Recipe for failure: Doing the same thing that you’ve always done

September 28, 2010 | Dan Rafter | Print Article | Email this Article

Dave Petersen

The working world today is one of change. You can’t succeed if you don’t adapt to changing technology or business models. Commercial real estate is no exception.

Dave Petersen, chief operating officer of the property management division of Chicago’s NAI Hiffman, mentioned this to me earlier this week. We were talking about the recession and its slow recovery, of course. We were talking, too, about how important it is to keep clients happy in these rough economic times.

Petersen pointed to the ever-increasing speed of business. If he gets an e-mail from a client, that client expects an answer in minutes. It doesn’t matter if Petersen has to do some intensive research to find that answer: Anything longer than 30 minutes? That’s too long.

Petersen wasn’t complaining. He was stating a fact.

“If you are sitting around and saying that this is the way we have always done it, you are doomed to fail in this business,” Petersen said. “It’s a constant changing of how we are doing things. Today, it’s all about speed and communication.”

Tags | Chicago, Illinois, NAI Hiffman, Technology

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