An Associated Press article published in BusinessWeek states that Homeowners have sued Fidelity National Information Services Inc., a giant financial data-processing company, accusing it of raising the price that cash-strapped consumers must pay to avoid Foreclosure of their homes.
The lawsuit, filed Jan. 16 in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Houston, contends that Fidelity has conspired with mortgage-servicing companies and law firms to "add to the indebtedness" of homeowners by tacking on secret fees that remain undisclosed for years.
I think we have all grown up with the theory of knowledge is power. You were raised to get good grades in school and learn as much as you can in your education process. As a result of your education process, you were to go out, get a job and make your parents proud. You have achieved a milestone in your life that sometimes seemed forever and now you have arrived. However, just by receiving that diploma or other paperwork showing you have arrived may not lead to instant Success in your career.
I believe education is a journey and not a final destination. We (Maxim Enterprises) have been interested with our education of our employees internally. We had 2 employees who where hired to update work orders for client. One employee that we hired (Employee A) had field experience in Property Preservation for about 6 months prior to work for us. The other employee (Employee B) had no field experience in property preservation prior to working for us. Both of them had 3 months of training in our office with updating clients in property preservation. In our quest for improving our employees and exceeding our clients’ expectations, we wanted to test these two employees on their current knowledge and see where they are at in their journey at Maxim. We used a test from www.webexam.us to measure their knowledge.
At webexam.us, a person can take a test that deals with HUD guidelines for property preservation. Questions are in a multiple choice format. Moreover, a score of 70% or higher is required to pass the exam. If one receives less than 70% then you have two more times to pass the exam. The part that intrigued us about webexam.us is that if a score was less than 70% the questions were not the same for the person to take the test again.
As a result of this exam, our two employees had results that were very surprising. Employee A (with field experience) received a score of 48 correct out of 100. Wow 48%! Less than 50% of the questions were answered correctly. I could not help think about Employee B and how he had done with no field experience. Will he score 40%, 30% or less? It was just the opposite. He scored 68% on the exam.
So now I am very confused and started to think something might be wrong with this exam and its process. As a result of neither Employee A nor Employee B passing the exam, I opted for them to take the test again and see the results.
How am I doing coach? In any sport, there is some type of gauge to let you know how you are doing. Baseball has the batting percentage, football has yards per game, and Property Preservation has..., uh well.
What do we have to measure how we are doing? You may get scorecards from your client telling you how you are doing. But most of the time, trying to understand the explanation from the client of how you are scored is like trying to understand nuclear physics. You may check your bank account to see how you are doing. You may even measure yourself by the vacations you take. Many times I have seen contractors measuring Success by one thing - money. Let me check my bank account to see how I am doing. I have money in my checking account so I must be doing o.k. I must be doing something right. This is a constant theme I hear from contractors. Money in the bank = I am o.k. Yes, money makes the world go around, and we all need it.
However, should it be used as the only measurement of how you are really doing? You as preservation contractors are heading into what may be the greatest opportunity in the history of this industry. It is going to be necessary for you to step back and look at how you are doing. Getting caught up in the day to day operations of your businesses, and not coming up with some type of measurement for your success may cause frustration and inefficiencies in your organization. In the words of Peter Drucker, "You cannot manage what you cannot measure." Choose wisely.
The Plain Dealer reports Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson took aim at Wall Street on Thursday with a lawsuit against 21 major investment banks that he said have enabled the subprime lending and Foreclosure crisis here.
The one-of-a-kind suit, filed in Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court, accuses venerable institutions such as Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch and Wells Fargo of creating a public nuisance.
A Yahoo! Finance article stated that Bank of America Corp. said Friday it has agreed to buy Countrywide Financial for $4 billion in stock, a deal that both rescues the country's biggest mortgage lender and expands the financial services empire of the nation's largest consumer bank.
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