Intero Real Estate | Intero Mojo

Posts Tagged ‘Intero Real Estate’

Thoughts on Leadership: What’s the Most Critical Quality of Today’s Leader? Creativity

By Gino Blefari | September 8th, 2011 0 Comments

If you’ve ever thought that creativity wasn’t necessary in the realm of leadership, think again. Creativity is critical to leadership success. It is a lifeline that renews, restores and inspires. Creativity can be used to build teams, enrich people and solve problems.

In fact, corporations need creative leaders to thrive. They need visionaries who act less as commanders and more as coaches, less as managers and more as facilitators, and who foster self-respect instead of just demanding it from others.

Creativity is what enables successful leaders to meet new challenges, and to recognize and pursue new opportunities through bold innovations.

Creative leadership that drives innovation and growth in this economy requires eight key qualities of a leader:

The leader must have a vision for the organization.
The leader must have the passion to transform that vision into action.
The leader must be able to travel into an unexplored path.
The leader must know how to manage both success and failure.
The leader must have the courage to make decisions.
The leader should have nobility in management.
Every action of the leader should be transparent.
The leader must work with integrity and succeed with integrity.

Leaders drive change and lead people in the pursuit of a vision. This means that often times, you’ll face the challenge of venturing into the unknown and the unfamiliar. This requires adjustment and the ability to respond to unexpected situations.

You could argue that creativity is actually the most important quality a leader needs to succeed in business today – outweighing even integrity and global thinking. According to a study done in 2010, about 60% of CEOs polled cited creativity as the most important leadership quality, compared with 52% for integrity and 35% for global thinking. Creative leaders are also 81% more likely to rate innovation as a crucial capability.

Whether you view yourself as a creative person or not, it is a skill that can be learned.

Creativity and innovation are not mysterious forces over which leaders have no control. Progressive leadership can and does create a climate that encourages creativity and innovation.

If you want to become a more confident and successful leader and improve your leadership skills and results, including your creativity, now is the time to take advantage.

Thoughts on Leadership: The Importance of Planning Ahead

By Gino Blefari | August 11th, 2011 0 Comments

Have you ever been in this situation? You rush out the door because you’re late for a morning meeting. You didn’t bother to take your time and realize whether you had all the materials you needed for the meeting. Halfway to your meeting it hits you that you forgot something so you drive back to your house to get it. You’re now even later than you were to begin with. If you’d taken just a few minutes to look around and check before running out the door, you could’ve saved yourself some time and trouble.

As Rick Pitino wrote in his motivational self-help book Success is a Choice, “What you should be doing is arriving at work a half hour early and getting all of your social conversations out of the way, getting your newspaper read, and getting your coffee poured, so that when the workday starts you are ready.” And if you do have to go back home for something you forgot, you’d actually be on time because you already planned to be on time.

There’s a great leadership lesson here – the importance of planning ahead. In his book, Start With Why, Simon Sinek also discusses a story that shows the importance and benefits of planning ahead for success from the very beginning:

A group of American car executives visited a Japanese automobile assembly line. They watched the cars go through the assembly line, which all seemed routine, but were confused by the process at the end of the line when the doors were put on the hinges of the cars. The Japanese process seemed to be missing a critical part. In the United States, a worker was hired to tap the edges of the car door with a rubber mallet to make sure that they fit perfectly. The Japanese assembly line, however, had no such worker or machine to ensure that the door fit.

Puzzled, the American executives asked the nearest Japanese worker how they made sure that the doors fit perfectly. The man replied, “We make sure it fits when we design it.” Not only was the Japanese process more efficient, but Japanese car doors last longer and are more structurally sound in accidents compared to American doors. Why? It’s simple: the Japanese engineered the outcome they wanted from the beginning of the process.

Many leaders make the mistake of structuring their organization how the Americans’ structure their car assembly line. They forget to base all their actions, from the beginning, on the original intention. Instead, they tend to focus on the short term. When something goes wrong, they provide their followers with several short-term tactics that would not be necessary if they had simply had the final goal in mind during the whole process.

If the American automakers had designed doors to fit from the very beginning, they wouldn’t need to worry about having a mallet or an extra employee and step in the assembly line to tap the door into place.

We can learn a very valuable lesson from the Japanese assembly line – one that applies not only to business, but also to life in general. We need to realize the importance of our long-term goals and keep them in mind with everything that we do. If we stop taking shortcuts and making short-term solutions, we will actually save ourselves time, stress and in some cases, (such as the assembly line) money!

Thoughts on Leadership: Billy Beane’s Leadership Lessons

By Gino Blefari | August 4th, 2011 0 Comments

With the movie coming out next month, I re-read Michael Lewis’ book “Moneyball,” (my second go round) – a remarkable depiction of Billy Beane’s unique leadership of the Oakland A’s.

Beane was a natural. At 6 feet 4 inches tall, he excelled at every sport he tried. Stanford University attempted to recruit him on a joint baseball-football scholarship, but Beane rejected the offer fearing a football injury would threaten his baseball career. Beane signed with the New York Mets. It was 1980.

As a major league player, Beane struggled. Over his ten year career as a player, he never achieved the promise that seemed so attainable to him. In 1990, Beane was recruited by the A’s general manager Sandy Alderson and became an advance talent scout.

His job, find the kids that will one day make the A’s a winning team.

And this is where the story truly begins.

By 2002, and under Beane’s leadership, the Oakland A’s became one of the most winningest teams in baseball, finishing first in the American League’s Western Division. But this stat was dwarfed by one far more impressive – Beane did this with the lowest player payroll of any major league baseball team.

Beane wasn’t cheap. He was smart.

When Beane scouted, he didn’t look for the star recruit with the most home runs or highest batting average; instead, he wanted players with the highest on-base percentage. Players who did what it took to win day in and day out.

Beane taught us the importance of a balanced team. What makes a team successful is not necessarily having the star player, producer or agent, but having a group of people who are all capable of doing what it takes to win or succeed. Having a wide range of skills and talents on your team is critical. Does your team have all the skills it takes to succeed? If not, what can you do to change that? Training? Recruiting?

The second critical part of the team is that everyone is in sync. A team is the sum of its parts. If people on a team aren’t working for the same goal and aren’t willing to help each other out at their own expense, then the team isn’t functioning to its full capability. Think about when you played a team sport as a child. Your goal was to win and you did everything in your power to accomplish that. Most likely you weren’t concerned with making yourself look the best at the expense of your other teammates and it would never cross your mind to do something that benefited you at the expense of winning the game. A good team player makes sacrifices and it pays off.

So stop worrying about being #1 and start focusing on your goal and how you can most efficiently and effectively accomplish it. Success will follow!

Thoughts on Leadership: Passion, Martin Luther King Jr., and Leadership Success

By Gino Blefari | July 28th, 2011 0 Comments

What is it about leaders like Martin Luther King Jr. that makes us remember and honor them for generations? What made him stand out from all the great orators of his day who shared his vision? What is it that tipped him from greatness to legends?

He, like other leaders share one thing in common: their amazing ability to inspire those around them.

Over the last few weeks, we’ve been looking at leaders whose inspiration and roots in the why of what they were trying to do led them to success. Like the Wright brothers and Apple founders Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs, Martin Luther King Jr. was not alone in his quest at the time. There were others preaching about civil rights and spreading a similar message.

Simon Sinek discusses King’s leadership success in his book, “Start With Why.” In his book, he cites the reason leaders like King achieve phenomenal success tying back to a simple “golden rule” that he subscribed to that made him different than everyone else.

While most leaders or companies communicate from the perspective of what they do, people like Dr. King communicate around why they do it. They start with a belief. Everything they do and every way they act is built around it. Rather than selling a product they sell a belief which creates deeper, more meaningful connections with people.

Sinek even says that it’s not a person’s skill or opportunity that creates this type of success; it’s the combination of other characteristics that make up a great leader.

Great leaders:

Inspire people to act
Give people a sense of purpose or belonging
Are followed by people whom they have inspired, not swayed

A leader is nothing without followers. You can judge a great leader by how his or her people act. Great leaders inspire people to:

Have deep personal motivation to act
Be less likely to be swayed by incentives
Be willing to pay a premium or endure inconvenience, even personal suffering
Act for the good of the whole because they want to, not because they have to

I hope from this series you have learned that in order to be a great leader you do not need money or fame, the highest skills or best connections, you just need the right intentions and a lot of passion. If you find those things, people will follow you and truly be inspired to act.

Cool Apps: Never Miss a Crucial Follow-Up with FollowUp.cc

By John Thompson | July 22nd, 2011 2 Comments

Many times in real estate sales, your livelihood depends on the follow-up. How many times have you witnessed a deal that never would’ve closed had you not followed up like an obsessed maniac? That’s just the reality of working with transactions that involve so many hands, and so many signatures.

But why risk missing that crucial follow-up that keeps your transactions moving? Persistence is an extremely powerful tool that makes things happen amazingly for your clients. And now you can trigger those follow-ups with a simple Gmail plug-in called FollowUp.cc.

Sweet, how does it work?

Visit FollowUp.cc’s website and sign up for the plugin. Once it’s all hooked up (really, there’s no wizardry beyond providing your email address, password and agreeing to a few things), the plug-in allows you to add a specific email address to an email’s CC field to determine how long to wait to send a follow-up email to anyone who is copied on the email. How does that work? Well, if you want a follow-up on July 30, you’d create an address jul30@followup.cc. If you wanted a follow-up in one week, you’d create 1w@followup.cc. The app creator provides a complete list of examples here.

FollowUp.cc also integrates with Google calendars and Salesforce for even more follow-up madness.

What’s it cost?

You can sign up for the free option, which allows you to schedule 25 follow-up reminders per month. Paid versions range from $5 per month for 100 reminders to $15 per month for 1,000 reminders.

Don’t use Gmail? Unfortunately, this week’s Cool App only works for Gmail or Google Apps users. Sorry folks. I did write about an alternative app called Boomerang that offers similar functionality back in December. Boomerang works with Gmail or Outlook. Check out that Cool Apps article here.

Thoughts on Leadership: Why Apple Inspires People

By Gino Blefari | July 21st, 2011 0 Comments

Like millions of other people, you’ve likely wondered out loud at some point, “What makes Apple so successful?” It is an extraordinary technology leader, founded and led by extraordinary men.

While it’s easy to explain what a company does or how an organization works, it is much more difficult to understand why. Why is Apple so driven not just to succeed, but to lead in consumer technology, to change the world and stop at nothing less? It is the why that separates amazing companies from mediocre ones – just as it’s the why that separates people who truly lead and inspire from those who are just in power positions.

Apple’s cofounders, Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs, are great examples of influential leaders (not just men in positions of leadership). I’ve been reading about the common traits of true leaders in Simon Sinek’s book, “Start With Why.” By studying influential leaders, Sinek discovered they all think, act and communicate in the same way – they start with why, and that is what inspires people to follow them to success.

In 1979, best friends Wozniak and Jobs created the first personal computer. Why? What was their why? Wozniak built the Apple I with a vision of giving average folks the same computer power as big corporations. He wanted to help level the playing field in business. Before Apple I, computers were too complicated and expensive for the average individual; they were primarily used as a tool for privileged businesses. Wozniak’s why was to enable individuals to compete.

What about Jobs? What was his why? He was the salesman – an amazing one. He dreamed of building a company that would change the world. With just one product, Apple Computer made $1 million in revenues in its first year. It made $10 million in its second year and in just six years became a billion-dollar company.

Even more remarkable than Apple’s fast growth is its longevity. More than 30 years later, the company continues to succeed – empowering individuals with world-class technology. Changing the world. Apple didn’t stop with the personal computer; the company continued to conquer the small electronics, music, mobile phone, and entertainment industries. Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs succeeded because they started with why. They had a contagious passion that fostered real innovation.

What’s even more interesting about Apple is that not only did the company’s founders inspire its employees to achieve greatness, but also it inspires its customers – to the point where thousands camp out overnight to buy its new products.

Sinek’s following excerpt sums up the leadership lessons from this legendary company:

“Great leaders are able to inspire people to act. Those who are able to inspire give people a sense of purpose or belonging that has little to do with any external incentive or benefit to be gained. Those who truly lead are able to create a following of people who act not because they were swayed, but because they were inspired. For those who are inspired, the motivation to act is deeply personal. They are less likely to be swayed by incentives. Those who are inspired are willing to pay a premium or endure inconvenience, even personal suffering. Those who are able to inspire will create a following of people- supporters, voters, customers, workers- who act for the good of the whole not because they have to, but because they want to.”

Thoughts on Leadership: Learning to Ask the Right Questions

By Gino Blefari | July 14th, 2011 0 Comments

“There are leaders and there are those who lead. Leaders hold a position of power or influence. Those who lead inspire us.”
- Simon Sinek, author of Start with Why

Learning to lead starts with learning to ask the right questions.

In the early 1900s, no man had ever successfully piloted an airplane. A highly qualified man named Samuel Pierpont Langley was dead set on doing it. He was a senior officer at the Smithsonian Institution and mathematics professor at Harvard, and he had the devoted support of his two close friends, Andrew Carnegie and Alexander Graham Bell, as well as the War Department (and its $50,000 grant).

Langley also had a dream team of some of the best minds and talents of his day, and the finest materials to work with. The press was following his every move. It seemed Langley would be the one.

But as we all know, he wasn’t. So, what happened?

Wilbur and Orville Wright ended up being the first ones to take flight. These two brothers didn’t have a college education and they didn’t have the kind of backing that Langley did. What they did have was an enthusiastic and dedicated team of people in their hometown who helped them as they worked on their flight machine in a small bicycle shop.

The brothers didn’t have the finest materials around like Langley and it was just a small group that witnessed them take flight in 1903 – not the gaggle of press Langley was getting.

What was the key to success? It obviously was not the connections, funds, education, or materials. If so, Langley would have been the first man to pilot an airplane. The key to success was why. The Wright brothers started with why. It was their greatest passion and dream to fly, and that passion inspired those around them to succeed. They truly led their team as opposed to just directing them.

The Wright brothers’ story shows that a contagious passion is the strongest component of leadership. Starting with why opens the doors – the right question.

This story is one of several that Simon Sinek examines in his book on leadership called “Start with Why.” In your leadership journey, he says, it’s important to start with this question of why and to learn to ask the right questions. This is because if you start with the wrong questions, eventually even the right answers will steer you the wrong way.

If two brothers who nobody knew could take this concept and become the first men to fly, then we as leaders can surely use this to truly lead our teams to success.

As Sinek says in the book, “There are leaders and there are those who lead. Leaders hold a position of power or influence. Those who lead inspire us.”

Intero Cool Apps: Why You Should Resist the Urge to Ignore Google Plus

By John Thompson | July 8th, 2011 0 Comments

By now, you’ve likely heard some buzz around Google’s latest big release called Google Plus. Maybe you’ve already gotten an invite and tested it out. If not, you should. I’m going to talk about why and how this new social network can be useful in your real estate business and go over a few basics of the road.

Why oh why do we need yet another social network?

This of course is the first question that comes to mind anytime someone invites you to a new “Facebook” of sorts. The short answer for why Google Plus is worth your time is this: It’s easy to use, takes seconds to set up and gives you the flexibility you’ve been longing for to segment your professional and personal social networking in a meaningful way.

OK, so how to get an invite if you don’t already have one?

The best way is to simply put the word out on Facebook and Twitter. Let your existing network know that you haven’t gotten an invite yet and are looking for one. Chances are high that someone in your circle has gotten in and can send you an invite.

What’s it all about?

The fundamental difference between Google Plus and the others before it is privacy. Google Plus is based on the Google Circles feature, which enables you to share and view content to and from specifically defined groups of people – and no one else. So if you want to share new listings or local housing news with your group of interested local buyers, then your cousins in Minnesota don’t have to be burdened with your irrelevant posts. Likewise, your professional contacts won’t have to see the pics from your summer family reunion.

How is this any different from Facebook’s list feature? Very very different. First, there’s ease of use. Google Circles is simple drag and drop. As soon as you get set up, you start creating your circles and simply sort your contacts into their respective groups. Second, there’s the segmentation of viewing content from these groups. So you’re not getting professional news and marketing tips alongside updates from your family members.

It’s easy to get fatigued by social media and resist the urge to jump on the next big thing that ends up being nothing at all (remember Google Wave?). But Google Plus really shows promise to be the best social web tool of all – especially for those of us who’ve found our personal and professional lives blending, finding it hard to keep up with all the content we want to keep up with due to this very blending.

Reach out and get your invite and start test-driving Google Plus today!

Thursday Thoughts: Bob Parsons’ 16 Rules for Success in Business and Life

By Gino Blefari | July 7th, 2011 0 Comments

Bob Parsons, founder and CEO of GoDaddy.com, the largest accredited domain registrar in the world, sold his company for $2.25 billion this last week on July 1. Parsons credits his success in leadership, business and life in general to 16 rules he developed and lives by every day. The rules cover everything from specific advice for problem solving and decision making to more general lessons about the way the world works. I want to share Parsons’ rules here:

Get and stay out of your comfort zone. Nothing significant happens when we’re in our comfort zones.
Never give up. Almost nothing works the first time it’s attempted. Just because what you’re doing isn’t working, doesn’t mean it won’t work. It just means that it might not work the way you’re doing it. If it were easy, everyone would be doing it, and you wouldn’t have an opportunity.
When you’re ready to quit, you’re closer than you think. There’s an old Chinese saying that goes like this: “The temptation to quit will be greatest just before you are about to succeed.”
Accept the worst thing that could happen and make it a point to quantify what the worst thing could be. Very seldom will the worst consequence be anywhere near as bad as a cloud of “undefined consequences.” Parsons says his father used to tell him when he was struggling to get his technology company going, “Well Robert, if it doesn’t work, they can’t eat you.”
Focus on what you want to happen. Remember that old saying, “As you think, so shall you be.”
Take things a day at a time. No matter how difficult your situation is you can get through it by focusing on the present and not looking too far into the future. You can get through anything one day at a time.
Always move forward. Never stop investing. Never stop improving. Never stop trying new things. The moment you stop improving your organization, it starts to die. Make it your goal to be better every day in some small way. Remember the Japanese concept of Kaizen: Small daily improvements eventually result in huge advantages.
Be quick to decide. Remember what General George S. Patton said: “A good plan violently executed today is far and away better than a perfect plan tomorrow.”
Measure everything of significance. Anything that is measured and watched, improves.
Anything that is not managed will deteriorate. If you want to uncover problems you don’t know about, take a few moments and look closely at the areas you haven’t examined for awhile. You’re guaranteed to find problems there.
Pay attention to your competitors, but pay more attention to what you’re doing. When you look at your competitors, remember that everything looks perfect from a distance. Even the planet Earth looks like a peaceful place from far enough way.
Never let anybody push you around. In our society, you have just as much right to what you’re doing as anyone else, provided that what you’re doing is legal.
Never expect life to be fair. Life isn’t fair. You make your own breaks.
Solve your own problems. You’ll find that by coming up with your own solutions, you’ll develop a competitive edge. Masura Ibuka, the co-founder of SONY, said it best: “You never succeed in technology, business, or anything by following the others.” There’s also an old Asian saying: “A wise man keeps his own counsel.”
Don’t take yourself too seriously. Lighten up. Often, at least half of what we accomplish is due to luck. None of us are in control as much as we like to think we are.
There’s always a reason to smile. Find it. After all, we’re really lucky just to be alive. Life is short. Parsons says his little brother always reminds him, “We’re not here for a long time, we’re here for a good time!”

The biggest leadership takeaway for me from Parsons’ 16 rules is Rule #7: Always move forward. By focusing on small daily improvements, you’ll eventually see huge advantages. This is doable, positive and a great leadership philosophy. Now get out there and do it.

Posts Tagged ‘Intero Real Estate’

Thoughts on Leadership: What’s the Most Critical Quality of Today’s Leader? Creativity

Thoughts on Leadership: The Importance of Planning Ahead

Thoughts on Leadership: Billy Beane’s Leadership Lessons

Thoughts on Leadership: Passion, Martin Luther King Jr., and Leadership Success

Cool Apps: Never Miss a Crucial Follow-Up with FollowUp.cc

Thoughts on Leadership: Why Apple Inspires People

Thoughts on Leadership: Learning to Ask the Right Questions

Thursday Thoughts: Bob Parsons’ 16 Rules for Success in Business and Life

Gino on success

Recent Posts

Comments

Search by keyword

View posts by subject

Monday Morning Mojo

Intero Cool Apps

Archives