The 7 Habits of Highly Effective CREs

The Spring 2008 issue of Development Magazine quotes Mark Gibson, Leader, Strategy and Operating Real Estate Advisory Services for Ernst & Young, on the seven skills that corporate real estate executives should bring to the table, listing them in order of importance:

• Project Management
• Strategic Planning
• Process Implementation
• Understand the Business
• Fortitude
• Real Estate

Real estate makes the bottom of the list.  This is interesting and a concession to the idea that the new commercial real estate executive is largely a strategist with a global perspective who reports directly to the CFO and works to harmonize real estate with IT and HR to achieve enterprise-level objectives.  The one thing I think Gibson missed is CRM (Client Relationship Management) which remains, along with strategy, where the focus of the internal corporate real estate department is since the movement toward outsourcing began in the 1990s.