I found out about the London office move from my own team after the planning was already underway.
My response was short: please loop me in earlier next time because it will help us coordinate the technology logistics.
The note was polite because this was a process miss, not a reason to create drama. Still, it mattered.
An office move is a technology project whether or not the move plan labels it that way. Internet service can take weeks or months to install. Firewalls and switches need a design. Wireless coverage depends on the floor plan. Conference rooms need equipment, accounts, and somebody who can support them. Printers, phones, access controls, shipping, and local vendors all develop dependencies on the move date.
If technology hears about the project late, the available choices get worse. Pay for an expedited option. Accept a temporary service. Move people into a space that is not ready. Or ask the rest of the company to delay something it already considers settled.
We had just lived through a much larger version of this in New York. The Empire State Building office opened while the final network design was still being built. We made the staged capacity work, but the experience made the value of early coordination hard to miss.
London also showed the new shape of Shutterstock. We were no longer operating from one office and a few data centers close to the same group of people. Decisions in another country could create work for a technology organization spread across time zones, providers, and local constraints.
The fix did not need a new committee. It needed an earlier signal.
Tell the technology owner when a move becomes real enough to plan. Share the target date and the possible locations. Let the people who understand lead times identify what can wait and what cannot.
I was not asking to own the office move. I was asking for enough notice to own our part of it well.