(They're green for St Paddy's Day)
I like full circles. Here’s a good one with an added twist on the end.
First There Were Bullpens
Agents would come and work in their real estate broker’s branch office. Why? Partly because they had to in order to gain access to listing information, office equipment, and/or to meet clients. Some of the benefits of having to come into the office were camaraderie, energy, and from what I hear a sense of community.
Insert Technological Advancements
Affordable technology changed the game. Agents starting buying copy and fax machines, computers, and scanners for their home offices. Realtor essentials started flocking to the internet – most notable, the MLS. (I still hear campfire stories about MLS books.) Add on cellphone technology and company intranets and now you have eliminated the *need for agents to come into the office. With many individual offices comes much less camaraderie, energy, and from what I hear a smaller sense of community.
Online Networks
Twitter and facebook emerge and help identify that even though people may work on the road or out of their home office, they still like to connect with others in their industry. Ideas are shared, good practices are shared and there becomes a renewed sense of camaraderie, energy, and community – primarily based on interacting online. The difference with these online communities is that there are no lines in the sand based on what company you are with, or whether you’re a lender or title rep, etc. Everyone starts sharing with everyone. These connections turn into face-to-face gatherings like barcamps, tweet-ups, and the sort. Some are work related, some are purely social.
#RETT
A group of forward thinking real estate industry folk (Dean Ouellette, Nick Bastian, Jay Thompson, Justin Mchood, Shane Hollenback, Bill Risser) take the face-to-face work meetings to the next level. In addition to regularly communicating via the internet, they decide to also meet face-to-face in order to share ideas/work together on a more regular basis. (They call it Real Estate Tech Tank – aka #RETT.) It’s similar to the open collaboration of ideas that are being shared in the online communities, only now it’s face-to-face. One person’s comment about #RETT was something like “it sounds like the bullpens have made a come back”. I kind of agree…
The Twist
The “bullpens” being used for #RETT are open to everyone, not just members of a particular company. That is a huge twist. Now product sales guys, lenders, title reps, Thompson’s Realty agents, Realty Executives agents, and John Hall & Associates agents can all sit around a table working on their individual tasks or listening to a presentation together. Camaraderie, energy, and sense of community are back in the face-to-face world!
There are other #RETT locations popping up around Arizona. It appears to me, people like working around others in work environments. There is now a #RETTphx at the Phoenix Association of REALTORS® and a #RETTredrocks in Sedona.
My Comments
It forces me ask myself, is it time to open the John Hall & Associates real estate offices to all? Would it be better to have open office work environments where all are welcome regardless of what you do or what company you are with? I guess if it started to get *crazy* it could cause the the elimination of the twist and offices would go back to being company specific? But then maybe there would be a renewed sense of camaraderie, energy, and sense of community? Maybe I’m barking up the wrong tree at a 100% brokerage.
I’m definitely looking for feedback on this one, what do you think?
(If you don’t want to post publically, feel free to email me – psexton at johnhall dot com)
Wow! You hit a sore spot w/me on this one Phil. I really miss the camaraderie, exchange of ideas and just plain fun that came with being in the office. When you work at home you do not get that – sure it’s convenient to sit around in your P.J.’s at your computer, on the phone, but there is a downside too. There is no “mixing it up”, change of scenery and pretty soon you begin to behave like a hermit! I say YES! An enthusiastic YES bring it on!! I love the idea and I KNOW everyone that would love the ensuing energy and sense of community that comes with!! Yay IMD – right on!
There’s an obvious need for a brokerage 3.0 model. You’re definitely on the right track with something here. Larry Kendall has laid out basic truths that we’ve gone from the bullpen-broker-centric model to the Executive/ReMax-agent-centric model to an era that is now mature and consumer-driven. So I love the ideas of agents engaging and cooperating more and increasing both their skill and best-practices. That serves the consumer-centric model within which we now operate. How do you build “brokerage” around that? The key thing here is that the strategic end has flipped. The bullpen served the needs of the broker. Brokerage 3.0 serves the needs of the consumer. #RETT definitely does the latter.
I’ve gone to a few open classes at Keller Williams, not just the 46.10 group – there were agents from other outside companies – while is was a class it was an interactive class with all agents exchanging ideas. Not sure it was a RETT but I think it would be good idea for JHA to do the same.
Great topic. To begin with, we should all do an effort to attend productive and efficient office meetings to build-up our internal family and the sense of belonging and fraternity. As well, it would be nice to create other sub-groups by market category so we can exchange intelligence and knowledge with like-minded colleagues.
About the open office idea – that sort of open office arrangement already exists informally among certain agents in some loose form and I don’t see why we cannot extend it to the industry within parameters. I must admit that I have an informal arrangement with some other agencies using their offices when I’m stuck in some parts of town – because I have known some of the agents and the brokers for years I have earned privileges with some – but we could have more formal reciprocal arrangements.
On this very subject matter, Realty Executives invites me to all their training, some meetings and renewal classes at no charge, and I have attended a few of them when the subject matter is appropriate. They have adopted an open door policy to all agents. Perhaps for self-serving reasons, but it does not matter.
However, here’s an extended idea – promoting the use of our offices to out-of-state agents, national or international. I’ve been in a situation before travelling out-of-state and had an ‘real estate’ emergency. This other real estate office extended to me all their professional courtesies. Perhaps we should consider reciprocity.
To be brutally honest….I really miss the camaraderie experienced at the Point office. It felt like family. I still feel like a stranger and newcomer at my current office, so I’m only there for meetings. It would be great to feel part of a “team” and feel comfortable enough to share information with and ask questions of some of those more knowledgeable and experienced in certain aspects of our business and this ever-changing market. I have connected with a couple of agents but it seems to be the exception. I agree, “the idea of agents engaging and cooperating more (with eachother) and increasing both their skill and best-practices” and sharing experiences of what has worked and what has not, would promote a greater sense of team. In the long run, what profits one profits all.
Oh, the question was should the John Hall and Associates offices be opened up to other agents, I think yes, it would further open up communication with our peers in other brokerages.
Deidre and I have been throwing around this idea for quite some time. This is something that short sale agents at Keller Williams have been doing for a while and it has been met with great success. Let’s go for it! D and I work like this all the time, I love her dearly, but we definitely need some new faces and ideas. LOL
Phil, I imagine there are a certain number or Realtors that are socially oriented and then some others that aren’t…making an environment like this available might be great for the people in the company that would benefit from something like that. It won’t affect the others anyway because we don’t really hang out there or seek out the camaraderie. I don’t see how you could screw up by trying it, except it might just die away but at least you would have given it a shot.
If I wasn’t retiring, I’d still probably not be involved but it’s nice for those folks that might benefit or like it…good for you. t
Totally cool concept! Would be very interesting to see how it took off. I think the open area configuration in the PV office might need to be changed a bit to make it more conducive to sharing.
I’ll be at #RETT this afternoon for a meeting and some collaborating. I’m thrilled that the space and people are there. For the type of tech help I need today, having several people toss around ideas and possible solutions will be so helpful.
I like the idea of the office open to all Realtors.
[...] Facebook and Superlative Open Office Meetings [...]
Phil,
Thanks so much for all you do. I really enjoyed our conversations the other day at the very first RETT at the Phoenix Association.
I have made some really great friends through communicating and sharing ideas online and in person. You, Dru, Patrick, Russ and others at John Hall are helping many people in our industry.
I look forward to watching and participating in the progression of RETT…
See ya’ around, my friend.
Thank you everyone for your comments. I’m reading them. Marge and Jim are reading them. I really like this conversation.
Deidre, Victoria, Lola, Tom, Jayann, et al, thanks for the support, I’m pretty sure we’re headed in that direction. Now I just have to figure out what questions we should be ready for. Or how to “roll it out”. Do we just flip a switch, or do we plan events? I’m planning a couple of tech sessions at the PV office, but I’m not convinced that’s the best way to get this going. If anyone wants to set group work dates/times at their offices please do. I’ll be happy to post about them on the blog, and the intranet calendar. Maybe we should create an intranet discussion forum for each office. Or even allow agents to post events to the calendar. Maybe it’s time to make some of the intranet tools public, and allow guest registration?
Richard, we love the idea of welcoming out of town REALTORS®. Awesome idea!
Benjamin, thank you for your comments. Calling it a brokerage 3.0 model makes me question things other than just opening the offices. What about having guest registrations on the intranet too? It makes me ask myself, would opening our offices and intranet to everyone deplete the value of being w/ John Hall & Associates or vice versa?
Elise, I like your comment because you give a specific example of non-technology groups that could gather and share. It’s one of the reasons I’m reluctant to calling it John Hall RETT, I don’t want to mislead agents with the acronym. (Real Estate Technology Tank)
Dru, I really like the idea of rearranging the bullpens. Arrowhead is best set up because a lot of their desks face each other. At Tempe, PV, and Scottsdale it’s like sitting on a bus, you’re staring at the back of the head of the person in front of you. The desks closest to the golf course at PV would all push together nicely!
Nick, I enjoy talking with you too. I’m a fan of thinking out loud. (obviously – with a post like this
I’m stoked the OG RETT started live streaming their sessions over the internet. It’s cool groups can gather to watch/listen the structured sessions. I can see agents gathering at the John Hall offices to all watch together. Much appreciate you and the others mentioned in the post for opening this door.
Re-arranging the bull-pens at the Scottsdale and PV offices is a thumbs up for me! Configurations of four to six desks perhaps. Would also make the offices look more comtemporary as well. Maybe add a few desk lamps.
Intranet. Intranet forums – definitely. But guest registrations and opening it up to other agents (or pubic) I disagree. That’s an internal resource and tool for the JH associates – I would keep this exclusive.