Last Monday I was on a walk with my dog, Mocha, in Sydney along the King Streets wharves and into the all-new Barangaroo precinct. Even though it was a weekday and 11 am there were all the hallmarks of a ghost town complete with a noticeable wind and squeaky signs echoing in the empty corridors between the buildings.

Recently I saw an interview with an executive from the commercial property titan Dexus. He maintained that commercial property was sound and that things should return to “normal” in a short time.
We hear a lot about “normal” and “new normal” these days. The advisory and NED roles I hold with successful SMEs mostly indicate that the best we can anticipate at the moment is a division into “A” and “B” teams with just half of the staff in the office at any one time. The other half will continue to work remotely. For the foreseeable, this scenario seems more realistic than the overly optimistic Dexus opinion.