At your grandchild’s soccer
game, another spectator spends more time checking his
PDA than cheering for his own
daughter. At a local bistro, the
couple next to you spends
more time on their cell phones
chatting with their direct
reports than they do talking to
each other.
Ask Laurie Keenan about
such behavior, and she’ll tell
you that none of these people
are living in the moment. And
it’s a subject she knows something about.
As president of Prudential Real
Estate Affiliates Inc., Keenan has
often straddled that line between
personal and professional life.
While pushing the company’s
2007 revenue to more than
$100 million and managing the
franchise’s network of more
than 2,100 residential real estate
brokerages across North America,
she admits to occasionally
falling prey to the distractions
of her BlackBerry outside of the
office.
To combat those urges and
find balance, Keenan has adopted a here-and-now philosophy
that has her living in the moment,
whether with her family at
home or her 140 employees at
work.
Smart Business spoke with
Keenan about how to live in the
moment at work by setting and
focusing on a clear agenda.
Evolve as you go. [If outside
opportunities spring up,] they
can become part of the agenda.
If it’s a good course, a good
decision, let’s go.
Every step you take is enlightening. Of all the things you put
forth in the year that you’re
going to accomplish, some will
have more value than others. If
new things come across that
make more sense, prioritize
and change course.
Look to your consumers to analyze
your market. Our market is
consumer-driven. From our
standpoint in our business, we
need to understand how the
consumer is thinking, how the
consumer is acting and where
the consumer is going so that
we can be there to engage.
There are lots of places to
learn about that. You can read
about it in newspapers, you can
go online, you can talk to them.
Who else knows better what
they need? Who else knows
better what’s happening? Keep
tight with them and understand
what their needs and wants
and desires are and how it can
better serve them.
Obviously, there are lots of
sources to figure out what the
consumer is doing. There are
also all kinds of studies that
many of the Internet companies do that give you information on how the consumers are
behaving.
Understanding that and trying
to interface with where they
are is an advantage.
Ask questions. The outcome
coming through a collaborative process is a better process
and a better product. (If questions) are thought-provoking
enough, you’d be surprised at
the creativity that results from
the other side of the table.
‘Have you thought about this?
Have you thought about that?
What do you think would be
the right choice? What do you
think would be a good decision?’
I don’t allow them to dump
problems on me. They need to
come up with a solution. Often-times in conversation, asking
the right questions helps people
to think those solutions through.
Listen — then speak. Someone
once told me that our Creator
gave us two ears and one
mouth with the expectation
that one would listen twice as
much as one would talk.
If you want to grow as a
leader, you have to spend time hearing from your constituents.
You can’t do that if you’re a
talker. You can’t hear that way.
(Listening) is a characteristic of
a good leader. In order to be
collaborative, in order to bring
people along, in order to get
buy-in, in order to really understand, you have to listen, so
button it up.
Implement a stated culture. Culture is extraordinarily important. Have clarity around what’s
important; demand it of your
organization and live it every
day. You can’t have a stated culture and not practice culture.
I’ll give you an example. It’s
called ‘Don’t talk stink.’ That
is a core piece of our culture.
We do not talk behind others’
backs. We don’t put others
down. We don’t talk in a negative way about our people.
When somebody does, they
get called on it.
By having it out there, by having it be a part of the stated culture, everyone works to reinforce it. It’s not just me. You
don’t have to be a leader to do
that. It’s ingrained in the interactions of all the people of the
organization.
We went at it quite purposefully. We brought our leadership team together, and we
talked about what it was we
believed in and what our culture needed to be. We put it in
words, we communicated it
and subsequently lived by it,
demonstrated it and practiced
it. When you do that, it gets
ingrained.
Think creatively and devote
resources to growth. Get extraordinarily creative about (growth)
in terms of how to get there.
If your team is great at
implementation but has not
tapped into what’s happening
in the marketplace, for example, and doesn’t have the
savvy to really think about the
world in 3.0 terms in opposed
to 2.0 or 1.0, then you seek
counseling. Find the experts,
and realize that you don’t have
to be knowledgeable about
everything. Surround yourself
with the right people who can
fill in those gaps for you.
Then, focus your resources to
do that. Push your budget. You
have to take opportunity where
opportunity is. If I’m in a position where I can’t push on the
budget, I’ll find something to
take out to make it happen. <<
HOW TO REACH: Prudential Real Estate Affiliates Inc., (949) 794-7900