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number of people making decisions, where key a CIO should see the company with a special set of eyes; they
individuals at high levels feel comfortable making a should be seeing things that others are not, from a perspec-
call that might not be a safe bet. Not everything can tive of how technology can help. If you’re not there, asking
be by committee; someone has to take those risks questions and getting involved, you end up being reactive.
on projects that don’t have an immediate impact, or One of the saddest things to see is the CIO-in-title-only, who
where the payoff isn’t immediately clear. doesn’t have a true seat at the table, and therefore can’t make
a real impact. Even when they see the opportunities, they
The second element is financial structure. Decisions cannot act on them because they’re not regarded as a key team
are impacted by how money flows through an organi- member. It must be extremely demoralizing to work in that kind
zation. For example, a company where most costs are of environment, but I also think that setup is increasingly rare.
incurred on the property level may struggle to make More and more people in commercial real estate realize that
an enterprise-level investment if it cannot be passed they have to be serious about integrating technology with core
through to individual properties. Similarly, a company business strategy. I credit Realcomm for bringing it to every-
structured as a series of funds, where the corporate one’s attention.
level exists largely to manage the funds, might find
that neither the funds nor the corporate level is prop- Realcomm: It might be easy to say “I will take chances and risks”
erly staffed or incentivized to do enterprise-level sys- when it comes to deploying new technologies, but what
tems work. This particular issue is extremely important does it really take to transform how your company embrac-
but often overlooked. es new technologies and truly changes how it operates the
organization?
The next thing is technology awareness. Very often
in commercial real estate, the people in leadership Segal: Not that the world needs another book on change
positions (other than the CIOs) got there through management, but that’s what I would have to write to really
very traditional paths that took years and years. Many answer this question. Instead, I’ll say there are three steps
C-level executives, VPs, and Directors are light even on in changing how an organization operates. First is under-
Excel and Outlook, let alone things like SQL, workflow engines, standing an opportunity. Second is identifying or creating
and analytics engines. These individuals are more likely to be the solution. And third is implementation and adoption. The
in reactive mode, and while they might be educated and con- first two can be done by a small team of like-minded people
vinced, that is still very different than what you get when those around a table, but that last step is by far the hardest be-
people are the actual drivers of innovation. cause it includes changing the behavior of many, many peo-
ple. For the implementation part you need to be a student
The last factor is size; you have to be big enough to do some of organizational development, with minors in anthropology,
things, but not too big to change. If you are responsible for
a million square feet, you probably don’t have enough scale
for robust projects because the size of the portfolio doesn’t
support it. On the other hand, organizational change in huge
companies is not at all easy. It really is all about finding that
sweet spot.

Not surprisingly, I think Boxer clears all these hurdles
comfortably.

Realcomm: How important do you think it is for the CIO to be
fully integrated with the organization’s leadership and why?

Chung: Technology reporting directly to the CEO is critical. It
elevates IT as a strategic function more closely aligned with
the business function. Having IT report through finance is
still pretty common, but there are often hard ROI influences
associated with that structure, which may affect the type of
projects that get approved and pushed through. As part of
our executive team, I participate in a weekly scrum, where
I am able to garner so much insight. I hear where the pain
points are; what business issues they want to address. My
understanding of the company’s core business improves, and
I’m able to determine how IT can apply.

Segal: Of course it is critical. The CIO needs to understand the
organization thoroughly in order to find the opportunities. And

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