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Thinking versus doing: The value of thoughtful decision making in the built environment in the context of pressure towards action
Corporate Real Estate Journal,
14
(4),
360-375
(2025)
Abstract
Real estate decision making is often compressed due to factors that are perceived as forcing decision makers to prioritise speed, including market, economic and global conditions. Speed is predicated despite the fact that these decisions carry significant impact and that, in general, buildings and spaces are often more durable than the decision-making horizon anticipates. Human thinking and decision-making processes can, however, be subject to shortcomings in approach that, if not examined and evaluated, can become endemic and lead to false conclusions being repeated over time as received wisdom. Speed exacerbates these errors, as do shortcuts in thinking intended to expedite decision making. Through exploration of diverse cases, the authors seek to unpack some common modes of thinking and doing, identify pitfalls as they relate to real estate, examine how these elements lead to poorer outcomes as a consequence and suggest tests and alternative approaches for improvement.
Keywords: decision-making bias; data-driven decision making; critical thinking; dual-process theory; outcomes in real estate
The full article is available to subscribers to the journal.
Author's Biography
Chris Lees is the Chief Executive Officer of Data Clan Ltd and the Technical Director of OSCRE. He is a polymath, workplace strategist and mathematician specialising in data, data standards and workplace analytics, has led organisational change and strategy development, provided operational management consultancy during global mergers and acquisitions and provided technical consultancy to support functional consolidations. Chris’s focus within the built environment is data. This includes the ‘golden thread’ and building safety, asset information, energy and sustainability and customer behaviours. Chris provides advice and services to several UK registered providers of social housing on their overall data strategy, or elements within it, as well as supporting global corporates with their space demand analytics and planning evaluations. He contributes to the work of the Building Advisory Committee, advising the government on the Golden Thread aspect of the Building Safety Act, chairs the Real Estate Data Foundation’s Data Standards Steering Group, and is the co-author of the Anatomy of Occupancy Analytics. Outside work, Chris is the Chair of the board of trustees and the Director of North Yorkshire’s Dementia support charity, Dementia Forward; a UK Athletics Endurance Running and Athletics Coach and head coach at Hambleton Athletics and Running Club and an award-winning public speaker. He was a recipient of the Queen’s Award for Voluntary Service and the Queen’s Special Recognition Award for work during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Anh Tran is a registered architect and a change management leader at Little. Anh has dedicated over 15 years of her career to the intersections between culture, built environment and strategic results as a designer, a strategist and a business consultant. She has focused her practise on performance outcomes and metrics for design and operational impact, working to uncover each project’s key challenges and opportunities and find the right strategies to address them. An experienced visioning facilitator, Anh has led stakeholder workshops and designed change management programmes for a variety of public and private clients’ transformative projects. She has led pro bono work for Rebuilding Together DC-Alexandria’s community-based initiatives and spoken about the impact of design, design metrics and change management programmes at IFMA World Workplace, CoreNet Carolinas, ULI Charlotte, A4LE and SCUP. Anh is also committed to furthering the architecture profession’s impact and evolution, currently serving as the 1st Vice President/President-Elect for Northern Virginia Chapter of American Institute of Architects, as well as a member of Virginia Tech’s Washington-Alexandria Architecture Center (WAAC) Firm Advisory Board. She runs, but not as quickly as Chris does.
