Hiring people who “know how to fail” has been at the top of Dean Hopkins’ list of priorities since he took over as chief operations officer of Canadian real estate investor, developer and asset manager Oxford Properties in 2019.
“I have injected 100 people into the business throughout the coronavirus pandemic who have no real estate experience but can bring that ability to fail,” Hopkins (pictured) told A/O PropTech founder Gregory Dewerpe on stage at CREtech London this week.
The former Thomson Reuters adviser, who had 27 years’ experience in tech and none in real estate himself when he joined Oxford three years ago, said the property sector’s mindset around change and innovation remains a massive challenge.
Hopkins said: “Change is a people problem, not a tech problem. I joined an organisation [Oxford Properties] that was very good at thinking linearly and having every box ticked in advance of implementing a plan. But you can’t do that when you are implementing change.”
Since joining the group, Hopkins said the number-one task on his list has been a move from linear to iterative thinking. As well as bringing in a swathe of people with a certain level of comfort around failure, he has tried to instil within the business an acceptance of not getting things right the first time around.
“We have ‘F Up’ nights where we talk about failures and discuss how to fail, and how to learn from failure,” he said. “The goal is to fail in small ways rather than have huge, catastrophic fails.”
According to Hopkins, the more people are able to feel confident around failure, the faster businesses are able to move forward, particularly around tech adoption.
ESG was also singled out as a key driver behind the speed of tech adoption within the sector. Hopkins called ESG “the greatest gift we have had in this industry”.
“It is the vehicle by which we will be able to bring tech into the real estate world,” he said. “It is woven into every process in the industry. There is nothing that won’t get touched by ESG over the next five years.”
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