Stanford case study: the culture behind the Keller Williams model

Austin, Texas, 1986. The city's real estate market was falling, and Keller Williams Realty, then a small local brokerage with just 35 agents, was losing its best people to a rival network that offered them 100% of the commission.

The founder, Gary Keller, refused to enter a commission war. Instead, he brought together those who stayed and designed with them a company nobody would want to leave: a company where everyone has a voice.

That decision gave rise to a culture built on three commitments: listening to everyone who builds the business, investing continuously in training, and sharing the value created in a balanced way, so that each agent's success is also the company's success. It is this culture that took Keller Williams from 35 agents to more than 185,000 worldwide.

In 2007, Stanford Graduate School of Business turned this story into a case study.

The question it put to students is the same one facing anyone considering opening a Market Center today: what makes this culture, and the model that grew out of it, replicable?

What the case examines

• Between 2000 and 2006, Keller Williams grew from 8,000 to more than 70,000 agents and to more than 600 offices in the United States.
• In 2006, a Keller Williams Market Center had 174 agents on average, against 49 per office for the average US brokerage.
• The interdependent model: the Operating Principal owns the Market Center, the Team Leader runs it and agents take part in management through the Agent Leadership Council (ALC).
• Open books: agents can see the Market Center's revenue and expenses and the ALC minutes.
• Profit sharing: those who bring agents into the company receive a share of the profit, in a seven-level tree that continues after retirement.
• The WI4C2TS culture (Win-Win, Integrity, Customers, Commitment, Communication, Creativity, Teamwork, Trust and Success) and training as the foundation of the business.

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