Is Less Actually More?

Less is More? I frequently have people ask me, "Why the name "Less is More" and what does it represent?"  

Less is More is one of the basic concepts that we teach corporations to embrace regarding their operational real estate. The ability to minimize facility obligations and cost in relation to your competition creates a key competitive advantage for your firm.

In service businesses, this means reducing the real estate cost/employee or cost/seat. For distribution, it is cost/pallet position or cost/pallet occupancy term. In manufacturing, it is cost/widget produced or cost/revenue dollar. These metrics are Key Performance Indicators (KPI) and you’ll typically track more than one to get an accurate measure of success. We talk about KPI frequently in these posts.

Elaborating on these examples could fill a book or, well, dozens of blog entries. Suffice to say that we will continue to explore how you can reduce SQFT/person, maximize the cube, and increase thru put in future postings.

I remember an article from several years' back in Inc. Magazine.  They featured a consulting firm, Point B (no relation to my firm, PointLine) with an interesting real estate strategy.  At the time, they had 233 employees and no physical commercial real estate office space, phones, desks, or cubicles. Organized by a group of former Accenture consultants, all of their staff worked from home or client sites. Now THAT is understanding the concept of Less is More!

Since that article was published, Point B has continued to grow, and in the process picked up a few bricks and mortar offices.  However, they still likely have the lowest ratio of SQFT/Employees of any corporation of their size.  This gives them a HUGH competitive advantage over their competition in terms of both cost and flexibility.

Here is a link to the online version of the article:

Link: Inc. Magazine “Office Optional”

Impressive.  Less really is More.