Happy Endings!

Today’s Washington Post Business Section carried an article, Loyalty to Leader Shakes Up Real Estate Firm. about W.C. & A.N. Miller, the company I work for. Having lived the story for the last month, it seems appropriate to say something about it here.

The Post article tells the story very well, and now that it’s ended, the agents and managers of W.C & A.N. Miller, Realtors will be popping champagne.  And we will be a very different company than we were a month ago. An old friend of my often quotes an adage about difficult challenges, “What doesn’t kill you makes you a whole lot better.” Now, I get it.

During the last month, we’ve all seen a new side of our colleagues. During the various meetings, I saw people I had barely known at their best, being absolutely eloquent, gutsy, funny and determined. We bonded. I mean we really bonded. There was, amazingly, no agent exodus – we didn’t want to leave Miller because it’s a fantastic firm known for being very, very good to its agents. Our single-minded goal was to put Humpty Dumpty back together, and have Michael returned as our leader, and on his terms.

It’s a family owned company, and we got a chance to meet and fall in love with Aunt Rosemary, who flew in from Hawaii to attend Friday’s board meeting. She met with a group of agents, listened to our issues, and we heard she was pretty amazing at communicating our concerns and the consequences of ignoring them.

And, of course, there is the one person who we’ve questioned and doubted and criticized all month. Since making the announcement about Michael leaving, Ted Miller has taken lots of abuse from angry agents. Many real estate owners make mistakes that tick off their agents, and then they ignore them, sometimes with disastrous consequences. Once we had the board’s attention, Ted couldn’t ignore us or his family, and while he took more time to resolve things than we would have liked, we’re finally done with it.  What a relief!

So, now the agents of W.C. & A.N. Miller are ready to take on the spring market with lots of energy and a new love and appreciation for the company and for the family members who own it.

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