Out to Put a Dent in the Multifamily Universe

Love: Be the Difference that Makes a Difference

April 13, 2012 By Leave a Comment
Apartment Love

You will always be the second best anyone else. – Leo Buscaglia

Apartment LoveLeo, in his book titled: Love, tells an amazing story as it relates to having love for oneself. I intend to give you the very much paraphrased version. He takes you on a visual journey back to grade school. He has you remember the anticipation you held in your little heart and mind over the art teacher coming around to your classroom. It was that time where you got to put down the lead and pick up the oily Crayola. It was time to put method, pragmatism, social order and conformity to rest so as to wake up the wild and the crazy. It was time to do the thing you love. Or, so you thought….

I Don’t Love Your Tree

His story picks up in description of the art teacher drawing a simple tree on the chalk board and instructing the class to follow suit by replicating it on the blank sheet of paper in front of them. Two lines mirrored just inches apart and headed for the top of the page. Lines that lend themselves to branches. And, a line that mimics a camel hump repeated in a circular motion starting on the right and finding itself up and around nearing the top of the page and back down to a point where it intersects with the vertical line on the left. Boom – it’s a tree. Yes – you did it. You and everyone else except for Junior.

You quite presumably know where this is going. Yes – Leo inserts ‘that guy/gal’ into the story. He calls him Junior. And, Junior produces a tree with the love and care that Michael Angelo gave in creating some of the finest art the world has ever seen. The love that a kid gives to choosing his yellow, green, orange and magenta with overtones of red and shades of grey, black and just enough brown. The love that creates the freakiest most awesome and over the top tree that art teacher, the class and the world at large has ever seen. That love that gets shunned, booed, kicked and yeah butted right out of the room. The love that gets you remarks like – I don’t love your tree…

Please Conform

Conformity kicks the teeth right out of love. It asks a maintenance technician to master electricity when plumbing is his first love. It’s asks our best maintenance supervisor to lead the troops to the top of the mountain and into war when tinkering and solving mechanical problems is his first love. It asks our best leasing people to master accounting when servicing people is his/her first love. It’s telling someone who the best way to do something is the way that you do it. Or the way the company does it. Or the way your dad used to do it. It’s the continued ripping of life right out of people the same way it was ripped out of Junior.

Punch Line

Starting today – Don’t give up your tree…

Have a non-conforming weekend,

Your, never giving up my tree, multifamily manic,

M

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Multifamily Leadership: Seven Behaviors

May 13, 2011 By Leave a Comment
Who wants to Lead in Multifamily
Who wants to Lead in Multifamily

Multifamily Leaders

It feels like a leadership Friday today. Not sure if it’s the cloudy skies, the chance for rain or the innate need to start a series. I do know that over the long bit of time I have spent in the multifamily business, I tend to naturally migrate to two primary drivers; leadership development and marketing and branding. And, with the advent of the Internet and the massive proliferation of it’s use for marketing apartments much of my time and attention has been invested there. But, as of late I am feeling a draw back to leadership.

Seven Multifamily Leadership Behaviors

Leadership is one of those topics that is rife with, great theory, good thought, wild opinion and plain misinformation. Even I struggle to nail down my own convictions after nearly twenty years of studying the subject both in academia and by real life experience. There are a number of reasons for that ranging from the four distinct generations that make up many of our work teams to the advent and use of efficient communication technologies. That said and for the sake of this series I intend to draw from Larry Bossidy & Ram Charan’s book: Execution.

Execution is not a book about leadership as much as it is about setting up environments that are conducive to getting stuff done. But innate in the literature and as captured in Chapter 3; leadership is really the premise. And, they have narrowed leadership down to seven behaviors that make a lot of sense to me.

Those seven behaviors will be the premise for my seven part series. I hope to get a brief post, focusing on essence, out every Friday which will be a true exercise in discipline for me.

Here are the seven behaviors in list form:

1. Know your people and your business

2. Insist on realism

3. Set clear goals and priorities

4. Follow through

5. Reward the doers

6. Expand people’s capabilities

7. Know yourself

I look forward to expanding on the seven behaviors drawing from my treasure chest of stories. I hope we have some fun sharing.

Your looking forward to a relaxing weekend contributer,

M

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Apartment Leadership – Your Answer May Not be the Only Answer

November 21, 2010 By 5 Comments
Apartment Leadership Innovation

I read a story today that held a lesson too important not to share. The overarching premise related to creative solutions for business problems. The key lesson being that just because you [leaders] don’t get the answer you are looking for does not mean the answer is not an acceptable solution for the problem.

Allow me to take you back to my childhood for a second to bring this point home. I grew up on a farm just South of a small town on the Eastern Plains of New Mexico. The summers, outside of crazy boring chores, were packed with a ton of down time.  My only mode of transportation were two wheels straddled by a frame, two peddles and a seat. It was four miles along the highway to the edge of town and another four to my nearest friend. Needless to say, I was not jumping at the chance to make the trip very often.

Both of my parents worked so my sister and I were left to make the best of each day. Days that included a long list of chores to complete before they made it home. On one occasion that list included a request for me to pull an acre of weeds no less than four feet tall [exaggerated for emphasis]. A project that wold have taken the better part of two days to accomplish [no exaggeration on this point].

Now I don’t claim to be any more resourceful than the next guy or gal but I can say that if there is a more efficient way to do something, trust that I am going to find it. In this instance, I went next door and asked by neighbor if I could borrow a few of his healthiest farm animals to assist in my assignment. He agreed and it took them the better part of a half-day to complete the project. They mowed the weeds right down to the dirt and in many cases pulled them out by the root. Needless to say, I was very proud of my accomplishment and could not wait to share it with my step-father.

“What were you thinking? I asked you to PULL the weeds,” he thundered upon my sharing. I was shocked. Devastated. And, angry. Why was my solution any less effective than his alternative? The reason according to the story I read this morning was because it was not his desired solution.

Getting to the point, how many times in our property management careers have we been put off or put back by resourceful thinkers that get things done in a different or better fashion than you. Do you coach them as it relates to your desired solution? Did you coach out of an underlying premise of frustration or anger? Here are some things to think about if you are in this crowd of thinkers:

1. Are you stalling creativity?

2. Are you screening out innovation?

3. Are you killing a free thinking environment?

4. Are you killing moral?

5. Are you losing good people?

Photo Credit: conversations.nokia.com

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Apartment Leadership: Team Meeting

September 3, 2010 By 10 Comments

I was chatting with Behind the Leasing Desk’s Heather Blume last evening and the topic of leadership came up. Then by some stroke of Seth Godin genius the follow blog post pops up this morning. Seth’s Blog: Check-in, Chicken. In essence, it speaks to the value in checking in with your team. And, in an effort to prime the pump for an post I am going to pen for Heather, I thought I would share a story with you.

In late 1999, I lived in Seattle Washington where I worked for Equity Residential. At the time I lead a twenty person team at a 750 unit property called Waterstone Place since sold and renamed Club Palisades. The property gave a whole new meaning to the words – never a dull moment. That being said, I had the pleasure of working with some crazy cool people who loved what they did for a living. It was fun to them. Hard work but lots of fun. And, as a team we practiced the art of checking in.

Every weekday morning started with the admin and sales team listening as I read from both old and new inspirational and motivation books. Truth be told, I’m not certain everyone loved it as much as I did nevertheless they indulged me. I remember reading lines from books like Think and Grow Rich and The Laws of Success by Napoleon Hill. Stories of definite major purpose, courage, desires and wherewithal. All powerful and rich with discipline. A few paragraphs everyday with one follow up question – what did that passage make you think? Around the room we would go – one by one – sharing. To this day – I take reminders from that group of people of the power in that exercise and what it meant to the team. We took the site to a historic 98.8% occupied with just 2.2% of the inventory left to lease at the pinnacle. I have to believe in some way that the power of checking in every morning had something to do with it.

Have a crazy amazing Friday and check in with your team – I know I need to!

m

Filed Under: Cool Leadership Ideas

Property Management Company: Cause

July 13, 2010 By 8 Comments
Property Management Company Cause

It seems to me that Property Management Companies are in essence Professional Service Firms. The chief objectives are to maximize the physical and fiscal performance of a real estate asset for institutional and or private owners. But are they really called to be and do more?

Property Management Company: Cause

I received an email not long ago asking a question along the lines of finding a cause for a firm – in an email exchange I penned the following:

I see a cause as being something bigger than self or team. To me – it’s audacious in nature. And, it has nothing to do with selling more stuff but everything to do with building individual and organizational character as a way of changing the world. I don’t use – changing the world – in jest. It is the only premise with which to build an organization. In my head organizations are built to serve the people that serve it – period. That is first and foremost. If built right all else will fall into place. An organization that focuses on building character will see that character exercised in the way of success on every level with every metric.

I think Emerson said it best when he penned the following:

“To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children…to leave the world a better place…to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded.”

Capture that in the way of a cause that lays over your companies mission, vision, strategy and goals that help to execute as much and you have something people can believe in. You will have found something that people can get out of bed in the morning for – you can change the lives of hundreds if not thousands and as a default – you will create wealth beyond your imagination and more important – the imaginations of those that are served by the organization. They will have lived what Emerson had in mind – all because you made a decision to offer up a worthy cause.

Do you have a cause? What is it? Why do you think it is important?



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Apartment Marketing: Creating Community

June 7, 2010 By 13 Comments
IMG_2508

Meet Lisa Zagoren – Property Manager at Mills Properties. She is responsible for the amazing and over the top performance of a 758 unit asset in North St. Louis County named Oak Park Apartments. This summer she has taken on the responsibility of producing a full on kids camp. She and her team are hosting twelve children from in and around the community and running them through all kinds of fun and educational activities aimed at keeping them off the streets and actively involved in her apartment community.

The camp runs daily from 9 to 4 and each of her team members to include herself are responsible for facilitating the activities. I got my first chance to observe the Kid’s Club last Thursday during a weekly site visit. At the time the kids were playing musical chairs and having a blast. The program goes beyond just having fun, however.

As you can see from one of the fliers created to promote the program, they are offering math, reading, language and arts, exercise programs, entrepreneurship training along with a host of other activities aimed at helping the children. Many of the educational programs are facilitated by four high-school students who also participate in the Kid’s Club. Their participation will yield them school credit for participating in a community service over the summer.

I had the privilege of meeting one young man who definitely exuded a community spirit. His firm handshake and confident demeanor assured me that he was aiming for a bright future somewhere in the world. It jazzed me to know – in the mean time – that he would be serving the Oak Park children this summer.

I got the real sense that this program is just the beginning of something of something really special as it relates to building community. And the marketing benefit? A whole host of kids and parents are talking about the Oak Park Kid’s Club and how cool it is…as such we will be checking in and reporting out often.

I’d be remiss to avoid sending out some major crazy cool – hat’s off to the Oak Park Team! Great Cause! And, thanks for rocking the house – always!

Filed Under: Apartment Marketing Ideas, Cool Leadership Ideas

Apartment Leadership – Lessons from THE CALL

June 4, 2010 By 3 Comments
umpire-jim-joyce-pitcher-armando-galarraga-wire-7807454c76dc196a_large

Much has been written and much will be written about the perfect game that was not -

I see a major leadership lesson in the action that rocked the baseball world just a few nights ago.

Lesson #1: Admit

How many times do we as operators and managers drop the ball? I would be humble enough to suggest that I employ the super bouncy ball dropping method of dropping balls on a near daily basis. I exercise such strategies as forgetting to write it down, ignoring the reminders I have set in my phone and laptop and plan old fashion ignorance. All that being said, I have come to understand the power of Admitting the shortcoming.

As it relates to THE CALL – I admire what Jim Joyce had to say after he viewed the replay:

“I just cost that kid a perfect game,” Joyce said. “I thought he beat the throw. I was convinced he beat the throw, until I saw the replay.”

“It was the biggest call of my career,” said Joyce, who became a full-time major league umpire in 1989.

Lesson #2: Apologize

I read a book nearly ten years ago titled: All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten by Robert Fulghum – one of the lessons described is the ability to say – I’m Sorry. How many times do we launch into the why-for’s and what-not’s – siting policies, procedures, protocol and make-it-up-on-the-fly alternatives to simply saying – You know – I apologize that we gave cause for you to drive 27 miles to our corporate office to meet with upper-management over the fact that your faucet has been leaking for over a month now and despite 33 requests to fix it – nothing was done. I agree that that is far from the service you should expect in exchange for the biggest check you write out each and every month – faithfully.

As it relates to THE CALL – I admire what Jim Joyce did and said later:

DETROIT—Armando Galarraga squeezed the ball in his mitt, stepped on first base with his right foot and was ready to celebrate the first perfect game in Detroit Tigers’ history.

What happened next will be the talk of baseball for the rest of this season and likely a lot longer.

Umpire Jim Joyce emphatically called Cleveland’s Jason Donald safe and a chorus of groans and boos echoed in Comerica Park.

Then Joyce emphatically said he was wrong and later, in tears, hugged Galarraga and apologized.

Lesson #3: Acknowledge

The end all be all mother load of goodness played out the following night:

In a classy gesture meant to show the world the Tigers had moved on from the night before, manager Jim Leyland had pitcher Armando Galarraga – instead of Leyland or a coach — bring the lineup card to the home-plate umpire.

All I can say is -WOW! Class Acts All The Way Around. I often joke that watching baseball is like watching paint dry – and if given a choice I ask that the color be multiple shades of red and black preferably in a satin finish. But, this episode has given me a whole new perspective of the game – namely the people who played it well over the last two nights and the actions they exercised despite the wholly emotionally loaded circumstances! Yeah – for the kids old enough to understand what happened – that is where it mattered most.

Have a smashing weekend. – M

Photo credit: NJ.com

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Business Leaders – Respond vs. React

June 3, 2010 By 13 Comments

Just a short bit ago the following article posted over at Bloomberg Businessweek – the news, not so good.

Network Communications Talks With Lenders After Missing Payment – BusinessWeek

What I really admire is what happened just about three minutes ago on Twitter – Dan McCarthy, CEO of NCI got out in front of the story. He posted a the link to the story above. Astute by all measure – in my opinion.

Dan, I applaud you for moving quickly in a space that demands as much and thank you for providing a firm example of great leadership.

Respond vs. React

There is a big difference and I would love to hear your unadulterated thoughts on the subject…in my opinion, Dan responded…

What do you think?

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Laid-Off Multifamily Execs – Can Win Free Admission to AIM Conference

March 18, 2009 By Leave a Comment

Do you know someone who was recently laid-off from a multifamily management or investment firm? We at AIM have put together a special deal to help them get back on their feet:

Ten laid-off multifamily professionals will receive free admission to the 2009 AIM Conference and one-on-one career counseling services on site.

Find out more about the AIM Career Transitions giveaway at: http://aimconf.com/career.

The application period begins today and closes on April 3, 2009. Winners will be announced the following week. The winners will be selected randomly from the pool of applications and will receive free admission to this year’s AIM Conference, regularly $595 per person. CallSource, a leading provider of call-tracking technologies and advisory services, is sponsoring the AIM Career Transitions giveaway.

The 2009 AIM Conference will be held in Denver, CO from April 29 – May 1, 2009 at the Denver Marriott City Center. To learn more about the AIM Conference, visit: http://aimconf.com

** THE AIM CONFERENCE: Focused, Cutting-Edge Education to Improve Skills & Careers **

Internet marketing is a revenue driver — and it’s one of the few revenue drivers that an apartment executive can control. If you’re looking for a career edge, knowing how to stimulate traffic and sales will give you bankable tools you can demonstrate to new employers. We want all attendees to leave AIM with the confidence and skills to continue to add value to their organizations in this tough economic climate.

The 2009 AIM agenda contains the best available resources to help attendees improve their careers and succeed in this current recession market. View the updated AIM 2009 agenda at: http://aimconf.com/agenda

Featured Career Transition Sessions:

To keep up with the changing economy, career counseling services will be available to all AIM 2009 attendees. Shirley Levey from Liberty Executive Search will give a special presentation on multifamily career advancement and will provide one-on-one counselor to the Career Transition winners.

In a special presentation that shouldn’t be missed, executive business coach and Harvard psychologist Sharon Melnick, Ph.D. will present on “Mindset Tools for Changing Times” in which she will share techniques to help executives to take charge of themselves and their organization.

View the updated AIM 2009 Agenda: http://aimconf.com/agenda

MORE AIM LINKS:

OVERVIEW: http://aimconf.com/

AGENDA: http://aimconf.com/agenda/

TESTIMONIALS: http://aimconf.com/testimonials/

SPEAKERS: http://aimconf.com/speakers/

2008 ATTENDEES: http://aimconf.com/last-year/

SPONSORS: http://aimconf.com/sponsors/

HOTEL & TRAVEL: http://aimconf.com/hotel-travel/

CAREER TRANSITIONS GIVEAWAY: http://aimconf.com/career

REGISTER NOW: http://aimconf.com/register/

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Apartment Leadership: 5 ways to cure tardiness

March 10, 2009 By 8 Comments

1. Educate: Make sure your standard and expectation are clear. And, communicate it often

2. Monitor: Keep track with a log – I would encourage you to automate it

3. Counsel: Communication is key – finding the why behind the behavior many times will solve the issue. Documentation is a must be it positive or negative. I use the SBI model: s: situation b: behavior i: impact – more on that in a later post

4. Follow up: Don’t wait for the behavior to happen again – instead follow up in three to five days and out some praise for showing up to work on time

5. Take corrective action: Hey, if you can’t change people; change people. Don’t be afraid to free up someone’s future.

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