Bill McHarg helped found Colliers in Australia in 1968. Since then, Colliers has grown from a modest company of real estate professionals into the third largest commercial real estate brokerage company in the world.
I work at Colliers, but I first learned about Bill McHarg from an NPR article I heard yesterday, the article is available here.
The point of the article isn't to highlight Bill's prowess in the commercial real estate field but rather to demonstrate the fervor in which Bill attacked Prime Minister John Howard on the basis of Mr. Howards failings in the green movement.
You can see Bill's commercial here.
For his efforts, Bill has lost his job at Colliers International, the company where I work.
For what its worth, I feel that it is really the company's loss and being fired will prove to be a huge positive for Bill. Being fired means that you are at odds with the company and the job isn't right for you.
Hopefully, one day the attitudes of this company will shift as the environmental movement gains traction and passes the tipping point into the mainstream. At that time all this confrontation will look silly and the marketing department will manage to spin Bill's fervor into a positive and all will be forgiven. Provided Bill hasn't started a rival commercial real estate company, a green commercial real estate company.
In my limited work experience here on this planet, it seems that nothing is more dangerous than people on a mission. Such people have ambition, which is more harmful than talent.
Talent can be squandered, or replicated, or out-sourced, but ambition carries with you and it is hard to break. Everyone wants to be good and good is easily attainable for those who can follow directions and be mediocre. But few are willing to make the sacrifices necessary to be great, it takes great ambition and a reckless spirit to try new ideas, your ideas, and to run with these ideas as if the devil himself is chasing you.
For most, making nice in order to be liked is more important than being great and great people are notoriously hard to work with. For one thing, great people are single-minded, reluctant to compromise and are driven by inner forces greater than what average people could ever comprehend.
This pursuit to do something well comes at great cost, but the benefits of working with and learning from someone great will outweigh these. You do not want to work for Mr. Average Nice Guy, not if you want to be great, not at any cost.
Since learning about the fate of Bill McHarg, I am proud to be working at the company that he founded, since this company was founded by great men.
At some point in the future, one where I am standing at my moral crossroads, I hope I will be able to follow my conscience.
Tuesday, December 11, 2007
Colliers In The Press: Founder Bill McHarg
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2 comments:
I would like to know more about why the partners were upset enough with McHarg to force him out of the company. Was McHarg asking for a change within Colliers too, or was Howard's administration extremely supportive of Colliers in Australia? How does the "green movement" fit in with commercial brokerage? Have you been privy to any conversations about it? And has McHarg's termination been mentioned within employee earshot? You're scraping the surface here, and I'm looking to read much more.
McHarg funded the political campaign by himself and did not seek to create change within Colliers. I can only guess that the personal attacks against the prime minister made risk adverse managers want to distance themselves from McHarg, since at that time the prime minister was still in power.
Colliers doesn't have a top down command structure; each office or region more or less sets its own policies and is forced to obey scant few rules to retain use of the Colliers brand. The forced resignation of McHarg came from pressure at the Australian office, the first Colliers office that he helped found.
This structure assumes that each office is its own self contained unit, that the workings in one office don’t affect those in other offices; however this creates a fractured brand image and inconsistency between procedures at different offices. These antics from Australia portray the firm in a negative light, as I feel most people would be sympathetic towards McHarg and could readily identify with his cause.
I think the error lies with the company which seeks to avoid controversy or taking a risky stance, or at least not taking better steps to spin the issue in a positive light. The knee-jerk reaction is to immediately silence all controversy and to try to close off the issue from the public. These command and control tactics are old and do not work anymore; the public doesn’t sit idly by waiting for a press release in order to communicate with the firm. It is a two way street, and if the firm cannot see the long term implications of its actions rather than the short term implications of trying to avoid conflict, the firm will not survive well into the future.
A little more information on the subject can be found here, it is from the Australian newspaper, The Age.
As far as the topic of “the green movement” in commercial real estate, I am glad that you asked. Commercial buildings pollute a lot; 30% of greenhouse gas emissions, 65% of energy consumption and 12% of potable water consumption happens in commercial buildings. These are some astounding numbers, and green buildings which use less water and electricity are gaining popularity.
I plan on having a post on green buildings in the future, as well as a breakdown of the LEED certification system. LEED stands for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design and is a hot topic in development circles today.
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