Quit-smoking strategies can help you deal with work-people problems, turning cubicles into crops, and hipsters co-work at the gym in Chi-town. It's an august Friday here at EiT HQ.

OFFICE TO FARM TO TABLE

Despite the continued hype around return-to-office-or-else policies, one billion square feet of office space remains vacant nationwide. At the same time, housing is in short supply, so enterprising developers are busy trying to make commercial-to-residential conversions a thing. But as the Wall Street Journal explains in this ELI5 video, it’s expensive. Like $500/sqft expensive.

Meanwhile, Ciara O’Brien at Modern Farmer--a nonprofit promoting a more resilient and equitable food system for North America--has a better idea: swap the cubes for crops in the form of vertical farms.

“It seems like we’ve hit a sweet spot where the entire world needs food security; it’s now a national security interest for most countries. At the same time, commercial real estate is imploding,” says Dan Houston, president of AgriPlay, a vertical farming equipment vendor. “You put those two together, and you’ve got a fast, easy conversion method to onshore your food production and solve your commercial vacancy issues.”

WSJ, 8 min
Modern Farmer, 7 min

WEWORK ON STEROIDS

"With downtown office vacancies at record highs and return-to-work mandates failing to catalyze the commute, co-working is making new inroads in Chicago, cropping up everywhere from suburban shopping centers and apartment buildings to a swanky health club in River North," writes Robert Channick at the Chicago Tribune, flexing his alliteration chops.

The hipster co-working era, ushered in by WeWork only to be quashed by the pandemic and the over-ambitions of one particular hipster, is back, stronger than ever.

But today's flavor of co-working is increasingly connected to health and fitness hotspots, especially in Chi-town, led by BIAN, a high-end private wellness club.

“We did not design BIAN to be hybrid co-working space,” Fisher said. “But as the world changed, what we saw was everyone using our lounge to co-work. They didn’t want to be at a Starbucks if you were a member of BIAN.”

Chicago Tribune, 11 min

C.R.A.F.T. WORK

When dealing with stubborn patterns of behavior with colleagues and subordinates, humans tend to go one of two ways: confrontation or passivity.

But in the world of addiction research, these strategies don’t fare well. Something called Community Reinforcement and Family Training (CRAFT) comes out on top, with a 70% success rate.

Why? It works by encouraging the person’s internal desire to change, not by imposing it. Casey Rosengren explains that the same can be applied to fostering change within our teams.

Every, 9 min

ELSEWHERE ON THE INTERNETS

YESTERYEAR TECH OF THE WEEK

Have a 15-person sales team? Tired of tracking deals through the clunky Salesforce mobile app? Old tech to the rescue with a solution that fits into the metacarpus of your hand:

Until next week 🫡,

— 💬 The EiT Crew at Status Hero

P.S. This week, the team at Status Hero pushed out a beautiful update to the app dashboards … read all about it.