Commerciality – what’s that?

Today with two colleagues I went back to Nottingham Trent University to meet up with Ann Priest and Peter Westland – both key figures in the School of Built Environment – breeding ground for Surveyors (and architects and other property professionals). We were treated to a tour of the new Newton / Arkwright link before Christmas – I blogged here about it. It was a really interesting discussion today around how best we can work with NTU in the future.

One of the topic areas raised by Peter was what the School did well at and what they could improve at. My firm have employed a number of graduates and sandwich students in the past – in fact my assistant is one such alumni! Of course I too am a graduate. It was an interesting question. The usual response from employers is that too much time is spent on the ‘theory’ or ‘academic’ side – and this was a view that I held firm. But today I think my view has changed and I think the academic side is important to develop an inquisitiveness.

We then arrived at the word “commerciality”. It was my suggestion that we would like it taught … but may be it can’t be?

But, rightly, Ann questioned the word itself. According to the Oxford English Dictionary it is a a derivative of “commercial” – which is concerned with or engaged in commerce or making or intended to make a profit. But this isn’t what I was getting at. It was a bit more difficult to pin down. To make matters worse some people have it – or get it easier – than others. We weren’t sure it could be taught? Not really very helpful then!

So we tried a bit harder as follows:

It has something to do with ‘seeing’ a big picture – beyond the job at hand. It has an element of ‘inquisitiveness’ on the part of the person – questioning the status quo. It requires an really good background knowledge (where the University come in) – as the base position needs to be established. You need to know if there is more than one option. It requires some tenacity and a real awareness of your surroundings. Most importantly it does hark back to money – the ability to see a profit in something.

So, can it be taught? I think it can, but perhaps not entirely in the University setting. The foundations can be laid – it was Prof. Neil Crosby many years ago who taught me valuation – and his philosophy was ‘question everything’. But the real learning ground does need to be Industry…I think!

There were some really interesting and positive things that came out of today – and I am really looking forward to working with Peter and Ann in the future. It was an interesting chat – and challenging too!