The Value of Character – Knowing Who You Are

       I am not, to be sure, a fan of corporate team building exercises – at least forced team building exercises.  Groups of individuals come together to accomplish joint ventures in two basic scenarios: long term endeavors and short-term undertakings.  When dealing with a short-term undertaking there really isn’t any time to develop a cohesive team effort or point of view. The endeavor will only be successful if the organization has put together competent and qualified individuals who can quickly come together and achieve a short-term goal. There simply is not the required time needed to allow for this group of individuals to come together as a single entity. Long term endeavors, by contrast, would last the required duration of time to allow for this but I find that the forced interactions common during typical team building exercises pale in comparison to a group which is slowly brought together over time and comprised of highly competent individuals who naturally gravitate toward each other professionally, intellectually, and perhaps even socially.

        It is not possible to force or coerce someone into liking someone else. Professionals are certainly able to put aside their own personalities and differences for a short period of time to work together in order to accomplish a task but that hardly qualifies as the definition of a team.  You cannot force mutual respect, friendships, or the development of goodwill. These are things which typically occur naturally over time. There is no known algorithm yet written which will identify individuals clearly suited to come together to form a high functioning team (case in point, the New York Yankees).  There is no shortage of evidence throughout history of highly competent, intelligent, and motivated individuals coming together and failing to accomplish their stated aims. Team building is, regardless of tremendous efforts to homogenize the process, one of the hardest and most elusive goals an organization can set for itself.

       I am fortunate to work with a group of individuals that would be very difficult to replace.  I have worked with a friend and partner for over eighteen years.  He taught me most of what I know about land acquisition.  I have been working with my two primary managers since August of 2010.  Most of the project managers who run our group’s projects have been with the company for almost ten years and with me for almost five years.  Together we developed the protocols and procedures that have been used effectively and profitably on over four hundred projects in the last five years.  Over a period of time that long we have faced both adversity and success.  Outside of work we have supported each other through births, deaths, and sicknesses.  We have watched the various industries we serve suffer periods of uncertainty and layoffs and watched them reach dizzying new highs.  We held on as Washington, D.C. played musical chairs and then did so again.  Together we watched COVID shut the world down.  Over that time, we have grown together not just as colleagues but as friends as well.  Text messages fly on holidays, birthdays, and whenever someone suffers new lows or reaches new highs. 

         No team building program could have built this group of individuals.  This came together organically over the years as like-minded individuals found a way to come together and provide a tremendous service.  Not every individual who cycled through this group remained with it.   Some fully qualified individuals just did not mesh well with the rest of the group, and they eventually moved on.  Suffice it to say that over the years this talented group of individuals came together and forged an industry-leading team capable of accomplishing just about anything a client could ask for in the land acquisition business. 

        So why did I lay all of this out?  While I am always happy to expound on the merits and achievements of the people I work with, I am instead newly cognizant of the reality that it is a delicate balance of many factors that allows a group of people like this stay together and function effectively. When that balance point is exceeded and there is no clear horizon as to when normality will return, it does not take all that long before the effectiveness of that team is upended.  We recently worked with a client whose approach and methods were in sharp contrast to our own.  Over the course of a six-month project this group was tested and confronted in ways unlike anything they had faced in the five years previous.  Over that period of time cracks began to show in our procedures and protocols.  Our normal and expected levels of success, always tracked and quantified internally, began to drop.  Frustration grew on the part of both the client and our group as we could not find a way to work together effectively.  

        In the end, with a sad tinge of inevitability, we and the client decided to go our separate ways without having accomplished what we set out to do half a year earlier.  Notice that I am not making a value judgment as to which approach was right, and which was wrong.  I do not believe either side was wrong, per se.  Separate groups can have different operating styles and approaches and yet still both be valid.

        While neither approach was right or wrong in the abstract it became clear that their chosen approach was wrong for us.  It became clearly evident that we were not generating our normal and expected rates of success at any of several check points throughout the project life cycle.  The managers and employees were working just as hard as always and the dedication and desire were present, but the results were somewhere between lagging and entirely absent.  In the end, after much contemplation and consideration, I came to the conclusion that the basic, fundamental approaches employed by each group were so divergent that they could not be made to coexist.  Sometimes, at a core level, some machinery and philosophies cannot be made compatible with each other. 

         We never forget who we are working for.  We know that it is our client that is paying the bills and affording us the opportunity to do what we do best.  Normally we can adapt our methods to respect this understanding but, in this instance, there was too wide of a gap to close the distance. This was a large acquisition campaign with many potential sites to be acquired. The client approached this in a purely mathematical sense, wanting to move quickly and rigorously through the massive number of possibilities. They kept tracking spreadsheets based on theoretical assumptions as to what success might look like. I cannot fault this approach. Most things in life (and certainly in business) can be reduced to numerical review and understanding.  And I will give them credit for having modeled this outreach effort and then wishing to stick with their theory.  

       Their model did not consider that independent landowners, the vast majority of whom had not sought this attention, cannot be made to adhere to any schedule but their own.  Their model, therefore, did not account for the time necessary to select out the landowners most likely to participate in a successful acquisition and develop some sort of working relationship with them. For our part, again, while we always remember who we are working for, we also understand that in many ways we must become a representative and advocate for the landowner in the process. We have found that this is the most effective method with which to bring the two parties together and ensure a successful acquisition. As we progressed into the project there was increasing friction as we would constantly ask for additional time to select out the appropriate landowners from the large potential pool of potential landowners and then maneuver them into a position from which they were willing to negotiate. Increasingly our suggestions we’re met with at first polite rebuttal but then increasing frustration. We were constantly reminded of the importance of the timetable and urged to keep track of and adhere to the phased progress points. Over time, not wishing to constantly argue, I found my managers becoming less forthcoming with suggestions regardless of the validity of those suggestions. They would go along to get along.  By the end of the project both sides found themselves mired in a hopeless morass and were no longer speaking the same language. In the end it became evident to both parties that owing to the chasm created by the differing points of view it would not be possible to continue together on the project.

      What I found most interesting was that even after the conclusion of this project and client relationship, our management team continued to be negatively affected by their experiences on that project. They had become increasingly hesitant to challenge any client seeking to avoid a repeat of the animosity which eventually took hold on the project in question. This new timidity, while indeed avoiding any source of confrontation with existing clients, caused us to jeopardize our continued effectiveness as a management group. I grew concerned as I realized the negative lessons learned on one project risked affecting our other efforts and client base as a whole. It was almost like watching a cancer spread throughout the body. It took several long discussions and open forums to realign the management team back to where they had been at the start of the project in question.

         At issue was not the success or lack thereof on one particular project with a single client, but the loss of who we were as a group. The effectiveness of that group is based on the nature of the individuals running it and their commitment to certain core principles that have been developed over time and have been found to work very well. We are advocates not only for our clients but for the landowners as well. When we believe something is in a project’s best interests we fight for it. When we believe that something is detrimental to a project, we fight against it.  If we believe something is right, we stand up for it and do our best to convince anyone, including the paying client, that we believe that it is the correct path forward. Losing sight of these qualities, in effect, almost caused us to lose sight of who we are.

        Personally, this was a learning experience for me. I learned the true value inherent in a group of people who have come together as a team to accomplish a given task. When you are lucky enough to have such a group you must protect them and what makes them special.  In business we are always looking to the tangible, quantifiable metrics of success on a given project, and if you are not economically successful you will not last long in the real world. But you must also realize that what helped the team initially find success also becomes essential to your identity.  You must accept that without this core group you will likely not meet with any level of success and so they must be protected and safeguarded beyond almost all other considerations.

           As I look back, I see several instances where these managers, either privately or in a group, warned me that we were going down a bad road, but I was focused on completing the project successfully and servicing the needs of the client.  In the end, I should have listened to my managers. Looking back there was likely nothing that could have been done to bring success to this client given their required operating parameters and timetables. To their credit, our managers saw this several months before I did.  They held on to their combined identity throughout the process and only at the very end began to shut down. My takeaway from this experience is that you need to go out and do what it takes to build the best team around you that you can and then accept that that team and their approach might not be a fit for every potential client out there. In those instances, even while understanding the importance of revenue and margin in keeping people employed, it would be best to preserve the effectiveness and unity of your team and not try to change them to suit the whims and notions of a third party.

           Now, Office BINGO anyone?