Mills Properties
Scaling Up – Culture
What is the most important responsibility of a company owner/president/ceo?
Short Answer – Own and lead the Company Culture – Soup to Nuts
It’s your – to the core – number one asset.
It demands and deserves capital investment akin to putting a new roof an apartment building. Or, doing a full overlay on your parking lot. It’s the front door to your company.
It’s the aroma that oozes out of your business office when a customer opens the front door. Does it eek of sour attitudes and tired souls or does it smell like fresh energy and enthusiasm?
Brave Heart
It takes courage and vulnerability.
In the movie – William Wallace (Mel Gibson) makes a plea to Robert the Bruce to rise above the politics and lead. It’s the perfect message for any owner/leader as it relates to owning Culture.
Your looking forward to Mills Properties Scaling Up Culture Multifamily Maniac,
M
Share this:
It’s a New Year
It’s been a while.
I took the better part of six months off from writing. The chief reason; time.
Mills Properties, the company I work with, is emerging from some deep and excruciating growing pains. Pains that caused me to take time away from the things I love most. Writing be among them.
We still have a long way to go before we become the organization that we want to be; a journey that will no doubt be rich with reward but also rife with struggle.
Getting out of your own way and going void from breathing your own exhaust is often times the hardest work a company can do. Having the courage to embark is necessary. And shying away from monologue is central to building a great organization.
Not understanding that entrepreneurialism and leadership are two very different things can and will divide mediocre companies from great ones. With that in mind; the more time I spend at Mills the more I truly understand the absolute difference. I also understand the necessity for dreamers, strategist, managers and those who do the hardest work of all; the people who stay compelled to work with all the characters listed above.
Very few people can pull off both roles – entrepreneur and leader and the responsibilities that go along with each.
My hope for this year is that we find our way. And the writing I do from this point will be focused on scaling up progress and greatness all the while pushing for excellence.
A word I’ve pulled back from using (may the gods bless Tom Peters – I still love the guy).
It’s utopian and quixotic to think a company or a person can be excellent across disciplines such as heart, body, mind and soul. Across operations, marketing, accounting, capital improvements, and human resources. Across curb appeal, tour routes, landscape, product, pricing, leasing, etc.
Anyone who thinks otherwise is back to breathing their own exhaust.
With that – here I go. I will have fits and starts with my writing no doubt but I’ve penned a 2015 intention to keep it up as best I can. And the overarching intention is to capture the journey of scaling up a company for progress and greatness. And from time to time a hint of excellence!
Your thankful for the lessons of 2014 and looking forward to 2015 Multifamily Maniac,
M
Share this:
What it’s all About
One of my absolute favorite things to do in the multifamily business is visit site teams. In my head, it’s what it’s all about. You’ve read it here a million times. Organizations are put in place to serve the people who serve it. And getting out to see the teams is front and center in that proposition.
There is an old axiom in real estate – location, location, location. I would posit a new axiom – people, people, people. For some it’s the tough stuff. The touchy feely soft side of business that you can’t capture on a spreadsheet. It is the part of the business that I love.
We manage a property in Edwardsville, Illinois called Cherry Hills. It’s made up of five unique properties ranging in size from 32 units up to 100 units. The market has been hit by overbuilding and lagging unemployment. It’s been really tough to say the least. But this team is all over it. They are getting their lemonade out of the lemons so to speak.
And, here is what I mean by that – love the simple stuff…
Share this:
Apartment Blog Distribution in the Workplace
Learned a good lesson this week about choosing apartment blog distribution in the workplace – one I am humble enough to admit.
Real Life STL Media, an entity of Mills Properties, published a post today that was called into question. Not in the way you might think. It was not by an outside source but rather an insider.
Distribution Channels Matter
Not an hour after publishing a piece of content on our apartment lifestyle blog; I received a call from one of our internal team members suggesting the content was not okay for the workplace. An assertion that I didn’t understand in the moment. But after some discussion laced with examples, it dawned on me that the content was not the problem but rather the distribution channel.
You see, several weeks ago we decided to subscribe every team member (leaving the opt out statement clearly in place – so you could unsubscribe if you wanted to) to the blog via internal work email addresses. At the time we thought that would be a good way to gain exposure. In hindsight I can see that people should always have a choice to opt in or out of what they want to see. That is as true in the secular world as it is in the professional work place.
We had two choices – tone down the content or do a mass unsubscribe.
Your always learning and adapting Multifamily Manic,
M
Share this:
The Blasted Apartment Doormat
Our guest post today comes to us from Lisa Zagoren, property manager at Oak Park Apartments – managed by Mills Properties in St. Louis Missouri. Lisa also serves as a blogger at Real Life STL, a blog focused around über cool neighborhood-centric conversation.
In my travels as a property manager, I’ve come across some really crazy, bizarre, funny, sad (you get the picture) things. I read a blog post the other day that reminded me of how $5 could cost you a resident, which in turn costs you thousands in vacancy, make ready expense, advertising, etc., which brings me to this post….The Apartments Doormat.
I have a crazy, over-the-top, insane property consisting of 756 units. My resident services side team deals with a lot of negativity on a daily basis. As you can imagine, it’s hard to keep them positive at times, when everyone around them is so negative. They get called names (really bad names that I can’t put in this post). They get threatened. They get spat at.
Do You Care
I had a resident give the resident services team her notice to vacate last week. During the resident’s tenancy, her doormat was stolen not once, but three times. When she came to the office to inform us, we were apparently not that empathetic to her situation. We basically stated, sorry, there is nothing we can do.
According to my resident, there were things we could have done. We could have been empathetic; “I am so sorry that this happened to you Ms. Jones. Is there anything you can think of that we can do to try to prevent this from happening again”? My resident also stated in her letter, why did we not put a notice in the hallway stating someone is stealing doormats and to call management if they know who is doing this or just keep an eye out for each other in the building, because we put notices in the hallway for everything else. Everything that’s important to management, but not necessarily important to the residents.
Lesson learned. Had I known of my residents situation, I probably would have bought her a new door mat ($10), apologized empathetically, and would have saved a notice to vacate that I had no idea I would get over stolen doormats.
I know my resident services team deals with a lot of negativity and stress on a daily basis. I get that. I just need to constantly remind them of the “one” resident that is not like that and they need to be treated with respect and be empathetic when they have an issue that is serious to them.
We all need to be cognitive of how the day-to-day stressors can affect us. This one notice will cost me thousands in vacancy, turn over expense, advertising, etc.
Your property manager point of view for the day….
Share this:
- Page 1
- Page 2
- Page 3
- Interim pages omitted …
- Page 12
- Go to Next Page »