This article was written for EG’s Starting Out in Real Estate guide, click here to view the digital edition >>
Blessings Doherty, land economy undergraduate at the University of Cambridge, interviews Dan Labbad, chief executive at the Crown Estate, about his journey in real estate and how young people entering the profession can help change the world for the better.
Blessings Doherty: Looking at your background, you have held several senior positions in global property and infrastructure across Europe, the Americas and Asia and have actively championed sustainability throughout your professional life. You’ve moved between different roles and tried different things. It’s clear that this is your passion. What would you say has been that pull towards the property industry and why have you remained in it for so long?
Dan Labbad: When I reflect back, I got into property not because I had a masterplan, but more my father was an engineer and I thought I wanted to be an engineer. So I got into construction and engineering. Through my travels, I got to meet people and, after a few years, that turned into conversations around this concept of placemaking and the role that property can play in life and in the way humans interact. That was a real awakening, probably four or five years into my career. From there I was taken by the power of property to drive social change, to drive sustainability, and how property can be used as a catalyst through placemaking. What I mean by placemaking is, helping to improve the relationship between the way people want to live and the way property is created to help them to do that. To me, that was very, very powerful. And to this day, that’s what drives my passion for property.
Doherty: That’s amazing. I like this concept of placemaking and wanting to create communities that represent the values and the wishes of people that live there. Sometimes people think that, to enter into the industry, you have to have studied real estate or maybe planning. What would you say to them?
Labbad: Often I talk to young people and they say, what railroad tracks should I be on in order to build my career? And when I graduated 30 years ago, there were railroad tracks. You graduated as an engineer or as someone in a certain field and you joined the property industry. By and large, you stayed there and that’s what you did. That is a very different world to the world we live in today. There are no railroad tracks anymore.
To be a leader in property today, you have to know enough about everything, from cyber security through to artificial intelligence, to the way energy systems work, to the way materials are evolving to help sustainability. Things that weren’t even thought of 10, 15 years ago are now at the centre of property. The property industry is a hugely exciting industry moving forward. No one should think about it in historical terms because it will change in the next 10 years more than it has changed in the last 100.
My advice is, don’t think of your training as a fixed enterprise or a fixed part of your life. For me, university is about learning how to learn, not stereotyping me as an engineer or this person or that person. It gives you the empowerment to go on and learn even more.
What is the Crown Estate?
The Crown Estate is a major national landowner with a £16bn portfolio that includes urban centres and development opportunities; one of the largest rural holdings in the country; Regent Street and St James’s in London; and Windsor Great Park. It also manages the seabed and much of the coastline around England, Wales and Northern Ireland, playing a major role in the UK’s offshore wind sector.
The Crown Estate is a unique business. Its history goes back to 1760 when George III agreed to surrender to parliament the net income from Crown lands and hereditary revenue in return for a fixed annual payment. Today, the business operates under the Crown Estate Act 1961, occupying a space between the public and private sectors, acting independently and commercially to grow the value of the portfolio for the nation.
All of the estate’s net revenue profit goes to the Treasury for the benefit of the nation’s finances. This has totalled more than £3.2bn over the past 10 years.
Doherty: So, you had this awakening that you wanted to drive change. I think a lot of young people now want to do that as well. What advice would you give to a young person who is just starting their career who wants to drive change in the industry, socially, environmentally?
Labbad: You have to make the choice to make a difference. That is a conscious thing. I often come across people who are in positions of influence, and what frustrates me more than anything else is those who don’t use that influence to make a difference.
Making a choice to make a difference is fundamental. Throw yourself into some of the challenges the world faces: climate change, energy security, the natural world. Climate change gets a lot of the headlines, but protecting and restoring the natural world is just as important. We live in a very unfair society. Those are all things we need young people to fight for.
The second piece, in my mind, is making the choice to have the courage to take on those challenges. It’s easy to want to fight for something. It’s much harder in those moments of truth to stand up for what you believe in. Now, none of us can fight every battle. That’s not what I’m saying. But I think I’d like to see people stand up for what they believe in those moments of truth.
For example, in a moment when you’re in a meeting with adults, or people that are older than you, and they’re telling you things that you think are wrong. When do you speak up and when do you stay silent? I’d really encourage young people to try to take on their nervousness around hierarchy, because sometimes it can be like kryptonite – it can hold you back from standing up for what you believe in.
I really encourage people to speak up more. Do it in the right way, do it professionally, but speak up and say, actually, I’m not sure this is correct – and these are the reasons why. I think, in order to solve some of these problems, we need more inclusion. We need to celebrate difference and we need to bring different ideas. And I have found in my career that some of the biggest challenges I’ve had to face have only been overcome because we happened to have very different people from different backgrounds and different thought processes come together and hack it out.
Doherty: The Crown Estate is a significant national landowner with a diverse portfolio. What opportunities does the Crown Estate provide for people from all backgrounds to have that platform to make a change within the industry?
Labbad: I come from Western Sydney. My father emigrated to Australia from Egypt when he was about 20. My mother, a bit younger, from Italy. I grew up in a very mixed Arab/European/Anglo household. My childhood, I’m fortunate to be able to say, had an element of diversity in it, but it also had an element of me seeing my father, who was an incredibly clever man, experience bias. As I got older, I reflected on my childhood and came to really believe that you have to see the beauty in difference.
I represent difference in some ways, but the Crown Estate also does. There’s a view that the Crown Estate is full of people that are from the establishment. But no, we are just everyday people – people who want to make a difference. People work for the Crown Estate because they want to create value for this country. All of our profits go to the country and we are very proud of that. We have a really broad representation of people from all walks of life working here. We have work to do. We are not perfect. I would like us to be more inclusive and more diverse. I believe it is a human right for every individual to have the opportunity to realise their potential.
Doherty: If you were to look back at your own career and had to start over again, what are two pieces of advice that you would tell your younger self to implement this year?
Labbad: Well, I think, one, being vulnerable is okay. I was brought up as that male archetype – you know, stiff upper lip and get on with it. But I carried a lot of pressure, wanting to prove that I could be the perfect person in that stereotype. You do not need to do that. I would have told myself: relax a little bit, be open about what’s working, talk to people about your vulnerabilities. I was able to carry a lot, luckily, but a lot of people can’t. And I see a lot of young people put themselves under too much pressure. You have to be able to run the marathon. It’s not a sprint. And therefore, you need to give yourself the freedom to be human. Talk to people, build networks that can help you and support you.
The second thing I’d say would be to fast forward 40 years to the end of your career. It’s your retirement day and you’re looking back at yourself. How do you want to remember yourself? I’ve thought about that question all my career. I want to look back and think about myself down the track with three things in my mind. The first is I want my children and my family to love me, not for what I did, but for who I am. Secondly, I want my children to see that I have made a difference. And thirdly, I want nothing left in the tank.
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