WorkPuzzle

If the Traditional Web Shrinks, Will Real Estate Become Social Again?

I came across an article this week written by Ben Elowitz that is worth sharing.  Elowitz is the co-founder of Blue Nile, a publically-traded online jewelry retailer, and now heads a media company called Wetpaint.

In the article, Elowitz comments on recent data which demonstrates that the internet (ie. the traditional web) has peaked and is now shrinking.  Here is the data he presents in the article: 

“When you exclude just Facebook from the rest of the Web, consumption in terms of minutes of use shrank by nearly nine percent between March 2010 and March 2011, according to data from comScore.  And, even when you include Facebook usage, total non-mobile Internet consumption still dropped three percent over the same period.

We’ve known that social is growing lightning fast – notably, Facebook consumption, which grew by 69 percent; but now it’s clear that Facebook is not growing in addition to the Web.  Rather, it’s actually taking consumption away from the publishers who compete on the rest of the Web.

And just what is the rest of the Web?

I have been calling it the ‘document Web,’ based on how Google and other Web architectures view its pages as documents, linked together.  But increasingly, it might as well be called the ‘searchable Web’ since it’s accessed predominantly as a reference, and navigated primarily via search.”

So, if the traditional web is shrinking, what is growing?  As the chart shows, Facebook has continued to increase in scope and influence.  In addition, the use of mobile access technologies and video (as opposed to text and graphics used in the searchable web) also continue to proliferate.

What does this mean for the real estate industry?  I think it is ironic that the real estate industry began and flourished for many years by being social...not social in a digital sense, but rather the “good old days” of having actual friends, business associates, and trusted network contacts that comprised a legitimate sphere of influence.

As long as information flow was restricted, this traditional social business system worked well.  In fact, some of the most successful pioneers in the real estate world were the true innovators who learned to leverage and scale this social way of doing business.  This was no easy task.  It took real talent, skill, and business acumen to build and operate real estate companies that had hundreds (or sometimes thousands) of agents.

But, over the last decade, the traditional social business system has started to erode.  The erosion probably started with the creation of the MLS, but it was truly powered by what Elowitz calls the “searchable web.”  With large databases becoming accessible to the public via search technology, the pendulum started to swing from a socially-powered business model, to a decidedly data-driven (or transactional) framework.  If the consumers have the data and can use that data to gain knowledge, the value of the social connection is diminished.

To most of you, the description above is not news.  You’re well aware that the real estate business framework has changed.  The question now is what to do about it.  How do you successfully compete in this new environment?

Elowitz is making the point that you probably don’t need to worry about it.  The “searchable web” has peaked and will surprisingly swing back to where the real estate industry originally started—a social business system.

“Something larger is afoot, and it’s not about science or technology.  Rather, as human beings, we have changed how we fit the Internet into our lives.  And the nature of the Web is changing to match.  The old searchable Web is crashing; while the new connected, social Web is lifting off.

In the last year, Facebook’s share of users’ time online grew from one out of every 13 minutes of use nationwide, to one out of every eight.  In aggregate, that means the document Web was down more than half a billion hours of use (that’s more than 800 lifetimes) this March, versus last March.  And in financial terms, that represents a lost opportunity of $2.2 billion in advertising inventory that didn’t exist this year.

The change in the Web’s direction is a clear indication to me that we aren’t just in the midst of a boom for new interaction modes, but rather a generational overhaul of the Internet.

What replaces the declining searchable Web is a new and “fully connected” digital life.  You may have heard this before.  After all, the promise of the Web was to connect pages with hyperlinks.  Well, this time, 'connected' means much more.  It means the Web connects us, as people, to each one of the individuals who’s online; and those connections, ultimately, extend from one of us to all of us.”

The real estate industry grew, flourished, and became one of the largest influencers in the United States economy by understanding the power of the social business model.  So, here's a question for you:  Will it happen again?  It’s a new set of tools and technologies this time around, but many of the fundamental things about human nature remain unchanged...

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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.

Is the Real Estate Industry Killing You?

Most of our readers have experienced a great deal of stress over the last few years. Figuring out how to first survive, and then somehow thrive has probably added at least a few gray hairs to your head.

Along those lines, I’m wondering how the market is affecting your health?  In a recent update, Dr. Martin Seligman describes with powerful evidence why the impact will be very different on some of you than on others, depending on your level of optimism:

“In the mid-1980s, 120 men from San Francisco had their first heart attacks, and they served as the untreated control group in the massive Multiple Risk Factor Intervention Trial (acronymic MR FIT) study.  This study disappointed many psychologists and cardiologists by ultimately finding no effect on CVD (Cardio Vascular disease) by training to change these men’s personalities from type A (aggressive, time urgent, and hostile) to type B (easy going).  The 120 untreated controls, however, were of great interest to Gregory Buchanan, then a graduate student at Penn, and to me because so much was known about their first heart attacks: extent of damage to the heart, blood pressure, cholesterol, body mass, and lifestyle—all the traditional risk factors for cardiovascular disease.  In addition, the men were all interviewed about their lives:  family, job, and hobbies.  We took every single 'because' statement from each of their videotaped interviews and coded it for optimism and pessimism.

Within eight and a half years, half the men had died of a second heart attack, and we opened the sealed envelope.  Could we predict who would have a second heart attack?  None of the usual risk factors predicted death:  not blood pressure, not cholesterol, not even how extensive the damage was from the first heart attack.  Only optimism, eight and a half years earlier, predicted a second heart attack; of the sixteen most pessimistic men, fifteen died.  Of the sixteen most optimistic men, only five died.

This finding has been repeatedly confirmed in larger studies of cardiovascular disease, using varied measures of optimism”

There are many more studies like this if you’d like to read more of the book... Seligman goes on to describe that many guessed, wrongly it turns out,  that these studies must have been measuring depression in the pessimists and that is what killed them.  But read on…

“Is depression the real culprit?  Pessimism, in general, correlates pretty highly with depression, and depression, in many studies, also correlates with cardiovascular disease.  So you might wonder if the lethal effect of pessimism works by increasing depression.  The answer seems to be no, since optimism and pessimism exerted their effects even when depression was held constant statistically.

All studies of optimism and CVD converge on the conclusion that optimism is strongly related to protection from cardiovascular disease.  This holds even correcting for all the traditional risk factors such as obesity, smoking, excessive alcohol use, high cholesterol, and hypertension.  It even holds correcting for depression, correcting for perceived stress, and correcting for momentary positive emotions.  It holds over different ways of measuring optimism.  Most importantly, the effect is bipolar, with high optimism protecting people compared to the average level of optimism and pessimism, and pessimism hurting people compared to the average. 

Why optimists are less vulnerable to disease:  How might optimism work to make people less vulnerable and pessimism to make people more vulnerable to cardiovascular disease?  The possibilities divide into three large categories:

1. Optimists take action and have healthier lifestyles.  Optimists believe that their actions matter, whereas pessimists believe they are helpless and nothing they do will matter.  Optimists try, while pessimists lapse into passive helplessness.  Optimists therefore act on medical advice readily…they also take action to avoid bad events, whereas pessimists are passive.
2. Social support.  The more friends and the more love in your life, the less illness.  George Vaillant found that people who have one person whom they would be comfortable calling at three in the morning to tell their troubles, were healthier.  John Cacioppo found that lonely people are markedly less healthy than sociable people.  In an experiment, participants read a script over the phone to strangers—reading in either a depressed voice or a cheerful voice.  The strangers hang up on the pessimist sooner than on the optimist.
3. Biological mechanisms.  There are a variety of plausible biological paths.  One is the immune system.  Judy Rodin, Leslie Kamen, Charles Dwyer, and I collaborated together in 1991 and took blood from elderly optimists and pessimists, and tested the immune response.  The blood of optimists had a feistier response to threat —more infection-fighting white blood cells called T lymphocytes produced—than the pessimists.  Another potential biological path is a pathological circulatory response to repeated stress.  Pessimists give up and suffer more stress, whereas optimists cope better with stress.  Repeated episodes of stress, particularly when one is helpless, likely mobilize the stress hormone cortisol and other circulatory responses that induce or exacerbate damage to the walls of blood vessels and promote atherosclerosis.  Repeated episodes of stress and helplessness might set off a cascade of processes involving higher cortisol and lower levels of the neurotransmitters known as catecholamines, leading to long-lasting inflammation.  Greater inflammation is implicated in atherosclerosis, and women who score low in feelings of mastery and high in depression have been shown to have worse calcification of the major artery, the trunk-like aorta."

My hope is that at least some of you have discovered a great deal about yourself during this challenging time in our little piece of history.  If you’re an optimist, there are additional perks to come, if they haven’t already.  There's plenty of research that says you'll experience success.  So continue to work hard.

For those pessimists, you might benefit from reading Dr. Seligman's book, Learned Optimism: How to Change Your Mind and Your Life, or read the main source of this article:  Flourish: A Visionary New Understanding of Happiness and Well-Being.

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Editor's Note: This article was written by Dr. David Mashburn. Dave is a Clinical and Consulting Psychologist, a 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.

Help me Build a Survey for Managers

Hello everyone.  We write and frequently speak on the topics that concern managers of real estate offices.  However, it occurred to us that it's due time we discover an effective way to receive your input about the pertinent issues that exist in your field of work.

We've chosen to obtain this valuable information about the current challenges real estate professionals face by designing a survey, intended to gather relevant information regarding the management of real estate offices.

But, I need your help...  We would like as many of you as possible (Managers, Agents, GM's, Directors, C-Levels, Owners...and anyone I left out) to respond to me through my email davidm@tidemarkonline.com and post questions that you feel should be considered for the survey.  We'd like the questions to be formulated in such a way that they can be answered in varying degrees.

For example:

Managers in our company are given clear performance objectives.
This can be answered (1) VERY TRUE, (2) SOMEWHAT TRUE, (3) INCONSISTENTLY, or (4) NEVER.

Or...

I spend the following percentage of time Recruiting:
(1) 1-5%, (2) around 10%, (3) More than 20%, or (4) NONE

Get creative.  What do you really want to know about your fellow managers, nationwide?  You can ask anything.  I'll keep this post brief so that you can spend some time considering some questions, click my email address, and then send them over.

ALSO-- I guarantee that the source of all questions will be anonymous, unless you indicate that you would like for us to let others know you were helpful in building this survey.

When we're done building it, we'll send the link out to take the survey, and let you all know the results once they're compiled.

Thank you for your time,

Dave

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Editor's Note: This article was written by Dr. David Mashburn. Dave is a Clinical and Consulting Psychologist, a 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.

The 20 Million Candidates You're Missing--Part 2

Last week, I began a discussion on the possibility of real estate companies focusing their recruiting efforts on the large demographic of young people who are either unemployed or underemployed.  

At the end of the discussion, I posed the question of whether you, as a real estate owner or hiring manager, believe it is worth it to focus a significant portion of your recruiting effort on this group of candidates.  I received some great comments back. 

There seems to be a small group of our readers who are legitimately excited about engaging, hiring, training, and mentoring young people toward success.  However, there are many others who are not so hopeful.  I've heard many polite, but weak-hearted responses among many of the managers whom I've met with in-person over the last several months...typically along the lines of..."I see what you're saying, Ben" or "That's interesting information."  But in their eyes, there is no passion toward truly pursuing these types of candidates.   

In an overarching sense, I suspect that this lack of passion is rooted in the resistance that every human being naturally feels toward change.  The specific reasons this particular change in hiring focus would not be good for your company or office probably varies significantly.  

Rather than trying to identify and address those underlying causes, I think it may be more helpful to address some of the common myths that exist regarding young candidates.  In doing so, I believe that some of the resistance that you feel may dissolve in the face of the potential and opportunity that young candidates bring to the table.

Myth #1:  Young people are not motivated.  If you flip through the channels during primetime, it does seem that young people (especially young men) are often portrayed as unmotivated or focused on the wrong things.  Or maybe you know someone personally who has an adult child living at home, who spends way too much time playing video games and surfing the web.  Your concerns have some validity.

However, I encourage you to look at statistics that quantify the issue before you disregard this whole demographic slice of society.  Most economists agree that about 3% of the population is unemployable (i.e. they can't keep a job) at any given time.  When I was in the military, we used to call these folks the "sick, lame, and lazy."  This would amount to four to five million workers in the U.S. who are deemed "unemployable."

Even if all 3% of these unemployables were in the above mentioned (young) group (and they're not), 15 million employable candidates would remain in the pool.  Just selecting the most motivated 10% of this group, could replace the number of real estate agents 55 and older, three times over.  The numbers are simply too large to make the generalization that this whole demographic group is unmotivated.  There are several million young, educated, and motivated candidates who could not only do the job, but dwarf the motivation level of many of your current agents.  

Myth 2:  Young people have limited resources.  The most common complaint I hear from owners and hiring managers is that the candidates they are interviewing do not have the financial backing (start-up money, ability to go without income for awhile, etc.) to start a career in real estate.

The tendency is to focus on the individual candidate as we wring our hands over this problem:  If a candidate doesn't have the financial ability to start a real estate career, disregard that person and find someone who does...  This is a great plan until you realize there is a very limited number of financially stable candidates available.  If you do happen to find one of these rare beings, you'll quickly notice they have other options outside of real estate.  

I encourage you to take one step back.  While most everyone has financial challenges, who has the highest probability of solving their financial problems as they start a real estate business?  I would argue that it is young people, for the simple fact that they do not have the expenses and responsibilities of a middle-aged person.  If they are living with their parents--no spouse, no kids, and limited monthly expenses--it is much easier to survive a startup period.

In addition, an adult child living at home has a much better chance of overcoming the financial obstacles than someone on their own.  Why?  Quite often, these candidates have motivated parents.  Getting junior out of the house and established in a career of their own is not only a priority for many parents, it is quite often something they are willing to put some finances towards.

3.  Young people do not have a large enough network (sphere of influence) to be successful.  One of the comments I got back from a top performing hiring manager in one of the midwest markets sheds some light on this issue:

"I truly believe that this group of candidates has a lot to offer to our industry for a number of reasons.  [One of the important reasons is that] they are in the age group that has many friends of their own that will be entering the housing market, if not themselves, as well."

I once read that railroad executives of the late 19th century never imagined that that their competitors would one day be metal tubes that flew thousands of feet in the air, without the need for steel tracks and other infrastructure.  Nor did real estate agents, even 20 years ago, imagine that a person could sit in their house and have free access to hundreds of millions of other people both in their neighborhoods and around the world, through the internet and social networks.  What's even more strange is that we call these people friends!

Here's the point:  Young people develop and maintain relationships differently than the generation before them.  Although it may seem strange, many of them have access to huge networks, and they are just learning how to leverage those relationships for business purposes.  You're going to need these individuals to help you transition into your own version of the airplane and tap the next generation of homeowners.

Are you ready to start engaging this new group of candidates?  You may need to dip your toe in slowly at first, but once you experience a few successes, I think you'll be hooked.  Their energy, excitement, and hope for the future is contagious, and it's just what the real estate industry needs. 

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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.

Experienced Agent Recruiting: Turning a Failure Into a Success, Part 3

Hopefully, you’ve had the opportunity to read the previous WorkPuzzle posts (1, 2) on the prospect of recruiting your competitors’ failures.  Engaging individuals who have recently failed with the hopes of turning them into successes within your company, is a risk that should be considered carefully.

If you decide to go down this path, it is critical that you learn everything possible about the nature of failure.  More specifically, if you are able to distinguish a good failure (someone who will use a recent failure as a learning experience and springboard to their next success) from a bad failure (someone whose recent failure is the start or continuation of a professional tailspin), you can lower your risk of making a bad investment.  There are still no guarantees, but it is helpful to get on the right side of the odds and make sure the data is stacked in your favor.

One data point you’ll want to pay particular attention to is the character trait of resilience.  In a recent article published in Harvard Business Review, Dr. Martin Seligman, the proverbial father of positive psychology, makes the following declaration: 

“Thirty years of scientific research has put the answers to [the questions of why people fail] within our reach.  We have learned not only how to distinguish those who will grow after failure from those who will collapse, but also how to build the skills of the people in the latter category.”

The article goes on to describe the details of a multi-million dollar research project being conducted for the United States Army on the topic of teaching people resilience.  While the verdict is still out on whether the trait of resilience can be successfully taught (he overstates the reality of the situation in his statement above), the “distinguishing who will grow after failure” part of the research is quite definitive.  Those who possess the trait of resilience, sooner or later, turn their failures into successes. 

But, how do you tell if someone is resilient if this is his/her first professional failure?  Or, if you’re in a casual conversation with someone who you could possibly recruit, how do get the person to reveal enough of their work history to detect a pattern of resilience?  In both cases, you probably can’t collect enough information to make a determination.

Thankfully, Dr. Seligman and his researchers are going to help us out.  One trait that seems to be strongly connected to resilience is optimism.  In simple terms, optimistic people tend to be resilient.  Here’s what the research revealed:

“We developed questionnaires and analyzed the content of verbatim speech and writing to assess 'explanatory style' as optimistic or pessimistic.  We discovered that people who don’t give up have a habit of interpreting setbacks as temporary, local, and changeable. (‘It’s going away quickly; it’s just this one situation, and I can do something about it.’)”

Now, optimism is something that you can detect in a casual conversation.  Since optimism and resilience are closely linked, this is the path to not only pursuing the right types of candidates, but also opening the doors in conversation that will help you learn about a person’s propensity to display resilience.

If you start a conversation with someone who is failing in his/her current role as a real estate agent and that person displays a lot of pessimism during the discussion, you probably want to back off right away and focus your efforts on someone else.

However, if a similar scenario results in you finding someone who displays a lot of optimism during an initial discussion, it might be natural to say something like this: “Wow, you seem to be a very optimistic person in spite of some really challenging things going on in your life right now.  Did you learn to be that way from some of your past experiences, or do you think that just comes naturally?”   

This type of open-ended question will naturally lead to someone sharing their past experiences.  Once you get this conversation going, look for the track record of overcoming difficult circumstances.  These are the good failures you potentially want on your team.

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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.

Experienced Agent Recruiting: Turning a Failure Into a Success Part 2

Last week, I began a discussion regarding the emphasis that many real estate companies place on experienced agent recruiting.  There is a natural frustration that always surrounds this topic due to the underlying demographics that characterize the issue.  
 
In short, companies currently compete for a very small pool of viable experienced agent candidates (i.e. those agents who are productive, but haven't yet crossed over into the realm of being high performers).  I believe this “productive but not prima donna” group makes up about 20% of the recruiting market of experienced agents. 
 
I made the suggestion that opening up the recruiting aperture to consider agents who are low performers in other companies, may be worth considering.  In a typical real estate company, this category of agents account for 40% to 60% of the agent population.  This amounts to a lot of candidates, who are more accessible than their more commonly pursued counterparts.
 
Before you jump into this new utopia of experienced agent recruiting with both feet, here is a disclaimer:  

Hiring failures is a risky proposition.  

In many cases, engaging these low-performing agents can quickly turn into a waste of time.  Or worse yet, the potential is there to waste resources and drag down your own productive agents if these folks fail in your company.  So, tread down this path with care and a healthy dose of cynicism.  If you believe you can save every poor performer that your competitor has created, you’re in for a big disappointment.
 
But, you may be able to save a small percentage...and a small percentage of a larger number can result in incremental recruiting successes that are worth pursuing.
 
If you decide to take on this challenge, I have an assignment for you:  You need to become a student of failure.  That’s right.  You need to become proficient at understanding why people fail. 
 
I know many of you have a bookshelf full of books on success.  But, have you ever spent time learning about failure?  A great place to start your education would be the April 2011 issue of Harvard Business Review.  In this publication, there are nine full-length articles, and seven short bios on the topic of failure.  The write-ups cover more than 60 pages ( yes, that’s 60 pages of small type).  There is a surprising amount of research that has been conducted on the topic of failure, and there is much to learn.
 
One article that I found particularly interesting highlighted the concept that not all failures are created equal—there are good failures and there are bad failures.  Being able to differentiate one from the other can be very helpful if you’re trying to figure out whom to engage in your newly expanded candidate search.
 
To document this phenomenon, HBR created a “Spectrum of Reasons for Failure.”  At one end of the spectrum, there are blameworthy failures (bad failures) and on the other end are praiseworthy failures (good failures).  Here is the list from bad to good:

• Deviance:  An individual chooses to violate a prescribed process or practice.
• Inattention:  An individual inadvertently deviates from prescribed specifications.
• Lack of Ability:  The individual does not have the skills, conditions, or training to execute the job.
• Process Inadequacy:  A competent individual adheres to a prescribed, but faulty or incomplete process.
• Task Challenge:  An individual faces a task too difficult to be executed reliably every time.
• Process Complexity:  A process composed of many elements breaks down when it encounters novel interactions.
• Uncertainty:  A lack of clarity about future events causes people to take seemly reasonable actions that produce undesired results.
• Hypothesis Testing:  An experiment conducted to prove that an idea or a design will succeed, fails.
• Exploratory Testing:  An experiment conducted to expand knowledge and investigate a possibility, leads to an undesired result.

Let’s suppose that you have the opportunity to engage one of your competitor’s agents who falls into the 40% to 60% of underperformers.  In striking up a discussion concerning “how business is going,” it would be natural to ask something like:  “Do you feel you’re meeting the original goals that you had when you decided to get into real estate?”    
 
And then as you listen to the answer and ask more open-ended questions, eventually get to the question:  “Why do you feel you have not been able to meet your goals?”  And then listen.  This is not the time to recruit and sell.  This is the time to collect information and make a determination if this person is experiencing a praiseworthy failure or a blameworthy failure.  Match the answers to the list above (after you wrap up the conversation) and then make a determination of whether this is someone worth pursuing.
 
In my next WorkPuzzle entry, I will reveal the one common trait that researchers claim is shared among those who are successful at turning failure into success.  If your candidate is lacking this trait, it’s a huge red flag!  Stay tuned...

 

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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 Positive Brain and Productivity

I know you were expecting a follow up article from Ben regarding his last blog on Experienced Agent Recruiting.  Ben is out of town and will pick up where he left off in the next WorkPuzzle edition.  But, on an unrelated note...   

I’ve never cared very much for books like, “The Power of Positive Thinking," or motivational speakers like Tony Robbins.  I’m one of those guys who get a bit nauseous if a speaker asks the audience to perform some sort of goofy exercise to brighten our day.  Maybe it’s my scientific background that makes me question the motives of people who are trying to sell happiness. 
 
However, as you have probably gathered if you’ve been reading WorkPuzzle for very long, Ben and I occasionally supply you with hard research evidence regarding happiness, positive emotion, and success that should be made mandatory learning for anyone who manages people.  Research over the last 15 years has mushroomed on the topic, and has supplied empirical evidence that should compel you to make a point of knowing, applying, and teaching about the this important link between happiness and success.

The latest summary of the research by Shawn Achor, a former Harvard psychology professor and author of The Happiness Advantage: The Seven Principles of Positive Psychology that Fuel Success and Performance at Work (Crown Business 2010) is a worthwhile, empirically grounded read.

Here he says what we all have witnessed: "You can take individuals of equal levels of intelligence, and you find there's dramatic variance in their success rates."  If career success isn't primarily a function of intelligence, then what causes it?  According to the evidence, Achor points to optimism, social support and whether we view stress as an opportunity or a threat.

The evidence is clear that, “Our brains are designed to work much better when they are in a positive state as opposed to a negative or neutral one," says Achor.  "We find that when people are positive, it raises their productivity rate by 31 percent compared to when they're in a negative state of mind.  Sales people sell 37 percent more than their negative counterparts.  We know that doctors, when they're positive, perform diagnoses 19 percent more accurately."

There is a neurotransmitter called dopamine (related to pleasure) that is released in the brain when we’re in a positive state of mind.  Furthermore, scientists have found that the brain can access all kinds of creativity, activate learning centers, and provide motivational energy when dopamine is naturally released in the positive state.  As a result, positive brains see more possibilities, and productivity rises.

Does your office create positive states of mind?  Are you mindful of working to keep your team positive, regardless of current stressors? The best leaders in history have had an uncanny way of providing this model and a path for those around them to experience the same.  It’s a worthy goal.

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Editor's Note: This article was written by Dr. David Mashburn. Dave is a Clinical and Consulting Psychologist, a 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 create change: Part 3

As I mentioned in the last blog, I am excited about this edition.  (You'll see why in the "Build Habits" section below...)  In the first two editions of this series (1,2), I introduced you to a well-constructed book by the Heath brothers entitled, "Switch: How To Change Things When Change Is Hard."

The authors consolidate a lot of information about the major elements of change, including how to create change, in their very concise, easy to read book.  The brothers liberally borrow their basic analogy around the elements of change from Psychologist and Researcher, Dr. Jonathan Haidt.  They explain that change involves two parts of the whole person that we are all familiar with....a person's emotional side, as well as their brain's rational side.

As I mentioned before, to create change, you must impact both sides.  The overpowering emotional side is identified as the "Elephant," and the rational, decision-making component sits atop the Elephant as the "Rider."  When conflict arises between the two, the Rider is easily the underdog.  (I addressed "the Rider" and "the Elephant" in the first two editions.)

Lastly, to create change, you must provide and shape a clear PATH.  This means that you must provide clear direction.  Sometimes change doesn't require anything we've described so far.  Sometimes, it only requires providing a path that's clear, accessible, habitual and inherent in the culture.  We all occasionally entertain the lazy habit of blaming character rather than environment when it comes to groups of individuals who may not be performing in the way we envision necessary.  However, the following are ways that you can begin to make change easier.

Tweak the Environment.  Did you know that the airline industry has a "sterile cockpit" rule that applies to any commercial plane flying below 10,000 feet?  Apparently, the most accident-prone time is while a flight is either ascending or descending.  Conversations that are not flight-related are not permitted at this time.

Similarly, the authors describe an IT group that had been unsuccessfully grappling with continually taking far too long in developing new products.  They set out to reduce new product development from three years to eight months. They decided to adopt the sterile cockpit rule for new projects, establishing "quiet hours" on Tuesday, Thursday and Friday mornings, before noon.  Making this simple tweak of the environment provided coders ample time to concentrate on complex bits of code without being interrupted, which turned out was the major culprit to slowing progress.  Ultimately, the group achieved a nine-month development cycle.  Not too shabby for a simple fix.  This result reinforces the idea that what can appear as a people problem, is often a situational challenge.  We all have a tendency to minimize, or ignore all together, the fact that situational forces can greatly influence and shape peoples' behavior.  And often, just simple tweaks of the path can produce dramatic behavioral changes that we wouldn't otherwise expect.

Build Habits.  When one has a habit, one has a sort of behavioral auto-pilot.  Habits allow behavior to happen without taxing the rider or the elephant...Both are simply doing what they always do.  Once habits are built, little energy is expended.  There are several examples in the book that address companies helping their people develop habits.  Your office/company can either help reinforce or deter successful habits.  Paying attention to your power to do so, is vital.

To change anything, you must build habits.  One way to help build habits is to set up "action triggers."  Action triggers are behaviors that are always followed by the habit you want to build.  For example, every Monday, Wednesday and Friday for the past 25 years, I have gone to the gym to work out.  This is such a strong habit that I don't ever even consider placing something else in that time slot.  These specific days/times of the week pre-load a decision to work out, and therefore prevent the Rider from scheduling over them.  Setting up action triggers have been proven to TRIPLE the chance of successful goal completion.

So, while helping build your agents' business plan, ask them to specify exactly when they will perform each activity.  Don't take a given time for granted...Instead ask, "After what activity will you do this?  After brushing your teeth?  After dropping off your children at school?"  Etc.  The authors offer several great examples of how you, as a leader, can help others to create habits and even "instant habits" through action triggers.

The authors then spend considerable time discussing the MAGIC, underrated, and sometimes despised tool...The Checklist!

Bear with me, and read further... This simple tool can make or break your company's success.  Dr. Peter Pronovost of Johns Hopkins, was fed up with the finacial waste and human loss attributed to preventable line infections occurring in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU).  So, he finally resorted to demanding that all staff take the time to check off a simple checklist of routine, required tasks.  It was a five-part checklist, containing items like, (1) Wash hands, (2) Clean skin with antiseptic, and so on... No new activities were added, rather, the expected routine was simply itemized out.

Eighteen months after the checklist was put into place by Johns Hopkins and some Michigan hospitals, $175 million dollars and 1500 lives had been saved.  "Check lists are insurance against over confidence."  I love that sentence.  Print it out in bold letters and paste to your office door.  If you think a checklist is for boring, menial jobs, then try your luck flying a 747.  I can tell you, first hand, that the majority of recruiting efforts put forth by most real estate companies, involve completely flying by the seat of their pants.  They not only don't have a checklist, but wouldn't know what items to place on their checklist if they were asked to create one.  If you are a client of ours, then you know that we have built-in checklists (literally thousands daily - between our clients and us) that ensure that the best sourcing and the best recruiting can be accomplished.

The last way to change the clear the path is to Rally the Herd.  There is no scientific fact more etched in granite than peoples' tendency to follow the lead of people in their immediate environment.  This is another reason to make sure you churn out agents who stand around the water cooler too much and never produce.  If 90% of your agents are working, most of the others will follow their lead.  Find ways to instill a sense that "this is the way we do it here" and ensure that it's in fact done that way.  Lead an Elephant on an unfamiliar path, and it's likely to follow the herd...

The authors acknowledge that change isn't always easy.  But the evidence suggests that when change works, it tends to follow a predictable pattern.  Visit the authors at  http://www.heathbrothers.com.

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Editor's Note: This article was written by Dr. David Mashburn. Dave is a Clinical and Consulting Psychologist, a 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 Create Change: Part 2

In the first edition of this series, I introduced you to a well-constructed book by the Heath brothers entitled, "Switch: How To Change Things When Change Is Hard."

The authors consolidate a lot of information about the major elements of change, including how to create change, in their very concise, easy to read book.  The brothers liberally borrow their basic analogy around the elements of change from Psychologist and Researcher, Dr. Jonathan Haidt.  They explain that change involves two parts of the whole person that we are all familiar with....a person's emotional side, as well as their brain's rational side.  
 
As I mentioned before, to create change, you must impact both sides.  The overpowering emotional side is identified as the "Elephant," and the rational, decision-making component sits atop the Elephant as the "Rider."  When conflict arises between the two, the Rider is easily the underdog (I addressed "the Rider" in last week's edition).
 
Research tells us that in order to achieve lasting change, the Elephant and Rider need to unite.  Lastly, you must provide a clear PATH.  In this edition I'll provide for you some examples of motivating the elephant.

MOTIVATING THE ELEPHANT -- The following are techniques that can help you tap into a person's emotional side (Elephant), which can spark actions that will lead to lasting change.

Find the Feeling.  Most of you can relate to the necessity of "feeling" the need to change in order to provide the rocket fuel and begin the necessary work to actually make the change happen.  I can personally remember, while in graduate school class, a guest lecturer spontaneously changing his topic from whatever practical, cerebral lesson he was sent there to instruct...to telling my class: "What you're learning here is less important than how badly you want to be good at what you do."  He continued, "And furthermore, how good you are, will determine EVERYTHING... Your reputation, where you work, how much you make, your options in life, and most importantly, the satisfaction you will gain from a life well-lived."  I can vividly remember him stating that, "Mediocrity will get you nowhere."  After hearing this, I took a long walk and introspected more deeply than I had in a long time.  Those words motivated the Elephant in me, and gave the Rider (my brain) the energy needed to alter my behavior (not only "getting through" school but excelling) and sustain my tenacity for a long time.  It's not that the pure content lectures were unimportant, but this one altered something deep and enduring inside me. 

Shrink the Change.  In the book, the authors speak of a car wash that ran a promotion using loyalty cards.  They tested two variations of customer cards to see which worked the best.  One card was an 8-stamp card, earning a free car wash when the card is filled.  Another card was a 10-stamp card, but already had 2 stamps completed, advancing them 20% toward their goal, but, in reality had the same amount required.  Several months later, only 19% of the customers given the empty 8 stamp card had received a free car wash, in contrast to 34% of the head-start group.  The authors state that this type of behavior is found in multiple studies.  In other words, people find it more motivating to be partially finished with a long-term goal than to be at the starting gate of a shorter one. How could you motivate your agents or managers to achieve a long-term goal by highlighting what's already been accomplished toward its completion?  To motivate an uninspired Elephant, shrink the change.

Grow Your People.  Change is very difficult if people believe that they can't change, or that they don't have any influence.  In past blog editions, I've written about the "Growth Mindset," an empirically verified set of facts that will determine the percentage of people who will thrive in your organization.  The Heath brothers list several examples to further the power of believing that people can grow and change.  Here's just one example: 
 
In 1977 the St. Lucia parrot faced extinction.  Despite laws and several "carrot and stick" attempts to change the fact that Island natives undervalued the bird, nothing changed.  Some even continued to eat the bird as a delicacy, while others turned their backs.  All analytical cases for protecting the bird had failed.  So instead, the government implemented an emotional appeal.  To do this they set out to convince St. Lucians that they were the kind of people who protected their own (there is much research confirming that people will live up to a collective belief system about "who" they are).  They did this by making the public assumption that St. Lucians swell with pride over their exclusive Island parrot.  The Parrot Campaign included T-shirts, bumper stickers and locally recorded songs about the Island's pride around their parrot.  In fact, the bird became part of the natives' national identity and it was constantly being compared to other "uglier" national birds, including our own Bald Eagle.  Stories published in 2008 noted that St. Lucians had not been caught shooting the parrot for the past fifteen years, resurrecting the species from extinction.

How can you find the feeling, shrink the change, and grow your people to accomplish the "impossible?"
I am very excited for the next edition...the final piece of change -- Clarifying the Path.

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Editor's Note: This article was written by Dr. David Mashburn. Dave is a Clinical and Consulting Psychologist, a 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 Create Change

How many times have you thrown up your hands, as a manager, parent, or business owner, and said "I give up.. I've tried everything and there is no way I can change this culture... or this pattern of behaviors?"  We have all, at some point, hit major road blocks in our quest to find ways to implement lasting change.

As a practicing Clinical Psychologist, I could point you to a large library of books about how to create change, written in thickly worded scientific language...but rarely have I seen a book written in layman's language that breaks down the process and elements of change effectively.

I am nearing the end of a such a book.  This well-constructed read by the Heath brothers is titled, "Switch: How To Change Things When Change Is Hard."  It's one of those books I wish I had thought of writing (although I wouldn't have done nearly as good a job). 

What they do, and do well, is manage to break down much of the information about the major elements of change, including how to create change, all presented in a concise book that's a joy to read.  The brothers liberally borrow their basic analogy regarding the elements of change from Psychologist and researcher, Dr. Jonathan Haidt.  The premise is that change involves two parts of the whole person that we are all familiar with -- A person's emotional side, as well as their rational side ("the brain").

And to create change you must impact both.  The overpowering emotional side is identified as the "Elephant" and the rational, decision-making component sits atop the Elephant as the "Rider."  When conflict arises between the two, the Rider is easily the underdog.  Research tells us that in order to make lasting change, the Elephant and Rider need to unite.

The last element is "The Path," or a VERY clear direction.

Over the next three editions, I'll share with you examples of appropriate uses of the following options:

   1. Directing the Rider - Analytical, Rational thinking 
   2. Motivating the Elephant - Appealing to Emotion and instinct
   3. Shaping the Path - Providing clear Direction

1. Direct the Rider:

Finding the Bright Spots.  In 1990, an international organization that helps needy children accepted a Vietnamese government invitation to decrease malnutrition.  They were given only six months to make a difference.  This short timeline made it impossible to end poverty, to purify water, or to build a sanitation system to address starvation.  They had to find a simpler solution and find it fast.  Most of us would waste precious time focusing on looking at, and even trying to magnify the problem.  This organization didn't.  Instead they traveled to a rural village and met with mothers whose children were thriving.  They were obsessed with finding the "Bright Spots."  Despite widespread malnutrition, they found them.  They discovered that "bright spot" moms fed their children four times a day (easier on kids' digestive systems), vs. the standard two meals.  Another finding was that bright spot moms added shrimp and crab from the rice paddies into their kids' meals.  Cooking classes where bright spot moms taught other mothers how to prepare healthy meals for their children ensued.  The mothers already had the emotional motivation (Elephant) in the form of their natural concern for their kids.  They needed direction (The Rider needed a Path), not motivation.  Six months later, 65 percent of the village kids were better nourished and stayed that way.

How often have you set out to find exactly what your best agents and managers do right...not just generally, but as specifically as possible?  How do they organize their days?  How many calls and emails do they make and to whom do they make them?  Figure out the detailed formula utilized by the best of the best, and then deduce the common denominators.

Point to the Destination.  In the mid 1980s, a major investment firm's research department ranked an embarrassing fifteenth among their banking clients.  This coincided with the hiring of a new GM, labeled "The Company Coach."  After discovering that the analysts of the company had become isolated from clients and each other, holding onto knowledge rather than sharing information and credit, he set the expectation for all analysts to initiate at least 125 client conversations per month.  In addition, he required analysts to cite colleagues' work at least twice during presentations, thus promoting a team environment.  He told everyone that he expected the firm to be among the premiere investment magazine's top five.  He directed the rider by laying out clear expectations (make 125 calls and cite colleagues work), and he also painted the destination.  In three years, the firm went from fifteenth to first place.

We have several clients who have done something similar to the above examples with regard to addressing goals around recruiting expectations.  Is it possible for you to be even more enticing with a clearer, more compelling goal?  Can you be precise about your exact expectations?  Instead of saying, "Make more recruiting calls,"...say, "Make X number of calls and X number of appointments per week."

 In the next edition, I'll discuss ideas around Motivating the Elephant.

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Editor's Note: This article was written by Dr. David Mashburn. Dave is a Clinical and Consulting Psychologist, a 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.