Creating a Purpose Driven Organization

I recently had the privilege of speaking to a group of Relocation Directors from all over the country. But what was unique is that there were also many Coordinators in the room. At most conferences, we don’t have the opportunity to meet the hard-working people face to face that facilitate the referrals on a day-to-day basis. They stay behind to keep things moving along.

I loved looking out and seeing so many young eager faces. They were excited to learn and their minds were open to new things. I had many of them come up to me afterward and say that I gave them some great ideas and they took a lot of notes. But what happens next?

With budget constraints and heavy caseloads, will they just go back to the office and get right back into the grind? And those ideas will collect dust on the corner of their desk and reside in the back of their mind? As an industry, we must do a much better job of upskilling and engaging the staff in goals and growth strategies. They will ultimately help us evolve to determine the purpose we serve as the industry changes.

They need skin in the game

People support what they help create. So when you are thinking about the direction of your department and wondering how you might evolve your business model, I encourage you to engage with everyone that works with you, maybe even people in other departments like marketing. Share your goals, challenges, budget, and reports with your staff. Help them understand the fundamental industry changes and what they may mean for the future. They should feel like they are a part of the process and outcome for good or bad. If you believe in them, they will have the confidence to believe in themselves. Making them feel a part of something will help with retention and give them a vested interest in every decision they make. That is why I like to incentivize employees based on various performance elements. When they have skin in the game, they are more likely to think strategically and have a vested interest in success. Purpose drives profit. Or as Simon Sinek says, “Profit isn’t a purpose, it’s a result. To have purpose means the things we do have real value to others.”

Lose the baggage

People newer to the industry don’t have baggage. They aren’t inclined to give you the ‘but that’s not how we do things’ response. They are untethered to the past and that is what makes them the perfect people to engage with for new ideas and problem-solving. The thing they are missing is a point of reference. That is what you are there for. Your experience is something to draw from, not get in the way of moving forward with new ideas.

Whether you call it baggage or experience, it is how you use the information that you have gained along the way. Emotional baggage holds you back and can impede your desire to grow and try new things. Baggage breeds complacency. Drawing from experience, on the other hand, gives you nuggets of knowledge from good and bad situations that you can reshape to apply to new situations or challenges. When we have very specific ingrained beliefs, it can be a great inhibitor of performance.

Wringing your hands never solved anything

You may be wringing your hands about how your RMC, corporate, or broker-to-broker business is down. We tend to focus on our historical data or what our competition is doing way too much. Instead, we must focus on what we can do better or differently. How can we increase conversion rates and generate new sources of business? What do our end users need right now? How can we evolve the purpose of our organization? Stepping outside of your comfort zone will likely mean more work and it may also mean failing at some things along the way. But you can just chalk it up as another tool in your experience tool belt that will help you guide those new to the business into the future.

“Experience is simply the name we give our mistakes.” ~ Oscar Wilde, Irish poet, and playwright