Bobthepanda is right, watercoolers win, and it's pretty clear that compressing 20 locations into 3 can always be made to look like a flying business case on a s

Bobthepanda is right, watercoolers win, and it's pretty clear that compressing 20 locations into 3 can always be made to look like a flying business case on a spreadsheet and a ppt deck - especially when you make arbitary claims about efficiency gains. I was party to a case where consultants (biggest and most expensive ones) introduced a 7% co-location bonus with no evidence or justification at all and this promptly yeilded a £100m investment in the realestate to support it. No one really argued because the alternative was 0 investment, and the axe man commeth for those who were on the periphery in any case. Actually, I lie. I argued, but now I work in a different place... coincidence? My point would be I think that there are pros and cons, distributed offices have huge pathologies, but centralised facilities often just don't work, and those failures are simply ignored or covered up in the modern workplace. I do not believe that the facts of what happens in these reorganizations could be measured if the faculty of Harvard and the LSE were to be onsite interviewing executives 24-7 in a corporate going through this. The beast must be fed, and those who get thrown in the maw don't count.