The NAR’s Social Media Grade should be “A” for Appropriate

Yesterday Benn Rosales wrote a post about NAR’s reaction to what he termed (properly) NAR’s first real engagement after their appointment of Todd Carpenter as their SMM. In that post he referenced another post written by Rob Hahn that called into question the manner in which NAR and Todd handled the controversy over a local board’s recent decision regarding the enforcement of an existing MLS policy. I read Rob’s post, and delayed the post I had originally written to run today in order to discuss some flaws in Rob’s well written, articulate, criticism of the NAR response.

Todd Vs. Todd

The first place where Rob and I have divergent opinions is his assessment of Todd’s participation in this situation. Todd engaged as an individual and then in his official capacity. As an experienced participant in the social media space, he opted for transparency, and clearly indicated when he was speaking officially and when he was voicing his own opinion. I don’t believe that his statements were contradictory, and I think it is disingenuous of us to think that he cannot speak from both of those positions.

I would think that Todd should be congratulated for the clarity with which he approaches the job, and the commitment that he has shown to both our trade association, our members, and his conscience. When Todd said, “I don’t make policy at NAR. To be frank, I won’t be doing anything to get this policy changed. That’s on you guys. The members. An official statement for NAR was published in the comment stream.” all he was doing was disseminating information – accurate information- and informing the readership of the process.

We’re not a Democracy

In his discussion about the manner in which he feels NAR should handle this type of situation Rob suggested;

3.  Unless there’s some good reason not to do so, open up the whole process to the stakeholder community.

Unless the issue at hand involves trade secrets, proprietary technology, or personal information that you just can’t share, consider opening up the whole process from soup to nuts on social media.  Conduct the business in plain sight, in front of your community, and get them involved in the whole process from very early on.

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The process is open to the whole stakeholder community. The NAR Mid-Year Meetings are open to every member of the organization, and there are seats available at the Multiple Listing Issues & Policies Forum and Committee meetings for any members who wish to attend. The business is conducted in plain sight , in front of the community, and all it requires to participate in the forum is to show up. (and as Wood Allen said, “90% of life is just showing up”). The fact that our current process takes place off line does not invalidate the process or make it closed in some manner.

Rob then went on to suggest that Cliff Niersbach , an incredibly bright, smart and engaging individual who has dedicated his professional career to the REALTOR organization, should have spoken directly to the readers of this blog;

Imagine if Cliff Niersbach had simply gotten on that AgentGenius thread, posted a greeting, acknowledged the controversy, and said, “Okay, I’m all ears, people.  What do you want to do?”  There would have been no “Us” vs. “Them” created; instead, all of the commenters would have made suggestions, protested the policy, etc.  Cliff could then have responded with his concerns, brought other staffers in, brought in people from the CRT to raise questions, ask questions, and turned the thread into a wonderful discussion/debate.

Some individuals would have remained very fired up about it, but the vast majority of stakeholders would see that things have settled down to a boring, dry, technical discussion of how to word the policy, how to define “indexing” vs. “scraping”, and so on, and would have gone back to their daily lives, feeling reassured that “people” (not “We” or “They” but “people who know what they’re talking about”) are looking at it.

I have to respectfully disagree. Though I think highly of this blog, its publishers, authors, and readers, we are not the only people involved here. We are, in fact, only a small portion of the community that is impacted by this issue, and though the importance of this forum is substantial, this is an issue for the entire membership, not for a portion of the membership.Our opinions are only opinions, and they should have no more weight than any other individual members of the group.

Cliff actually executed a more appropriate version of what Rob suggests. He spoke to the most knowledgeable people in the organization about the technical issues involved, and , with the input of the appropriate people in the organization, arranged to bring two smart well informed advocates for change to address the body charged with investigating and acting on issues like these. Our organization is a republic, not  democracy. We have representatives both elected and appointed, who conduct the business of the organization for the benefit of their constituency (the members) on a regular basis. It is those people who need to review this issue and determine the correct course for the organization to take.Because of the open nature of our association, we have a system of forums in which every member can be heard without regard for their level of involvement in the goveranance of the group.

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Ron then discusses the possibility of a need for limited transparency;

If you can’t open up the process to that level of transparency, then say so, and say why not:  “Hey gang, as much as we want to get you all involved, I’m afraid this involves some pending patents, and possible litigation, so we’re gonna have to go behind closed doors.  But we’ll let you know as soon as we decide something, and get your thoughts.”

While I appreciate Rob’s desire to mention the possibility to allow for a fair assessment of possible limitations, it just isn’t the case here. In fact the organization is going above and beyond by bringing in two people , at the expense of the group to assure that the voices calling for change are being championed by people that are willing and able to make the most compelling case possible for the change the want to see.How much more transparency could anyone ask for?

They Keep Trying to Get it Right

I walked the halls of the Midyear meetings today, watching the swarm of REALTORS walking to and from their meetings. All of them are volunteers. All of them have businesses that are working through the challenges of the current economy. And yet all of them made the trip to Washington to donate their time to deal with the issues facing us as an industry , this scraping issue among them. They are supported by the best staff I have ever had the pleasure to work with. All of these volunteer are here trying to “do the right thing” for our industry, as did the volunteers that came before them. If our leaders don’t always “get it right” , it’s only because they’re human – not for want of trying.  And by trying, the association keeps doing better and better, and will hopefully continue to do so with the help of a participatory membership given voice through vehicles like AG.

Image courtesy of 2008 NAR General Session courtesy of creativecommons.org and JohnHallAssociates

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