I was at work. Point2 hosts Open Source, a once-a-month get together for the whole company, and yesterday’s theme was Rock Band. Four teams of rockers each dressed up and played us their set list.

When I snapped out of it, I turned to the person next to me and laughed and said “…we also write code”. Leaving unsaid the obvious fact that we are all here for the people.

I count myself among those lucky enough to be among great people having fun working on something we really enjoy being part of.

Rock on Point2!

My strengths are:
1) Learner
2) Achiever
3) Input
4) Competition
5) Ideation

None of these were a big surprise to me and I didn’t get as much as I had hoped out of the whole Strengths Finder 2.0 experience.  However, I loved discovering the strengths of others on the team.  Now I’d like to learn more about how teams can leverage each other’s strengths to become better.

We have been active participants in the Syndication workgroup and this year we’re looking forward to expanding our participation to include the Data Schema and Certification workgroups.

James is already there for a bit of sight-seeing. I won’t have as much time, but I also plan to squeeze some touring time in when I get there. I’m going to bring my camera so I can take a few pictures being that this is my first trip to D.C.  If I manage to take some nice ones I might even post them here.

Adnan and I will be flying out tomorrow morning at 6 AM. Unfortunately Jay Pepper-Martens is sick and won’t be able to make it this time, but he’s resting up and training hard for the next one.

Point2 syndicates hundreds of thousands of listings daily to over 300 marketplaces including Trulia, Google, Cyberhomes, Yahoo!, eBay, and many more.  A growing number of those listings come directly from MLSs through a RETS data feed.

Have you ever had to sit through a meeting having no idea why you were invited? …or have you ever sent an email To: multiple people asking for a decision because you weren’t sure exactly who should make the call?  …or received an email that was sent To: multiple people and felt you just HAD to respond, but really the sender was only intending to keep you in the loop?

CAIRO Can Help

CAIRO is an acronym.  The letters stand for: Consulted, Accountable, Informed, Responsible, and Omitted.

To build your own CAIRO matrix and start to clear things up, try this:

1. Identify and list all of the processes and activities that surround a project or team – one per row.
2. List the people or roles involved – one per column.
3. For each process or activity mark down who the ‘R’ is.  There can only be one.  If there’s more than one, try breaking the activity into smaller activities.
4. Determine who are Accountable to the Responsible person for getting all or parts of the actual work done.
5. Then determine who needs to be Consulted and who needs to be Informed.  Consulted parties provide input, unlike Informed parties who are silent.
6. Finally, and sometimes this is the tricky part, determine who explicitly will be Omitted.  These are people that don’t need to be involved in any way.

The resulting chart is simple, but forcing yourself to think about which letter to assign to everyone for each item will require some thinking and may even stir some debate.

An Example

Try not to get hung up on the details of whether or not this is the right way to assign roles and responsibilities.  This example shows an IT organization with activities surrounding the acquisition of hardware for a development team.

To add some color the above matrix, here are a few descriptive paragraphs:

The Director of IT is Responsible for ordering workstations for developers.  Although he is ultimately accountable to his boss (**), the Chief Technology Officer for this, the buck stops at the Director of IT when it comes to decisions about the ordering of workstations.

The Director of IT has asked Systems Support to actually carry out the work, so they are Accountable to the Director of IT for ordering workstations for developers.

When workstations are ordered, the Systems Support team is sure to Consult with the project manager to time the order and delivery with the schedules of developers that need them.  In addition, the developers are Informed when workstations are ordered.

The COO and Board of Directors are not kept in the loop about developer workstation orders.  They are explicitly Omitted from communications relating to the ordering of workstations for developers.

The result of doing this with your team is that everyone will know their role and have a clear understanding of what’s expected of them in terms of team communication.  In addition to this, everyone will know what everyone else’s level of involvement is for each activity.

I snapped this shot of my daughters playing outside after we went swimming on Sunday. That’s Sophia, my oldest, playing in the puddle, and Ava scaling the snow mountain behind her. Sophia’s playing in a puddle!

What’s the big deal you say? It’s just a puddle?

After spending what felt like an eternity enduring another brutal Canadian winter with temperatures dipping as low as minus 42 degrees Celsius (that’s -43.6 F) plus the wind chill factor, puddles are a welcome sight. So, welcome back puddles!

We were asked, “What is best for the seller?  To have the listings everywhere?  What are the drawbacks?”

In short, Point2 doesn’t believe there are any drawbacks for the seller.  Since consumers may go anywhere and everywhere, the easiest way for a listing to be found is for it to be everywhere.  Some consumers may like the Trulia heat maps, some may like the Cyberhomes interface, some may read one of the online newspapers HomeFinder publishes to, and some may go to REALTOR.com for the volume of listings.

Our CEO, Saul Klein, often says, “Distribution trumps Destination.” When one considers that according to Hitwise, only roughly 7% of the traffic goes to the top Real Estate Website and even the top 20 only attract less than half of the total traffic, it’s easy to see how true this is.

Point2 Technologies works directly with MLSs, REALTORs, and Real Estate Marketplaces to syndicate listings, and with 39 destinations Point2 has the largest syndication network on Earth.

Learn more about how…
Point2 provides MLSs and Associations with leading-edge tools that make up a complete web marketing solution for Brokers and Agents.

Point2’s listing syndication network is only a small piece of Point2 Agent’s suite of powerful online marketing tools which includes websites with virtual tours, lead tracking, analytics, and hosted email.

I’ve recently taken on the role of COO at Point2 Technologies. I could have created constructingsoftwarecompanies.com or some such crazy domain, but elected instead to simply use zachsvoice.com.