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”.
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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There is an interesting little dichotomy in the results of the survey that Inman ran recently, and published as a Special Report: “To Be A Broker: Charting a Course for Recovery“. It’ll cost ya some money, unless you’re an Inman Premium subscriber, but I think Inman did a great job here in putting the information together. If you care about the industry, brokerage models, and the like, you’re going to want to check out this report. So go buy one, or subscribe. (Disclosure: I am a columnist for Inman.com… so uh, if you subscribe and such, I think I benefit through that. Plus, you can see my archives on Inman.com, which might be entertaining later.)
My first thought upon reading the Report was that the sample might be skewed — after all, presumably Inman contacted brokers in its database of subscriber or some such. They have to be among the tech elites, these brokers, to be subscribers of Inman. Then my second thought was, that real estate brokers, more than perhaps any other group of business owners in America, need a remedial class on business strategy. My third thought was, hey, this might be a good blogpost!
Said blogpost follows.
I'm not a Realtyman, I'm a Realty, Man!
So earlier tonight, I asked a simple question on Twitter:
Question: How many of you Realtors have a business plan? How many years does it cover?
The answers I got were somewhat amazing. The replies ranged from “I have a 1-year, 3-year, and 5-year business plans” to “Business plans are too complicated”. What an amazing variance!
So I ask a follow-up question:
so for those who said they don’t have a business plan, or a bizplan that is defunct, how do you know you’re successful at any given time?
The answers were as follows:
Such interesting responses there as well!
Realtors, it appears, have inverted the classic Jay-Z line, “I’m not a businessman, I’m a business, man!” A realtor is not a business, man, he’s a businessman.
This… has consequences.
