Change or Die... "If you look at people after coronary-artery bypass grafting two years later, 90% of them have not changed their lifestyle." Oops. That's a quote from Dr. Edward Miller in Change or Die, an article in Fast Company (May 2005), about the difficulty of changing behavior.

"The central issue is never strategy, structure, culture, or systems. The core of the matter is always about changing the behavior of people," according to John Kotter, a Harvard Business School professor."

"Behavior change happens mostly by speaking to people's feelings," he says. "This is true even in organizations that are very focused on analysis and quantitative measurement, even among people who think of themselves as smart in an MBA sense."

Is the real estate industry changing? Yes, according to Tom Wickes, President of Insurance Data Services (IDS), which describes itself as "the country's leading provider of certificate of insurance tracking and outsourcing services."

Over the past ten years, IDS has grown to over 70 employees, based outside of Los Angeles, CA, solely focused on monitoring insurance compliance, tracking over 300,000 "insureds" each year -- tenants for property managers and vendors for retailers.

How important is insurance compliance? It's only important if a claim is made. But then it's hugely important. So it better be correct.

If IDS finds that a tenant is not in compliance (normally a 45-day process), the company turns it over to the property manager or owner. Naturally, any violation of a lease is a highly sensitive subject.

As Wickes and Ronda Kerr, VP of Operations at IDS, talked with me about the challenges of interpreting insurance lease clauses and then matching that language to actual insurance policies, it was clear that the process required considerable expertise. That's a fact -- and a feeling.

Sponsor Profile... This Dispatch issue recognizes Insurance Data Services as a major supporter of PikeNet. Quite simply, sponsors make possible the free delivery of the PikeNet Dispatch to you twice-a-week. Thank you!

--Peter Pike