The Leader - November/December 2008 - (Page 39)

We are a signiﬁcant contributor to NSN’s people strategy.” In turn, he points out, “We strive to offer inspiring workplaces to facilitate innovation and open communication. And, the competitive pressure requires cost-efﬁcient real estate solutions.” A valid conclusion is that real estate and workplace at NSN are very much aligned with the business strategy, that CRE has a seat at the senior management table, and that CRE speaks the language of the business, not of CRE. Doran, like other accomplished industry practitioners, talks about high-level alignment as CRE’s “holy grail,” starting with his reporting directly to the CFO and extending to key performance indicators (KPI’s) like productivity measures for the business units and C-Suite. He remembers how in the ﬁrst 90 days of NSN he was asked, “When can you talk to the CFO?” It was music to Doran’s ears, because KPI’s, or performance metrics garnered largely by CRE departments today, would frame the approach. “The early imperative,” Doran offers, “was to understand the data.” Part of that exercise involved CRE playing a strong part in the company “culture jam” to gain input directly from a cross section of NSN’s large work force. Supporting the Business, Not a Function That meant getting a quick handle on NSN’s “inherited” portfolio of 1,000 buildings, and consolidating the combined space down to 600 buildings – a mandate for a nearly 50 percent “streamlining” of facilities accompanied by an almost 25 percent cut in the initial global space total of about 21.5 million sq. ft. (2 million sq. m.). “The majority of our buildings are leased,” reports Doran, who also says ofﬁce and R&D represent 79 percent of the company’s holdings, 2 0 0 8 TH E LE ADE R “ “ “ as compared to 21 percent for production and warehouse. As mentioned, a major aspect of the consolidation was creating a culture for the new company. After all was said and done, a total of 25,000 Nokia employees from a Finnish project-management corporate culture needed to be integrated with 35,000 Siemens people with a German technical process orientation. Plus, the Siemens workplace management model is less centralized than Nokia’s. “Inside Nokia, you’re a Nokian,” recalled Doran, who spent 10 years helping the company morph from cable and rubber products to a global telecom solutions provider. Admitting both companies differ culturally, Doran speaks to the need “to be in an open environment,” and how “going through (that) change really set the pace” for a new model to be distinctively NSN in its ﬂavor. That’s why it’s so important that today “CRE is helping to building an ‘anytime, “ ‘Broadband with no boundaries’ means enterprise impact for real estate 39 NOVEMBER / DECEMBER

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of The Leader - November/December 2008

The Leader - November/December 2008 Leadership Contents Message from the CEO Real Estate in the News Leveraging Business Geography My Work @ Bank of America Blending the Old with the New A Tool for Growth Creating Real Estate Value Nokia-Siemens Networks’ Peter Doran DTZ’s James Maddock Annual Economic Development Directory The Georgia Report Location Profile: Magdeburg, Germany Linking Corporate Real Estate to the Enterprise 3rd Quarter 2008 Adding Value in Challenging Times Australia and New York Shell’s Paul Huston Economic Development in the News A Look Ahead In our Next Issue Calendar of Seminars Index of Advertisers Chapter Learning: The Global Perspective

The Leader - November/December 2008

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