Ep. 403: "Start with the Strategy, Not the Lease" – The Integration of Design, Behavior and Technology in Workplace Transformation with Lisa Copland of Presynct

You got to start with the strategy, not the lease. Be clear on how your portfolio and workplace can support your business strategy before making any of those property decisions. And I think importantly, your property decision shouldn't be considered at the point of the lease event. It needs to be considered well in advance. This is the Workplace Innovator Podcast where we talk with corporate real estate and facility management leaders about the industry trends, challenges and technologies impacting your organization. This show is powered by Eptura, the global work tech company providing software solutions for people, workplaces and assets to enable you to work your world. Hey folks, welcome back to the Workplace Innovator Podcast. It's me, your host Mike P and I am so excited to visit with someone I met recently way down South. And I'm talking about the sunshine, say sunshine state everybody, not Florida, even further South below that the other Southern hemisphere in Australia, everybody. She is joining us today from Queensland, the other sunshine state in Australia and the city specifically is Brisbane. Her name is Lisa Copeland. Lisa, welcome to the Workplace Innovator Podcast. Hey, thanks Mike. I'm excited to be here down in the sunny state of Queensland. Yes. I am so excited. I am a big fan of Australia and how did I say it? Brisbane, is that correct? You know what? You've got it spot on Brisbane. All right. I'm working on it. I'm working on my Australian pronunciations. I've been there, Lisa. I was a visitor about three years ago, spent a couple of weeks with my wife and visited our apptural locations in both Sydney and Melbourne. Melbourne. Melbourne. Melbourne. Melbourne. Melbourne. Melbourne. Melbourne. And now I'm talking to someone from Brisbane, Australia. This is the best I've ever experienced. Now that American accent comes through, but we have so much fun just prepping for this call. We had to get it out of the way, right? Yeah, we did. We did. Absolutely, Mark. And you've been in the US used to work here in Houston, Texas. So let's talk about America. That's the, that's as, that's as American as it gets. The great big state of Houston of Texas. Oh, amazing. The rodeos, you know, the food is amazing down there, Mark. I mean, you can get any cuisine you want. In fact, any blended cuisine, Mexican, Spanish and American all mixed together. It's a fusion of food. It's an amazing place to live. I loved living there. I love it. I do too. Everything's bigger in Texas. Everything is bigger in Texas. Barbara Q. Yes, right. The accents. I'm in Washington, DC and I've learned, I thought I learned not to have an accent, but when I bring someone like you on the show, that theory goes out the window. But anyway, let's get to the conversation at hand. We have such a short time together, Lisa. And I'm so excited for my audience to learn about your role as managing director and founder at precinct, which is a consultancy about workplace strategy and change based in Australia. But tell me more about it. It's an amazing connection to what I do here on this show. But what would you say? How would you describe what you do? Oh, wow. That's a, that's a good question. I would say that we, well, obviously being a psychologist, I would say that we try to connect the organization's business strategy and then use the workplace or the portfolio to drive that business strategy. That's kind of in a nutshell what we do. And then make sure it works through the implementation of the change in the ongoing support. It's very, very niche. But I love it. Yeah. And you do have a background in psychology that you bring to this incredible profession, which I love. I love the human side, Lisa. It's all we do, whether it's design or using technology tools or strategies or, you know, supporting and inspiring facility managers to care for the physical built environment. It's all about the people who occupy those places and spaces, right? Yeah. That's exactly right. Well, how did you end up in this world of workplace? I mean, you've been at precincts for how long? Yeah. Well, I actually started precinct. So I'm the managing director. I started it from nothing. Congrats. And it's about, it's been running for about 10 years. But I suppose where my career path starts to make sense is really a long way back in university, when I was going to university, I really was tossing out between, do I do architecture or do I do psychology? So now I'm basically a psychologist using workplace to drive transformations in organizations and I suppose in hopefully people's lives because, you know, as a psychologist, you're looking at transformations in individual people's lives. A little bit of background. I grew up in Perth, Western Australia. So not Brisbane or Melbourne. I'm actually the other side. The other side. It's a one way away. It is. Yeah, it's a long way from everywhere, Mike. And I was lucky enough to join Chevron. You would know Chevron. So that obviously the connection to Houston there. And I worked in their internal consulting group. Really focusing on organizational change and learning. And I feel really privileged. It took me to Scotland and then Houston. And I worked on these major transformational projects. And to be honest with you, Mike, most of those were outside of workplace. Like crazy things like that set drilling optimization or onshore and offshore people alignment. Or, you know, it was just, you know, just really, really interesting. And then when I was in Houston, I was really lucky to complete a project which took about six years. It was the Houston Portfolio Consolidation 1 and 2. And I'll give you some stats on it. We did 11 buildings to one. We had a hundred person project team. The workplace was about 3.3 million square feet. I've got to get that right because in Australia, we'll say square meters. But in the US, they'll square feet. Got it right. Yeah. Three buildings, two of which were 50 story. And about 10,000 people and along the way, two mergers. And what we were trying to do is create a flexible workplace. And at the time, which I don't want to tell you how long ago it was, Mike, because then you'll know my age. We could, we made it flex from all open plan to all close without taking in more space. And that project in itself is where I absolutely fell in love with workplace. Because as a psychologist at heart, I realised that workplace and the physical environment, all the environment is an excellent lever to drive behavioural change. So as a psychologist, you're trying to create a behavioural change. And you've only got so many tools in your disposal. And workplace is one of the biggest tools that organisations and people can use to drive it. And so when I, what the, the nice thing about that was it was actually two project. One project was done really, really poorly. And I saw how it could become a major barrier to achieving a change. And then it was redone and it was done very, very, very well. And I got the opportunity to see that it could be an accelerator of business strategy. So my time in Houston was very transformational around my career and what I wanted to do. And then I moved back to Australia, Brisbane. I knew no one. I had a different plan and that didn't work out. So I just was like, I'm going to start precinct. And that was 10 years ago. So and really precinct, we just try to connect the dots between portfolio, workplace, business strategy, how people work. We do the strategy. You've, so you've got clear evidence. We deliver the change, so the behaviour stick. And then we support it on, on going. And it's interesting because the reality is most organisations know they need a change, but they're space tech and the ways of working. They're just not keeping up at the moment. That's what I'm saying, Mark. Well, I am seeing that too, Lisa. And we want to hear more of your perspectives and some of the lessons you've learned in recent years and how you might help my audience move forward. Here we are in the middle of 2026 almost. And we are in a place where we have the opportunity to shape our space and also the people and those human behaviours are so essential. So we're going to talk about it all. But before we go too far, everybody knows me here as DJ Mike P and I warned you about this. In our pre-call, I love Australian music. So you've got to give me a chance to just talk about some of my favourite bands growing up. I'm going to date myself by talking about what you would now probably call classic rock Australian rock, the bands like Inexcess and Midnight Oil. Are you a fan of Midnight Oil? Are you as proud of Midnight Oil as I love them here in America? I mean, I'm proud of all the Australian bands and that was a real era of very, very cool classic rock bands. I wouldn't say that I'm really into them. Sorry, Mike. I didn't want to be. But I do. I mean, I do. You know, if the kids are going to soccer and we crank up Sunday's track and bounce I had to get them all amped up for it. Oh, that's decent. Yeah, and people don't like you from Australia. No, they don't. No, they don't. No, they don't. But we're so connected today, Mike. You know, you get exposed to so much music from around the world. world. You don't even, I don't even refer to where they're from anymore. I just know the, know the music. That's right. Yeah. It's a global community. It is. What is on the playlist if you wanted to get the kids fired up? And I didn't want to pigeonhole you into just Australia and classic rock. It was very selfish of me. No, that's fine. What would you say your favorite type of music or artist is? That's funny. I mean, I love music, but I suppose it really depends on my mood. So when I'm feeling upbeat, I just, I love all the popular songs that I can sing along to, much to my kids annoying. So I love singing at the top of my, at the top of my lungs in the car. I'm probably the most annoying driver around. But I suppose when I'm, when I'm feeling a bit more reflective, I really lean towards kind of that alternative folk like passenger or David Gray or that type of music. I don't know. Have you heard of those guys? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. He had a hit here with, was it a, was it a duet with someone? I can't remember. What was this biggest song? Would you say? Oh, I, do know, I'm terrible at remembering the songs. Okay. I just find the lyrics. No, no, that's truly fine. Don't ask me to sing it because I'm a really bad singer. Let's, I'll just sing some midnight oil because it's been a number of years since I had a chance to go. Bam, bam, bam. Oh, so good. Out where the river broke the blood would and the desert oak. That's my Peter Garrett imitation. My arms are flailing. If you're watching the video, you're seeing me. I'm impressed. I'm going to shape my head and dance around the stage. I mean, press. I was actually a real dance. What our earth is turning. How can we sleep? Yeah. And I will. Yeah. That's right. That's right. Classic. It's a classic. Your intro was, your timing was very good as well. Mark. I'm quite impressed. Thank you. Thank you. Hey, before we get into the workplace topic again, I got to ask for some inspiration. Okay. So do you have a favorite motivational quote you could share with us? I do. I also like same as my thick, I also like between very clever tongue-in-cheek quotes that keep me keep everything in perspective at this stage of my life. Usually something that reflects my juggle between being a parent, working, drinking too much one and everything in between. But as I said, pretty much like the music, I've got two sides. I try to really draw on things that push me to be better. So, you know, just really simple things. And one that I do love is care deeply about people, but lightly about their opinions. It's just a good reminder to me in this very fast world that we live in to stay empathetic and connected without getting caught up in the drama of what everyone else thinks. So that's one of the ones I keep. I do remind myself on a daily basis about sure. That's great. Yeah. Practical. I mean, we have more in common than not. We all have different opinions about any number of topics. But let's find that common human experience and connection. That's what's great about workplaces, right? 100% transition time. We get a chance to get together with many who come from different backgrounds, different experiences, different life journeys. And we come together as teams and have a chance to have that diverse perspectives and collaboration opportunity. And that's where really organization shines. So what we like to talk about here on this show is how we can be better workplace innovators. And I wonder from your experiences, and you've already shared a number of things. But what does it take to be innovative in the workplace today? Yeah. And I'm probably going to take this from like a personal view, Mike. I think I think one of the things I would say is don't be afraid to innovate. So and we talked a little bit about this before is I'm coming from a psychology background into property workplace. And I and you know, you don't always feel like you naturally fit into the industry. And I think early on when I started precinct, I had a little bit of imposter syndrome like everyone does. But over time, I've really realized that that a different lens is really valuable. And it's encouraged me to speak up, share ideas and challenge the norms. And you know, there's some really cool innovative things that I think that we're doing at precinct. You know, that have come from a completely different perspective, things like, you know, 24 different occupancy models around the way you work that require different amount of spaces or spatial principles or technology and have different ways of working. I mean, just coming out of a psychologist's brain, you know, and applying that, that thinking to workplace or we've just released an area capacity modeling application that's based on how people work and their work from home policy or we're trying to do things around a different co-working model where teams physically come in and use someone else's space for the whole day and they have all of the amenities. So they use it just on a Tuesday every month and it saves them a heap of money, but they've got a complete space where they can connect together. Even stuff like auto allocation of time-tabelling for students based on student attendance at university. So I feel like the more confidence you have and the more encouraged you are to speak out and take a different perspective. That's where a lot of the ideas or the innovations come from. So I think about innovation, I think just I think being having a willingness to stay curious and look at things differently is often where I think the most meaningful innovations will really come from. Yes, yeah, that's really well said, Lisa. And it's something you've shared with my team here at Aptura very recently. Yeah, you were part of an interview online. A blog was written much more in depth than we can get into here. So I will share that in the show notes with everybody. In fact, my colleague Craig Moroni, who is based in Australia, he's our vice president of the APEC region. You know Craig. I do. I had a chance to kind of summarize a lot of these ideas and some of the strategies and some of the things you do in your office there in Brisbane to help your clients, you know, experience some of these innovative solutions. But I loved in our pre conversation, Lisa, that you have this holistic view of the workplace. You try to combine all the elements of design of the behavior and technology and bring it all together. Tell me more about that and how you are thinking about workplace engagements with your clients and how you think my audience should be focused here in the middle of 2026 when they want to care for their workplace. Yeah, yeah, that's, I mean, I think it's because we're not looking at it from a purely design lens. We're looking at from an occupier. So someone who's responsible for property in a business and how that person can help the business use their role or their remit to move a business forward in terms of their strategy. So they're not dealing with just the space in order for, you know, their role to make a transformation or difference in the business. They need to really understand how does what I'm delivering support my business and my business performance and how do I enable the entirety of the people within my organisation to move towards that. So you're right. We look at it's very, it's a very interesting view that we have. So we're trying to make sure that the workplace or the portfolio aligns with one, the business strategy, the experience and that sort of forms how they're actually going to work. So that occupancy model is almost like the, if you're sitting on a seat, it's like the top of the seat. Yeah. If you can get that right, how you're going to occupy the space based on what your, your organisational strategy is and your operating model. And here's how we're going to make property do that. It then drives everything. It drives the building that you're going to go into and the performance requirements of that. It drives the spatial principles. It drives the technology performance requirements and it drives how the change is going to manage. So it's what we're trying to do is, is not look at one thing in isolation. It's actually when those, those three things or four things marry up, it's beautiful. It just creates an unbelievable workplace experience that is truly transformation for the organisation. But if you're just dealing with one leg of that chair, so it's a four-legged chair, just the space and you forget about the tech or the behaviours or, you know, all of those other things, it falls over. So that's really where we're sitting. It's really that intersection between enabling your workforce and your business strategy and using your property, whether it's your portfolio or particular site, to really drive that performance. Wow. Yeah. That's so good. Lisa, I really appreciate that. And you mentioned one of those legs of the stool is technology. I'd love to hear more about your perspectives there. I'm fascinated by the opportunity my listeners have to pull one of the levers, you know, the lever of technology and use it as a tool to really help make these changes and to make these better workplace and employee experiences. What would you say about the biggest FM and workplace technologies out there and what is potentially having the biggest impact on the workplace? Yeah. So this is, I'm actually really excited about where technology is going and I think you mentioned the article I wrote and I think the title was the future of workplace and I think technology plays a massive role and it's getting bigger all the time. So I think the first thing I would say is that the integration is a real game changer and I think AI will enable this any even more and I suppose what I mean by that is most organisations that we deal with already have some of those workplace systems in place they might have access control or room booking or visit a management or you know they have people data but what's happening is they're sitting in silos and when you start to interconnect the data and those systems it creates a far more seamless user experience. So if you were, you could imagine I'm, I'm, I'm, issue digital access passes based on planned attendance in my Apple wallet. As I'm swiping through the race gates I'm getting the destination control lifts to a different floor every day because the building is being auto-stacked based on who I need to be sitting with. I'm getting personalized entry points with content coming to me. I'm getting automated check-in to a desk that I might be sitting at for a, you know, an hour or so. And even some event recommendations where, you know, I know I've got four hours between a meeting and there's a, you know, an event in the lobby. So I think the productivity gains come from really reducing that friction, cutting down the steps and minimise that content switching. So that would be the really the first thing. Secondly, and I've kind of a touch on this a little bit. AI is really beginning to shape how space is allocated and how teams come together. And from a, it's really interesting Mike, a lot of organisations I talk to, it's no longer just the organisation structure is static, you know, you report to this group who reports to this group and that's how you work. Today that's not how people are working, that teams are coming together to do projects and to sparing. Natural teams are coming together to make a decision. And what I'm seeing organisations try and do is get rid of the 50 touch points that it takes to make a decision. And, and workplace technology can do that. AI can now auto stack buildings based on planned and actual attendance and then dynamically grouped teams together. And it moves the workplace away from static floors and decks to something far more responsive and where the space is actually adapting to how work is actually happening. So I think, you know, those are two really interesting areas that I'm finding. And so it's not about adding another app. The real shift I think is creating this integration layer. So bringing together workplace platforms, supporting strong governments and cybersecurity frameworks so integration can happen. And with AI, it's becoming easier and easier. I think the only caveat to that is that strategy has to lead the technology. Only need to integrate what generally supports the behaviors and the outcomes of businesses aiming for. This is not a go for your life, integrate everything, $100 million approach. It's really just being really strategic about the outcome that you want and how to take those systems and bring them all together to create a cohesive, orchestrated and strategy led integration. Wow. Yeah, that's a great reminder. Lisa, begin with the end in mind, the business outcome is what we're going for. Not just the shiny object or technology. And it's an exciting time. I think you've really touched on a number of things that get me enthusiastic about the world of workplace. And I wish I could talk to you all day. It's a amazing, insightful discussion. The fact that you bring your psychological background into this world and you share it with such a fun. In fact, that's one of your corporate values at precinct is, yeah, things with a lot of fun. You've proven that today. I appreciate it. I want to give everybody another chance to check for the article you wrote with our team here. And I'll share that as well as give you a chance to give us some final takeaway. Some last minute thought, maybe a practical piece of advice you can share with my audience of FM and workplace leaders as we head into the future together. What would you say? I'd say you got to start with a strategy, not the lease. That would probably be my first thing. And I think in many cases, the pathway to a portfolio, a property portfolio that truly supports your business starts with, it could even start with optimizing how people work within the existing space. It doesn't need to start with an event. It could be just, you know, well, we're going to get people to work differently through technology and behavioral change as the first part of our property portfolio transformation, rather than committing to more or different space. And it's really interesting that I, the reason I say that is I would say I just to kind of close out too often I'm bored into retrofit a way of working into a workplace after an organization have either committed to too much or too little space. And it really makes it significantly harder to achieve that right outcome. So I think my key takeaway is start the strategy early. Amazing. Great stuff. Lisa Copeland. Thank you for sharing it. Thank you for all your insights. And for playing along with my love of Australia, you've added to it today. And I hope to be able to visit down under another time in the future. And if you ever come back to Houston or anywhere in the US, please let me know I'd love to meet you in real life. But until then, thank you for taking time to be with me here on the workplace innovator podcast. Thanks so much, Mike, for having you having me. I really appreciate it. You're very welcome. And thank you all for watching or listening to this program. I hope you are getting something of value from these conversations. And if so, do me a favor and share this podcast with a colleague or a friend anyone who might like to join us as we continue on our journey to encourage and inspire you to be a workplace innovator. Peace out. Peace out. You've been listening to the workplace innovator podcast powered by Eptura, the epicenter of the future of work. For more about how we help organizations to engineer a thriving environment by enhancing their employee experience, work spaces, and asset value, please visit eptura.com.