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5 Tips for Leading Through Adversity

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It’s during anxious times that strong, unshakeable leadership is ever more necessary to keep both businesses and morale from plummeting, so we’ve roped in a professional for advice. Helping corporate captains steer their ships through troubled waters happens to be what Paul Harvey has built his career on. From The Great Room at Centennial Tower, Harvey applies his extensive experience with executive coaching and leadership development programmes to his role as partner at organisational design consultancy Synthesis. Here are his leadership strategies for guiding a team through crisis.

1. Connect with others

The best thing you can do at this stage is to talk about your experience and your feelings. It isn’t always easy in the Asian context but reaching out to trusted family members, friends or colleagues will help to alleviate those feelings of being lost or alone. Right now the whole world is struggling with the same Covid-19 challenges, so the opportunity to empathise with and comfort one another is available if we take the risk of opening up.

2. Talk about underlying feelings

Discussing the new work-from-home procedures and the logistics of sharing tasks is important but you need to create some time to talk about everyone’s underlying anxiety, about how to support each other, and even of hopes and dreams for the future. This will also reduce the need to rush around trying to complete tasks that aren’t even that useful. Doing things distracts us from these anxieties but the best way to alleviate such feelings is to build a set of support resources to help everyone through the change.

3. Take care of yourself

Leaders don’t just have to manage their own anxieties, they also have to contain the anxieties of their teams. So you have to take time each day to recharge. Whether it’s running, writing in a journal, taking a walk in nature or playing with your kids, find something that will rejuvenate you. Leaders who are drained, overworked and overstressed are less able to think clearly, be empathetic and act as a support to others — all things that they will need to do more of during a crisis.

4. Exercise a more directive style

In times of crisis, followers are seeking clarity and certainty from their leaders. Teams in a heightened state of anxiety are less able to process complex or nuanced information, so keep your communications short, clear and to the point. Leaders would also be well advised to create forums where employees can talk about their experiences and feelings. All you have to do is acknowledge what is shared; you don’t have to fix them. Because if these feelings aren’t acknowledged, they will show up in employees’ actions — teams will be less collaborative, less innovative and more protective. If you’re noticing these signs, it means more communication and dialogue is needed.

5. Let people go at their own pace

Transitions aren’t linear, so it’s possible to feel hopeful one day and confused and lost again the next. Some team members may even transition faster than others, but forcing everyone to transition faster than they are ready to will only lead to resistance. By creating psychological safety for people to share honestly without fear of retribution, the leader is creating a culture that enables people to adapt better to change. For teams that are less comfortable talking about their emotions in a group setting, Synthesis’ organisational psychologists can help leaders create that environment. We use a variety of techniques, including practices like calligraphy and poetry, to create a space where people can open up without feeling like they’re in the spotlight or unduly separated from the crowd.

Fighting an Invisible Enemy: CEOs against the COVID-19 Slump

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Does the viral crisis call for wartime CEO mentality?

Make no mistake, this is war. Yet it is a war like no other, for the opponent is not a competition after market share or trying to outdo you in a tech race. It is an insidious virus that hijacks the lives of the man of the streets, that locks countries down, that disrupts markets to the point of sending the world-wide economy on a slide downwards. Is it time to wake up the wartime CEO in you?

Charging Through Rough Seas With A Unified Mission

The wartime CEO needs everybody to move in step, according to his plan – no room for deviances. A unified mission, clearly communicated by the leadership, is what companies in crisis need right now, according to a report by Deloitte Insights (ref: https://bit.ly/3bjHyLS) which identifies the fundamental qualities CEOs will need to guide their enterprises through the crisis. American management consultancy Bain outlines it even more clearly in wartime settings: (ref: https://bit.ly/2UbmIsh), prescribing the establishment of “a dedicated senior team in a war-room setting”, outlining macro scenarios and translating them to contingency plans.

Move fast, move aggressive

Bain further stresses the importance of swift action, recommending the outline of “no-regret moves” within days of the crisis, rather than weeks. “As CEO, you must be out in front with a planned cascade of possible actions, probably more aggressive than your team can imagine right now,” recommends a report published by the consultancy.

A perfect example: Facebook. After long battles over scandals that have eroded the trust between the company and the public, brand perception is on the uptick, thanks to the company’s swift response to the crisis. As early as February, Facebook was leading other tech industry giants to collaborate with the World Health Organisation (WHO) to discuss solutions to the outbreak. It continues to help WHO and other health organisations disseminate accurate information to its users.

The social media platform has also rapidly rolled out other initiatives, from banning ads for surgical masks, sanitisers, disinfectants and test kits to prevent scams and price gouging, to a $100 million program to help small businesses. “Aim for speed over elegance,” advises Deloitte Global CEO Punit Renjen (ref: https://bit.ly/3bjHyLS). “Resilient leaders take decisive action—with courage—based on imperfect information, knowing that expediency is essential.”

Make the difficult decisions

While Facebook sized up the situation and turned it into opportunity, few companies have the same luxury of vast resources and reserves to dip into in an economic crisis. Most would be first tackling the issue of revenue decline, scaling down operations, stabilising disrupted supply chains, and slashing costs.

In his blog post Peacetime CEO/Wartime CEO (https://bit.ly/2QGguhY), American businessman and New York Times bestselling author of The Hard Thing About Hard Things, Ben Horowitz writes: “Peacetime CEO builds scalable, high volume recruiting machines. Wartime CEO does that, but also builds HR organizations that can execute layoffs.”

Indeed, now is the time to carrying out those plans that nobody likes executing with the business’ continuity as the core mission in mind. The silver lining in this is the opportunity for leaders to show solidarity with their community: Trip.com CEO Jane Sun and chairman James Liang has announced that they will both not take any salary starting from March 2020, and members of the senior management will take voluntary pay cuts of up to half of their salary.

Amidst broad cost-cutting measures, the CEO of Singapore Airlines (SIA), Goh Choon Phong, will also be taking a 30% pay cut, while those holding executive vice-president and senior vice-president positions will bear 25% and 20% pay cuts respectively. Yet, tackling a Black Swan event as the COVID-19 pandemic isn’t just being ruthless, aggressive and goal-oriented.

It takes as much of thinking with the head as it takes thinking with the heart. While it is early days to see which companies will emerge victorious, so far, the CEOs who are winning are showing as much empathy and compassion as they are training their focus on financial performance. For ultimately, businesses are built by people, to serve people.

Personal Kanban: How This Organising System can Boost your Productivity

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While many productivity tools focus on achieving more and ticking the boxes, this handy, adaptable system emphasises working and living better. Here’s how it works, and how you can make it work for you.

Events, tasks, deadlines, people to please, kids’ activities to juggle, presentations to prepare for. Like many of us who live multi-hyphenate lives, Jaelle Ang, CEO and co-founder of hospitality-led, premium coworking space operator The Great Room, knows how this goes. “As a multi-hyphenate, entrepreneur and mother, I still have an unreasonable belief having it all. I believe that one can have it all, just not all at the same time,” she says.

“I no longer believe in seeking balance in life, I feel it’s like a trap to do that. It is important to seek the deepest clarity of what are the glass balls and rubber balls in your life now,” she says. “There are five balls in my life: health, spouse and kids, family, career and social. I always remind myself that my health is the glass ball – if I drop it, it could break irreversibly. My career is a rubber ball; it is likely that I will hit the ground (because it doesn’t ever, I am probably not doing enough or doing anything worthwhile) at some point in time, but I can and will bounce back.”

A useful – some might even call it game-changing – tool for managing all those glass and rubber balls is Personal Kanban (PK). It came into being because Jim Benson realised work life, personal life and social life cannot be treated as separate entities. “Work / life balance is not sustainable,” he says in the book he co-authored with Torianne DeMaria, Personal Kanban: Mapping Work | Navigating Life. “When we compartmentalize our lives, these elements [professional, personal and social] become pathological, pushing us from one task to the next in order to satisfy their own jealous needs.”

Benson describes PK as “A visual launchpad to personal effectiveness, spontaneous collaboration and an integrated life.”

While there is no productivity panacea that can turn you into a hyper-achieving speed demon, no matter where you work – whether that’s as a digital nomad out of a shared office in Hong Kong, from home or in a corporate office – PK can deliver something many other organisation tools don’t: fulfillment. It does this by helping you visually map everything that matters to you, within and beyond the walls of your workplace, so that you can prioritise and focus.

For the corporate team, PK is handy because you can share boards and follow team progress, and for the multi-hyphenate working remotely in a coworking space, it’s useful because it helps you stay disciplined and on track with your tasks – in work and in life.

How Personal Kanban came into being

PK has its roots in a scheduling system first created for the automotive industry, by an industrial engineer, Taiichi Ohno at Toyota. Developed with just-in-time manufacturing in mind, kanban used cards to track production in factories, in this way preventing the build-up of excess inventory at any stage of the production process.

Benson used variations of this technique in his work in software development, then he further developed the method into Personal Kanban with his colleagues at Modus Cooperandi. It helped them understand their workload, work flow, and also limit the amount of work in progress – and it’s this last part that’s key.

The rules

Recognising that we can only do so much – and realistically, we only have capacity for one task at a time (multi-tasking is so passé) – PK has adopted two rules, one of which is: limit what you’re working on at any one time. It’s rule number two, so let’s backtrack a bit and start with rule number one: visualise your work.

“Visualising work gives us power over it,” says Benson, who later honed the method with his co-author, DeMaria. “We now have a physical record of all those demands on our time. This larger view of our work and our context allows us to make better decisions.”

You can use a whiteboard, you can use sticky notes, or you can use a digital tool like Trello, Zenkit, Jira or Taskworld, to help you visualise your tasks. Benson and DeMaria encourage the use of a whiteboard and physical sticky notes, at least to start with, because “hands-on experience reinforces what we learn.” But many PK advocates use digital tools instead of physical ones, and these seem to be highly effective – especially if you want to have your PK board with you on your smartphone when you’re travelling.

Back to the second rule: limit your work in progress to just three tasks at a time. “You can only do as much work as you can handle. You can’t overload yourself. Once you do, your ability to finish and your ability to focus breaks down,” says Benson.

How to apply Personal Kanban

Here’s how it works, in a nutshell:

  1. Write down all the expectations you have on different sticky notes.
  2. Create an Options column, and put all your tasks in it. It’s much easier for your brain to take in your tasks this way, as it’s more visually pleasing than a jumble of tasks.
  3. Create a Doing column. Limit what you put in this column to three items, and no more.
  4. Create a Done column, and move tasks you’ve finished into this column.

Finish one task before you move something else onto your ‘doing’ list. “You finish, you focus [on something else]. You’re giving yourself the luxury of being able to complete something with quality, which means that you like your work when it’s done,” says Benson.

Insider tips

The beauty of PK is that you can make it your own. You don’t have to stick to three columns: you can have far more, and you can name them whatever you want, as long as you stick to Rule 1 and Rule 2 (maximum three tasks in the Doing column at any one time).

You can create a Backlog column for every single task you need to do, big or small. Don’t leave anything out: be honest with yourself Oh and this doesn’t simply have to relate to work – your PK board can include tasks you have to do outside of work – like booking your kids into swim class, paying for those concert tickets, date night, whatever!

Then put those you’re ready to do now in a Ready column – work that’s waiting to be done. These can be funneled into the Doing column when you’re good to go on them.

Long-time PK user Sven Wiegand suggests dividing your board into tasks to be done today (create a Today column for this), this week, this year, and he also has a Waiting column for those tasks that require someone else’s input in order to be completed. You can find out more about his approach here.

As well as being a useful organisation tool for individuals, PK is ideal for teams – especially if part of your team is working remotely out of a coworking space, or if they’re working in agile workspaces. You can put team tasks on a PK board using a digital tool like Kanban Zone to help you track workflow, giving everyone on your team access. You can even create different PK boards for different projects.

For further insights into Personal Kanban and how to use it, check out Benson and DeMaria’s site here.

International Women’s Day: Weighing in on Gender Equality and Female Empowerment

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The working woman should be lauded for her contributions to modern society, and this International Women’s Day, The Great Room had the privilege of sitting down with four such ambitious and highly capable women for their insights, experiences and advice.

Walaimas Jerdmethawut
Sales Manager, Upfield Professional
The Great Room Gaysorn Tower, Bangkok

As Sales Manager at the world’s largest plant-based consumer product company, Jerdmethawut is living her dream of working with a firm that shares her passion for the environment and delivering healthful products to the people.

The difference between men and women in leadership is… Men tend to be direct, and they do not take things to heart after an intense discussion. Women are great in a collaborative setting and at being emotionally sensitive to the people around them, which leads to great teamwork. We just need to be open-minded, as there are skills to learn from both genders.

Women at work should… Empower each other while being mindful. They should speak up for what they believe in, rise above the noise and focus on delivering results. This is how they can stand out from the crowd.

My female role model is… My mother, who taught me about hard work and diligence. In the 30 years, she has worked for our family business, she has only ever given herself one day off a month. She even taught herself English and Mandarin so she could better communicate with her customers. Her work ethic inspires me to never give up and to never stop learning.

Chloe Cortinovis
Co-founder and Managing Director, Bienvenue Factory
The Great Room Raffles Arcade, Singapore

After a 20-year career in brand development, Bienvenue left Europe for a new eye-opening adventure in Asia. She co-founded Bienvenue Factory in 2018, and is changing the retail landscape with omni-channel trade strategies.

A good leader is… Someone with sharp emotional intelligence, and who can bring people together through an inspiring vision and an unswerving exemplarity!

My hope for women today is… That they be allowed to take control over how they want to manage their personal and professional lives. In my time, recruiters would dare to ask me during interviews if I was planning on having a third child. I very much hope this has now stopped.

My superwoman power is… I can juggle thousands of responsibilities at the same time. I am immune to stress.

I would like to celebrate International Women’s Day by… Replacing all the world leaders with women and see how the world works then.

May Yin Lee
Account Manager, Teads Hong Kong
The Great Room One Taikoo Place, Hong Kong

A self-professed “people person” with a background in customer service, May knew she would be a great fit in the media industry. After a few years working in agencies, she realised that Advertising Technology (Adtech) was the future, so she joined Teads and now helps its clients reach their audiences in non-intrusive ways.

My advice to those looking to join this field is… Not to be afraid to show your personality — it could be your best weapon. Also, think outside the box because everyone is different and being agile with people is a useful skill. Finally, be nice to everyone. That intern you worked with might become your client one day.

Gender equality means… Allowing everyone the opportunity to be whomever they want to be. Women as leaders are rare in this male-dominated industry, but so important, which is why I’m aspiring to be one.

My female role model is… Sabrina Cannon, a manager from my days working for Harrods in London. She was charismatic and smart. I really looked up to her. Despite her busy schedule, she was always looking for ways to maximise her team’s potential. She gave me the drive to be the best version of myself, and played an important role in shaping who I am today.

Maria Karacheva
Director of Sales & Marketing, Ramada Resort by Wyndham Khao Lak
The Great Room Gaysorn Tower, Bangkok

Leading three departments — Sales, Marketing and Distribution — for an established big name hotel is no walk in the park, but it is all in a day’s work for industry veteran Maria Karacheva. After a decade working for another international chain, a hunger for change and an opportunity to learn something new led her to the Ramada Resort by Wyndham Khao Lak.

The women I think have moved the needle for female empowerment are… Malala Yousafzai, Greta Thunberg and Mari Copen, just to name a few. I am very impressed with this generation of women who aren’t afraid to speak up and demand change for a better future. We have a long way to go to achieve gender equality, but I have no doubt that female empowerment is in the good hands of these bright, young women.

On International Women’s Day, I want young, career-minded women to know… That it is not going to be easy, but it is absolutely possible. Besides, what would be the fun in doing anything that is too easy? I also feel like some women, myself included, feel easily discouraged in the workplace. We should stop taking things personally and just strive for the best. If we don’t stand up for ourselves, nobody will.

My superwoman power is… Super multitasking. My schedule is packed daily both inside and outside the office. This may surprise you, but the more I have planned, the more I am able to achieve.

Hong Kong’s Decentralization of Business Districts: Why Major Brands are Moving to Quarry Bay

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Central is no longer the only core business district in Hong Kong. High Rental Prices Driving companies to look outside of Central

Thanks to Hong Kong’s continued growth as Asia’s leading financial hub, the demand for Grade A office space in Hong Kong continues to grow with vacancy rates in the traditional CBD area of Central, hitting a record low of 1.6% in 2018 according to Savills.

This, combined with the influx of Mainland Chinese companies looking to secure prime locations in Central, has drastically driven up rental prices, forcing many companies to look elsewhere for competitively priced, quality office space.

In recent the years, the focus has turned to the East of Hong Kong Island and specifically, Quarry Bay. This former sugar refinery and dockyard has developed into Hong Kong’s secondary core business district attracting both the large multinationals from Central as well as the burgeoning SME’s that are a product of Hong Kong’s ongoing success story.

However, this has not all be down to simple market economics.

“This whole theme of decentralisation in Hong Kong will continue, and follows what other financial centres in the world have experienced.” Don Taylor Director of Swire Properties.

Swire Properties

The major driver behind Quarry Bay’s success story is Swire Properties who, since the early 1990s, have developed Taikoo Place into a hub of eight interconnected Grade-A office towers with a total gross floor area of over 5 million square foot.

In 2017, it was announced that Swire would invest HK$15 billion developing two Triple Grade A office towers: One & Two Taikoo Place.

One Taikoo Place: Home to MNC and SMEs

Completed in October 2018, One Taikoo Place (OTP) has been awarded a LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) Platinum Certification, adding an additional 1 million square foot to Swire’s existing Taikoo Place portfolio.

Attracting multinational tenants from the financial, legal, insurance, media, luxury brands as well as professional services, OTP has further demonstrated the ongoing decentralisation taking place in Hong Kong.

Companies in OTP
Finance : Royal Bank of Canada
Legal: Baker McKenzie, Eversheds, Simmons & Simmons
Insurance: AXA, Chubb, Metlife
Luxury Retail: Kering Group, Prada
Media: Facebook, IPG McCann
Professional Services: Ernst & Young

In addition to these large multinational tenants, Swire Properties have also chosen Singapore co-working provider The Great Room to occupy an entire floor at OTP. Designed to add both additional amenity space and flexible office solutions to both the multinationals and SME’s looking to gain a foothold in OTP, The Great Room opens in March 2019.

As the largest Landlord in Quarry Bay, Swire Properties have also been able to masterplan the Taikoo Place precinct;, utilising elevated air-conditioned walkways to connect the office towers to Quarry Bay MTR and incorporating 70,000 square foot of landscaped gardens as well as adding a variety of shops and dining spots.

New Central – Wan Chai Bypass Tunnel

The opening of the Hong Kong Government’s HK$36 billion Central – Wan Chai Bypass Tunnel in January 2019 has been another incentive for businesses to move East. This huge infrastructure project has cut the travel time from Quarry Bay to Hong Kong Airport Express Station at IFC to just under 10 minutes by car and 40 minutes to Hong Kong’s International Airport.

Relocation of Government Agencies

Recently, the commercial real estate market has been filled with news that Hong Kong’s financial regulator, Securities and Futures Commission (SFC), will relocate to One Island East, signing an 8 year lease commencing January 2020.

This has not come as a surprise to many observers who feel that this represents the SFC’s desire to save on its rent roll in Central and that the move will further encourage other businesses in the financial and professional services industry to decentralise.

Live in the Moment and Be Great at What You Do

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Zi En, Co-founder of HASIKO, is a former banker turned serial entrepreneur and a qualified Pilates instructor. HASIKO was founded to empower people to lead their best lives by forging strong connections with their mind, body and self.

She shares how being present can make you happier, reduce stress and perform better at work.

Most of us are not fully engaged in what’s happening in our daily life. We are constantly in our heads anticipating how something will turn out, or thinking about how things didn’t happen the exact way we wanted it to.

The result is that we live with high levels of stress, tension, frustration and anxiety everyday. Not only does it take away joy in our everyday life, living in this distracted manner decreases our productivity and performance.

The Mind Hack: Be Present

In his TEDx talk, Matt Killingsworth, a Harvard psychologist who ran a study that gathered 650,000 data points from 15,000 people across 80 countries discovered this:

“We are substantially happier when we are are fully engaged (being present) in what we are doing.”

We are less happy when our mind is distracted regardless of what we are doing. For example, commuting to work is something that most of us do not enjoy. Yet, Matt’s research showed that people who focused on their commute instead of letting their mind wander off were substantially happier. This pattern held true for every single activity that was measured.

In addition to higher happiness levels, you enter a state of flow when you are fully engaged and present in an activity. This is a state of being where you are able to tap into your highest abilities, where you are at the optimum level of clarity and focus, and where your performance level is at its peak. Research by the Flow Genome Project found that being in “flow” can boost human productivity, learning, and skill mastery by 490%. It’s the state that elite athletes are in when achieving superhuman feats, and it’s not exclusive to them.

However, we are a distracted breed. Matt’s research shows that we are only present 35 – 50% of the time in our daily life.

So How Do We Be More Present?

This is not about ignoring the past or the future. Our capacity to learn from the past and plan for the future is immensely useful. Just that when you are doing them, do them with your full attention. That’s being present and in flow.
There is no magic formula or a single method that works. Just like learning anything new, start with small steps and keep practicing. Here are some simple ways you can start with.

1) Start Your Day With Some Quiet Time

After scrambling to get the kids off to school and driving through rush hour traffic, most of us come into work already stressed and on the edge. In this frazzled state of mind, you are more likely to be stressed out by things at work.
Start your day with 5 minutes of quiet time, have a cup of tea, a nice shower, or focus on your breath. You may find that the stresses of the day roll off your back easier.

2) Focus On One Task

How often do you switch from your inbox, to a conversation with your colleague? Or from reading an article to checking messages on WhatsApp. Our attention is being demanded by so many things that we are constantly pumped up on cortisol. Our distracted mind feels overwhelmed because it’s constantly shifting from one thing to another.

Try this instead. Switch off all distractions and set a timer for 20 minutes. Pick a task on your to do list and fully engage in it. Besides lower stress levels, you’ll get more done than when you were multitasking.

3) Practice While You Wait

Embrace the daily pockets of waiting time as opportunities to practice being present. When waiting for the lift or in line for your coffee, instead of looking at your phone, practice being fully present. Observe what is happening in that moment without any judgment or commentary about how the line is slower today because the lady at the counter doesn’t know what she wants. Just notice what you see, hear, or smell.

4) Be Intentional

Our intentions drive our focus. An effective way to build a habit of presence is to intentionally practice for a month.

Home & Away: Leaving Home for a Hot Desk

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Journalist, editor and brand content consultant Christian Barker explains why he ‘left home’ for a desk at The Great Room.

Working where you sleep does have its downsides — as I discovered during a year freelancing from a home office.

It was terrific having the ability to send my kids off to school in the morning and greet them when they got home. However, disruption’s inevitable — if you’re parenting properly, your attention will be on your kids. They’re going to be, for want of a better word, a distraction. And at home, they’re far from the only one.

I’m lucky enough to live in a particularly green, leafy suburb of Singapore. Ah, the serenity… Yeah, not so much. Throughout the home-work day, there was always someone trimming those leaves or resurfacing the road. Or noisily knocking down a building to then noisily construct another. Or practicing beginner’s violin. Or playing Chinese opera at volume level 11. Not exactly conducive to concentration.

You need self-discipline to stay focused when you’re working at home, blocking out disturbances, avoiding the lure of social media — especially tricky, since it’s your main link to the outside world. Working from home is lonely as hell. Isolating. And since you’re alone, out of the public eye, you tend to let yourself go a bit.

I started getting out of shape, too, thanks to the irresistible proximity of the snack-packed kitchen. (Pringles: “Once you pop, you can’t stop.” Now that’s truth in advertising.) And because the closest gym was miles away, I never worked out. It wasn’t working out. I was always at home, but I was always at work.

I hadn’t even thought about coworking — a concept I wasn’t terribly familiar with, to be honest — when one weekend, I was invited along to the opening party for The Great Room’s first space in the Singapore CBD. Right away, the design and ambience ‘spoke to me’ and I decided to take up a trial Hot Desk membership. I’ve been here ever since, two years on, and can honestly say trading a home-office for The Great Room changed my life.

I still get up in the morning and farewell my girls, but then I make like Barney Stinson and “suit up” (or at least, get dressed properly). Having a little bit of pride in your appearance makes a big difference to mindset. I leave home and hop on the train — okay, commuting isn’t exactly fun per se, but it provides a clear demarcation between personal and work life, which simply blur into one when you work from home. And then, I arrive at this beautiful Mad Men-ish office and grab a seat.

When you hear ‘Hot Desk’ — the level of membership I maintain — you might get the idea it’s a scramble to find a place to sit each morning, but that’s not the case at The Great Room. I’m at the same individual marble table, on the same leather banquet, nearly every day. The desk isn’t ‘mine’ exclusively, I have to pack up all my things and put them in my locker at night, but there’s something zen about that — I love the calmingly Marie Kondo-esque sense it gives me of starting and finishing every day with a clean slate.

What really sparks joy, though, is the community. I’m constantly meeting interesting people at The Great Room, making friends, picking up new clients and discovering potential collaborators. And none of it’s forced. Unlike a regular workplace, you don’t have to endure anyone’s company because of office politics. You may be coworking together, but they’re not your coworkers. You can take them or leave them. Don’t like the person you’re sitting next to? Fine, move.

Luckily, that’s rarely necessary — I find The Great Room attracts a pretty high standard of human being, many of them doing inspiring things in their particular field. Those community bonds are strengthened through regular networking sessions where the conversations and libations flow.

All up, operating out of The Great Room has made me more productive and focused, improved my sense of work/life balance, and given me a space where I’m proud to host clients, suppliers and guests. (You can hardly have them around to your apartment, can you?) It’s an inspiring environment, full of inspiring people, which makes for inspired output. Best of all, it lets home be the place I go to wind down when the work is done. Like right now.

Drive to Succeed: How to Accelerate Your Content Marketing Efforts

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Luann Alphonso is the managing editor of vastly popular online portal LifestyleAsia.com and the head of digital content for Singapore and Malaysia at top international publishing house, Burda International Asia. Here, Ms. Alphonso, who is also a passionate auto enthusiast and respected motoring journalist, reveals the lessons she’s learned at the wheel of the world’s fastest cars — as well as wisdom gleaned steering LifestyleAsia and Burda International Asia’s regional content strategy.

The Great Room: Luxury sedan, high-performance supercar, efficient hatchback, reliable family wagon… If you were to liken an effective piece of content to a car, which type would it be, and why? 

Luann Alphonso: I would go with high-performance supercar. Many supercars are hand-built, specialised vehicles with advanced structuring, which demonstrate passion. Likewise, a credible, engaging story is painstakingly put together after hours of research and provides value to its readers and consequentially strengthens relationships for the brand.

TGR: Which skills, honed behind the wheel, have you applied to your role as Head of Digital Content with Burda Singapore & Malaysia?

LA: Not so much a skill but rather, a habit — adjusting your mirrors to cover your blind spots. Very often, smaller problems tend to go unnoticed and can snowball very quickly. To prevent that from happening, I check in with the team regularly and liaise with different departments to make sure we get a clear view of impending problems.

TGR: What are the most important factors to consider when crafting a piece of content? 

LA: Target audience, the purpose of the content and the value and longevity of the article.

TGR: What should non-specialists (start-up founders, for instance) do to ensure the content they publish on their own blogs and social media channels captures the audience’s attention? 

LA: Depending on the capability of the platform, measuring and analysing responses and reactions from past articles is a good way to adapt one’s content and constantly improve.

TGR: In your opinion, do all businesses today need to evolve to become ‘pseudo publishers’, constantly pushing out content? 

LA: If a particular company does not have the ability and resources to execute proper content with the help of functional departments, it is advisable to reconsider publishing, as poor content can greatly decrease brand loyalty.

TGR: Why is it important for a business to create content that engages, entertains and educates the customer — rather than simply trying to ‘sell’ to them?

LA: It’s a game of patience. Well thought-out content is about giving, not selling. When we give the audience a memorable read, it builds positive brand association which can, in turn, generate sales.

TGR: Editorial vs. content marketing vs. advertising — what’s the difference? 

LA: Using a car as an analogy, I would say that editorial is the engine, the heart that drives emotions, and content marketing is the steering wheel with the destination in sight. And finally, advertising is the sleek exterior — complete with a glossy finish.

Enterprise Solutions: Coworking Thinks Big

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Corporates are increasingly gravitating to coworking, attracted by the simplified set-up process, increased flexibility, reduction of replicated or redundant resources, and bespoke solutions coworking can offer. Director of Enterprise Sales at The Great Room, Sarah Ingham, explains why. 

Establishing a new, permanent office in a city requires significant capital expenditure and generally, locking into a lengthy lease. It’s a big financial commitment and highly time consuming — the company will need someone on the ground who is completely focused on finding the real estate and then project managing the office fit-out, handling the various tenders and so forth. Many companies don’t have that personnel in place, and if they do, they won’t necessarily be based in the city where the new office is being established.

One of the biggest advantages we can offer is to act as the client’s representative, a ‘one-stop shop’ providing a turnkey solution for that enterprise company, creating a bespoke fit-out coordinated by our experienced designers in consultation with the client, but where the furnishings, fittings and infrastructure are the property of The Great Room. This allows the company to turn what would normally be a capital expenditure into something that falls under the operational expenditure budget, meaning they can amortize the spend over the term of the contract.

This is another area where we can provide increased flexibility — even for a fully bespoke space, the contract term could be just 12 months; or less in a situation where the enterprise is moving into one of our beautifully designed, pre-existing spaces. That’s a real benefit to a company that may be growing or otherwise fluctuating in size, or one that is perhaps looking to establish a temporary outpost to fulfill the needs of a particular project or contract.

As The Great Room expands and builds new spaces across the region, we’re in the privileged position of being able to work in close collaboration with enterprise clients and construct spaces that are precisely matched to their needs. It’s very much like going to a bespoke tailor, as opposed to shopping for ready-to-wear. Rather than try to slot a client into the spaces we have, we set out to custom-build the perfect solution to fit the client.

Our skilled designers will ascertain the unique parameters and create various options — A, B or C — for clients to choose from. For instance, do they need an exclusive, permanent entrance and reception area of their own, or will sharing The Great Room’s signature hospitality-influenced lobby and common areas suffice? Does a CEO who spreads his time across various international facilities need a permanent office of his own, or can one be allocated as-and-when needed? Are there other transitory staff who’ll need hot-desking solutions? Is a board room, which may only in fact be used a couple of hours per day, really necessary, or would it make more sense to book a shared space whenever necessary?

As commercial real estate costs continue to rise, not least in Southeast Asia, companies are now becoming more conscious of the square footage they’re using and how efficiently it is being utilised. Some companies will insist on having their own reception area and meeting rooms, and we can most certainly accommodate that demand. But for those wishing to be a little more agile, we can help them increase efficiencies by integrating their front-of-house operations and meeting rooms within our coworking facilities, and provide various other anciliary services that will allow them to keep headcount a little leaner and decrease their overall office footprint.

In Singapore, we recently signed contracts with a leading IT security firm and major insurer, both occupying a bespoke space with several dozen desks. Clients like these say they appreciate The Great Room for our high standard of elegant, tasteful design, and that we really listen and come up with a unique solution. It’s not the ‘one size fits all’ situation, common to many other cowork providers. We are delivering a service, and we’re dedicated to providing our enterprise clients with workspaces that are utterly tailored to their needs — today, and in future.

Like a bespoke suit that can be altered as you change shape, The Great Room’s enterprise solutions are incredibly flexible, meaning your space can evolve along with your business and your people’s demands. For a forward-thinking CEO with a long term vision, that’s a very attractive prospect.

Peak Performance: How Entrepreneurship Is Like Climbing Everest

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The incredible people at The Great Room is at the heart of what we do. This is a story about GRIT and GREATNESS.

One of our long-standing hot desk members, Paul Valin (MD of Samara Consulting) provides support to European startups establishing operations in Southeast Asia, helps identify strategic partnerships, offers advice on angel investments and mentors founders in fields including fintech, ecommerce and pharmaceuticals.

In his private life, the Frenchman is also a passionate mountain climber who earlier this year, achieved a lifetime goal of summiting Mount Everest.

Here, Paul shares his heroic experience climbing the world’s highest, most formidable peak. And how that parallels the challenges he faced in his startup journey.

The biggest similarity that strikes me between climbing and entrepreneurship, is that they’re both about taking things step by step. Climbing a mountain, like Everest, or establishing a business, they’re both long, tough processes. And a lot of it, you have to handle on your own.

Before facing either challenge, you have to ensure that you’re prepared — mainly, mentally prepared. But in climbing, of course, there’s a big physical aspect to it as well. I’ve been preparing myself since 2013. This year’s climb was my second attempt to summit Everest, I’d previously tried in 2014. I wouldn’t say that I failed that first time — they closed the mountain after a disaster, an ice avalanche that tragically killed 16 sherpas. There’s a risk involved in entrepreneurship, however in climbing, the risks are obviously greater. You can die.

Approaching Everest, you need to be ready mentally to endure this long and very tiring ascent where anything can happen — you can get sick, you can get weaker. So you need to be ready in your mind for that, and you need to train hard, physically, for that. I’m quite a big guy, I weigh more than 100kg, so that was the first challenge: Could I do it with my weight? I had to find a chief of expedition to take me because I didn’t have so much experience in high-altitude mountaineering, we went to Nepal in 2013 to test my capacity to handle high altitude, and subsequently we made the first attempt in 2014 and tried again this year. Equally, in business, it took a long time to ready myself before I fully became an entrepreneur.

The stakes are much higher in climbing, the risks aren’t just to the health of your business but to your life and limb, your physical wellbeing. But in a similar way, when you embark on the entrepreneurial journey, you have to recognise the fact that you might fail. A lot of startups, in fact, most small businesses do fail. So you have to be mentally prepared for that to be a possible eventuality.

More to the point, you have to be aware that you may fail and even if you do fail, you’ve just got to stand up again — you have to go back and try again. Over there on Everest, a few times, including one point a few hours before reaching the summit, I was in a situation where I was really down and I was thinking, ‘Boy, I am going to make it?’ But finally you find some strength and in the entrepreneurial story, it’s the same – everyone faces big issues when they launch and when they’re running their own company. You just have to push through it.

For me, running my own business, on my own — that’s my idea of freedom, taking a risk and going for your dream. If you don’t take the risk, you’ll never know what could have been – you’ll never know what’s after the bridge, you might say. It was an amazing feeling for me, succeeding in climbing Everest. I had what they call ‘summit fever’: I couldn’t use my hands any more, my sherpa had to fix my rope, I was going very, very slow. But I was compelled to continue, and when the sun rose a couple of hours before I reached the summit, it was really stunning and that was the peak of emotion for me.

I had very good weather conditions and was lucky enough to spend an hour on the summit. I thought, ‘You will never come back here — enjoy it!’ Then I mustered my strength, because most of the accidents happen on the way down, but it’s compulsory that you move on, you cannot stop there, you cannot stay and rest there. It was frightening, facing that return journey. It’s another 12 hours to go down. The climb is very, very long and though reaching the summit feels like a success, you also have to survive the trip back down.

As an entrepreneur, I’d say I am more confident as a result of climbing Everest. I think my clients trust me even more, knowing that they’re working with someone who can handle that level of stress. My clients respect it. On a personal basis, it’s a game changer. It will probably take me another couple of years to fully process and digest the ways it has affected me. This has been a dream of mine since I was a little kid. When you make a dream reality, that changes you.

The Great Room brings together a like-minded community. Our Hot Desk membership is ideal for small teams and solopreneurs looking for an inspiring workspace and community. When extraordinary people come together, great things happen.