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March 30, 2006
The Board's About To Do Something Stupid, and...
......you're the manager. What are you going to do about it? Well, you could:
- Keep quiet while grinding your teeth down to the gums
- Pass a note to the President "What the *&^%$# are you thinking of?"
- Say out loud "What the *&^%$# are you thinking of?"
- Distract them with an X-rated story about one of their neighbors and hope they forget to vote on it
- Delete it from the minutes before sending out the next board package (if its not in the minutes, it never happened)
- Go back to your office, bang your head against the wall a few times, and update your resume
- Smile, because you know that you've got a good chance of winning the office pool for "Worst Board Motions"
- Realize you're now going to be over budget because of the legal costs straightening this out, and the board won't remember why six months from now
- "Accidentally" spill something on whoever raised the issue, preferrably hot coffee, so that maybe they'll go home to change
- Clear your throat, mumble "You might want to re-think that" and insert it in the minutes before the next board package goes out (if its in the minutes, it must have happened and you've CYA)
- Pass the buck by recomending the board get an opinion from ______ (insert attorney, engineer, architect, CPA, Magic 8-ball you carry in your briefcase*, etc)
or, do you go head-to-head with them trying to straighten it out before the problems occur?
Now and then, every board will do something that's "just around the bend" and you know it is. The first question to ask yourself is why? They may be tired of looking at the same issue time and again, or the problem is so off-the-wall that they really don't know what to do, or there's a personal agenda working underneath, or, maybe you just can't figure it out. The key is to not let it come to a vote. Keep the discussion going by raising any issue you can, while you try and identify the cause and the votes. Work the "NO's" and undecideds by planting potential problems in their mind. Change the direction from an "Action Item" to a "Study and Report". If all fails, simply tell the Board that you feel there may be some potential liability or risk isues and ask that it be tabled. That will buy you a month to convince the individual board members to re-think the issue. If you can't convince them by then, you may have to bring in some outside help (outside experts always carry more weight, even if they say the exact same things you did).
Even if its not in the contract or job description, a major part of your job is to keep the board from doing something that will have a negative on the community. I used to tell board President's that if they saw me give a negative shake of my head, then the issue needed to be dropped or tabled, and they would usually say something like "I'm not comfortable that we have all the facts" and ask that it be carried over. It helps to have that kind of working relationship and understanding with your President. You're the advisor on management - get in there and save them!
*By the way, if you can't carry around a manager's best friend, the Magic 8 Ball, here's an on-line version----but really, if you don't have one on your desk, how do you get through the day?
Posted by joewest at 11:46 AM
March 14, 2006
The Plateau Principle
I was reminded today of one of the earliest principles of community association management, the "Plateau Principle". This was fostered by one of the few management philosophers I've met by the name of Art Hiban. I can't remember the exact wording of the principle, but basically it stated that "Management companies will grow to the breaking point (plateau), then hire the needed staff which will require the company to move to the next breaking point." In other words, you never really find the balance between staff, accounts and profitability.
I imagine it is as true today as it was back in 1977 when I first heard it. Unless you've determined to stop growing, and stay at a determined size, the cycle never ends. Stretch staff to the limit, hire new staff, find new accounts to pay for new staff, which stretches larger staff to the limits....
I really thought that by now, someone would have come up with a formula that solves this problem, but although people may have figured out a way around it, no one has put it on paper that I know of. Somewhere out there must be a math major turned manager who can make sense of it. All you need to do is figure out the relationship between the cost and timing of adding new staff, add in the necessary increase in company overhead, factor in your increased time supervising and reduced time in managing, determine when and at what rates new accounts will come on and how much time they will take to manage and voila, you have it.
Hmmm...maybe that's why no one has reduced it to a simple formula. If you have, we'd love to hear it, even if its just a hypothesis, we'd be glad to test it, or, come to think of it, maybe just asking that 8-ball on your desk is still the best way.
Posted by joewest at 8:28 PM