How Countrywide managed to put its house out of order

HERE’S a tip for new bosses running people businesses. Er... don’t lose your best people.

Seems pretty obvious, no? Sadly for shareholders and employees at Countrywide, its former boss Alison Platt didn’t seem to get it.

Under her regime, Britain’s biggest group of property agents lost large swathes of experienced agents and executives. In one September — the crucial month when buyers and sellers look to move after the summer break — she put all the managing directors in her estate agency division on notice that they were at risk of redundancy.

Nice work, Mrs Motivator.

She decided the business should be remodelled as a retailer, rather than a property company — a concept that left employees utterly baffled. Say what you will about estate agents, successful ones understand it’s a complex, stressful sale, requiring empathy and an ability to win the clients’ hearts and minds. First to get them to list their properties with you, then to coax the transaction through the surveyors and conveyancers. It ain’t like selling tins of beans.

Unsurprisingly, the Platt plan didn’t work. The number of people listing their properties with the company fell, and with that went the profits.

But, given that Countrywide is in an industry turned on its head by digital rivals, it would be in a jam anyway.

While Countrywide was running up £200 million of debt by buying agents up and down the country, Purplebricks and others were building a technology platform that would offer an arguably better service for a fraction of the fee. Their hybrid model — a slick digital service combined with agents working from home — is highly likely to do to Countrywide what Amazon did to