Facility Executives Should Understand What CEO Wants from Facilities
Facility Executives Should Understand What CEO Wants from Facilities November 14, 2008
I’m Ed Sullivan, editor of Building Operating Management. Today’s topic is understanding what the CEO wants from facilities.
Imagine that you could trade places with a CEO for a day. While the CEO fields complaints about a roof leak, you could approve funds to replace that aging roof – unless, that is, there’s a board meeting, a quarterly earnings call with investors or any of the many other things the keep the CEO from focusing on facilities.
Rather than wishing that the CEO would walk a mile in their shoes, many successful facility executives do the opposite: They lace up an imaginary pair of the CEO’s wingtips and try to understand what top management expects of facilities.
The first thing these facility executives see in their role as CEO is the imperative to control costs. But the rest what they see varies dramatically from organization to organization. Facility executives must be able to deliver the right level of facility performance in key areas, whether the measure is comfort, uptime for critical facilities, or flexibility to respond to changing business conditions. Those are the areas where facility executives should be sure to focus attention. That’s not to say that those are the only important areas, but they certainly deserve a high place on the agenda.
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