Walking in the streets of Vancouver,I find empty street front store every corner. Yet, the unit rent is incredibly high. From Gastown to Point Gray, triple net ranges from $55 to $80. No wonder a latte in Yaletown costs $6, I wonder how many cups be sold to recover the operating costs.
Funny as it appears, many empty stores stay empty for year. Financially, one would cut loss by renting the unit out at a lower rate. No sir, those income trust managers can afford to hold the rate high. There are plenty of innocent investors putting their savings into these trusts...
Across the nation, I can name a few property income trust holding a vast majority of property. Deal or not, their option not yours.
Friday, September 24, 2010
Wednesday, September 8, 2010
Culture - a collective mind set
Lately, I listen to a few business management audio books, many focus the listeners on a particular skill set or a social media phenomenon. Every year there will be new observation and new techniques to test out.
One of the audio book Delivering Happiness from Tony Hsieh captures my attention. The book is about Zappos, an eCommerce retail enterprise. There are indeed many valuable learnings throughout and in particularly building a Zappos culture. These days I keep hearing about culture building in many companies, except a lot of these talks are just talks.
Corporate Culture means changing individual behavior to the company's predefined mind set. In the past, there were many successful examples be it good or bad. The bad examples I mostly read are the corruption culture...so easy to adopt.
Stephen Covey in his 7 Habits of Highly Effective People has provided the fundamental elements to build a responsible culture. In the 80's the book was so popular in the corporate environment that workshops after workshops were held to improve employees behavior. Yet, corporate after corporate has failed to provide the basic responsibility to their stakeholders. In 2009, 90% stakeholders globally were left without means to live.
Needless to say I am very impressed with Hsieh and associates to build a culture of "delivering happiness" to all stakeholders. I hope this culture will continue and being adopted globally.
One of the audio book Delivering Happiness from Tony Hsieh captures my attention. The book is about Zappos, an eCommerce retail enterprise. There are indeed many valuable learnings throughout and in particularly building a Zappos culture. These days I keep hearing about culture building in many companies, except a lot of these talks are just talks.
Corporate Culture means changing individual behavior to the company's predefined mind set. In the past, there were many successful examples be it good or bad. The bad examples I mostly read are the corruption culture...so easy to adopt.
Stephen Covey in his 7 Habits of Highly Effective People has provided the fundamental elements to build a responsible culture. In the 80's the book was so popular in the corporate environment that workshops after workshops were held to improve employees behavior. Yet, corporate after corporate has failed to provide the basic responsibility to their stakeholders. In 2009, 90% stakeholders globally were left without means to live.
Needless to say I am very impressed with Hsieh and associates to build a culture of "delivering happiness" to all stakeholders. I hope this culture will continue and being adopted globally.
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