Gratitude as a business strategy
There's nothing wrong with expecting excellence, and taking steps to get it. The problem is, we tend to take excellence—and thoughtfulness, and kindness, and joyfulness—for granted.
When things go as we expect, we don't even...
I don’t understand what anyone is saying anymore
Abstractionitis
We have forgotten how to use the real names of real things. Like doorknobs. Instead, people talk about the idea of doorknobs, without actually using the word "doorknob." So a new idea for a...
I spy with my little iPhone
Until the recent uproar over the discovery of Carrier IQ's analytics software running on a variety of mobile devices, including Apple iPhones and Google Android phones, however, most consumers failed to recognize that they...
Know when house rules violate lease
Q: As a property manager, I am under contract with an owner to advertise and show his single-family rental. I recently chose new tenants and signed the lease. Since then, the owner has sent...
Lehman seeks financing for Archstone counterbid
Lehman, which owns 47 percent of Archstone, is in discussions with investors including Blackstone Group LP and Brookfield Asset Management Inc. to arrange financing, said the person, who asked not to be named because...
Senior housing is booming, baby
In the third quarter of 2011 alone, 39 senior housing deals worth $5.5 billion were completed, primarily by real estate investment trusts that specialize in housing for the elderly. That figure includes independent-living and...
The ultimate question: Would your customers recommend you?
Peter Fader: Can you tell us what NPS stands for? Those three letters are on everyone's mind these days, and a lot of businesses are being run by them.
Rob Markey: NPS originally stood for...
When nothing works
As Bertie examined my elbow, I reminded him of everything I had done to try to fix my problem. When it began to hurt, I used ibuprofen. When that didn't work, we tried two...
Through the eyes of the imagineers
Kimberly Scott, founder of Capture the Market, a real estate video production studio in Dallas, Texas, is hesitant to agree with such a trivialization. She might argue that when forging a tech-based business in...
Your use of pronouns reveals your personality
The research: In the 1990s, James Pennebaker helped develop a computer program that counted and categorized words in texts, differentiating content words, which convey meaning, from function words. After analyzing 400,000 texts—including essays by...
Using social networks to improve operations
Then telephone surveys began to supplement mystery shopping. Today, digital technologies are supplanting both, with online customer surveys providing an exponentially greater number of performance snapshots per day.
A well-managed loop that links customer experience...
Federal Housing Authority poised to re-sink the economy
Whatever measure of truth there may have been in that cliche, the reality is that by refusing to accept the real estate correction as the healthful and decades-overdue solution it is, America's leaders have...
And the winners are…
The 466-unit first phase of Columbia Parc at the Bayou District in New Orleans, La., winner of both the Community of the Year and Best Affordable Community awards, was honored by a visit from...
A house becoming more divided
Consider foreclosure-ravaged Detroit. In the historic Green Acres district, a haven for hipsters, a pristine, three-bedroom brick Tudor recently sold for $6,000—about what a buyer would have paid during the Great Depression.
Yet just 15...
Afraid to move
Consider these signs of the times:
The Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index registered 47.1 in August for the category titled "work satisfaction"—the lowest it has been since the measurement was introduced in January 2008. The number means...
