Executive Update: June, 2019
An important aspect of my job is to keep The Big Picture of CSS front and center. What are we trying to create? Why do we exist? Or, what do we do; who do we do it for; and, how do we do it? I’ve outlined this below. Please contact me if you have questions or would like to discuss.
Vision (What): We aspire to create and maintain a real estate services company that provides superior results, engages team members, and produces 10% growth and profits every year.
Mission (Why): We exist to provide superior results for our customers, and growth opportunities, both professionally and financially, for all team members.
How we do this?
1. We Play the Great Game of Business
- Know and Teach the Rules of Business - How to Make Money!
- Share financial results and teach what they mean
- Insist that all staff engage in producing improved results (bottom-up not top-down management)
- Follow the Action & Keep Score:
- Team targets and minigames
- Weekly team huddles and CSS Huddle
- Weekly and Monthly Scorecards – how are we doing versus the targets we set?
- Provide a Stake in the Outcome:
- Participate in Team target setting and decision making
- Quarterly bonus program
- What is our winning aspiration?
- Long Term: See “Vision” above; Short Term: Achieve 2019 Budget Results ($18.4M in revenue; $1.2M in profit)
- Where will we play?
- Regional settlement provider
- Branch title agency in Michigan
- Commercial title provider in targeted regional markets
- How will we win?
- What capabilities must be in place?
- What management systems are required?
- Focus on the Wildly Important
- Produce profits >$1M in 2019
- Act on Lead Measures:
- We focus on doing the activities that will move the numbers
- Keep a Compelling Scoreboard
- We commit to completing weekly/monthly activities and measuring whether we met our commitments
- Create a Cadence of Accountability:
- We hold weekly (Huddles) and monthly (Leadership Team) meetings to review the results we produced versus the commitments we made
Jerome Jelinek | CEO and President
Jerome was the founder of CSS in 1992, and has been its CEO and General Counsel since that time. Prior to CSS, Jerome was in private practice in southeastern Michigan, concentrating in real estate law and commercial litigation.
CSS has been on the forefront of utilizing full digitization of real estate transactions. It has been closing transactions for several years using electronic and remote online notarization technology, being one of the first and only title companies to embrace the paperless process.