Escaping Mediocrity in Property Management

The difference between good and bad property management is people and processes. 

Some companies get one or the other right. Often good people struggle with bad processes and burn out. Or the wrong people stop following the right processes and problems ensue.

In short, if you don’t understand people, or if you struggle to create, refine, and follow processes, you’re going to struggle in property management.

The right people can fix the wrong processes, but the right processes cannot fix the wrong people. Put the right people in the wrong processes (without changing those processes) and the processes will win every time.

In other words, merely assembling the right team isn’t enough. Fixing bad processes isn’t enough. You need the right people following the right processes. That’s when everything changes.

The right people following the right processes execute at a level not previously possible. They quickly identify and define problems, resolve them, and help build processes to prevent them from recurring. 

Preventing problems means fewer fires to put out because those fires were proactively prevented. Those same right people are now avoiding the inevitable burn out that can result from trying to make bad processes work. There is no cascading impact on residents and investors. Resident satisfaction increases, as does resident retention, both of which result in happier investors.  The job somehow becomes easier.

The downstream effects of right people and right processes begin to compound. With more resources freed up (time, bandwidth, etc.) the right people can now focus on less routine problems and develop processes to solve and prevent them. Freed from the burnout that results from laboring in bad processes, the right people are free to focus on people–coworkers, residents, and investors. 

Leaders who care enough about their team to surround them with the right people, and help them build and refine the right processes, send a powerful message about what they value. The team is now consistently executing at a high level. In sports that’s called winning, and winning feels amazing. Winning solves all sorts of problems. The cycle becomes self reinforcing and is crystalized into culture.

In his best selling management book, Good to Great, Jim Collins explained “people are not your most important asset—the right people are.” We tell our team the most important job we have as leaders is hiring awesome people for them to work with. Not far behind that, is helping build, refine, and maintain processes so they can not only win, but win consistently. Once you’re executing and winning, consistency becomes the goal. And the right people executing and winning consistently is a powerful culture.