THE TWO D’S IN YOUR ORGANIZATION

Time out. Before we leave our discussion of your Organizational Model, we need to address systems and tools. We’ve put forth the idea that when you hire the right people, they will develop and implement your systems and tools. That is exactly right, and it’s why we’ve dedicated the bulk of our analysis of leverage to the people aspect. But we need to realize that while the third L—Leverage—begins with people, it also includes these other two important aspects. Systems and tools bring leverage to your staff, and they bring more D to your business.

Let’s take a moment and explore the concept of bringing D to your organization. All truly successful businesses are successful because they get things done. The best businesses get things done by bringing two D’s into the business. The concept of D comes from the popular DISC behavioral profiling tool used by many organizations during the hiring process. In that system, D loosely stands for the “drive” we associate with doers. In other words, “D gets things done.” It is sometimes referred to as Leadership D. On the opposite end of the spectrum is another kind of D that I’ve identified over the years. It’s the D of the business itself, which is about the “drive” created by infrastructure—powerful systems and tools. This is called Business D. In a business organization, unless you address it, the two tend to exist in inverse proportion to each other. The more Leadership D there is, the less emphasis is put on developing Business D and visa versa. Leadership D and Business D.

Having them both in your business is the key to building a truly great business. Most real estate agents power their sales business by their Leadership D and heavily favor leveraging their growth on their personal drive. This is the classic model we see every day in the real estate industry, where the agent provides the lion’s share of the D. On the other side of the spectrum are mature businesses, which base their success on the quality and effectiveness of their infrastructure, systems, and tools. This brings to mind massive systems-based companies like FedEx, which have exceptional leaders like Fred Smith but which also have amazing Business D. The Business D derived from systems and tools that are so effective that the company could essentially fly on autopilot for a long while without the leader’s everyday influence. Their business model demands that their systems be that powerful and self-sufficient.

Such a balance of Business D and Leadership D is hard to find, but when present, the agent has the best of both worlds: Strong momentum from their Business D, powerful drive from their Leadership D. In our industry, the main challenge for real estate agents is bringing Business D to the organization. Many high-achieving agents have difficulty making this happen and aren’t comfortable depending on systems and tools to move their business forward. The truth of the matter is, to reach your highest level of success, you will have to incorporate a certain amount of Business D in your organization or it will always be 100 percent dependent on you. Your Organizational Model is the key to adding Business D to your company. The right people will discover and implement the right systems and tools, while bringing some Leadership D of their own.