Over the last couple of weeks, we’ve been discussing the importance of innovation.
It’s essential that an innovative mindset permeate every part of a business. The process of reinvention is what infuses life into an organization. It makes everything new and vibrant.
In our final discussion on innovation, we’ll focus on applying what we’ve learned to the topic of recruiting, the ultimate new growth innovation for a real estate company.
As many of our readers know, we help real estate companies recruit more effectively. In a consulting role, we get a front row seat to the recruiting processes organizations are using and the new innovations they are trying to implement.
From this perspective, we view some of the highest performing companies in the country do incredibly innovative things that produce remarkable returns.
On the other hand, we also see some recruiting projects turn into miserable failures.
What’s the difference between the two outcomes? The successful companies understand the nature of innovation.
New Growth or Core Innovation?
As a rule, companies who successfully innovate in the recruiting arena see initiatives from a “new growth innovation” perspective. We’ve seen very few exceptions to this rule.
As we defined earlier in our discussion, innovation projects fall into one of two categories:
Core innovations are lower potential projects expected to offer rapid returns, and they are near and complimentary to your current business process. Competitors will often be aware of these innovations and likely be implementing many of the same ideas you’re considering.
New growth innovations push the frontier of your strategy by developing something utterly original or doing something in a novel way. These innovations have the potential to produce substantial returns, but it takes much longer to realize revenue from them.
Viewing recruiting innovation as a “keeping up with your competitors” activity (ie. a core innovation) never works. The nature of recruiting does not fit this paradigm. Recruiting projects implemented from this perspective are short-lived, produce a poor return on investment, and disrupt the organization.
Executing Your New Growth Recruiting Innovation
Viewing real estate recruiting from a “new growth” perspective sometimes produces the results for which you’re hoping.
I wish I could say it always produces a great return, but that’s not reality.
All new growth innovations involve risk. To obtain something significant, you have to try something big. There’s always a risk of failure. Of course, the risks can be minimized, but not avoided.
To minimize this risk, go through the steps outlined about choosing the best new growth innovation (outlined in part 2 of this series), and apply the principles to your recruiting function.
Once you’ve selected the best new growth recruiting idea for your company, use the formula for executing new growth innovations:
Focus Talent. A successfully implemented recruiting innovation requires that at least one talented person get up every morning and go to sleep every night thinking about nothing but your recruiting new growth innovation. Also, they must have executive level attention and sponsorship.
Focus Resources. After getting a talented person to solely focus on your new growth innovation, you’ll need to dedicate resources to the effort. This usually requires freeing up resources in your existing organization (get rid of the zombie projects).
Measure Progress. Create a mechanism to shepherd your project. The process should be organized differently than normal executive oversight functions. Don’t just replicate the current executive committee. If you do, it will be too easy for group members to default to their corporate-planning mindset or to let day-to-day business creep into discussions about innovations meant to fulfill long-term goals.
For years, I’ve heard real estate leaders tell me recruiting is the life-blood of their organizations. If this is true, I encourage you to treat recruiting as THE center of innovation for your organization.
To be successful, it needs to be handled differently than the core innovations commonly implemented by real estate companies. Recruiting is a unique function and it’s worth special consideration in managing it.
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