EDITOR’S
COMMENT: In tough times, perspective is valuable. So it was a pleasure to catch
up with Simon Silver this week as he announced his retirement from Derwent – a
company of which he was a director back when I was playing with action figures.
Even in the middle of
today’s market uncertainty, Silver’s love of real estate and London shone
through. He has worked through a golden age for property, he told me, taking in
all the ups and downs the markets have seen since the mid-1980s.
But what stuck with me
was Silver’s thoughts on what comes next, and who shapes it. Early in our
conversation he sang the praises of the talented Derwent team he is preparing
to leave behind. As our chat drew to a close, I asked him what advice he would
give a young professional just entering real estate or weighing up an industry
role.
“For people coming
into the industry now, it’s obviously not the greatest of times – but I don’t
think that matters,” he replied. “Property is an amazing industry. It’s a
people industry, communication is everything, and I certainly wouldn’t deter
anybody thinking of making a career in property from making a start now. When
there are problems, there’s also opportunity, and where there’s opportunity,
there’s a chance for young people to show their prowess.”
There’s an inspiring
optimism to Silver’s logic. I’ve spoken with a lot of people recently about
crises being an opportunity to make your mark, to bring something of worth out
of even the most difficult of challenges. As Seaforth Land’s Tyler Goodwin put it in a piece for us
recently, with a global recession looming, “these challenges could well be your
career-defining moment”. And it could well be that the younger workforce finds
that truest of all.
Whatever changes the
real estate industry now goes through in the way it works, creates and assigns
value, one goal must be for those changes to reflect a broader range of views
than would once have been the case.
Initiatives like the
British Property Federation’s BPF Futures scheme have already helped to give
young industry professionals a louder voice, and those voices should be ringing
out in companies across the sector. John Woodman of the Worshipful Company of
Chartered Surveyors writes for us this week of the challenges of finding the next
generation of property professionals. With so much effort put into finding
them, it would be a crime to then make them feel as though their own unique
experiences were not being drawn on to rethink an industry as it moves (we
hope) out of crisis.
Our tech editor Emily
was absolutely right when she said last week that the “new normal” is something
to aspire to rather than accept. And as we
all work out what it is we’re reaching for and how it will reshape what we do,
the answers cannot be moulded by the same old suspects. That’s not to downplay
the experience of industry veterans, but to acknowledge that the enthusiasm and
innovation that often comes with a fresh pair of eyes counts for a lot too. As
Silver might put it, let the next generation show its prowess in helping map
out the next normal.