Leading Workplace Change™

I met up with a friend recently, and in five minutes, he brought me up to date on his job at a residential real estate company.  He started by saying - “we hired a new managing broker from outside the company; she is putting in an electronic marketing system and it is driving us crazy!”  He laughed as he said - ”We never needed a marketing system before.  We put our client names on a PDA rolodex - made sure we kept up with relationships at the country club and every year many of us made the million dollar club.  But the current downturn in the market is making all of us nervous and we know we need to do some things differently.”

I could not help but put on my “corporate culture observer” hat as I heard him use the phrase keeping up with relationships.  It makes sense that being relationship-driven is one of the traditional underlying sources of success in residential real estate.  It is the case in most companies where success in personal selling is the preferred method used to create income. And, from my knowledge of organizational culture it is normal that the primary source of external success is also many times used to guide how people operate within the sales organization.  They probably do not write things down or record how work gets done. They most likely talk to the folks who have been there the longest to find out how to solve a problem.

Utilizing an electronic marketing system is of course driving my friend and his colleagues crazy at his company.  It requires people to input data regularly which takes time away from maintaining relationships.  This is going against the grain of a relationship-driven culture and it will be hard for people to maintain unless people are consistently supported and the system brings in some quick wins.  The managing broker will need to support people in muscling their way through unfamiliar behaviors.

My friend ended his tirade against the new marketing system by noting that he agreed with the new managing broker’s plan about everyone needing to work smarter and build on each other’s success.  I asked him if he thought the new marketing system would help them to do that.  His response was – “Yes, but someone has to be brave enough to take the time and teach me how to work the system first!”

Tags: Corporate Culture Observer, Workplace Stories by Terri – older, but wiser white lady
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I am always putting on my “corporate culture observer” hat - most times because it is my job and that is what people pay me for, but other times - I just cannot help it.  I interact with people in casual conversation and hear them talk about their work and community lives, and I unconsciously latch onto clues that tell me something about how culture is influencing them in what they do.

For example, yesterday I went early with my dog to the park down the street and I met a neighbor who I regularly meet with his dog.  We know each other well through our early morning conversations about most everything.  This morning, we talked about his son’s baseball team and how as a coach, he has to raise money for the team’s upcoming trip to Cooperstown.  He said, “you know it is easy for me, because raising money is what I am rewarded for in my work.”  I looked at him with a question in my eyes and he said - “as a medical researcher/professor in a university, writing grants is what I do all the time - I have to find a way for the funders to believe in me, my ideas and find a way to feed the funders’ egos enough so they will give me money - I am a salesman.”

I locked that bit of info up in my culture bin for future reference - one of the keys to personal success at a research university is to be good at sales - selling the intangible.  I never would have thought of that on my own, but it makes sense.

Tags: Corporate Culture Observer by Terri – older, but wiser white lady
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