Why CEO Michelle MacKay hit the reset button on Cushman & Wakefield and turned it into a “different kind of engine”

Listen to the episode or read the transcript below.

Michelle MacKay: What I think people don’t understand is we’re growing a different kind of engine, a different kind of company, and a different kind of culture that’s far more tapped into where the world is going and far less reliant on historical practices of where the world has been. And when we were talking about talent, this is a complete tie out to the kind of talent that we want too. We don’t want people who are going to tell us the way that it was done. We want visionaries to come to us thinking about the way it’s going to be done.

Diane Brady: Hi, everyone. Welcome to Leadership Next, the podcast about the people…

Kristin Stoller: …and trends…

Brady: …that are shaping the future of business. I’m Diane Brady.

Stoller: And I’m Kristin Stoller.

Brady: This week, we are speaking with Michelle MacKay, who is the CEO of Cushman & Wakefield.

Stoller: Yes, and I’m excited because she is a fellow “Connecticutian,” or Nutmegger, from the Nutmeg State.

Brady: “Connecticutian.” Is that a word?

Stoller: If it’s not, I’m making it one today.

Brady: Well, you’re, I mean, you both had formative early parts of your career in Hartford.

Stoller: Yes, yeah.

Brady: The Hartford for her.

Stoller: So Michelle worked at the Hartford Insurance Company. I worked, actually, right around the block, but not at the same time, at the Hartford Courant. So I would stare at her office every day, or take a mental health walk by her office every day. And it’s funny that we both got our start in that area.

Brady: And I think of Cushman & Wakefield as commercial real estate, that sort of office building footprint, but I think more than half of their revenue actually comes from services.

Stoller: I had no idea.

Brady: Yeah, it’s everything from, you know, art to cleaning stadiums. So that’s an interesting part of the building—”building,” listen to me. That’s an interesting part of the business. There’s a faux pas that’s appropriate to the show. But I’m also curious about office real estate, because frankly, a lot of cities continue to struggle. This time last year, we were talking about an urban doom loop, certainly in New York and San Francisco. The fact that people don’t want to go back to the offices, and tax revenues were falling.

Stoller: They don’t. And so I went in January to see the new JPMorgan headquarters here in New York, where they are trying to…

Brady: Crown jewel.

Stoller: Yes, bring people back to the office five days, and I think using this building to do so, because they have a pub, they have, you know, mental health rooms. It’s just all the amenities. But what I found the coolest part of that was how they’re using AI in their building. They’re using AI so when you’re coming in, they know your coffee order. If you’re booking a conference room, they know the temperature you like.

Brady: That sounds Orwellian to me.

Stoller: Yeah, it is a little scary, Severance-like, I don’t know. But I think the new tech in buildings is such an interesting new space we’re gonna see.

Brady: And look, this is an industry that’s in the front lines of climate change. Honestly, you think commercial real estate in Houston or other parts of the country—it’s complicated because they’re dealing with the fact that, you know, coastal cities are under threat. There’s a lot more natural disasters. It’s hard to insure for this stuff. So I think you have to be thinking about resilience. You have to be thinking about how we’re going to live and work going forward so…

Stoller: And how to future-proof a building, your whole portfolio.

Brady: And policy matters. And of course, we have a real estate president in the White House. There’s a report out on Cushman’s site about Trump 2.0, the impact it’s having. I think we’ll definitely want to hear from her as to where she sees policy impacting the future of real estate and also the rest of the business.

Stoller: Absolutely. Well, back soon with Michelle.

Brady: The best business leaders today know the value and importance of empowering those around them, personally and professionally. By encouraging and enabling others to grow, take risks, and fuel innovation, business leaders are not only driving greater engagement and performance, but also future proofing their organization for years to come. I’m joined by Jason Girzadas, the CEO of Deloitte US, to talk more about this. Welcome Jason.

Jason Girzadas: Well, thank you. Diane, great to be here.

Brady: Innovation is about empowering the people around you, and that’s something that a lot of CEOs struggle with. How do they embed it into their leadership style?

Girzadas: Well, I think there’s all types of CEO leadership styles, clearly, and proven that there’s maybe not one recipe for success, but it does require, I do believe, a commitment to inclusive leadership, where all are expected and invited to contribute around innovation. I think there’s also a collaboration and a collaborative culture that’s a requirement that’s also not something that maybe comes as naturally and has to be cultivated and be intentional about. And then also, I think giving leaders some autonomy to actually look at opportunities for innovation, look at opportunities for creative, new ideas to bring forth that requires a degree of trust and a degree of openness by CEOs in particular, to allow for that within an organization.

Brady: So Jason, I want to, on a personal note—I’m talking to a CEO here. What are some of the most effective strategies you think for fostering open dialogue, collaboration? A lot of what you’re talking about [are] the ingredients to innovation.

Girzadas: Well, for me, it starts with being genuine and authentic as a leader, being clear that the single leader doesn’t have all the answers to every question, and certainly in my case, it’s inviting a very broad organization to participate in addressing the issues and challenges that we face. So I think that genuineness and that transparency and authentic leadership style is the key ingredient from my experience.

Brady: Good advice. Thanks for joining us, Jason.

Girzadas: Thank you, Diane.

Brady: So Michelle, you know, the first thing I see when I go to your website is “Trump 2.0—The First 100 Days.” I thought that was actually interesting, straight into the fire. Tell us, you know, give us a sense of the implications this has had for your business, because I love the fact that you’re out there making us smarter about the impact so far?

MacKay: Yeah, we took a focus, really, on the administration’s take, at the time, on tariffs, and we’re walking our clients through the potential implications for them and the potential implications for real estate. People have asked me directly how the tariff situation is going to impact the company directly, and it really doesn’t impact us directly, but it does impact a lot of our clients and the business decisions that they’re making. The one piece of advice or commentary that I make around this each time is that our job at Cushman & Wakefield is to give advice to clients in their time of need, and so it’s a really good place for us to be right now. And this particular report that we did, we did a follow-up call walking our client base through all of the implications and what we’re thinking at the time, and we had upward of 4,000 people join the call.

Stoller: Wow. What was the most surprising thing you found from this report?

MacKay: I think when we looked at it, you go in with this mindset that everything that’s going on is going to be bad, that you’re going to find that, you know, there’s just more stress in your system and pressure, and in certain parts of the world and the economy and logistics there are, but really there’s a lot of opportunity to take out of it, especially for someone who’s in a seat like we are, in terms of giving advice and guiding our clients. But we know we need to be smart enough and educated enough to do it. That report is done by our think tank.

Brady: Yes, I saw that, but I thought… Well, you know one of the things I think—first of all, let’s correct some of the misperceptions out there about the company that you’re leading, because I think of it first of all as, commercial real estate is only part of what you do. And one of the things that you mentioned: there has been this sense of urban doom loop and cities having trouble. So talk about the commercial real estate, but also the services that you provide, I think, to give people some level set here as to the scope of this global brand.

MacKay: Yeah, the scope of the work that we do. Thank you for that question, because it is true. I think that people think of us as a very concentrated, focused play, sometimes on specific asset classes, even within commercial real estate.

Brady: Office buildings.

MacKay: Yeah, sure. And the truth is that we’re very broad. First of all, we have a global footprint, which everybody pretty much knows at this point. A brand that’s recognized across the globe, and that’s over 100 years old. But we have also really extended ourselves into serving clients in asset classes anywhere in the built world. We install solar panels. We install electric charging stations. We oversee the cleanliness of stadiums. We work with hospitals. We work with national art collections. It’s pretty extensive. And so the term “commercial real estate,” I find it to be too narrowing. I quite often talk about the built environment or the built world, because it’s a better descriptor of the role that we’re playing is in servicing the built world or the built environment.

Stoller: I think that’s—and I know, you know, you said that you’re not totally focused on office buildings, and that’s not the only thing you do, but Michelle, I do have a question for you about it, just because I’m so personally interested in that commercial space. And you know, Diane has been doing a lot of talking about the return to office and that debate that’s going on. We talk to CEOs all the time, and they’re debating whether to go back five days a week. We’re back five days a week, but it’s still such [a] new debate. So I’m wondering with the pressure on office space post-COVID, are you thinking this golden age of commercial real estate is over and now it’s back, or how are you looking at it going forward?

MacKay: Yeah, I have a view that we’re all returning to a very fundamental perspective of real estate. I made commentary on my recent earnings call around the fact that people used to think it was an arbitrage asset, especially in a low-interest-rate environment, meaning you could buy the asset, finance it really cheaply, refinance it three years later, cash out, and then kind of have an option as to what you were going to do with that asset. When I came into commercial real estate, it was a lot about the 10-year hold period, and you took on financing at lower levels. You held the asset for a longer period of time. Funds were created around the 10-year hold period with the potential two-year extension option. So I think in terms of shifting in the way people are looking at it as an asset class, as an investment, that’s where I think things are going to be going.

Stoller: How do you advise CEOs that are struggling with it, or clients that are struggling with it?

MacKay: Struggling with perspective on it, or…?

Stoller: On whether to invest in office space right now.

MacKay: Yeah, I think each client is different, right? And if you think about an investment fund, it typically has a philosophy around what guides its ability to invest. So when you’re raising funds today, you might be raising funds specifically for taking opportunities or investing in opportunities in the office space. And in that way, you’re just helping to guide your client as to whether or not they want to be in a core or central location. Particular markets, which do come up for conversation—we were talking a bit about that before we started today. Do you want to go into San Francisco and really take that 10-to-12-year hold period, because that is a market that always returns? Do you want to go into something that’s more stabilized in New York City, but you’re going to pay more per pound, if you will, for that asset?

Brady: Do you want to go into Houston, given climate change? More to come.

Stoller: Let’s talk about the market. Let’s myth-bust it.

Brady: Well, I think I—yeah, before I—boy, you’ve got such a fascinating background. Listeners, we’re going to get to Michelle’s background. But I think you’re right. I think to give people some perspective of this, you know, hyperlocal nature, and I’m saying that both on a domestic basis and international. What are the markets right now that feel like they’re really heating up, and which ones are still challenging? And we can do a lightning round, if you want. You mentioned New York, San Francisco, I just came from L.A. Of course, that’s stressed in a different way because of the wildfires. What are you seeing?

MacKay: We have the full spectrum. I think, as everybody knows, New York came back really quickly, which was great for all of us based here in New York. L.A., which you mentioned, has continued to struggle, and that was before the wildfires. I think there’s been just a doubling down in terms of local commitment to bringing that city back to life. But L.A. and San Francisco are still standouts in that way. Chicago has been, unfortunately, a bit soft as well. When I go overseas, and markets that I like, that I still see a lot of strength in are Singapore. Markets in India have continued to be really compelling. There’s drivers, like outsourcing still going on into markets in India, but also companies that are deciding to put down permanent footing in those markets, as well as that talent base has built out. I was just in Sydney, Australia, which is another market that I like a lot and is doing pretty well.

Brady: You work in the Opera House. That is not—that’s not you, literally, but and Hartford…

MacKay: No, but that would be pretty exciting to work in the Sydney Opera House.

Brady: One market we haven’t mentioned is a market you and Kristin share in common: Hartford, Connecticut.

Stoller: Yes, our home of Connecticut.

MacKay: Yes, it is.

Stoller: Yeah, how’s Hartford doing?

MacKay: Well, Hartford’s always been a market that has had its ups and downs. And we were talking about how when we were there it was really focused on the insurance industry. There’s still good concentration of insurance, you know, specifically in Hartford, but some of it is out in the suburbs, and always has been. I think it’s unfortunately a city that’s struggled a bit defining itself on a permanent basis.

Stoller: Are there any underdog cities that you would bet on? We’re just coming from St. Louis, and we’re really intrigued by all the real estate there.

Brady: Is that an underdog? Maybe.

Stoller: Is there any underdogs that you’re like, that’s going to be the next big one?

MacKay: You know, we actually have a big presence in St. Louis. We have a lot of our processing and back office in that market. That’s a market we like a lot, but not many people are aware or think of it as a market. I also like Baltimore. I’m a big fan of Boston. Boston’s, you know, making its way back as well. And D.C., we didn’t talk about this. D.C.’s a market that’s been under pressure and stress. It is such a fabulous city, right? The art collections there, and the whole livelihood of this nation. That city is a city that we really need to commit to, I think, as a nation.

Brady: Many people want to be in D.C. Let me circle back to Hartford. It’s also a place where you spent an early part of your career. What did you want to be when you grew up? Let’s start there, because, you know, here you are today, living the dream. But this was not necessarily the dream you had early on.

MacKay: No, early on I just wanted to find something that I was really interested in. Intellectual curiosity, to me, is a big part of the way that I make decisions. And I did an internship at a commercial and residential real estate firm that was in East Hartford that was, you know, appraising assets all over the Hartford and West Hartford market and Glastonbury, you name it. And it really—I got hooked early on. I think that was my junior year in college, and then I just wanted to pursue a career in something related to commercial real estate. It wasn’t that targeted when I started off, and that became a tough time in the market as well. I didn’t—my undergraduate degree is in political science, so I immediately…

Brady: …as is mine…

MacKay: Oh, nice.

Brady: Yeah, all hail political science and history.

MacKay: So I went back to school, and I went back to school to get my master’s degree and really firm up some financial skills. My first job out of college was at Connecticut National Bank. So I was coming out in the late ’80s, early ’90s. The RTC was taking over assets, and the banking industry was really under pressure. That’s how I started in commercial real estate and stayed there for a couple of years and then moved over to the Hartford, as we discussed, to work in their commercial real estate portfolio, and then eventually move into their fixed income department, because the structured products market had started to take off, and they had started taking big pieces of commercial real estate, hiving up the financings into bonds, and insurance companies were starting to invest in them.

Stoller: So I love your journey to CEO, to where you are right now. I think it’s fascinating that you came out of retirement to do this, and I want you to kind of walk us through why you did that, and did you always have your eye on that corner office and think that was going to be your job coming from, you know, our humble Hartford, Connecticut?

Brady: Why you retired—my gosh, too young. Never retire.

Stoller: Why? Tell us.

MacKay: I’ll tell you why. So, when I was 25 years old, I never thought about being a CEO. Let’s start with that one. I wasn’t brought up in an environment where that was on the table or a thought, and so it never occurred to me. As I matured in my career, that became more of a thought. But once I had stopped working and started taking on board seats, I will say that I did retire—those three years that I spent on board seats and with a little more time for myself were probably the most important years of my career journey, which is ironic because I wasn’t working full time.

Brady: Why is that? What did you learn?

MacKay: I learned that I needed to take a little more time contemplating the long-term point of view on my career, and I was so in the day-to-day action of what was happening, and that I really hadn’t stepped back in a number of years and reconsidered my own path. I didn’t think I was going to go back to work. That just happened because I was on the board of Cushman & Wakefield, and the then-CEO approached me about potentially becoming the CFO of the company, which I did not want to do. The CFO was retiring, and when I said “no,” he came back to me and he said, “Well, what do you want to do? Make up a job, and let’s make it work.”

Stoller: Lucky.

Brady: Did you say let’s call it CEO? That job—that exists.

MacKay: Yeah. He—well, he had that job. And what he did say to me at the time was, “I want to put you in the succession plan for CEO. Why don’t you come in? We’ll figure out what you want to do.” And I came in as COO, “and let’s see if we can make that work.” The reason I went back was because it was a big challenge, with a big brand, and I had somebody who backed me from the onset. And I thought, you know what? We got one version in here, one life. I’m just going to go for it.

Brady: Why did you retire in the first place? I mean, I know there’s obviously a point where people can say, “I’ve made enough. Now I can enjoy myself and move on to a new chapter.” But was that the reason for you? Because obviously there were many challenges you could have taken on and just created another executive role for yourself.

MacKay: You know, I had been at a company for about 15 years and really had a pretty successful career there, and I think I was a bit just done with the version that I understood, in my career, if that makes sense. It was a really bold thing to do because there wasn’t a particular driver or action to it. I just got to a point where I thought, this isn’t as interesting for me as it used to be. It’s more of a taker than a giver, and I think that I can figure out a different life for myself. But in order to do that, the way that I was working and the pace I was working at, I couldn’t do it simultaneously. I had to leave.

Stoller: And the pace—was that a very heavy workload? And how does that compare to where you are now?

MacKay: The pace is more about a balance between my own intensity and what the job needs. I tend to drive myself harder than any job is ever going to drive me. But I also get drawn into the deepest problems. I also get drawn into the more complex issues at a company, and so the intensity of that, but also the work rate over a 30-year career in this industry and down here. I think, at the end of the day, your ability to recover and recuperate decreases over time. When you have, you know, the span of a career as long as I had had, and I was probably unaware that I also needed a bit of recovery from the career and that experience.

Stoller: Now I have to ask this question, because, as our listeners know, Diane and I are musical podcast people over here, I see that you were…

Brady: …I sang in a bad ska band. So that’s very—not quite a musical career, per se.

Stoller: But Michelle, I see that you were a musician at some point in your life. Is that correct?

MacKay: Wow. Where did you find that?

Stoller: I will never reveal my secrets.

MacKay: I studied voice growing up, which is part of why we were talking about…

Stoller: Oh my gosh, me too.

MacKay: …projection.

Stoller: Yes, voice lessons? Connecticut?

MacKay: Yes, voice lessons, Connecticut…

Stoller: …all right, we have so much in common.

MacKay: At one point at the Hartt School of Music, I was studying. And I grew up—my mother was a folk singer, and [I] just grew up singing and in churches and eventually, you know, individual performances and whatnot. Love music. Always make a lot of references…

Brady: Do you have a signature song? Your mother was a folk singer…

MacKay: Yes, I no longer have a signature song. I think…

Stoller: What is your karaoke song? That’s a better question.

MacKay: Yeah, well, you want to hear this funny thing? I’ve never done karaoke.

Stoller: What?

MacKay: I think I’d take it too seriously.

Brady: Oh, yeah.

MacKay: Karaoke is fun, right? 

Stoller: For Type A people, it could be a little hairy.

Brady: You’re also a former athlete. I would just treat it as another competition.

MacKay: Well, I think that’s what would happen. But when you come into New York City, if you think you’re the best karaoke singer in the bar, oh, you’ve got something to learn…

Brady: …city of stars.

Stoller: That’s why you do private room only.

MacKay: Exactly. Test the acoustics.

Brady: One thing I’m curious about, and again, it’s just especially being a woman in the world of real estate writ large. We now have a president in the White House who comes from the world of real estate. And I’ve heard many people tell me this is very emblematic of the way things are done in real estate. I want to—give us a sense of the culture that you grew up in, in your career, and whether it’s the negotiating style, New York City—I mean, obviously Trump is much older, so he was really formed during the ’70s and ’80s. But can you give us some flavor for what it’s like? Because I do have this picture of people doing deals and walking away. It just feels like a real rough-and-tumble profession.

MacKay: Yeah, it’s individual by individual, honestly. I mean, we talked about starting at the Hartford and it was not that experience when I was working there, and we built buildings and invested in buildings and bought buildings and ran, you know, facilities. And there was nothing really rough-and-tumble about that environment. When you come down to New York in general, things get a little edgier. And I would say that you choose who you’re going to work with in the industry, and that can really kind of cull and cultivate the experience that you’re going to have. I don’t think about my job or my career in terms of individuals really defining it as rough-and-tumble. I would say I’m a little rough-and-tumble. I have three brothers. That’s how I grew up. And so my standard might be a bit higher than most in terms of what you might define as, say, a difficult environment, or…

Brady: What’s your advice then, for getting a great deal? What’s your “art of the deal”?

MacKay: You know, I am someone who will always walk away. That’s it, and I never commit emotionally or psychologically to a transaction. That’s the easiest way to make a mistake.

Stoller: I love that. That’ll help me when I haggle for all these bags and jewelry that I like to do. Now, because we’re talking about New York City, we’re in New York, you’re known for advising people on the future of cities. So I’m just really curious, what do you believe, like, New York City, or these big cities, or just like the American downtown in general, is going to look like in 10 years?

MacKay: I mean, I’m a city person. I live in the city out of choice. So you have to take this a little bit with that perspective. But I believe in the heart and lifeblood of the city as a driver of everything around it within 50 to 100 miles. I think it needs to exist. I think when you create the real heartbeat, that real centering sensation that cities need to have, you can tell how successful they are. Our office space right now is located right next to Rockefeller Center, and it is a huge driver of people coming into the city with their kids, the experience that they get to have. You know, downtown, where you’re located, the Seaport, and the ways that people can take advantage of the city in a way that you can’t really in a more rural community.

Stoller: Is there anything we’re getting wrong about building either New York or just cities in general, in the U.S. right now?

MacKay: I would say one of the things that we haven’t focused on is that you need to have a large component of entertainment in any city that’s truly viable at the end of the day, because that draws important, not just for the people coming in from the outside, but for the people who exist here. That means you’ve got to support your restaurants. You have to support theater. We do a great job of that here in New York City. You’ve got to support areas like Lincoln Center to keep and make these things viable and to really make it special. Have an identity. Our identity has been arts and finance, and that’s worked really well for us. When a city doesn’t have an identity and they don’t invest in the arts, they typically aren’t as successful.

Brady: Yeah, you know, when you mentioned the Hartford, I immediately flashed back. I just moved to the U.S. 9/11 had happened. And I was on a train to Hartford, and I was listening to two guys from the Hartford talk about insurance, and it was whether or not the Twin Towers falling was a single insurance event or a double insurance event, because obviously that would make a huge difference in the amount of money that came. But it makes me think about risk and insurance, and that’s such an important component of your industry, in part, because I think of Houston. I think—who would invest in commercial real estate given climate math? Now, how are you thinking about that world of risk? And you know, by all means, you can reflect back on 9/11 but I think it’s fascinating how you price for risk, how you incorporate it, build resiliency. That’s been a big issue here post–Superstorm Sandy. That intersection, especially coming from a place where it was insurance, you must have an interesting perspective on it.

MacKay: Yeah. I mean, anytime that you’re dealing with a built facility or built project, you’re going to have exposure and risk. The thing is that, quite often, those properties or assets get a lot of high-profile exposure when an event happens. But you think about them, you think in your mind, wow, that was a one-time event. It happened once in 25 years. But if you look at certain business risks or the stock market, and you balance that out against the kind of risk that you’re talking about, the real estate market doesn’t hold a disproportionate amount of it.

Brady: No, but I do think that we’re talking now about adaptability as opposed to prevention, in many cases, with regard to climate change. How are you incorporating that into your own thinking with regard to the growth of the company, and also the parts of the world where it’s becoming tough?

MacKay: Yeah, yeah. Well, remember, first and foremost, like we talked about in the beginning of our conversation, that we do more than just traditional real estate…

Brady: …yep, services is huge…

MacKay: …and the services component generates about 55%. Now, we do provide services to traditional real estate as well, but the idea for our companies to have a foundation of stability in those services revenues—we also don’t own assets directly. So the more that we understand about running different types of built assets, hospitals, things you know are never going anywhere, which is what we’re doing, the better off we are in terms of managing the kind of risks that you’re talking about

Stoller: For these buildings that you know are going to be around for a long time, like a hospital, per se. How do you actually future-proof that? Because you’ve got AI, you’ve got climate change, like Diane was talking about. Design of buildings just gets dated so quickly. Can a building actually be timeless?

MacKay: Yeah, you can definitely strip back to the shell of a building. And by the way, this is a great connection to your conversations around environmental implications, because a new-build building in terms of carbon footprint and use of resources, it requires much more than taking an existing shell and stripping it back. Yeah, our people have to be on top of all of it. What’s the new buildout? How much electricity do you need? How are you getting it? Is it clean? Are you willing to pay the extra price of something like that? What if you have to put on a new type of medical facility? So this isn’t new technology, but it’s a good example for you. We had to oversee the extension of a hospital in Australia, and we added an MRI facility to it. We have to have that knowledge base across the organization on all the fronts that you’re talking about. So I think you can make a building evergreen, as long as you’re willing to be smart about how you reconstitute it. And then the question becomes, are you using it for the same purpose, or, like happened down here many years ago, are you taking an office building and then converting it to multifamily?

Brady: You know, one of the things that every CEO talks about is talent, what you hire for, what the hiring environments like. I think that even this conversation, of course, the mix of your business, the part that’s real estate, there’s so many reality shows you must get a lot of people waltzing in and saying, “No, you’re in the wrong place. Go somewhere else.” But what do you hire for? And is that changing at all?

MacKay: Yeah. First of all, I have a different definition of talent than has really existed in our organization before. I call it the “filters off” version of assessing talent. I don’t need you to come from the traditional commercial real estate industry. You don’t have to have specific experience in that to have value to me. I need people who are driven. I need people who are flexible in the way they think, and I need people who can collaborate. And you can be as high-IQ as the smartest person on the planet, but if you can’t work with other people, or if you introduce toxicity into our environment, I don’t consider you talent. In the last four years, we’ve replaced about 70% of the senior leadership of the company.

Brady: 70%. Wow.

Stoller: What happened?

Brady: Oh, you came in.

MacKay: Correct, correct. I came in…

Brady: …five years, right?

MacKay: Yeah, I’ve been, I’ve been there five years. After I was there about a year I had four, I think it was four direct reports at the time, and I eventually replaced three of those four. One is still remaining. I added one new. And in the next evolution of my job when I was promoted, I had three additional directs, of which we’ve now replaced or promoted internally three different people into all of those seats.

Brady: Is it just an instinct that you’re the new boss, and ergo, you want to have new people around? Or what is it—at a senior level, those are people who you presume know how to work together. Maybe I’m wrong, but where do senior leaders tend to fall short in moving to that next rung?

MacKay: I think there’s always the right person for the right time in an organization, and I think that where we get it wrong is we think that somebody should be able to adapt and mold to every combination. I tend to look at talent as leadership that will multiply what we’re doing. I’m a distributor of power and a distributor of accountability, and I need people who can actually hold that space and work in it. Not everybody can. When I came in, the company was very reactionary, siloed, on purpose, center-led on purpose. The company had been put together through a combination of other companies, PE investing, taken public, very command and control. And certain people work really well under that. They’re just not going to work well for me under that kind of construct.

Stoller: Are there any decisions that you’ve made, and I know you’re still very short tenured as a CEO, that you look back on, and you think, I wish maybe I would have done this differently, or you learn from it and wish you could redo—what would it be?

MacKay: Yeah. I mean, I’m only coming up on two years, and so there aren’t that many situations to reflect on, but I do do a lot of reflecting. There’s some timing things, I think timing is really important. When you make a decision, when you execute that decision, there’s both an intelligence and an elegance to it, both for yourself and the people involved. Maybe sometimes things were a little forced through, but we didn’t have the option, given where the company was when I stepped in.

Brady: You know, I’m always a little hesitant to ask about being a woman in a leadership role. It’s a bit of a Faustian pact, right? Like, how does it feel? You’ve always felt, you know you can’t say any different. But how do you think about the importance of that? Because, of course, there’s a role model aspect to it. I would argue there are some differences often, anecdotally. But how do you think about it in terms of both being a woman in the role, but also the people that you promote into senior roles?

MacKay: Well, I promote purely on talent, and so nothing else comes into play for me, but that’s why we talk about filters off. But you’ve heard about my definition of talent. If I were to define talent more narrowly, that would restrict the kind of people that I had working directly for me.

Brady: Well, there’s a tendency sometimes to recognize excellence in a form that reminds you of yourself, which is why a room full of men of a certain age would—they can recognize excellence, but they don’t recognize it as the type they want to promote. And that same is true for all of us, right? We all have our biases. So I think about filters off, but you have to also be intentional in creating that diversity.

MacKay: Yeah, very much. And I think that when we took the filters off, however, for us, and when you look at our senior leadership team, and you look at our board of directors, diversity of thought came. And honestly, we just didn’t have to do that much when we started talking about what defined talent in the organization and how we wanted to drive results.

Stoller: Now, I have to return to your comment about you being intense, because I think that a lot of women get described as that too. That we’re too intense, we’re too, I don’t know, fill in the blank here. But do you think that helps you in a way in lots of rooms full of men CEOs? Or how do you look at the intensity?

MacKay: Yeah. I mean, I’ve always been intense, and so it’s hard to separate myself and separate how someone else might define me without it. It’s a big part of why I’ve been successful. And I think though that look, did I have moments where that was thrown back at me? Am I too intense? Am I too engaged? Which is something I can’t imagine you would ever say to a man.

Stoller: Never.

MacKay: Never.

Brady: Can one be too engaged? I don’t think so.

MacKay: Yeah, I don’t think so either.

Brady: Yeah, let me step back a second, and, in a way, think about just what’s on your radar right now you’d put on ours. We have not talked about AI in any meaningful capacity. So kudos to us for that, because that’s supposed to be top of mind for everybody.

Stoller: One shot every time there’s an AI mention on the podcast.

Brady: But what are you thinking about in terms of the opportunities for growth? You know, both—I’m talking about growth, the expansion of the company, but the culture you’re trying to create as well. What are some of the priorities that you have that you think perhaps are underappreciated when people are looking from the outside?

MacKay: Well I think that what’s under-appreciated actually, is the fact that we’ve been able to hit the reset button at a really important time, and we have reset it hard. We’re creating an ecosystem whereby you can have structure and flexibility, whereby you have a leadership that magnifies and is connected. And we’re setting, along with AI, new metrics. Not just to measure in the organization, but to drive what I call the Cushman brain, which will be the data set that you can then, you know, query, and say, “Okay, well, this is the piece of information I have. What do I do with it now? What were the best practices? Where did it work? Across the organization? How did it work in Japan?” Right? When I’m sitting here in St Louis and just being able to give it a real fresh reset, which I don’t think any of the competitors have been able to do, is going to drive our growth, because then I get to put our strategy into that new ecosystem that we’ve created that’s really healthy. Our new values into that ecosystem, and I do capital allocation now, so I’m putting that into this ecosystem as well to drive growth. We’ve been very successful at driving organic growth, which in this industry is highly unusual. Most growth is driven by acquisitions.

Stoller: If you had to make one really big bold prediction for what the future of your industry is going to look like in 10 to 15 years, what would you say is going to be your prediction?

MacKay: I would say that AI is going to drive big portions of the business, but not in a way that displaces people, in a way that answers some of the questions that you’re bringing to the table today. So that you will have more knowledge about something around the environment, right? If we choose that topic, or you may have more knowledge around, hey, what is the highest and best use for this asset?

Brady: Before we go, I want to ask you about your board work, because I think that is something that very few people get the chance to experience. But in terms of how it trains you as a leader, must be invaluable. What have you learned from some of the boards you’ve been on that you think has made you lead differently?

MacKay: Board leadership gives you perspective, and you cannot get it any other way. I was on a board for seven or eight years during the GFC that had…

Brady: …GFC…

MacKay: …yes, the Great Financial Crisis.

Brady: Yes, okay, I’ve not heard it called that.

Stoller: Yeah, I did not know what it was.

MacKay: Yeah, sorry about that.

Brady: No, I remember it well, that’s good.

MacKay: Yeah. So that was my first board seat. I was relatively young at the time, and it was a company that was going to be filing bankruptcy, and I was representing an independent group of shareholders. And that experience was phenomenal in terms of learning, rebuilding a company, putting in new leadership, re-IPOing it, and then selling it at a premium. And after I came out and retired, obviously with that particular experience, I was able to get on boards pretty early. One of the things that people don’t understand is that the board has a completely different perspective on certain days than you do as a business leader. And it’s really helped facilitate my interactions with the board in a way that I just could never have done.

Brady: Is there any question you don’t get asked enough that you wish you were asked?

MacKay: I probably don’t get asked enough about why people should be paying attention to Cushman & Wakefield.

Stoller: Tell us…

MacKay: Yeah, well, we started with the reset conversation, which I think is really valuable. What I think people don’t understand is we’re growing a different kind of engine, a different kind of company and a different kind of culture that’s far more tapped into where the world is going, and far less reliant on historical practices of where the world has been and when we were talking about talent. This is a complete tie out to the kind of talent that we want too. We don’t want people who are going to tell us the way that it was done. We want visionaries to come to us thinking about the way it’s going to be done.

Stoller: Now Michelle, I want to end on a fun one, because since you don’t do karaoke for fun, I want to know, what do you do for fun?

MacKay: My biggest, you may laugh at this, but two things that exist in my life that I consider fun: Every day, I have to go outside and take a walk. Part of this is because of my connection to nature and where I grew up, which was in a pretty rural community. That is actually fun to me, to walk through and see the season changes and things of that nature. Second thing is, I am a puzzler, so I…

Brady: …which puzzles?

MacKay: Well, it is the wooden ones that have individual pieces…

Stoller: How many pieces are you up to right now?

MacKay: You know what? I can only do 500 at a time on those because they will make you crazy.

Brady: Is it meditative? What do you like about that?

MacKay: I like the fact that I’m tapping into the problem-solving part of my brain, but at the same time, there is no pressure on when I finish.

Stoller: I love that. That’s a great, great thing to do.

Brady: I can’t think of a better place to end in there. Thank you for joining us.

MacKay: Thank you.

Brady: Leadership Next is produced and edited by Ceylan Ersoy.

Stoller: Our executive producer is Lydia Randall.

Brady: Our head of video and audio is Adam Banicki.

Stoller: Our theme is by Jason Snell.

Brady: Leadership Next is a production of Fortune Media. I’m Diane Brady.

Stoller: And I’m Kristin Stoller.

Brady: See you next time.

Leadership Next episodes are produced by Fortune‘s editorial team. The views and opinions expressed by podcasters and guests are solely their own and do not reflect the opinions of Deloitte or its personnel. Nor does Deloitte advocate or endorse any individuals or entities featured on the episodes.