Business Model Checkup... "Two leadership qualities have become absolutely indispensable today... The first is business acumen, more commonly called business savvy. The second is a need to know ... a refusal to take anything for granted and an insatiable curiosity about what's new and different."

That's from Bossidy and Charan's new book, Confronting Reality: Doing What Matters to Get Things Right. "Though business people like to think of themselves as realists, the fact is that wishful thinking, denial, and other forms of avoiding reality are deeply embedded in most corporate cultures." Oh-oh.

But my guess is that successful real estate professionals already incorporate a pretty realistic world view -- at least in the short run. That's one of the benefits of a commission-based revenue stream. Longer term, however, they must be alert to changing circumstances.

Bossidy and Charan emphasize the importance of developing a strong "customer chain," a corollary to a company's "supply chain," and they highlight GE's ACFC ("At the customer, for the customer.") program as an excellent example.

"...Creating a customer chain is not a marketing exercise. It is an essential element of looking around corners, a total reorientation of the business to realities of your customer base, involving all functional areas and organizational levels."

GSA Representation... And speaking of the real world, last week a Dispatch reader suggested that other readers would be interested in the GSA's competition to select a very limited number of service providers nationwide to represent the GSA. If you're knowledgeable about the GSA, blast away, and I'll report more in a future Dispatch.

--Peter Pike