Notorious R.O.B.

Achilles Slays Hector, Peter Paul Rubens, 1630-1635

So Gahlord Dewald, seriously one of the big brains in the real estate industry, puts up a thought-provoking post on strategy. It’s worth reading in full. But I got obsessed with his definition of strategy, especially since I just wrote a post on strategy. Funny how things seem to come in bunches. Anyhow, Gahlord on Strategy:

Strategy

The art and science of maintaining and deploying resources in order to have the freedom and flexibility to continue operations.

There are a few things to unpack in this definition of strategy and since I’ve come this far I may as well unpack them.

• Strategy is an art because it involves personal choices.
• Strategy is a science because there are often visible and repeatable results.
• Maintaining resources is about conservation and growing.
• Deploying resources is about spending and taking action.
• Freedom is your ability to execute your plans at will.
• Flexibility is your ability to respond, react and pivot when required.
• Winning means to continue operations.

So that’s the root theory of strategy that I follow, as much as a bullet list will allow anyway. For the purpose of our “Large Business vs Small Business and the use of Social” conversation, the most important part is what I see as “winning.” It’s merely the ability to continue to operate.

It’s a really nice formulation. I posted a response on his blog in which I reveal that my definition of winning involves not just continuing operations, but getting the other guy to cease operations. It’s a far more martial, more violent, less peaceful view of the term, I guess.

So how might the above be modified if you believe, as I do, that strategy cannot be divorced from conflict. In business, we call that conflict “competition”.

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Dick Lebeau, Steelers Defensive Coordinator

I spoke recently with a friend of mine about the nature of strategy. Actually, it was about football, but somehow led into strategy, and I thought it was interesting enough to share.

Most people use the word “strategy” incorrectly. They think any sort of plan means “strategy”. As in, “What’s our strategy for increasing leads from the website?” Or, “What is your strategy for getting better reporting from the accounting system?”

I think of strategy as something far more fundamental: it’s the general philosophy of how you win. It turns out, there are only two kinds of strategies: doing the unexpected, and better execution. Everything else is detail.

And y’know, I think at least in real estate industry, most people have very little idea of how they plan to win.

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Just in case you’re only reading Notorious through email, and haven’t updated your subscriptions after I’ve changed some of the editorial approach… I’ve been writing quite a bit on real estate related issues over at the 7DS blog, and AOL Real Estate. You might want to check at least a couple of those out.

On 7DS:

• Little More on NAR 800K
• On Syndication: Is A MLS A Data Repository, or An Exchange?
• Updating the Renter Nation Prediction
• Bank of America Sets Up a New Division: Hopeful Signs

And over at AOL:

• Realtor Fees Play Role in Home Prices
• Our Homeownership Society: Is It Coming to an End?
• Farewell Fannie and Freddie, Hello Renter Nation

Just figured you might want to know. Because y’know, it’d be a sin to miss any of my brilliant thoughts. Or even the plainly dumb ones.

-rsh

I don’t often do book reviews on Notorious, although I do read quite a few of them, but when the author is a man I respect, a good friend in bad times, and an all around great guy, and his publisher sends me a review copy… well, the least I could do is give my impressions of the book.

The book, of course, is Surviving Your Serengeti: 7 Skills to Master Business and Life by Stefan Swanepoel. I read the thing in one night, because… well, that’s just how I roll, baby.

No, seriously, the book is written for the mass audience. It’s an easy read that blends storytelling with travel writing with solid business advice. Large chunks of it read like a novel, because… well, it’s sort of written like a novel, and you find yourself just turning one page, then another, then the next.

Longtime readers of Notorious know that I’m nothing if not honest — some might say “brutally honest”. There will be no exceptions just because I admire the heck out of Stefan. Read on for my impressions.

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This blog NOT written for this audience.

Once in a while, the Internet has gems in it that I find absolutely amazing, and tonight, I found one of them: online readability tests. I hadn’t ever given the topic much thought, since I write for my pleasure not yours, but it does appear that this blog is written for an older, more educated audience.

For the record, I’ve analyzed this post (which was the #1 most popular post in the last year) using this tool and got the following results:

Number of characters (without spaces) :	 7,939.00
Number of words :	 1,667.00
Number of sentences :	 104.00
Average number of characters per word :	 4.76
Average number of syllables per word :	 1.58
Average number of words per sentence:	 16.03

Indication of the number of years of formal education that a person requires in order to easily
understand the text on the first reading
Gunning Fog index :	 11.23

Approximate representation of the U.S. grade level needed to comprehend the text :
Coleman Liau index :	 10.38
Flesh Kincaid Grade level :	 9.26
ARI (Automated Readability Index) :	 9.02
SMOG :	 11.49

Flesch Reading Ease :	 57.20

It appears that you need an 11th grade education to understand what the hell I’m talking about on the first try, according to the Gunning Fog Index. Thankfully, my Flesh Reading Ease score is pretty good at 57.20 suggesting that it’s not really that hard.

We’ll get into what some of this stuff means, but here’s why I think it’s interesting, particularly for some of my readers. If you blog, and unlike me, you’re not doing it just for fun and pleasure but to connect and communicate with some sort of an audience… you probably should care how readable your blog is. If you want a wide distribution, but write at a 11th grade level, chances are, a lot of people are just going to find what you’re saying incomprehensible.

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The Birthplace of REFooCamp

A while ago, I wrote that it was time to reinvent the REBarCamp and that I would do more than just kvetch about it. Yesterday, we had a very small, very intimate gathering of likeminded and curious folks at the GoodLife Team‘s offices in Austin, TX. (Thanks so much, once again, Garry and Kristina Wise!) It wasn’t widely advertised on purpose, as I wanted to see how the format would work, whether we’d generate anything useful out of it, and yet, people came and joined in for as long as they could. Given the on-purpose lack of advance notice, I’m extremely happy that we got to test out the concept.

I can speak only for myself when I say that I thought the format worked beautifully for what I intended, and that I hope to do a more formal, more advance-notice, REFooCamp soon. Perhaps in Atlanta next? These are just a few of my observations.

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I posted about this change last year, but I think it bears repeating once again. I’ve made some editorial changes to convert Notorious into much more of my personal site, and do more of my industry-related writing on my company blog. So those of you who are subscribed to Notorious via email or RSS might want to change that over to 7DS.

Thanks!

-rsh

Inspired in turn by Jillayne Schlicke’s list of Top Five New Wave Songs, it got me really thinking what my top five would be. It’s a really hard thing to cut down all the universe of great songs to five. That, I suppose, is the whole point. But here goes, in reverse order.

#5 – The Killing Moon, Echo & The Bunnymen

Quite simply, this song is poetry set to some of the most imaginative music of the New Wave era.

In starlit nights I saw you
So cruelly you kissed me
Your lips a magic world
Your sky all hung with jewels
The killing moon
Will come too soon

While I don’t put Echo into the top five, or even the top ten, of the top groups/bands of the New Wave era, this song is an absolute masterpiece.

#4 – It’s A Sin, Pet Shop Boys

Pet Shop Boys, to me, always symbolized the artifice of the 80′s — the cool, detached, ironic attitude that also celebrated money, wealth, fashion. I think Paninaro by PSB could be seen as a snapshot of the culture of the times. But in this song, said to be inspired by Neil Tennant’s struggle with homosexuality and his father, there is a passion that seeps through their detached hipster attitude. And yet, the emotional lyrics are laid on top of a rich, gorgeous orchestration of techno sound that is a hallmark of both the Pet Shop Boys and the New Wave movement.

#3 – The Promise, When In Rome

This was the toughest choice. When In Rome was a one-hit wonder who created one absolutely phenomenal love song and faded away. But what a song it is! The entire decade, the entire musical movement that is New Wave, is filled with songs of heartbreak and longing and wanting… except this one. This is the one true, pure love song of the decade. It’s filled with an innocence long since lost in pop music, a tenderness laid over a core of strength in those words, “I’ll be there.”  This is the song that women want their men to sing to her even if in silence, and the one that makes men want to find a woman who would deserve these words, this music, these feelings. Which leads us to…

#2 – Somebody, Depeche Mode

If The Promise is the one real love song of the New Wave era, then this song represents the deepest hopes of an entire generation for what they wanted in their mate. Although the song is written from a male voice, since Martin Gore is a man, there’s nothing particuarly “masculine” about the song, and one can easily imagine a woman singing this to herself. The lyrics are worth reproducing in full:

I want somebody to share
Share the rest of my life
Share my innermost thoughts
Know my intimate details
Someone who’ll stand by my side
And give me support
And in return
She’ll get my support
She will listen to me
When I want to speak
About the world we live in
And life in general
Though my views may be wrong
They may even be perverted
She’ll hear me out
And won’t easily be converted
To my way of thinking
In fact she’ll often disagree
But at the end of it all
She will understand me
And I….

I want somebody who cares
For me passionately
With every thought
With every breath
Someone who’ll help me see things
In a different light
All the things I detest
I will almost like
I don’t want to be tied
To anyone’s strings
I’m carefully trying to steer clear of
Those things
But when I’m asleep
I want somebody
Who will put their arms around me
And kiss me tenderly
Though things like this
Make me sick
In a case like this
I’ll get away with it
And in a place like this
I’ll get away with it
Ahhhh…….

The last six lines, of course, transforms what could have been just a over-the-top sappy song into something else: a deeply self-aware love poem that recognizes at once the futility of the search and yet, is willing to try and transcend the deep cynicism of the age. It’s an astonishing turn. The phrase about not wanting to be tied to anyone’s strings, and yet wanting somebody who will put their arms around me tenderly is heartbreak, past and future, of a generation that grew up truly knowing divorce as a widespread phenomenon wrapped in strains of the piano.

I think when the world has forgotten about the rest of the New Wave movement, it may remember this song for the aching beauty of its hopeful cynicism.

#1 – Bizarre Love Triangle, New Order

Personally, this was never in doubt. I have called this song the Asian-American National Anthem; if you’ve gone to college in the 90′s or to Asian club scene in the 90′s, you know this to be true. Literally every single dance I have been to from about 1988 to 1995 featured this song, at least once, and often more than once as the DJ saw the crowd rush the dance floor whenever the instantly recognizable synth horns whoosh in. And no matter what part of the country someone was from, if he or she was Asian-American, this song would be in his or her top ten favorites.

I have no idea why we all responded to this song, but I know every word of this song, have made up dance routines to go with the lyrics, and even twenty years later, if this song comes on at a club, I’ll have a hard time staying in my seat. This will be the #1 wedding party song in about 20 years’ time when all of our kids start to get married, and the Gen-Xers will want to get our fat old rears in gear.

Every time I see you falling
I get down on my knees and pray
I’m waiting for that final moment
You say the words that I can’t say

For someone lacking that particularly cultural milieu and particular set of experiences, I can understand how this may not make his/her top five. But for me, there are literally volumes of memories tied to this one song. It must be #1, by a country mile.

Notable Songs that Missed the Cut

There are just too many to list. Just off the top of my head, Forever Young by Alphaville, Only You by Yaz, More You Ignore Me, Closer I Get by Morrissey, Tainted Love by Soft Cell, Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now by The Smiths, Just Like Heaven by The Cure, True by Spandau Ballet, and the list goes on and on and on.

That’s my list. If you’re a child of the 80′s and a fan of New Wave, what’s your Top Five? It’s a lot harder than you think, because of the songs you have to leave off the list.

-rsh

It's high time we brought back these classes...

Apparently, some legislators in South Dakota are pulling a political stunt by introducing a bill to require that all adults buy a gun upon turning 21. I say it’s a political stunt because the whole point of the exercise apparently is to say that Obamacare is unconstitutional, just like a an individual mandate to buy a gun would be:

Rep. Hal Wick, R-Sioux Falls, is sponsoring the bill and knows it will be killed. But he said he is introducing it to prove a point that the federal health care reform mandate passed last year is unconstitutional.

“Do I or the other cosponsors believe that the State of South Dakota can require citizens to buy firearms? Of course not. But at the same time, we do not believe the federal government can order every citizen to buy health insurance,” he said.

Well, what I find really disturbing about this is that a frikkin’ state legislator is so ignorant of the Constitution that he can make statements like this. We need to bring back civics education and do some sort of teaching on basic, fundamental constitutional law. Our nation is starting to suffer because of the low level of knowledge and education on the part of the citizenry on the most fundamental document that governs our political lives: the U.S. Constitution.

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