Phil Kirschner, Senior Expert and Associate Partner, Real Estate & People and Organizational Performance at McKinsey where he advises executive teams on the future of work, employee experience, organizational health, and workplace strategies. Phil discusses systemic changes, expected rebounds in cities’ commercial real estate, and organizational health. He shares insights about workplace utilization, the critical emphasis on ‘how’ we work and change management to evolve behaviors, and the new retail-oriented perception of work. KEY TAKEAWAYS   [02:25] Phil calls himself an accidental work strategist, starting out in banking.   [03:37] Phil starts in the efficiency management group looking to save money in real estate.   [04:40] How workplace innovation by Google and Microsoft caught public attention.   [05:23] Competition for talent from other industries drives investment to improve work ‘place’.   [06:30] Balancing not having your own desk with other amenities to improve the experience.   [08:06] Trying to reduce office-based friction with shared environments.   [09:00] Most managers absorbed a bit more pain to give team members a better experience.   [10:30] The extra friction for managers working in open spaces is offset by overwhelmingly positive responses from other employees.   [14:41] It’s not a real estate project, but a culture project, Phil explains.   [17:14] Phil explains what measuring productivity in a bank looked like 10 years ago.   [20:57] Phil is using the McKinsey Organizational Health Framework to study fully remote companies and the results are largely favorable for remote working.   [28:45] The four ways companies are showing up in the world nowadays.   [30:28] Narrowing the focus of our work environments is the way to success; you can’t solve all the needs of all people all the time.   [34:22] Who are the companies doing hybrid, and can they do more? Phil lays out the results of a study he recently led.   [40:27] Technology is undoubtedly driving the change in how we work, Phil touches on how AI may change this further.   [44:22] Phil explains the increasing retail nature of our work choices and some of the implications of this when it comes to competition.   [46:56] The HR/IT/Real Estate stool now needs a seat to bridge the gap in employee and customer experience.   [51:10] RTO cannot stand; Phil explains why and what the future may hold for larger companies still trying to hold that line.   [55:47] Phil breaks down what commercial real estate issues and positive trends to watch for in the coming years.   [59:05] IMMEDIATE ACTION TIP: Stop thinking about inputs, the days in the office, or “what’s the right hybrid?” Focus on outputs and the impact on organizational health. Study work practices and outcomes across your organization based on how people work and collaborate to figure out the secret sauce, then pilot, test, learn, and scale those behaviors, and keep evolving.   RESOURCES   Phil Kirschner on LinkedIn McKinsey.com   QUOTES (edited)   Those work environments with the bean bags, the beautiful amenities, and the campus also have a desk for each employee. We didn’t have the means for that, so to give you a better experience, you had to make a trade with us: give up your assigned seat.   We found that where you had the managers who were willing to be sitting in the open having calls or conversations in the open, those zones by far were the ones where people would report the highest satisfaction.   I say this all the time; these are not real estate projects, they’re change projects. They’re culture projects that happen to manifest in space.   When you’ve created a culture where lots of work can happen in the open, it eases demand for the formal spaces.   Fully remote companies that have never had an office, who were born remote and not forcibly remote are top quartile, if not top decile performers against McKinsey’s 20-year experience of measuring organizational health.   If you give someone a cho