When First American Real Estate Solutions merged with Sacramento-based CoreLogic Systems Inc. in February, it was just another day at the office for George Livermore. The newly formed company, First American CoreLogic LLC, is what Livermore — who serves as CEO — refers to as a “melting pot of cultures,” the product of the acquisition of more than 20 regional real estate information companies nationwide. The result is a culture and a management team that reflect the diverse backgrounds of its former companies and a spirit for entrepreneurialism — a word you might not expect to hear at a company of 1,200 employees that posted combined annual revenue of around $325 million in 2006. Smart Business spoke to Livermore about the importance of collaboration and the positive effects of making a mistake.
Make leadership a team effort. We have a strong management team here, and we have built our strategy in this business together.
It isn’t an autocracy where everybody is waiting for me to tell them what to do, by any means. I don’t care for an autocratic leadership style. Everybody becomes dependent on that one person, and it breeds weakness.
Participation is important, and it’s not just a meeting you go to. Part of the job of my management team is to weigh in and help create and continue to modify and nurture our strategy.
It’s not up to me by myself. Everybody has a piece of the action, and they’re constantly coming in and making recommendations. For me, that’s critical.
If you’re doing those things together as a team, it makes it really easy to communicate to the rest of the employee population, as well as to your clients, who you are and what you do and to be very consistent about that. You don’t have to be constantly worried about, ‘I wonder if the people in this location really get what we’re doing.’
You know they do, because your entire management team is on the same page, as opposed to you cooking it up in your office, coming out and telling everybody what you’re doing and then figuring out who doesn’t understand what you’ve told them.