Five Ways to Align to the C-Suite

By George Bouri

In my experience, real estate and facilities management (RE/FM) executives have not traditionally enjoyed as much access to or involvement with C-level leaders as our peers in finance, HR and IT. There is an old joke that asks how RE/FM leaders get a seat at the table for senior-level meetings, rather than simply providing the table.

To some degree, RE/FM leaders are victims of their own success, especially in terms of reducing costs for commodity services. We have come to be viewed as a back-office function, quite capable of cutting costs and getting tactical things done. But, we are not typically viewed as strategic partners to the business. Thus, we are not regularly invited to help shape the corporate agenda, define the strategic vision of the enterprise or play leadership roles in broad-based transformation programs.