Andy Poppink has spent much of his two decades at JLL advising technology companies in and around Silicon Valley. But at the start of this year, he left his role as the agency’s president of the US West region to become chief executive of its markets business across Europe, the Middle East and Africa. Now, he’s trying to encourage his new teams to do some California dreaming of their own as they exit the Covid-19 crisis.
“The hardest part to replicate about Silicon Valley is this mindset that almost everyone has, that what they’re working on or thinking about has the ability to change the world for the better,” Poppink says. “It’s engrained in the culture there. It’s the discussions you have over coffee or lunch. It’s the friends that you have that are working on or contributing to something. People genuinely believe in their personal ability to impact and influence change.”
There’s a distinctly American, go-get-‘em approach in that way of thinking that doesn’t spring to mind when you think of the UK or European markets. But Poppink, a former professional basketball player whose love of sports and fitness is well known to US colleagues, is going to do his best to give his new reports a pep talk. Influencing and embracing change has been on his mind over the months since he and his family moved from the US to Switzerland for his new role.
“It’s a big personal and professional transition,” he says of the job change. “One of the things that I believe in from a leadership standpoint is the need for constant learning, growth and evolution. For me this represented an excellent opportunity to learn about new markets, connect with new people, stretch myself a bit.”
I think we have to continue to think of our organisations as organisms. Hybrid risks a little cultural erosion and even may reverse some of the strides we’ve made around diversity and inclusion
That focus on learning, growth and evolution is as necessary for JLL as a company as it is for Poppink as an executive. Poppink’s new role was confirmed last November after the announcement that EMEA chief executive Guy Grainger was taking a new post as global head of sustainability services and ESG. Alongside Poppink’s move came the appointment of Americas chief executive Greg O’Brien as global head of markets.
That means known faces in new roles as the agency tries to move out of the pandemic. And the challenges are stark. EMEA revenue across all business lines dropped by 12% year-on-year to $716.2m (£507m) in the three months to the end of March. Fee revenue fell by 7% to $311.5m, while the regional adjusted EBITDA loss widened to $24.8m from $10.6m.
Poppink’s latest job in the markets division covers many of the business lines that the group will want to help it recover ground, including leasing advisory, property management, and project and development services. The overarching goal, he says, is joining the dots more effectively than they have been during a difficult time for the industry, “helping create greater connectivity and community across our EMEA markets”.
“Already we’re seeing great returns in terms of sharing best practices, sharing forecasts and outlooks, collaborating around clients,” he says. “I believe our people are yearning for that connection having been outside of the office, and really appreciating it.”
Missed connections
Forging connections has been harder than ever after more than a year of enforced remote working, and that has made it tough for Poppink to spread the kind of enthusiasm he misses from Silicon Valley in the European business. But he knows that doing so is important as the industry responds to big market changes in the wake of the coronavirus crisis.
“I do not fear change in any way, shape or form. I prefer to lean into it and lead it, so I’m hoping to lead by example as it relates to change,” he says. “But this is where I wish I had more time in person with people so that we could have those informal brainstorming sessions over a whiteboard where people can get comfortable enough to talk about their passions and how they feel like they might have an impact.”
Poppink is trying to get small groups of colleagues together when possible and is hitting the road when he has the opportunity – he is in Portugal when he speaks to EG, a virtual walk-and-talk meeting allowing him to talk shop while he navigates the Lisbon streets hunting for a vegan restaurant.
“We’ve got to find creative ways to connect,” he says. “There’s no way to sugar coat it, I miss that and we need it.”
One group-wide initiative Poppink has helped to spearhead is a new mentoring programme pairing rising stars with senior leaders across different geographies. The scheme was oversubscribed by both mentors and mentees, and Poppink says he hopes the programme “lasts long beyond my tenure on this role or even JLL”. He has been paired with Toby Hall, the agency’s Dubai-based head of office leasing for the United Arab Emirates.
“It’s extremely impactful, if not critical, at this moment to be able to have that conduit to understand what our next generation of rising stars are going to expect from us and from the workplace [after the pandemic],” Poppink adds.
Working out what that next iteration of the modern workplace looks like has kept Poppink, like so many of his peers, busy. Like many in the agency world, Poppink has faith in the future of the office, even if that future has a good degree more flexibility than in the past.
“There’s a lot of research, including research that JLL has done, around the hybrid workplace,” he says. “I understand it’s a model to start with, but I don’t necessarily love it as a destination… Hybrid, I fear, is a little too structured relative to the way we actually live and work.”
Instead, Poppink prefers to talk about an “elastic workplace” – provide flexibility for individuals without making the company feel less of a whole. “The way one individual in a group works in a large organisation impacts the ways other individuals and teams work and communicate. So, as opposed to going to a fully individualistic, hybrid model where people structure their personal workdays, I think we have to continue to think of our organisations as organisms. Hybrid risks a little cultural erosion and even may reverse some of the strides we’ve made around diversity and inclusion.”
Light at the end of the tunnel
Covid-19 marks Poppink’s third crisis since joining Staubach Company, which JLL bought in 2008. His own career started just as dotcom bubble burst, after which he worked his way through the global financial crisis. “To some extent, I think starting at a low point in the market when things don’t come as easily as they might during a rapidly growing marketplace allows you to build skills and a foundation that sets you up for future success,” he says.
That’s the kind of silver lining that many of Poppink’s younger colleagues, who have yet to come out of the other side of a crisis, will need guidance to be able to spot.
“Talking through this with people, you realise that with the growth of the millennial generation as a higher percentage of our workforce, most of our JLL team had never been through a crisis,” Poppink says. “The majority of our people have only known a 10-year, expansionary real estate cycle where people are growing, money is flowing.”
Each crisis is different, but Poppink knows that they share at least one characteristic while they’re happening – “it feels like you just can’t see the other side and that the world may have changed dramatically forever”.
That’s not actually the case, he adds, no matter how it feels at the time. “There is light at the end of the tunnel,” he says. “It doesn’t feel like it when you’re in it. It didn’t feel like it when you’re in the depths of the dotcom crash. It didn’t feel like it in 2009 in the global financial crisis. But we are resilient people. So to stick with it, and be resilient and patient, will pay off for a lot of our people who are able to do it.”
And even in the depths of a downturn, Poppink places an emphasis on finding some joy in the task at hand. In a video recorded by colleagues to mark his winning of one of JLL’s “Champions of Excellence” awards back in 2012, Craig Kammerer, managing director in Palo Alto, says that clients love Poppink because “they know he has their back, they know he’s thinking creatively for them”. As real estate rethinks so much of its business, that creativity is arguably more important than ever.
“This is where what we do becomes fun,” Poppink says. “It takes the experience that you gain over years of interacting with clients, colleagues and markets, and it’s when the game slows down and you can see the entire field. To use a football analogy, you can see when a teammate is running to an empty space and put the ball out in front of them. That’s the fun stuff, right? You get to bring creative ideas to a client, pair them with someone else in the industry and see things that one might not necessarily see if you just take a very straightforward approach.”
Those sporting metaphors come easily to Poppink, who captained the Stanford University basketball team and whose basketball career took him to Turkey, Japan and Spain.
“Team sports are a good analogy for what we do in the professional services industry,” he says. “If you think about a highly successful basketball team, it takes the full organisational impact to really accomplish what you want. You need a coach that sets out a clear vision and provides appropriate structure within which the team can operate. Then the individual has to continue to work on improving their skillset in order to contribute to the team. Then you’ve got to constantly work on the team dynamic where you bring other individuals together to achieve that common vision. And you’re doing it in a very competitive environment.”
The EMEA markets team’s new coach might have some near-term challenges in managing that team dynamic. But he’ll hope there’s little that some of that West Coast attitude can’t help with.
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