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A corporate balance sheet has three components: money (cash, debt and equity), goodwill and assets. Boards tend to have money-savvy accountants and sector specialists, but who is looking after the fixed assets? If most companies’ major fixed assets are the properties they own or lease, why are there so few property experts on the board?

It seems astonishing that there are so few directors with the expertise to influence the strategy for buying, leasing, occupying or investing in properties from which the company trades. Yet this vacuum is common. Why?

Maybe property people are assumed to lack the wider business sense to sit on a board. Alternatively, the assets could be viewed as the sort of detail boards should avoid in favour of a strategic focus. Most likely it is a blend of these factors.

A classic example of the vacuum was an automotive supplies company with around 625 retail outlets. The properties were under the care of the company secretary (not a board member). For this busy individual the properties always slipped to the bottom of the to-do list. His solution was to employ a firm of property specialists to run the portfolio.

Unfortunately, they were not real estate managers. Further, they were paid only for enough time to review each property once a year at best. It later emerged that the company secretary was responsible for more than 1,700 properties and legal property interests across seven European countries.

The implications are far-reaching: no records to rely on, no strategic plan nor budget to buy, sell, manage or enhance the properties, and no cashflow planning either. Without recorded details of rent review
dates, lease expiries or freeholder/ leaseholder duties, problems will emerge. Yet, each property is the visible face of the business to customers. For a company with multiple outlets, it could be disastrous, operationally, financially and from a reputation perspective.

So what can be done? On a broad scale, chairmen, directors and headhunters should wake up to the value of bringing property expertise onto the board. Only when real estate properties are strategically integrated into the business will they perform well. Equally, senior property professionals must show their understanding of the business implications of changes in the economy, legislation and market.

Many property investors and developers may be hidebound by
a lack of financial understanding and more traditional business knowledge. Or perhaps the problem runs even deeper. Is there something in the intellectual make-up of the average real estate professional which allies their thinking more to the technical
issues of a property rather than the broader corporate concepts?

The ability to think strategically and to articulate how a business
can mitigate real estate risks – as well as take advantage of opportunities – are vital skills any board neglects at its peril.

Barry Gilbertson is an international real estate consultant, speaker and lecturer

• Cash flow 41 per cent
• Access to contracts 19 per cent
• Red tape 11 per cent
• Bank support 10 per cent
• The rest were a mix of smaller issues

What does this tell us? First, money is very tight. Secondly, finding work is hard. Thirdly, bureaucracy makes life difficult. No big insights there perhaps.

However, it seems that working capital is not perhaps as big a problem as many commentators consider it to be.. I wonder, though, whether people are confusing cash flow and working capital? The former is the flow of cash in and out of a business. The latter the stock of money to which the business has access so it can operate.

Focusing on cash flow has long been a lesson learned the hard way by many entrepreneurs, partners and directors of businesses of all sizes. Too many companies have got into financial trouble by spending too much in the good times − big salaries, excessive dividends, new offices, fancy cars, smart IT kit, or simply living the good life on expenses. The bubble was always going to burst. It was only a question of when.

So, what can companies do now to reduce the burden of these overheads? Pruning the list of excessive expenditure is an obvious place to start, but what next?

I’ve always believed any company can, if it wants, shave 10 per cent off its overheads. For example, professional services firms often set the wage bill at about 60 per cent of turnover. What about a target of 45-48 per cent?

Or what about relocating? Do you really need smart offices in the centre of town? Could you be more creative with your location to lower your property costs? Or what about ditching expensive car parking spaces or slashing your hospitality budget (clients won’t walk as a result).

If you have already trimmed the fat, finding the second 10 per cent of cuts will mean cutting into the muscle. It will be harder and is likely to mean salary reductions – owners and directors must lead the way. If your shoulders are on the wheel others will follow.

Cost savings take focus, concentration and effort, yet it is the only way forward for many businesses right now. Working smarter is no long an esoteric ideal, but a necessity. While it is difficult to avoid bureaucracy, following a simple rule like ‘touching a piece of paper only once’ will get things done quicker and save time – and time costs money. Similarly, putting off work that is difficult is far more time-consuming than simply getting it done. So, get smart.

You also need to be creative. For instance, talk to your landlord about re-gearing your lease. A longer lease on a lower rent might be more appealing to your landlord than no rent (and having to pay empty rates) if your business fails.

Be ingenious, not deceitful and don’t be afraid to share, listen and learn. You are not alone. Ask others in your network how they have made cuts, how they have saved money and how they have protected their working capital. Never be too proud to ask.

Ultimately, any business that is successful in this market will be looking at every way possible to save money in the short, medium and longer term. All the smaller cuts will make a difference. So if it takes 10, 100 or 1,000 small cuts to survive, just do it.

Why not share your ideas on how to make savings successful in business? It would be great if you would contribute just one idea…thanks

A recent RICS survey asked people running small property companies and professional services firms to rank the challenges they faced. Before branching out on my own this year, I spent the last 15 years as a partner at PwC helping companies in distress to survive by reducing costs or to increase profits, so I found this fascinating.

Let’s take a look at the results. Some 41 per cent cited cashflow as their biggest challenge, 19 per cent access to contracts, 11 per cent red tape and 10 per cent bank support. The rest were myriad smaller issues.

From a cursory glance, what do these stats tell us? Firstly, that money is very tight (neither news, nor rocket science). Secondly, that it is hard to find work, whether from existing or new clients (ditto). Thirdly, that bureaucracy makes life difficult (probably true for most organisations regardless of size). The list also showed that working capital is not, perhaps, as big a problem as many commentators consider it to be…however, some may have confused cashflow and working capital. The former is the actual flow of cash in and out of a business, whilst the latter is the actual stock of money to which the business has access so that it can operate.

Focussing on cashflow has long been a lesson learned the hard way by many entrepreneurs, partners and directors of businesses of all sizes. History reminds us, through phrases like ‘penny wise, pound foolish’ or ‘look after the pennies and the pounds will look after themselves’, that the statement ‘cash flow is king” is very hard to dispute.  These epithets may not be much comfort to a company in trouble, especially where (with the benefit of hindsight) the company got itself into financial trouble by spending too much when times were good. Such spending may have been on big salaries or excessive dividends, on new offices, on fancy cars or smart new IT kit, or simply living the good life – on expenses. The bubble was always going to burst, it was only a question of when.

So, what can a company do to reduce the burden of its overheads?  Any company can look to that list of possibly excessive expenditure, and prune them to a minimum. That is obvious, but what next ? One of my philosophies has always been that any company can, if it wants, shave 10 per cent off its overheads. For example, professional services firms often have their wage bill at about 60 per cent of turnover. Not surprising, you may say, because they don’t make a product, but only have their people as their most valuable asset (and cost). True. However, a target would be to get employment costs down to 45-48 per cent of turnover. This is real cash flow, as the wages have to be paid every week or every month.

Another, relatively easy win, is to cut out the fripperies; take clients (or potential clients) for coffee or a sandwich, not a slap-up lunch. People won’t think any the less of you. Really. In fact, they may admire your prudence. Downsize your company car. Park free on the street not in a pricey car park – the extra walk will do you good. Do you really need smart offices in the centre of town? Could you be more creative with your location, and therefore lower your property costs?

Inevitably, if these savings have already been successfully implemented, then cutting the second 10 per cent cost reduction will be harder. This is when you have to cut into the muscle, rather than simply trim the fat. This means salary reductions, especially for the owners or directors, who must lead the way. Their shoulders on the wheel will encourage others. It takes focus, concentration and effort, just as it does to ‘work smarter’.

Whilst it is difficult to avoid bureaucracy, following a simple rule like ‘touching a piece of paper only once’ will get things done sooner, quicker, and more efficiently than regularly shuffling the difficult stuff to the bottom of the pile, whilst also taking up valuable time to worry about how to comply, or to effect the change. It might not be obvious how this action cuts costs, but it saves time – and your time, and your staff time, costs money. Putting off working on the stuff that is too difficult is actually more time-consuming that you might imagine. We had one example a few years ago where the finance director was made redundant. He cleared his desk, but failed to empty all the drawers, where we found four years’ worth of difficult letters, demands and unpaid invoices.

Smaller things: turn off the lights when not needed; fit movement sensor lighting and energy; do you really need air conditioning?; get your news online, and stop buying hard-copy newspapers and magazine; make notepads from the blank side of used photo-copy paper; maybe (and this may not be too popular) you should talk to your landlord about re-gearing your lease – a longer lease on a lower rent might be more appealing to your landlord than no rent (and empty rates) if your business fails. Be ingenious., but do not be deceitful.

Don’t be afraid to share, listen and learn. You are not alone. Ask others in your network how they have made cuts, how they have saved money and how they have protected their working capital. Never be too proud to ask. Remember ‘pride comes before a fall’.

Ultimately, any business that is successful in this market will be looking at every way possible to save money, in the short, medium or longer term. All the smaller cuts really will make a difference: survival is key, and if it takes 10, 100 or 1,000 small cuts to survive, then just do it.

All ready to go

On a very cold early October morning in Virginia Beach, a small group comprising an escaped convict, a clown, two pink fairies and a butler in a black and white morph suit gathered outside the VB Conference Centre along with 7,000 other Halloween runners, joggers and walkers. The Wicked 10k Halloween Run was about to begin.

For me though the race began several weeks earlier when family Di and Dan, who live in Fredericksburg, Virginia, invited us over to stay and casually mentioned they were entering the race. Would I like to join them ?

Never one to shirk a challenge, this opportunity seemed just the thing I needed to get me running again after a succession of foot operations and a broken toe-joint, that I have promised not to mention again. So, I girded my loins, put on my lycra and trainers, and simply got out there. Training.

It was, of course, difficult to get those old limbs going. Knowing the importance of preparation, in business as in running, as in life, I stretched my hamstrings and calf muscles just to warm up before making, what someone has previously called, the hardest step in running…the one out through the front door.

Five runs later and the date of our flight arrived. In the meantime, I had agonised over what to wear. I had no idea just how seriously the Americans take their Halloween costumes. Nor did I know that Halloween is the US’s second biggest holiday, in business terms, after Christmas. Halloween was worth an astonishing US$ 6.02bn last year, with the largest proportion on costuming. I spotted the butler’s morph suit online and thought that would be fun. All I needed was to think how to make it Halloween-ish.

When we arrived in Virginia, there were already pumpkins, witches, mock gravestones, ghouls and ghosties everywhere. From the supermarket to the front porch, to shop windows, to gas stations, to the local pumpkin-patch farm, just everywhere. So, whilst I had already thought about the butler carrying a tray, it became an easy decision to ditch the tray idea and opt instead for a very lightweight plastic pumpkin. I thought about filling it with sweets to give away, but worried about the rules and laws of giving candy to kids.

Two more runs around the neighbourhood where the family live and I felt ready to go. Ten km is only 6.2 miles, after all, I said with ‘confidence’. A quarter marathon, as they say…and I did run the London Marathon, although I was 15 years younger. It was just the same then, carbo-loading the day before (well, eating pasta for supper this time) and plenty of fluids on the morning of the event (well, a couple of cups of tea) which lead inevitably to a long queue for the men’s room before the start.

At the start of the race, everyone set off at a cracking pace down 19th Street. Too quick for me. A large green crocodile overtook me, strangely holding hands with Wonder Woman. A black-cloaked ghoul simply ghosted past the butler. There were some really nice comments about my costume and pumpkin, with ‘good job’ being a regular observation. The only person bold enough to tell me that I was daft to carry a pumpkin round the course was my brother-in-law Dan…but who listens to an escaped convict in a black and white striped costume, straight out of Great Expectations.

As we turned onto Atlantic Avenue, the wind hit us straight in the face and despite the velcro holding my pumpkin onto my outstretched hand it blew off. I fumbled with it and held on. ‘Great catch’ said a voice, which turned out to be a witch in a pointed black hat and a very short orange gypsy skirt. She looked very odd in long black and orange striped socks over the knee and what seemed to be over-large trainers in luminous (or was that bilious?) green.

Battling against fierce headwinds, we ran all the way down to The Loop at 1st Street and back along the boardwalk to 10th Street where we would cut back onto Atlantic Avenue. After a couple of miles, I felt a large clap on the shoulder and there was Karen the Clown, with her giant white hands, having just caught up with me. We ran together for a while. Karen said we were running at around 10 minute miles according to an app on her i-phone. Amazing technology. We ran behind two behinds…they were blue plastic ‘butts’ projecting from special shorts…effectively blue-mooning. Very funny.

Some of the great things about an event like this are the sound of the whoops, hollahs and yee-haas as mile markers are passed; the camaraderie between runners encouraging each other and the banter with the audience. A woman with her face painted like what I thought was a cat, had slowed to a walk. Urging her on, it turned out she was a mouse, but said she wished she was a lab-rat. Another woman was running in black with the stand-out white logo of Athletes Against Cancer on her t-shirt: she didn’t look very athletic, but she was out there doing her bit for her charity. Further along, someone in the crowd called out: ‘Wow, come on sexy, you can do it!’ Several runners called back, almost in unison: ‘Are you talking to me?’

After a long three mile stretch to the north of the resort along Atlantic Avenue, all the way to 40th Street, we turned back onto the boardwalk for the final mile-and-a-half towards the finish at 20th Street. It was around here that I was overtaken by two guys, both wearing gas masks, breathing heavily, but running diagonals and bouncing around us other runners just to show how much energy they still had to spare. Fortunately, for us at least, they antagonised a huge costumed gorilla in a Wicked orange T-shirt…that gorilla kept them busy as we ran past, leaving them to their fate.

Being spotted by friends or family calling out your name or taking a photo whilst running by, is a huge boost to all of us joggers, rather than racers. I saw my wife, Von, three times along the route and really appreciated those fleeting words: ‘Go, Baz, go.” Equally enhancing was to see the volunteers from LiveStrong – the race’s premier charity – cheering us on…and they did so relentlessly at various points of the course. Cheering encouragingly for an hour or more must be almost as exhausting as it is to run the race.

Like many others, I tried to speed up as I approached the finish with hundreds of spectators lining the route and got lots of cheers for carrying my pumpkin all the way round. I missed the clock at the finishing line, but felt that the technology would ultimately tell me my time, as everyone’s number bib had two chips in it measuring and recording progress around the course.

As the pack of finishers slowed down, willing helpers individually handed out a bottle of water then, another 20 yards on, a sparkling medal, followed by a banana and finally a baseball cap…the spoils of success. Large signs directed us to our individual ration of two glasses of Blue Moon ol’ pumpkin beer inside a huge marquee, which was a welcome respite from the cold wind. With more and more runners piling inside, the temperature rose as a cosy, warm fug enveloped the atmoshere. Just as I came out of the beer tent looking hard for friends and family, ominous big splodges of rain began. By the time I found everyone, we were all very wet and getting even colder. Von had, very sensibly, found a dry spot, but moving around got us throughly drenched. Despite some warming chilli, the final prize for runners, it was a cold and damp end to a well organised event.

We trudged back to our hotel, dodging further heavy rain showers and the blustery wind. Shivering. It really was cold, but by the time I had warmed up in a long hot bath, an email had arrived from the race organisers showing that I had completed the course in 68 minutes, with some 3,100 (of the 7,000) runners behind me. Finishing 33rd in my age group was a comforting result, too, as most of the 32 in front must have started ahead of me as I hardly saw anyone older whilst I was running. I was constantly surrounded by many, many younger runners who all seemed to find the run very easy indeed, despite their run-hampering costumes: one guy was an oven; another was a (two person) pantomime dachsund with a giant slinky between them; yet another was dressed as a calendar. I saw about 20 bees, very many super-heroes (from Batman and Robin, to Spiderman and Superman) of every shape, size, colour and ability, together with loads of angels, pirates, goblins, ghouls, ghosts, skeletons and other scary folk. The rain made their spooky make-up even scarier, and their mascara ran.

Running, jogging or walking – a great time to think about things. All sorts of business and other problems get unraveled in the tranquility of the mind, whilst the body focusses on the physical effort. What do you think about when you are running?

During the Wicked 10k, for me, at least, I realised that my preparation had paid off. The relatively few miles that I got into my legs in five training runs had made the race possible, and the finishing line seemed to come really quickly. Perhaps the most heart-warming remark, though, was when Von said she was proud of me…a morph-suited, pumpkin-carrying butler can’t really ask for more.

Successful succession planning

In any business or organisation, identifying and then nurturing the leaders of tomorrow is the key to successful succession planning. Here are six signs noted from our different experiences we think help to spot those individuals who will be leaders, rather than followers, as they progress through their chosen career, whether paid, voluntary or not-for-profit.

Assertiveness: question everything

‘He who asks is a fool for five minutes, but he who does not ask remains a fool forever.’
Chinese Proverb

Assertiveness, in its true sense, is a little-used skill. It is not the ability to question something, for that is just self-confidence. Rather, it is knowing when to question and how to do so effectively. To be assertive is to let others know what you do and do not want in a confident and direct way. Both passive and aggressive people relate to others as though only one person counts: themselves. In contrast, assertive people are concerned with a fair deal for everyone. You will be respected and feel valued.

Effective networking: genuine communication

Good looks and a coy smile won’t really get you very far. You’ve got to make your own luck. Use every opportunity to prove your worth, but don’t push the boundaries. Nobody likes a try-hard (you are making friends and not enemies, remember), or a ‘smart Alec’. Being yourself and holding genuine conversations will make you well respected and can open doors – just don’t expect them to be opened for you.

Hold your head up high, shoulders back, chin up and don’t underestimate the merit of a good handshake.

Intuitive: people will follow

A good leader is intuitive about all sorts of things, but especially how to capture the mood of the moment. In the wisdom of crowds, there are always leaders who understood first what is going on, or about to happen, and then act upon it. Leaders know this phenomenon intuitively, they do not have to be taught. However, this does not mean it cannot be taught, but it does need very good judgement if it is not one of your innate skills.

Organiser: all leaders are good organisers

From their own life, to their career, to tasks, through events, leaders can marshall their thoughts into actions, usually quicker than followers. It is about the ability to conceive, plan and implement. This is a skill that others recognise as ‘a safe pair of hands’, which some might call ‘damned by faint praise’, but actually it gets the leader ahead of the curve and influencing others…just like the control of the flip-chart in a brainstorm session.

Out-of-the-box: the ability to think differently

This talent will set emerging leaders apart. It is all about other people thinking or saying aloud: ‘Why didn’t I think of that?’ There are various ways to get your brain to think beyond the envelope, laterally or even just differently. The key is to recognise that any idea is a good idea in a safe environment. When in an open forum when opinion counts, simply process the ideas a little further in your mind before announcing them to the group: will the idea actually work or could it be made to work, or is it just animated wishful thinking?

Willingness to listen…and to learn

If you listen, you will learn. The experiences of others, who have already been where you are yet to journey, are valuable. An opportunity to listen and learn from them is invaluable. Apply or adapt the lessons to your own world and you can succeed. In order to get an answer though, you must first ask a question.

Ultimately, there is one word which sums up all the effect of all these traits: inspirational. All good leaders inspire their teams, their followers, even their acolytes. It is what makes people follow, or give up their own right to lead, or to make decisions. They are inspired to believe that the leader will exercise good judgement and make the right decisions for them.

Inspiring people is not something which it is easy to teach, but is innate to those leaders who will shape our business, or lives or our world.

William Buttery & Barry Gilbertson

Do let us know what you think. Are there other attributes we’ve overlooked? Let us know below.

There are many examples of the consequences of this vacuum. However, for me, one of the worst cases was a company I came across with 650 outlets . The properties were under the care of the Company Secretary (not a board member). For this busy individual, the properties always slipped to the bottom of the to-do list; not least, perhaps, because his only experience of property was buying and selling his home.

His solution was to employ a firm of property professionals. Unfortunately, the ‘surveyors’ were entirely unqualified for the role and only given the resource to consider each property once a year, at best. As I delved further, it turned out that the company secretary was responsible for more than 1,700 properties and legal property interests across seven European countries. That’s quite a job to languish at the bottom of the pile.

This situation is far from unique, but I’m wondering about the consequences that this lack of expertise have been for businesses generally? Do you have any experiences to share?

So, what can be done about it?

In my view, it is incumbent upon senior property professionals interested in corporate leadership to find a way to break through this particular glass ceiling onto corporate boards. Whilst it may seem a clumsy comparison, it is now well known that women have broken through their own corporate glass ceiling in increasing numbers across our top 350 listed companies. As a working example for property professionals, women have done so by being demonstrably capable, expertly qualified, and quietly (rather than brashly) confident in their own abilities.

It is about experience, yes, but also about corporate expertise. If that means a post-qualification, mature student approach to further business education, then so be it. That is why, even though I already hold an independent, non-executive director role on a public company quoted on the NYSE, I am attending a course for extant and aspirant non-executive directors at Cranfield University this Autumn. It’s about improving my knowledge, my understanding and my competence relevant to the role.

If you are a property professional, what are you doing to get on the board of companies? Or, if you are a director of a non-property company, what will it take for you to invest in having the right people at the top of your business to oversee the vital role of property on your balance sheet?

I’d love to know your thoughts, so please do leave a comment below, or share this blog with others by using the share button below.

See also CoStar’s guest column from me on Property’s Glass Ceiling

Why and how typical are my experiences?

Visibility and profile

I first switched on to the idea of LinkedIn as I approached retirement as a partner at PwC and began planning my consultancy business. For me it was about somewhere to create and store my book of clients, chums and contacts. LinkedIn provides this service very effectively for free. As I discovered, it also gives me access to view and connect with my connections’ connections.

That visibility is vital when growing a business. More connections mean more visibility to my network and more business opportunities. And the benefit grows the more you use LinkedIn. It keeps me front of mind when a client or contact needs help or a service I provide.

It is also a very effective way to find service providers to support my business. For example, I rediscovered former colleague Barry Gilbertson who has helped me create this website and develop my business proposition.

Alan also introduced me to social media guru Barry Gilbertson, who taught me a very valuable lesson: Twitter may have been created for social networking and LinkedIn for its business networking, but they overlap and continue to evolve.

It is good to feel part of that evolution. I now gain a lot from condensing my thoughts on property markets and much else besides into 140 characters. It’s a great way to share my insight and find other people’s.

I started slowly, following other people whom I thought might be interesting − from economists to politicians, journalists, Fulham FC fans, friends and colleagues and the occasional celebrity − and crafting the odd tweet of my own. Amazingly people started following me and reading and responding to my tweets.

Some three months later, I have tweeted nearly 700 times, follow about 160 people (some tweet several times a day and some hardly ever) and nearly 300 people are following me. My followers grow every day often because someone retweets one of my tweets, sending my thoughts out to all their followers and one of them may decide to follow me.

Twitter tools improve my efficiency

Hashtags (the # key) are incredibly useful, briefly describing a topic so others can find everything on that topic, such as #highstreet or #ffc (Fulham FC). #in sends tweets to my LinkedIn account so my 700+ contacts can also see them if they choose. Added together, that is almost 1,000 people who want to be connected to me or read what I have to tweet. So no pressure.

But there are pros and cons of connecting LinkedIn and Twitter in this way. Using the #in means I get to choose which tweets appear on LinkedIn rather than sending all tweets out on both platforms. However, it is more time consuming and uses precious characters.

What do you think – is this selectivity necessary or worth the effort?

There are lots of other tricks too. For instance, using a website like www.bitly.com to shorten links, ensuring that the tweeter can refer their followers to a chosen website, article, photo or video without using up characters. Bitly also analyses the response to links which helps me craft better and more relevant tweets.

Business v personal

It is also true that apparently ‘personal’ or ‘social’ tweets can help my business too – contrary to my expectations. When other people’s interests coincide with mine, there exists the possibility to meet up or simply explore further as a way of widening my business network. What do you think about the relevance of personal tweets?

An eye on the world

Whilst all this stuff may be interesting and perhaps baffling for non-tweeters, by far the most important thing has been its effect on my assimilation and dissemination of knowledge and news. By following a range of people, news gets to me fast, whether about the economy, real estate or Fulham FC. I find I read more articles more carefully (rather than just scan the headlines) and seem to absorb more knowledge. By forcing me to reduce my musings to 140 characters or less, more of that knowledge sticks and I can chat about it to clients and contacts with confidence.

Whether I am simply a tweeter, or may possibly be considered one of the Twitterati (I have made it into Property Week’s Top 100), it is certain that I feel more networked, more connected and ultimately more LinkedIn.

I’m still learning. So what other tools do you suggest I try using to support my efforts and why? Do let me know in the comments section below or find me on Twitter @barrygilbertson.com

Writing for CoStar Barry suggests ways to break through barriers.

When I was growing up as a surveyor, I was always surprised that boards of companies, whether public or private, did not have more property expert directors. Why ? Well, it seemed to me that, simplistically, a corporate balance sheet really only has three basic components : money (cash, debt, equity), goodwill and assets. For most companies, the fixed assets are the properties that they own or lease. Without such expert real estate knowledge right at the top of the company, how can the right strategic property decisions be made, and how can the board best determine where, when and how to buy, lease or occupy property from which to trade, or in which to invest.

Let me give you an example. Several years ago, I was asked to lead the real estate due diligence for a company said to have some 650 outlets in the UK. When I asked to speak to the main board director responsible, I was told that such a person did not exist. All property matters were handled by the Company Secretary (who was not a board member). The Company Secretary explained that, whilst properties were important, as the company could not trade without them, he had lots of other work to do and property always fell down his pecking order of urgency, not least because the only thing he knew about property was that he had bought and sold his home several times. He did, though, have a solution in place. He had instructed one of the national firms of “surveyors” to help him.

The more I dug, though, the deeper his hole became. The firm of surveyors were really property managers who were dabbling in a range of real estate issues for which they were not really qualified and, worse, the company had only contracted for half a day a week for the suveyors to work on all 650 properties. Wholly insufficient, of course, as that works out at more than 12 properties to consider, every week, in just three and a half hours, and each property would only get considered once a year! When one adds into the mix a search role for new properties, all in the same half day for the same fee, it becomes clear that the company gave their properties very little credence as an asset of their business.

In fact, we ended up discovering that they had responsibilities, and liabilities, for more than 1700 leased properties, trading or assigned, across seven European countries, with all the cross-border jurisdictional issues that situation heralded. If this company had real estatequalified, or even just property-savvy, board members, this hopeless and irresponsible financial and practical outcome probably would not have occurred.

In my view, it is incumbent on property professionals, interested in corporate leadership, to find a way to break through this glass ceiling onto corporate boards, alongside accountants, lawyers, financiers and entrepreneurs. Whilst it may seem a clumsy comparison, it is now well known that women have broken through their own corporate glass ceiling in increasing numbers across our top 350 listed companies. As a working example for property professionals, women have done so by being demonstrably capable, expertly qualified, and quietly (rather than brashly) confident in their own abilities. Women like Deborah Meaden (of Dragons Den fame); Dee Forbes, Managing Director, Discovery Networks UK & Western Europe (manages 18 brands with 270m subscribers); Dame Fiona Reynolds, Director General, The National Trust; Rachel Clacher, Director, Moneypenny (one of the UK’s largest independent employers); and, of course, Liz Peace, at the BPF.

It is about experience, yes, but also about corporate expertise. If that means a post-qualification, mature student approach to further business education, then so be it. That is why, even though I already hold an independent director role on a public company quoted on the NYSE, I am attending a course for extant and aspirant non-executive directors at Cranfield University this Autumn, simply to improve my knowledge, understanding and relevant competence.

I can begin to hear the tinkling of glass all around me.