WAV Group holds a quarterly webinar called the WAVes of Change. It allows companies and senior executives to get a one-hour overview of change that is happening in our industry. We wear a lot of hats in our capacity as industry researchers, investors, capital markets advisors, consultants, RE Technology publishers, and though our newest endeavor – WAV Group Communications. WAVes of Change webinars aim to pack all of this into a big ball and throw it your way so you can hit it out of the park in your business.

Another way to look at change is innovation. Some call it rethinking. It is a process whereby you try to summarize external and internal forces that impact your mission and adapt in a way that improves your success. WAVes of Change helps with finding the right innovation by providing an overview of both external and internal trends.

Externally, WAV Group research looks at consumer expectations and agent expectations to measure attitudes about our industry (consumer and agent satisfaction research). We look at how companies in different segments in the marketplace are changing to become more competitive (like publishers and franchises). We remark about the need for new technology (like agent safety) that may now find light. We watch the regulatory process (Dodd Frank) and stay close to the pulse of industry structural changes (RESO, Upstream, AMP, Partner InfoNet, Data Sharing, business consolidation).

Internally we reflect on trends in business decision-making (like syndication and data management). We talk about problems in operations (lead responsiveness, business intelligence). We endeavor to understand why companies are growing or declining; the impact of leadership changes, and changes to alliances between organizations.

My dad was a boat builder. He put everything he could into manufacturing the best possible product on the market. But he taught me more about business psychology than anything else. Honestly, I do not know anything about building a boat but have dedicated my life to business building. From him, I learned that people run businesses on emotion and justify their decisions with logic. His teaching was to ask more questions about WHY something is happening than following WHAT is happening. WAVes of Changes was created by Marilyn Wilson to look at the WHAT in an effort to understand the WHY.

I don’t like change very much. It disturbs the balance of a company internally and externally. But I love innovation. Innovation is finding new ways to operate the same way with a higher degree of effectiveness. As someone who is on the inside of a lot of industry innovation, I am awestruck at the media and blogging pundits who speculate about the future with doom and gloom. We are a bold and outstanding industry founded on the strong principles of integrity and collaboration. There will always be insurgencies, but the resilience of agents, brokers, associations, franchises, technology firms, and MLSs is super strong. The bigger the threat, the stronger it gets.

If you want to know more about the WAVes of Change quarterly webinars, reach out to Marilyn.