.
Wayne Whitzell: What a world, right? And, and that's the thing is how, I, I mean, I, I'm gr- I'm, I, as someone who enjoys writing and I was-- I'm one [00:26:00] of these people that say I would love AI to do all the things it can do for me so that I can write, because that's something I'm good at and I like doing.
And I've been receiving p- obvious things that have been written by AI to me, and I have been doing more of that myself for basic business stuff, right? Where it would normally I'd, I'd agonize over creating the perfect business letter because I just want this nuance here and this here. But my particular LLM has gotten very good at knowing me 'cause I've been feeding back my edits to my LLM's letters back in and saying, "This is how I write it."
So the voices are becoming very, very close together. I still, when it comes to a personal letter to a person that I care about and so forth, I'm gonna write that letter because I want that in my own hand from, from a human mind. But, I, I someone once described it to me, it might have been Dr. Jake Smithwick it might have been him, I might be misquoting, but that when AI becomes as ubiquitous as a, as a desk calculator is, where we just trust.
We type in two plus two on the calculator. Oh, it's four. Okay, we just believe that. It's four. And, [00:27:00] and we're getting to that point but I would arg- I would argue we're still doing a lot of talk, we're still doing a lot of laboratory talk when it comes to AI, and there's not a, a ton of content yet where people are sharing exactly and precisely what they're doing in a very open-ended format and saying, "Hey, I, I'm gonna open the kimono.
Here's what our department does here FM." And I mean, you just described something that with agentic AI, I think you're, you run into so many roadblocks to try to even implement that in a lot of organizations, both from a cybersecurity standpoint, from a risk standpoint, and just from not trusting what you're gonna get back.
And w- I mean, you, you obviously have consulted with a lot of organizations and, and you have a, a feel for that. Give me a realistic timeline of when do you s- really think that the FM organization is going to be AI-empowered to a meaningful way? And I'm not talking from the vendors who come in and say, "Well, we've got some IoT stuff that can, we can tie in."
I'm talking about the FM department [00:28:00] operating with an AI backbone. What, what do you think the timeline is on, on that adoption and uptake?
Amanda Muzzarelli: This is a instance of operational reality impeding or slowing down the, the visions of grandeur that your s- strategic team comes up with. The operational reality, because of the things like info security and all of the checks and security things that have to be done when you're talking about technology it's gonna be slowed down.
I would say, I say three to five years, you're gonna have fully agentic AI. You're gonna be able to pull up your app or phone at work and report that spill in the hallway and it will geolocate you so you don't have to fill out the form. It'll just put it in there based on... You take a picture, upload it.
And those are things that, that could be... Okay, so a lot of people would say, "Why is anybody putting a ticket in for that? Just get some [00:29:00] paper towels and clean it up." Yeah, but you still have to document it.
Wayne Whitzell: And you still need that data, right?
Amanda Muzzarelli: Yeah, you do.
Wayne Whitzell: Here's why we need to pay for lids on the coffee cups, because it's costing us, you know, $20,000 a year in spot cleaning.
Right? So that whole concept of, of integration, one of the things I see p- potentially as coalescing of opportunity, we've been talking about digital twin for a while, and the b- barrier to entry, right? Is, okay, well, I've got an existing building who's gonna hand jam all that data into a system, and is that the value that I get from it going to be worth doing that?
Well, now, with AI being able to walk through a building and asset tag it with a camera and and have it go fetch the, the manuals and everything and set up maintenance schedules for you, these things are becoming more and more easy e- e- every day. So this, this actually seems to complete the circle with what we're talking about because- When it comes to psychological safety, I'm afraid I'm the only guy that knows how to bang on the side of the boiler.
[00:30:00] Well, what if my entire value in FM is the fact that I'm, I'm that hub, that problem solver that all these things are going through, and now all of a sudden 60% of that can be done with agentic AI. And now, now where is my value? So if I'm a young person in the field or somebody that's, you know, moderately young that's got some time left in it, I'm gonna be thinking, "Okay I've got to adapt.
I've really got to start u-using these tools so that I'm leveraging the knowledge that I have in a way," but I'm not-- I can't shy away from it because... I mean, just for example, I'll give you a, like this was two years ago. I th- you know, so LLMs are, were still on, on the rise, and I was talking to a person who she had never used an LLM at the, at that time or anything and, and the, her, they refreshed all their conference rooms and wanted a new naming convention.
The C-suite said, "We want you to come up with a new naming convention." But she was dreading this. She was dreading having to come up with something and think of all these names or whatever. She gave it to a brand-new 23-year-old coordinator, and he [00:31:00] walks back in the office and says, "I'm done," like after five minutes.
And she said, "What do..." And he gave her a-all these options that he just put in. This is back then. And that's something that's so basic, right, that we can do with that. But we're at a point now, I think, where it, it's we have a lot of people that want to do it. They don't know how, that nobody sh-- I shouldn't say nobody.
Very few people are sharing actual knowledge, "This is what I'm doing." So in, in, in your experience, is this something that you see an opportunity for the consultant class to come in and, and kind of help these people integrate these tools? Do you think that it's a matter of bringing in an AI czar or steward into the organization?
And, and my fear of that is we did that with sustainability, where we put sustainability directors in over FMs that were telling FMs how to run buildings and had no clue. Mm-hmm. Eh, what, where do you see the, the big lever in the organization to finally say, okay, do you think it's gonna reside within the FM department [00:32:00] with cons- or consultants coming in and saying, "We're gonna help you AI your department," or some other method to, to really get this thing over the hump?
Amanda Muzzarelli: Well, I think organizations are not going to pay for a consultant to come in to do AI with their facilities management team. If anything, they're gonna say, unless they're a facilities management provider and it's their, their bread and butter, they're gonna say, "We're gonna put AI priority on anything that touches the customer So that might be facilities if we were talking about retail storefronts and, and things like that.
I, I think a lot of the technology, we've seen it before, it goes straight to the frontline of where the money gets made in an organization, which is really important for FMs to understand the companies that they're working for, how their, how their business works and what they value, because that will help you, you know, figure out how to get resources and, and make those appeals through the process.
I, I do think consultants will [00:33:00] still have, but I do th- I do think it's gonna be individuals in FM who are curious and hungry for knowing about it, going out and m- you know, getting their personal subscriptions and just messing around, going watching the YouTube videos and doing a lot of self-education, realizing, "Wow, I don't have to be a programmer to create something."
Now, of course, the caveat is you can't just create this thing and turn it loose inside your organization. You're still gonna have to go through all the compliance, all the InfoSec things unless it's in a, in a closed loop in order to use it within an organization. I think it's gonna be a lot like software implementation teams that support it when you put up-- bring in a whole new operating system.
Those people will come in and, and help with AI and, and who knows? I think some of those consultants might develop better ways to do it and just sell it to you like a product, [00:34:00] and then nobody has to figure out how to apply it in FM.
Wayne Whitzell: But yeah, and, and to that, to that end, I think that's also the dangers too because this is one of those things that could be one of the most egalitarian things that's out there, you know, next to the internet that, that empowers people to, to, to do things and knowing how to do some of those basic things in life is, is almost going to be Jesus.
It's, it's, it's almost like the, the, the right to to have food and, and, and clean water and access to this, this tool because we could get into this kind of two-class system- Yeah ... with, with people. Yeah. So boy, that's again, it's... We're, we're, we're constantly putting the human at the center of all of these things here, even when we're talking about AI, and I, I think the more I talk about it with people like you, the more I, I, I think I'm, I'm I'm confirming that it's not just human in the loop as a, I'm a human checker of what's going by.
It's, it's really you're saying let's, let's, let's own that in, in FM. To champion it yourself, especially in your career, if you're saying, "I, I want to be ready for the next thing," whatever that [00:35:00] is, that firm is gonna ask you, "How are you using AI already to leverage what you're doing?" So that's gon- That is a question that's being asked now at every interview, by the way.
I don't know if anybody ha-has ever- Is it?
Amanda Muzzarelli: Okay.
Wayne Whitzell: Yeah. I mean, that's like you see it all over online is, is, is these experts with the r- You know, it's that they're ask- They're ... Yeah, 'cause that ... How, what do you do? How do you do it? If you, if you come to any organization right now and you're not proficient in a basic way with some of those things, believe me, there's a 22-year-old that is.
You know, it just is. And, and so I think that's important. But I think I could just sit, you know, for six hours and just pick your brain and, and talk, and I fully expect to have you back on the podcast at some point.
But c- is there any place we can look forward to, to hearing more from you or seeing more? You have anything on the docket right now? I know you're pretty busy with the new job, but anything coming up you'd like to, to, to plug to the folks?
Amanda Muzzarelli: Well, yes, of course. Okay. World Workplace in November. Yes.
I'm having a workshop as part of the [00:36:00] education sessions to really kinda help self-assess if your organization's really ready for IFM and kind of a self-assessment for that. And then there's a panel that I'm gonna host having conversations with people who are really savvy on social media, and how that is the way to reach the youth, the youth of the future- Yeah.
Yes ... so that we can attract more people to our field.
Wayne Whitzell: All right. Well, I will see you in World Workplace. Obviously, I'll be there, and everybody who, who's headed over there- Mm-hmm ... pop into Amanda's session and, and- ... and both those sessions and then take advantage of this knowledge. So Amanda, listen, on behalf of the whole podcast team, we, we really appreciate you making some time for us and and sharing your knowledge and expertise with us.
We, we really appreciate it.
Amanda Muzzarelli: Of course. Thank you so much for having me, Wayne.
Host: Thanks for tuning into the Connected FM podcast. If you enjoyed today's episode, please take a moment to rate and review the show because it really helps us reach more listeners just like you. And don't forget to hit the subscribe button so you never miss an episode. See you next [00:37:00] time.