FIX THE BROKEN WINDOWS IN YOUR APPRAISAL BUSINESS
Broken windows are unsightly. They’re potentially sharp and dangerous. Broken windows lack protection from the elements and are a sign that something needs to be fixed. If a window in your home is broken, you’d most likely have it repaired quickly, and for a few reasons: so that it can do what windows are supposed to do, which is allow the sunlight to come in while keeping the elements out, but also because a broken window simply doesn’t look good and sends the wrong message to anybody who might see the broken window.
No, we’re not really going to talk about actual broken windows on the show today. What we are going to talk about, however, is a theory called the ‘broken windows’ theory and how it applies to your life and your business.
Let me set the stage for you: back in the late 1960’s, researchers at Stanford University conducted an experiment whereby they left 2 abandoned cars in 2 very different areas. One car was left in Bronx, New York, and the other was left on a street in Palo Alto, California. Within an hour, the car left in the Bronx was vandalized, ripped apart, all of the valuable parts of the car taken, and the rest of it destroyed. The car left in Palo Alto, however, left untouched for the length of the experiment. Sadly, not unexpected.
The researchers decided to change one of the parameters of the experiment after that, which was to break one of the windows of the car in Palo Alto. Within hours of breaking the window of the car left in California, the car was vandalized similar to the one left in the Bronx. Thus, the ‘broken windows’ theory was born.
If you’ve ever heard of the Broken Windows theory, it’s probably because the theory was written about again in the early 1980’s and eventually adopted by law enforcement in New York, which changed how police officers went about their business of crime fighting. Without going too deep into that aspect of the theory because it’s fairly controversial and I don’t agree with everything that was done as a result of the theory, crime rates dropped significantly, and those areas of New York started to thrive again.
What the theory posits is that, when a window is left broken for some period of time, it signals to the population in that area that nobody cares. What will inevitably happen is that eventually more windows will be broken and, if not repaired, will invite more vandalism and a general decline of everything in that area. Graffiti will start to appear, crime will increase, real estate values will start to decline, and, over time, the broken windows will beget more broken windows.
If you haven’t figured out yet, the broken windows aren’t necessarily actual broken windows. The broken windows in the theory can be anything that signals to the population that people don’t care. Instead of an actual broken window in a home or apartment building, maybe it’s graffiti that isn’t cleaned up right away. Maybe it’s an increase in robberies or prostitution in an area. Whatever the symbolic ‘broken window’ is, if it’s not addressed and taken care of, at least as the Broken Windows theory posits, it will lead to further decay.
In essence, the broken window theory says that we tend to respect the order of things as long as we believe and perceive that the order is respected and being taken care of. If there is any inkling that order is not respected and being taken care of, that lack of respect and action is an invitation to more of the disorder and decay of that order.
I became aware of the broken windows theory many years ago while studying another interesting theory called the bystander effect. There’s a bit of an urban legend told over the years about a real murder victim named, Kitty Genovese, who was stabbed repeatedly by a man in Queens, New York in the early 60’s. While the story of her murder is completely true, the urban myth part is that, while she was being attacked and screaming for help over several hours, nobody helped her and some even closed their windows to drown out her cries for help, which is not what actually happened.
Nevertheless, it was that story that led me to understanding the broken windows theory as it relates to crime rates in certain areas and human behavior. What was more interesting to me than how the theory was being applied by law enforcement in high crime areas was the psychological principle the broken windows theory touched on. It got me thinking about the theory as it applied to leadership, management, business practices and principles, and so on.
I started to make some connections between what I had experienced in our own ghetto grocery store in dealing with customers, as well as my co-workers; what I experienced with some very good mentors and strong leadership role models; and, of course, what my experience was growing up with good parents. Probably much like you, I had good parents who wanted the best for their children as they grew up so that we could become high quality, contributing members of society and enjoy life to the fullest. What being a good parent meant to them was having some categories of rules to follow.
One of the most important aspects of having rules for something is how and when the rules are enforced, if they’re enforced, and what the repercussions are for breaking the rules. If my parents had some rules for something, but they didn’t enforce those rules when broken, then the rules become meaningless and will be violated every time. If the rules were enforced some of the time, but not other times, the inconsistency invites the desire to challenge the rules and push the boundaries. If the enforcement of the rules was uneven and unfair whereby my brother gets away with a certain behavior but I get punished for it, the unfair application of the rules encourages more of the rule breaking.
I’m not here to teach you how to parent, I’m still learning myself. I’m just giving you some different context about how I started to see the ‘broken windows’ theory in almost everything. Every one of the parenting examples I just gave can be considered a broken window. Breaking a rule with no repercussions is a broken window. A child who acts out in public with no correction from the parent is a broken window. Favoritism of one child over the other is a broken window. The bad behavior of one of the parents in front of the children; broken window. The parents doing one thing but expecting something different from the children; broken window.
Of course, what started to become most fascinating to me was how and where I began to see the broken windows theory showing up in business and, especially, leadership. Again, anything that may send an undesired or undesirable message to the public, to the world, to your staff, or to your customers and clients can be considered a broken window. If not addressed in rapid fashion, the message the proverbial ‘broken window’ sends is one of lack of care, of apathy, of blatant disregard for your business, your people, your product and service, and your future. The broken windows become the equivalent of a virus making its way through your business.
Remember, the ‘broken windows’ theory, as it was first introduced by the criminologists in the early 80’s, posits that the even the pettiest of crimes like loitering, graffiti, or a measly broken window in a building is going to lead to more of the same and it is most likely to escalate with time.
In business, a broken window can be a dirty physical location, a sloppy counter in a grocery store, an employee with a bad attitude, chipping paint on a sign out front, a long wait time on a customer service call, a ‘no return’ policy, or even a company policy that punishes good behavior and encourages bad behavior. All of these things are considered a broken window in your business. If ignored, you risk suffering the consequences of your apathy.
Small things sabotage the big things. If you never heard the story of Disney painting the fences and fixing the light bulbs every night at Disneyland, just Google it. I can’t confirm whether or not it’s true, but it makes for a great story and example of Disney recognizing the extraordinary value of the little things. As the stories go, all of the touch up work happens every single night at Disney properties. Once all the guests are gone, all of the equipment and cleaning staff come out and undertake the task of touching up any and all high traffic areas, removing gum from the streets and walkways, touching up scratched paint, replacing burned out lightbulbs, and fixing anything even slightly broken. There is even a renovation crew that strips and repaints one light pole along main street every evening after the guests are gone.
Why would they do this? Because the understand, at a very deep level, the broken windows concept. People pay exorbitant amounts of money each year to go to Disney theme parks and Disney obviously wants this to continue. They know that if somebody pays thousands of dollars for tickets to walk the park, if they see it run down in any way, the perceived value of those tickets drops drastically and, eventually, people stop coming. Even though it must cost a lot of money to maintain parks like that, they’ve determined it to be worth it.
Go to any 4 or 5 star hotel, like the Four Seasons, the Hotel Intercontinental, or any of the Waldorf properties around the world and you will see something similar. They may not call their policies ‘broken window’ policies, but they recognize that a spider web on a chandelier is a broken window. A piece of hair on the bathroom floor in your hotel room is a broken window. Anything that takes away from the 5-Star experience in those properties is a broken window and must be remediated immediately.
When it comes to leadership, broken windows come in all shapes and sizes. In fact, I’ll go as far as to say that the majority of the ‘broken windows’ when it comes to leadership aren’t recognized by most leaders as broken windows, so they disregard them, avoid dealing with them, and essentially invite more of the same types of issues by doing so.
When it comes to leadership, a broken window might be someone showing up 5 minutes late to a meeting. Not a big deal on the surface and not necessarily something that needs to be brought up in front of others. But, if being on time is a core value of yours and your company, not addressing it in private is a broken window. It may not necessarily show up in your business as others coming late to meetings, although that’s fairly likely, but it could start to show up as a general lack of respect in other areas.
Showing up late, just as an example and especially if it’s habitual, sends a message to everyone else who showed up on time that the late person doesn’t care, maybe that they’re special, or maybe they think they’re more important than everyone else. It almost doesn’t matter what the other people think because the point of a broken window is that the behavior will invite more of the same regardless of the varied perceptions of everyone else.
A broken window in a leadership paradigm might be letting one employee behave a certain way while calling somebody else out on the same things. A broken window might be letting the men in the group talk or act a certain way around the females in the group without recognizing that it might be inappropriate or sending the wrong message. A broken window might be letting the women in the group get away with certain behaviors that the men would never be allowed to get away with.
A broken window as it relates to leadership is not having clear guidelines and expectations for the staff yet expecting them to perform in a certain way and to get certain results. A broken window is not having a growth plan for your people yet expecting them to stay around for the long term.
I’ve had lots of experience with the broken windows theory as it relates to leadership while helping to run one of the largest martial arts organizations in the world back in the 90s. I got to see firsthand how a strong leader recognized the smallest of broken windows and how he dealt with them in real time. Many of these issues would have been things you and I would probably never perceive as issues, or if we did, they appeared so small and insignificant that they weren’t even worth dealing with. But this particular person did see them and knew the importance, as a leader and as a business owner, of calling those things out and making sure everyone knew what was being done to correct them, which more or less ensured something similar wouldn’t be an issue from anyone in the future.
When you are in a leadership position, whether by choice, by promotion, or by default as the owner or leader of something, you are called to make tough and often uncomfortable decisions. This often means having difficult and uncomfortable confrontations and conversations. When those conversations are blown off or avoided, either because the leader doesn’t perceive any of the windows to be broken or because the leader doesn’t have the guts to address the broken window, the consequences are all but guaranteed.
There are always consequences. There are either the consequences of not addressing and fixing a broken window, or the consequences that come with addressing and fixing it. The beauty of all of it is that you get to choose which of the consequences you want to experience. What you don’t get to choose is whether or not there are consequences because those are inevitable.
Friends, the little things in life and business that get shrugged off can lead to disease, disorder, decay, chaos and eventually anarchy. Broken windows are signs that something is out of order and needs to be addressed. When the broken windows aren’t fixed, they send a message to the world that you don’t care. The tiny things end up sabotaging the big things.
I implore you to step back from your life and business from time to time and observe as objectively as possible. See them with different eyes than you’re used to looking at things and see if you can identify anything that might resemble a broken window. Maybe it’s a dirty service van, some graffiti on the bathroom wall, a company policy that punishes the innocent in favor of the guilty, a broken system within your business that punishes the customer for having the nerve to want to do business with you. A common broken window in the real estate sales world is no follow up with past clients. A common broken window in the appraiser world is having disdain for your clients, customers, and the real estate agents in your market. A common broken window in the mortgage business is poor communication regarding the timelines and a general lack of transparency around the real costs and the process.
They are all around us, which means they’re often overlooked. Just like the real broken windows we might drive by on our way to the local market simply become part of the landscape that we eventually stop noticing, when it comes to our own lives, relationships, habits, health, marketing, leadership, and our business, the broken windows have consequences. Avoid fixing them at your own peril.
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