Would a Smart, Talented, and Motivated Person Want to Work for You?

Wednesday, July 28, 2010

Last week, we discussed the coming trend in the employment market at large where the traditional “job with benefits” will become less available and employers will look to lower cost employment models to meet their needs. The two most prominent models are (1) the independent contractor and (2) part-time employment with no benefits. We then raised the question: How do you position yourself to take advantage of this trend?

For a real estate company, this seems to be a tough question. As I’ve spoken with real estate leaders over the last six months, I’ve learned that everyone wants to find ways to attract younger, more talented agents who are willing to dedicate those talents to the real estate industry. But, there’s a disconnect. These individuals are not choosing this option on their own, and they don’t seem overly interested in listening to the options a real estate company has to offer.

How can this be fixed? The change in traditional employment will help, but that’s not enough. Just because other options are not as appealing as they used to be does not necessarily mean that talented individuals will now choose to work with you. Your option has to be superior (or at least equal) to the remaining options available.

This may sound like an oversimplified observation, but it is something that most real estate companies struggle to understand. Part of the reason this blind spot exists is because real estate leaders do not have a perception of what employment options exist for young, talented individuals. The belief is that competition for new hires primarily comes from other real estate firms. This is not true. The competition for new talent is between your firm and all the other non-real estate companies who can potentially hire people in your immediate geography.

Of course, this begs the question: What employment options do talented individuals have within 20 miles of your real estate office(s)? If you don’t know the answer to this question, you need to find out. Once you find out, how does the employment opportunity you’re offering (becoming an agent) honestly stack-up against these other opportunities? Be honest. This is a more difficult question than it may seem.

There is a perception among real estate leaders that there are restrictions inherent to the real estate business model that make it difficult to compete with traditional companies. While this is partially true, it is not a premise that the most successful leaders in the future will accept. They know that if you ask people to make less-than-intelligent choices, they will only be able to attract B players.

Next time, we’ll discuss what these options look like and how a real estate company can compete more successfully.

Editor’s Note: This article was written by Ben Hess. Ben is the Founding Partner and Managing Director of Tidemark, Inc. and a regular contributor to WorkPuzzle. Comments or questions are welcome. If you’re an email subscriber, reply to this WorkPuzzle email. If you read the blog directly from the web, you can click the “comments” link below.

The Death of the Traditional Job With Benefits: How Can You Take Advantage of This Emerging Trend?

Thursday, July 22, 2010

I spent some time with the leadership team of a mid-sized real estate company in the Midwest last week. They’ve been clients of Tidemark for more than two years and have noticed that the traditional candidate pools for real estate agents are not producing sufficiently productive new agents. I sensed deep frustration over their realization that what has worked in the past, is not likely to produce results in the future.

One of the candidate demographics that seems to be most troubling is the baby boomer new agent, whose spouse has a traditional full-time job with benefits. The spouse provides the financial safety net for the family, and the agent’s job is to bring in extra income for needs such as college expenses, an extra car payment, money for vacations, etc. If the real estate market is expanding consistently, this arrangement seems to work pretty well—both for the agent (standing in the right place at the right time) and the real estate company (it needs individuals to take orders and provide basic customer service).

But, as the economics of the real estate industry have worsened, this traditional arrangement has become very strained. A new agent can no longer make an impact (or any money) without true skills and focus being applied to the real estate sales profession. A real estate company cannot meet their financial goals by depending on this type of lack-luster talent.

Is all lost? I don’t think so. But the agent/company relationship will change based on the nature of employment, the economic realities of the housing market, and the continued pressure that emerging technologies will put on traditional real estate business. Companies that can adapt to these changes will be able to capture the available opportunities in the future.

One of the trends that the real estate industry can benefit from is what many people are calling “the death of the traditional job with benefits.” In years past, a real estate company was often at a disadvantage, competing for talent against companies who could offer someone a steady paycheck with benefits. Even commission-based sales positions in other industries (ex. insurance, technology sales, media sales, etc.) commonly offered base pay and benefits in addition to commission. But, according to a recent CNN report, all that may be changing…

“Jobs may be coming back, but they aren’t the same ones workers were used to.

Many of the jobs employers are adding are temporary or contract positions, rather than traditional full-time jobs with benefits. With unemployment remaining near 10%, employers have their pick of workers willing to accept less secure positions.

In 2005, the government estimated that 31% of U.S. workers were already so-called contingent workers. Experts say that number could increase to 40% or more in the next 10 years.

James Stoeckmann, senior practice leader at WorldatWork, a professional association of human resource executives, believes that full-time employees could become the minority of the nation’s workforce within 20 to 30 years, leaving employees without traditional benefits such as health coverage, paid vacations and retirement plans, that most workers take for granted today.

‘The traditional job is not doomed. But it will increasingly have competition from other models, the most prominent is the independent contractor model,’ he said.”

So, let’s put two and two together… We have real estate companies who are no longer able to depend upon B-level talent to get the production they need. In addition, we have A-level talent in the employment market at large, who are increasingly willing to look at an independent contractor employment model because the traditional “job with benefits” is becoming scarce.

This is a trend that can be capitalized upon. Next week, we’ll talk about some ideas about how to make this happen.

Motivation Revisited: Six Kids in a Car for 7,000 Miles

Tuesday, July 20, 2010

Over the past couple of weeks, Dave has been making most of the contributions to WorkPuzzle, as I have been working remotely in the Midwest. Now, he is off to Europe for a few weeks to visit his daughter who is working in London, and I’ll be writing the WorkPuzzle entries. Hopefully, you’ll enjoy the extended focus each of us have/will put toward WorkPuzzle during the weeks in July.

The reason for my trip to the Midwest is a music tour I decided to embark on with my family. Some of you know this already, but my family started a bluegrass band a few years ago. We normally perform in the Northwest a few times per month, but this summer we decided to do a cross country trip from Seattle to Indianapolis. By the time we’re done, we’ll have performed 12 times in various communities across the country. (If you have an interest in reading more about the band, you can visit the band website at www.noteasilybrokenmusic.com.) Since we perform during the evenings and weekends, I’ve been able to work remotely.

The trip has been a lot of fun, and we’ve created some great memories along the way. But, as we conceptualized the journey, I knew there would also be some challenges. One of those challenges was going to be getting my six kids to ride in the car for 7,000 miles without killing each other. My wife, Sally, suspected it would be similar to those experiments she read about in her psychology classes where they put rats in very confined spaces and they eventually start eating each other!

To keep this from happening, Sally started planning months ahead of time. Of course, we had all the normal tricks such as books on tape, videos, games, crafts, etc. But, when boredom sets in, we knew it would still be tempting to take a little bite out of a sibling. To head this off, she put a request out to her network for ideas to keep kids occupied and civil during long car rides.

While she received many ideas, one in particular caught her attention. It was provided by a mom who has eight kids and regularly takes trips across the country. This woman had devised an incentive system whereby her kids could earn quarters for good behavior in the car. Here’s how it worked: Each child was presented with two rolls of quarters ($20), but they could not claim their quarters until the midpoint of the trip. During the trip, if relational offenses (rudeness, disrespect, physical harm, etc.) were committed, one or more quarters would be deducted from their account. So, at the halfway point in the trip, they could potentially earn $20 for good behavior. The process would then be repeated for the return trip.

Now this all sounded good and we’ll try almost anything when it comes to parenting, but I did notice that this incentive system was at odds with what I had recently learned about motivation from Daniel Pink’s work (see previous blogs 1,2,3). Research demonstrates that “carrot and stick” incentive systems are not effective. In addition to having a little peace in the car, I was curious to see if we could defy the research. Do those researchers really know what they’re talking about anyway?

Unfortunately, for my wife and I, they do. We’ve now crossed the midpoint in the trip, so we held a “results ceremony” at lunch with our extended family last Sunday. The results were not good. Of the 480 quarters available, only 248 were claimed by our kids. This means that there were 232 offenses committed over 3,500 miles. I bet you’re glad that you were not in the car with us over the last three weeks!

If you dig into the data a little bit further, it’s even worse than it appears. For three of the kids (I won’t name names), 124 out of 180 quarters were lost due to poor behavior. Of course, these were the particular kids who we were hoping the incentive system would have the most impact on. Where we needed behavior modification most, we had a failure rate of nearly 70%. I knew we were in trouble when one of my boys said, “Dad, nice try on this quarter system. The way I see it, this is just a way for me to be able to commit 80 free offenses. I don’t really need the money.” He said this about three hours into the trip!

So, science again triumphs over the well-intentioned schemes of desperate parents. So…if “carrot and stick” incentive systems don’t work, what does? The researchers are right on this account as well. Inspiring individuals to personally buy into a meaningful purpose is what produces outstanding behaviors. When it came to the band performances, there was a single event to which the entire family could focus. With this goal, the negative behaviors generally disappeared. Interestingly, the more important and difficult gigs were, the higher the level of focus and good behavior.

Hopefully, you can see how these principles could apply to the team you manage. As for producing good behavior in the car, I’m still working on that…

Five Ways To Become A Positive Leader

Thursday, July 15, 2010

In a recent opening address, as keynote speaker, Dr. Barbara Fredrickson (whom I have referred to before), explored the idea of positivity in leadership, and its direct and powerful impact upon creativity and performance. The teachers I remember, the bosses who had the most influence, and the leaders I respected and wanted to follow, were never, ever perfect people. But, they were generally positive people.

Here is Dr. Fredrickson’s researched list of ways to create a positive, creative, productive environment:

1. Be Open

2. Be Appreciative

3. Be Curious

4. Be Kind

5. Be Real – no false pretenses of positivity

The above isn’t rocket science. Pick the one that is your weakest and spend one week working to develop its expression.

Editor’s Note: This article was written by Dr. David Mashburn. Dave is a Clinical and Consulting Psychologist, Partner at Tidemark, Inc. and a regular contributor to WorkPuzzle. Comments or questions are welcome. If you’re an email subscriber, reply to this WorkPuzzle email. If you read the blog directly from the web, you can click the “comments” link below.

How to Better Track the Tasks You Delegate to Others

Tuesday, July 13, 2010

If you’ve ever delegated something, only to later find out that the person dropped the ball, this blog is for you. I have become a huge fan of Michael Hyatt – He is full of helpful advice about practical, everyday problems we all face.

Here’s what he has to say in a recent blog entry about his philosophy, advice and tips around delegating:

“Perhaps you may have heard the adage, ‘What gets measured gets improved.’ I would propose a parallel principal: ‘What gets tracked, gets done.’ This is especially true when it comes to delegation.

Early in my career, I had an experience that burned this into my psyche. As a first-time supervisor, I didn’t want to be guilty of micro-managing my staff. I had been managed this way, and found it to be incredibly demotivating. As a result, I went to the opposite extreme: I delegated tasks and never followed up.

One day I was sitting in a marketing meeting with one of my company’s authors. I was his marketing director. In a previous meeting, I had committed to him that I would follow-up on a problem he had with a report we had sent him. I told him I didn’t know the answer, but that I would research it, and share what I learned at the next meeting. I delegated the task to one of my staff members—and forgot about it.

In the meeting, the author, who was a copious note-ta ker, started out the meeting by asking me to report on the issue from the previous meeting. I looked at the colleague to whom I had delegated the task and watched the color drain from his face. It was obvious to everyone that he had not completed the assignment. It was a very awkward moment.

It would be easy to blame him—and I did. But as the leader of my department, I was also responsible. I was the one who made the commitment, and delegating to someone else, didn’t erase my own accountability. I was embarrassed and purposed that I would never find myself in that situation again.

Over the course of the next few years, I learned that I had to make delegation work – I had to take five steps:

1. Assign the task to one person. Ask them to confirm that they understand the assignment and have accepted responsibility for it. Until this is done, the handoff is not complete. In football, it’s called a ‘fumble.’

2. Articulate a specific outcome. In other words, what exactly are you expecting the other person to deliver to you or for you? I always start the assignment with a verb (e.g., ‘Call,’ ‘Notify,’ ‘Write,’ ‘Order,’ etc.) and finish it with an objective deliverable. You have to be able to tell whether the task was completed as assigned.

3. Include your delivery timetable. Some projects have hard fast deadlines. For example, I might tell someone I need a task done by ‘The close of business on Friday.’ Others are not as time sensitive. I might say I need a task done, ‘anytime in the next two weeks.’ Regardless, you have to express your expectations and be clear.

4. Make yourself available for consultation. You want to be a resource, but you don’t want to micro-manage the other person. The best way to do this is to stay focused on the outcome rather than the process. I personally don’t care how the other person gets the job done (assuming it is ethical); I only care about the end-result.

5. Track the delegated task on a to-do list. This is crucial. Not everyone you delegate to will have a good task management system in place. Perhaps those directly under your supervision will—because you trained them—but what about the others?

There are at least four ways to track delegated assignments:

1. Use a page in your journal. This is the simplest, most low-tech solution. I used it for years and still know people who prefer it to automated solutions. If you are using a Moleskine Notebook, you can dedicate several pages at the end of the notebook. Divide each page into three-columns. In the first column, note the date you made the assignment. In the second column, note the first name of the person to whom you delegated the task, then the task itself. In the third column, note the due date (if any). I don’t use a due dates unless a specific date is mission-critical.

2. Use Outlook, Entourage, or Mail folders. Nearly all of the assignments I delegate happen via email. If I make an assignment in a meeting, I follow-up with an email confirmation. Regardless, an easy way to keep track of these assignments is simply to drag a copy of the sent message to a ‘Waiting For’ folder. If you need to check in on the status of a project, you can forward the original message to the person you delegated it to as a reminder of the assignment, and ask them for a progress report. When the task is complete, you can delete the message from the folder.

3. Use Outlook, Entourage, or Mail tasks. This kicks the level of automation up a notch. It puts your delegated tasks in the same spot that all of your other to-do lists are, so you will be more likely to review them. If you follow David Allen’s methodology as recommended in Getting Things Done (a.k.a., “GTD”), you can set up an ‘@Waiting For’ task category. In the Task field itself, you type the name of the person, a dash, the assignment, another dash, and the date you made the assignment.

For example:

Category  /  Task / Due Date
@Waiting For Lindsey / Notify Andy Andrews contest winners – 1Jul / 6Jul
@Waiting For Vicki  / Renew my Admiral’s Club Membership – 7Jul  / 1Aug
@Waiting For David / Review Jesse Sparks book proposal – 6Jul /   6Aug

If you want to explore this methodology in greater depth, I highly recommend that you buy one of David Allen’s Setup Guides. It will walk you through the process of using GTD on Outlook, Entourage, and Lotus Notes. Even if you use Apple Mail, as I do, you can learn a ton from the Entourage guide.

4. Use a dedicated task manager. This is the method I personally use now. A dedicated task manager is a more robust tool than any of the ones I have mentioned above. I am personally using Things for Mac. Nozbe is also excellent, as is OmniFocus. There are literally dozens of others. I have written an AppleScript that allows me to delegate a task via email and add it to things automatically as a Waiting For task. (I hope to share this in a future blog post.)

Someone once defined delegation as ‘the art of getting things done through other people.’ This is true, but only if you track the tasks you assign to others and make sure they are completed as assigned.”

In addition to Michael’s tips, here’s one of my own: We at Tidemark use Basecamp for all of our projects and delegation thereof. In fact I’m writing this blog within the confines of Basecamp. It will then go to our editor, Lisa, via an email alert, then back to me, then finally back to her to launch. All very seamless. With a well-functioning system, the number of potential fumbles is reduced dramatically.

Why Understanding Generation Y Can Help Your Business

Thursday, July 08, 2010

The first marketers to clearly understand the needs of baby boomers have become enormously successful. Starbucks is a prime example. The company capitalized on the fact that boomers had generally become isolated adults who had left the community life that they loved so dearly in the 60’s, pursued material wealth, and yearned for community life (without any commitment) once again. Starbucks also figured out that boomers love being catered to and will pay dearly for it. Voila! $4 cup of coffee to schmooze with people you don’t know for 20 minutes!

I predict that the marketers who tap the needs of Generation Y (those born between 1977 and 1997), will also do very well. I’m not sure exactly what that looks like within real estate, but let’s look at some characteristics of this age group and see if it reveals some clues. The following was garnered from an article in Suite 101.

“Generation Y is extremely comfortable with technology. This is the first generation that has no real memory of life without computers, cell phones, and digital music, and members of Generation Y laugh at people who don’t have these technologies. Walk around any college campus between classes, and you might see half of the students talking on their phones or listening to their iPods (or doing this during class, which drives professors crazy).

Generation Y is cynical. Baby boomers started out optimistic and politically involved, but became disillusioned during the turbulent 1960s. Generation Y started out disillusioned. They came of age during events such as 9/11 and the Monica Lewinsky scandal, and have little trust in government or other authority figures.

Generation Y has a non-existent attention span. College students have always gotten bored easily, but the attention span of this group is especially low. This is a generation of remote controls, hyperlinks, MTV, Facebook, and endless hi-tech college student distractions. Professors have their work cut out for them.

Generation Y loves consumerism. Advertisers love Generation Y because they are such a large demographic group, and because young people are easier to market to than older ones. Thus, Generation Y has grown up accustomed to businesses trying to win their favor. In the U.S., this is the first generation who grew up with advertisements all over their high schools and fast food in the school cafeteria.

Generation Y is more diverse than previous generations. Throughout much of the world, young people have grown up accustomed to racial and religious integration, and more and more people are of mixed race or ethnicity. This generation grew up watching Will and Grace, and homosexuality has won more acceptance than ever before.

Generation Y is used to chaos. Young people today expect they will have to deal with a confusing global economy, political crises, and social transformations. But unlike previous generations, they are used to this. They expect to have multiple careers, homes, and social circles throughout their lifetimes. This generation follows the REM motto: ‘It’s the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine.’“

Ponder the above for a while and let me know if you figure out ways that this information will impact real estate and business in general. Also, think about how to best recruit and retain Generation Y agents.