What We Believe
Have you ever been to Buc-ee’s? If you have then you’re in the club. If not, then I encourage you to try it at least once. There are many incredible and incredulous things to see and experience at Buc-ee’s – more than can be experienced in a single trip. This travel convenience chain is rooted in Texas but is creeping across the southeast. We have two in Georgia so far. In Warner Robins, the site sits on 22 acres with a 53,000 sq ft store, 120 gas pumps, more than 70 iceboxes – and brisket, the holy grail of the thousands of their daily offerings. People come for the brisket and stay for just about everything else – the kitsch of a literal one-stop-shop for everything from a wall of jerky to deer corn and beaver nuggets.
How did a giant beaver-themed convenience store knock the socks off its competitors, and what are the takeaways that apply to any business?
THEY KNOW WHO THEY ARE
On their careers page, this (beaver) nugget stands out: Do you believe what we believe? We believe our store should be clean. We believe our staff should be friendly. We believe our prices should be low. If you believe what we believe, come join the Buc-ee’s team!
They advertise their pay rates which range from $16-$33/hr depending on position with 401k (100% match), three weeks paid time off, healthcare, nightshift premium pay, etc. The stores are filled with staff on the move and on the alert for any customer who needs assistance or just looks a little confused.
Their stores are brightly lit and well-stocked which is a feat in a time when supply chain disruptions cause sparse shelves in other retail stores. They advertise and maintain the ‘world’s cleanest restrooms’. Their locations are outside the urban core, located instead on the interstate just far enough away to make stopping for road snacks and a top-off reasonable – and it never disappoints.
THEY KNOW WHO THEY AREN’T
Surprisingly, Buc-ee’s is not a truck stop. They do not have parking or pumps for big rigs nor do they offer any of the amenities a long haul truck needs such as showers or a place for extended parking.
The phone numbers for their stores are unlisted. They found that having phones ringing distracted cashiers from caring for the customers in front of them. If you have questions, go to the website.
Their return policy is the opposite of easy – as in return to the store where you purchased it and ask for a manager. My guess is that this means they have very few returns. They do not have a system for letting you know if an item is in stock at a particular store. Take your chances.
WHAT ABOUT MULTIFAMILY
There is a tendency in multifamily to chase after the newest thing – be it tech, amenity, or experience. If you’ve been here for a while, you know that I am a big fan of more innovative technology to improve the customer and team member experience. The future is now, and I’m leaning into it. Ship and iterate and get rid of the stuff that slows the process and progress. Which is all well and good…
But – if we can’t distill who we are and what we believe with the brilliant simplicity of Buc-ee’s, then we have some remedial work to do right now. It doesn’t take a three-inch-thick binder of policies and procedures if we simply believe that our properties and offices should be clean, our maintenance shops stocked and organized, our amenities clean and functional, and make-readies should be ready like you’d move your mother into ready.
I encourage you to start asking your team members – what do we believe? Distill it down to its simplest form and then spread it throughout your organization. Clear, concise, and easily communicated.
Who are we and what do we believe?
Share with us your experiences with defining your company’s beliefs and sharing them with your team. What worked and what didn’t?
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Durable Goods
Lately, I have been thinking about durability – what lasts and what doesn’t and the things we hold onto versus what we should toss.
My wife grew up in a rural area of Wisconsin. She is a big fan of Carhartt and has owned some of their clothing for more than twenty years. I had the opportunity to learn more about their brand while shopping for a gift on my wife’s wish list. Carhartt’s claim of durability is justified – just ask their 1.2 million followers on Instagram.
Not Durable – Failure
In interviews with more than 100 people at the top of their fields, Tim Ferriss found they all shared two habits: 1. They ask ‘absurd’ questions and 2. They deconstruct fear. In the article, Francis Ford Coppola is quoted as saying, “Failure is not necessarily durable. You can go back and look at it and go, ‘Oh, that wasn’t a failure. That was a key moment of my development that I needed to take, and I can trust my instinct.”
If failure is not durable, why do we hold on to it? When engaging in real open-hearted conversation, most people can quickly recall and recount moments of failure – so much so that it feels like failure is cataloged in our brains for easy recollection.
Poor Decisions
Failures related to poor decisions can be quickly rectified in a culture of honesty and safety. Bad choices lead to better ones when shared openly with a team dedicated to group success. The only thing worse than a wrong decision is making NO decision – the GPS can’t let you know that you’re headed in the wrong direction until you start moving.
Character Failures
I find that failures related to character are the hardest to let go of. When I haven’t lived up to my personal values or acted in a way that contradicts them – those failures cut deep. They happen in business and personal relationships. I don’t know about you, but I find that I can readily recall those failures – can actually feel them in my body when I think about them.
But here’s the thing – even those personal character failures are not durable, and there is no value in holding on to them forever. Once you do the work – the personal character work – to reflect, course correct, and make amends for those failures – it is time to release them.
Past vs Future
Carrying around the weight of the past takes up personal bandwidth that is better used to serve your current and future purpose. Acknowledge past failures for the lessons they provided and move on. It’s easier said than done – but it is worth the effort.
What do you consider to be durable – important enough to keep? And what are you holding on to that is past its expiration date?
Let us know what you think.
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By The Roots
As I write this, it is springtime, and signs of the season are everywhere you look with abundant flowers, blooming trees and shrubs, and pollen that covers just about everything. Many years ago, I owned a landscape company named The Lawn Ranger, and it provided me with a real appreciation for the rapid evolution of the spring season.
People who love to garden also seem to come alive this time of year. Choosing plants, preparing the soil, and carefully determining what conditions each plant will need to succeed. The smell of fresh-turned earth fills the air as the gardener carefully puts seed to ground in an act of faith. The belief that water, sun, and warm temperatures will do the work of generations and bring the seed to bear fruit.
The work of the gardener is never complete. Attention is turned to an almost fanatical process of watering, weeding, and battling pests. There are many methods to fight weeds, but few things are more satisfying than pulling out a pesky weed that comes out of the ground all the way to its roots. Some weeds come out easily but others (I’m looking at you, dandelions!) have long tap roots that resist removal. If you pull a weed at the surface but leave the root, it looks better for the (shockingly short) time until the weed reappears.
Cultivating Team Members
In the multifamily space, we serve a similar role – as the gardener is to crop so are we to our team members. The topics of competition for talent, rapid new hire turnover, and current team member retention are everywhere in multifamily. The pandemic acted like a pressure cooker on the front line and support employees, but it did not create the problem. High turnover has been an issue for the last several years, well before Covid-19 was added to the mix. The multifamily turnover rate was 33% compared to the average national rate of 22%.
Planning for the arrival of a new hire begins before the job is even posted. Setting pay rates that are competitive with the marketplace is a baseline requirement. Not the amount you paid the person who was last in the role – but what the market demands today. It is unreasonable to expect someone to work for less than their worth. Pre-start date communication and touchpoints, onboarding, peer-to-peer connections, and mapping out those crucial first weeks – training, support, and encouragement – help new team members find their way through the maze.
In the early days, new hires are quietly checking their experience against what was promoted and promised before they accepted the position. This is where we lose them. When we aren’t who we say we are. When our core values aren’t practiced every day – trust is broken and like those pesky weeds, it won’t be fixed with a surface-level solution.
There are no simple solutions to talent acquisition and retention, but the fundamentals are fairly straightforward. Competitive pay, intentional connectivity, serving a purpose higher than self and ensuring that your brand promises align with the actual cultural experience throughout your organization.
Critical Dreamers
I was looking over my credit card statement not so long ago and noticed that Amazon was labeled as a book retailer. Wow. Although I know that Amazon started in the bookseller space in the early 90s, I don’t know anyone who would describe them as such today.
Jeff Bezos was an unqualified success when Amazon went public in 1997, long before he rolled out a streaming platform, Prime memberships, and went on to become the largest retailer on the internet. Bezos has many admirers, and maybe just as many detractors, but it’s hard to deny him credit for big ideas. In fact, while still in high school Bezos developed the Dream Institute, a center that promoted creative thinking in students.
Multifamily Innovation
The multifamily industry is on the precipice of innovation and there is plenty of opportunity to craft solutions that were unthinkable just twenty years ago. Whether we stimulate or suffocate fresh ideas is at the crux of the problem for many leaders in our industry.
The antidote to creativity lies in thinking you know (or should know) all the answers. Leaders who seek innovation invite their team members into the conversation as partners in problem-solving AND in dream making. A culture of creativity is best served by a collaborative mindset.
Here are a few other considerations for growing next-level critical dreamers.
Culture of Creativity
- Invest in education. Team members need the opportunity to grow their knowledge and skills beyond their current roles, and even in fields unrelated to property management, to round out their expertise and open their eyes to connections that could lead to breakthroughs.
- Add creative thinking skills to your curriculum. Some people are naturally creative thinkers, but it is a skill that can be taught and nurtured through an intentional learning program and fueled with stimulating brainstorming or out-of-industry field trips such as museums, art galleries, or tours. Fresh perspective sometimes requires fresh surroundings.
- Consider personal motivation. What do your team member find fascinating, enjoyable, or personally challenging? How might you use that to set each team member up to work on problems that fit this sweet spot?
If you only ask questions to which you already know the answers, you can only hope to make team members learn exactly what you already know.
And where is the innovation in that?
What are you doing to build a culture of creativity in your organization? Share your stories with us!
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Changing Perspective
In March 2011, I wrote about changing up the way you think about prospects and residents. “Prospects and residents are human beings and or people first. Think of it this way, treat them as prospects or consumers and you are treating them according to your needs. Turn that around and treat them as people or humans and you are treating them according to their needs.”
Earlier this year the post Business is Personal, discussed being in service of the whole humans who work for and serve the business. On the surface, these two admonitions may appear to be in conflict, but I believe they are two sides of the same coin.
Hot Under The Collar
Many times, when a resident calls the home office, the caller is hot under the collar, feeling that their needs haven’t been met or that they have fundamentally been disrespected. The follow-up conversation with the site team often runs along the same lines – they feel that the resident violated policy, was rude, and want to know that the company ‘has their back’ in the conflict – often quoting some form of evidence that they were right, and the resident is wrong.
In this right vs. wrong mindset, there are no winners. Either/or is almost always a sucker’s choice and leaves at least one party feeling maligned and misunderstood.
Pressing Buttons
I know from personal experience that some residents seem to press all the buttons and when that happens, it is easy to get caught up in an emotional hailstorm. But when my buttons are pressed, it is MY responsibility. How I manage those feelings and how I respond are completely within my control. It isn’t the resident’s fault if I ‘lose it’. To paraphrase Viktor Frankl, there is power in the space between stimulus and response. We have the power to choose and, in our response lies the opportunity for growth.
When a business accepts the responsibility to act in service of its team members with a culture that actively removes barriers to healthy communication, it promotes a standard of psychological safety. In that climate, it becomes easier to engage in difficult conversations and team members learn how to resolve conflicts without defaulting to triggered emotional responses.
You Win – I Win – We Win
When the overall stated goal is to generate better outcomes for everyone instead of winning at all costs, it increases the likelihood that residents will feel heard, and their issues will be resolved in a way that benefits them.
Ultimately, the business wins when the team members do, and we all benefit when our customer wins.
What are you doing to create winning situations for your team members and customers? Share your stories with us!
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