Executive Search for the Real Estate and Construction Industries

Hot Candidates

San Francisco - Project Executive - Fifteen years plus as senior project manager owner’s representative for multi-unit residential and mixed use commercial development. Candidate has built over 800 condominium and rental units in San Francisco. Major expertise and strengths are due-diligence including environmental issues, entitlements including community outreach and city planning negotiations, guidance of project design to meet needs of end users and developer budget, careful attention to construction cost, quality and final commissioning. Project pro-forma modeling on Excel.

San Francisco - Owners Representative - Senior-level manager with over 25 years experience developing, implementing and coordinating complex new building, renovation and real estate development projects. Licensed Architect with experience in business development, project management, and contract negotiation.

Boston - Senior Portfolio Manager - Oversees all aspects of leasing/marketing, operations and construction for a privately owned commercial portfolio communicating directly with ownership. The portfolio is comprised of over 100 leases of more than 1 million square feet of commercial Grade A office space.

New York - Senior VP of Development - 15+ years experience. Responsible for securing developmental approvals, negotiating municipal agreements and securing A/E/C contracts and permitting approvals.

New York - Senior Project Manager - 20 years experience. Coordinates, manages, and supervises the design and construction process from project conception through final construction punch list and project turnover. Hires and supervises architectural and engineering design consultants. Directs the design process through the schematic, design development, and construction document phases of pre-construction. Participates in scope review and subcontractor selections with the construction manager. Works with utility companies and city agencies as required. Acts as the Owner Representative during construction, handling project start-up, budgets, change orders, requisitions, retail tenants, construction challenges, and project close- out.

New York - Acquisitions Manager - Corporate Real Estate / Asset Management professional with over 26 years of experience representing the real estate requirements of Fortune 100 companies, major financial institutions and property owners. Background includes responsibility for a diversified portfolio of commercial office, retail, production and warehouse properties on a nationwide basis.

San Francisco - Construction Project Manager - Extensive experience with project management and estimating for commercial, retail, mixed-use and interiors projects. Candidate has a stable work history and willing to explore opportunities offering growth and advancement.

Boston - Property Manager - Manages of 1 million feet of downtown property. Responsibilities include negotiating leases, repair and maintenance budgets, and preparing annual operating budgets.

For more information about one of more of these candidates, contact John Kreiss at jkreiss@morgansullivan.com.

Overcoming the asshole factors
By John P. Kreiss, President, MorganSullivan

There are many important lessons that business managers discover on the job, outside of any formal educational setting. One of the biggest of these, if I can be blunt, is dealing with asshole bosses, co-workers, and subordinates.

These toxic turkeys, through rude, narcissistic, bullying behavior, wreak havoc on staff morale. They not only make life miserable for others in the company, they also negatively impact the bottom line—even if they are productive employees. That’s why managers should try to root them out, or at least contain them, if they infiltrate the organization, and avoid hiring these jerks in the first place.

You may have sensed that even productive employees can have long-term negative impacts on your company if they are chronic assholes. Recently, researchers have published data to back up that notion.

The effect of the bad apple employee on co-workers is the subject of a research paper that appeared in the December 2006 issue of Research in Organizational Behavior.

“If only for bottom-line reasons, you should pay attention to it because it will have a dramatic impact on co-workers’ job satisfaction, the group’s ability to function over time, and the group’s productivity and performance,” a researcher at the University of Washington recently told HR News.

One of the researchers’ key findings was that a bad apple can have more influence on a team or group than all of the other team members combined. People pay more attention and react more intensely to bad behavior. If the bad apple is not kept in check or fired, poor behavior can spread throughout his or her group.

Asshole behavior can be made manifest in many ways including:

• Constant negativity towards the suggestions and initiatives of others.
• Shouting at and belittling subordinates.
• Sabotaging of new policies and programs.
• Arrogant attitude – everyone else is “incompetent.”

These behaviors lead to high turnover, especially among the asshole’s subordinates and co-workers. In addition, people working for these jerks are more likely to call in sick, and even steal from the organization. One bad apple can indeed spoil the whole barrel.

A recently published book, The No Asshole Rule: Building a Civilized Workplace and Surviving One That Isn’t, by Robert I. Sutton, PhD, has several recommendations on how to deal with megajerks in the workplace. Here are a few of his key points:

• Treat certified assholes as incompetent employees.
  Even if people do other things extraordinarily well but persistently demean others, they ought to be treated as incompetent.
    
• Get rid of assholes fast.
  Organizations usually wait too long to get rid of incorrigible assholes, and once they do, the reaction is usually, “Why did we wait so long to do that?”
   
• Assholes will hire other assholes.
  Keep your resident jerks out of the hiring process, or if you can’t, involve as many “civilized” people in interviews and decisions to offset the predilection of people to hire their own kind.
    
• Model and teach constructive confrontation.
  Develop a culture where people know when and how to argue, and when to stop fighting, stop whining, and implement a decision (even if they still disagree with it).
  

There may be occasions where a company wants to, or has to, keep an asshole on board. Maybe the jerk is the boss’s son or the jerk is a rainmaker that is too valuable to let go. In these cases, a containment strategy can be effective. Try to isolate the asshole from the rest of the company. Reduce or eliminate his or her supervisory duties and create a role where this person works in virtual isolation. If he is good at sales, for instance, let him concentrate on that and stay out of everyone else’s way.

The best way to reduce the asshole factor in your company is to make sure you don’t hire any in the first place. Checking references carefully before offering a job can help. Personality tests that identify those who are low on agreeableness, emotional stability or conscientiousness can be effective tools in weeding out the non-desirables.

With the potential for assholes to cause great damage to the company, it’s certainly worth the effort to eliminate them.

What do you think? What are your experiences with workplace assholes? Let us know...

John P. Kreiss is President of MorganSullivan, an executive search firm serving the real estate and construction industries.