AWA Institute · Online Webcast · 21 October 2026
What your ‘C’ suite leaders actually want from the workplace
For ten years AWA has asked business leaders to allocate a hundred points across ten organisational capabilities in relation to their importance to business performance.
On 21 October you make your own allocation, live, and we put the two answers side by side.
Most workplace projects start at the wrong end
A brief is written. A budget is set. A project manager is appointed, then an architect, then a fit-out team. Options are drawn and costed, and the programme takes over. One question rarely gets asked at the point it would still change something: what is the leadership team trying to achieve, and what would the workplace have to do to help?
- Step zeroWhat is this change for?
- Step oneThe brief is written
- Step twoThe budget is set
- Step threeThe team is appointed
- Step fourOptions are drawn and costed
Nine times out of ten, the people, the plans and the budget are moving before anyone has asked what the change is for.
A workplace change is one of the few moments an organisation can rearrange how it works. Treated as a property exercise, it produces a building that functions without advancing anything the leadership team was trying to achieve. Treated as a business exercise, it is one of the largest levers available to them.
We’re going to share a radically different design and management philosophy that treats the workplace as a strategic business tool, aligns investment in workplace projects to ‘C’ suite leader priorities and allows ‘through life’ measurement.
Leaders and workplace teams do not answer this the same way
The exercise is one question with a hard constraint. What does this organisation most need to be able to do? Allocate a hundred points across ten capabilities, and you cannot use a point twice. AWA has been running it with business leaders for a decade. Here is where the top of their list sits.
How business leaders allocate the hundred
- 01Cross-departmental collaboration and trustRevealed
- 02ProductivityRevealed
- 03Live, 21 Oct
- 04
- 05
- 06
- 07
- 08
- 09
- 10
The assumed answer
Cost
Ask a workplace or real estate team what the board wants from the building, and cost comes up early. It is not what tops the leaders’ list. Where it does sit is one of the things the session shows you.
A workplace designed against cost is a different building from one designed against collaboration.
You do the exercise first, then you see the answer
This is not a presentation with questions at the end. The exercise happens at the start, with everyone in the room taking part, and the rest of the session works with what comes back.
01
You allocate your hundred
Everyone attending allocates a hundred points across the ten capabilities. It takes a few minutes and needs no preparation.
02
The room’s answer goes up
Results appear on screen while everyone is still there, including where the room agrees and where it splits.
03
Ten years of data goes up beside it
The full business-leader ranking is revealed in order, and compared with what the room said.
04
Priorities become decisions
Andrew Mawson walks from a stated priority to what it demands of the design, the technology, the practices and the change itself.
The most useful screen is the one showing disagreement
The exercise plots every answer, so a leadership team can see at a glance which priorities it is united on and which it only assumed it was united on. Attendees see this for their own room on the day.
A priority the room agrees on
Answers cluster. The conversation can move straight to what to do about it.
A priority the room only assumed it agreed on
Answers scatter. Someone in the room is solving a different problem from everyone else.
Both plots are illustrations of how the view works. They are not client data.
The recording will not have your answer in it
Register and you get the recording either way. What a recording cannot hold is your own allocation, or where your organisation lands against ten years of leader data. That part exists only if you are in the room on the day.
The findings and the method
The full ranking in order, the walk from a stated priority into design, technology, practice and process, and the discussion that follows it.
Your hundred points
Your own allocation, the spread across everyone in the room, and the comparison drawn against the leader data while it is still on screen.
Anyone who has to justify a workplace decision upwards
The exercise is pitched at business level rather than workplace level, so it works whichever side of the table you sit on.
Workplace and real estate leaders
Test what you believe the board wants from the estate against what business leaders have actually said for ten years.
Facilities leaders
Language for the value conversation that does not start and end with cost per square foot.
HR and people leaders
See where the workplace agenda and the people agenda are asking for the same thing, and where they pull apart.
Anyone facing a change
A move, a refit, a lease event or a restructure. A method for deciding what the change is for before the programme decides for you.
No preparation needed. Bring the workplace change you are closest to, and the leadership team you have to convince.
Your expert speakers
Leads the session
Andrew Mawson
Founder & Managing Director, AWA
Andrew founded AWA in 1992 and has spent more than 30 years helping organisations change how they work. He built the organisational needs exercise and has run it with leadership teams for over a decade. The data shown in this session comes from those engagements.
Hosts the session
Brad Taylor
Director of Consulting, AWA
Brad heads the AWA Institute, AWA’s senior leader forum. A Chartered Fellow of the CIPD with more than 30 years in HR across finance and professional associations, he has held senior people roles at the CIPD, CIMA and Barclays.
Guest speakers
To be announced
Leaders who have run the exercise
We are inviting leaders who have taken their own organisation through this exercise and acted on what came back. Confirmed guests are announced ahead of the session.
Register your interest
Free to attend. Fill in the form and we will send the joining link, a reminder on the day, and the recording afterwards.
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Research that changes how organisations work
Advanced Workplace Associates is an independent research and consulting firm specialising in the science of work. For over 30 years, AWA has helped organisations understand how people work best, and design the environments, policies, and cultures that make it possible.
This webcast is part of the AWA Institute — AWA’s forum for senior workplace, HR, and real estate leaders. The Institute brings together practitioners across the field to share evidence, challenge assumptions, and develop the thinking that shapes how organisations manage work and space.