A regional director solved a recurring vacancy problem without needing more leasing. The Problem? Slow maintenance response times causing NTVs.
The problem you’re solving is rarely the problem. It’s almost always a symptom of a system you haven’t mapped yet.
Donella Meadows, the systems thinker behind Thinking in Systems, spent her career mapping where in a system it pays to intervene. We push on the surface and leave the structure alone. The fix feels productive but the problem comes back.
In multifamily, the leasing problem is really a pricing problem, the pricing problem a product problem, the product problem a maintenance problem, the maintenance problem a staffing problem. Chase the leasing numbers, and you’re treating the symptom four layers above the cause.
A systems operator asks what structure keeps producing this outcome, and what would have to change there for the symptom to die for good instead of coming back next quarter.
She stopped working on leasing. She fixed the maintenance response time. Renewals recovered. Occupancy followed. The leasing team was never the problem. They were absorbing a problem that lived three systems upstream.
Map the system before you reach for a fix.
Every recurring operational problem is a systems design issue dressed up as an execution failure. Fix the design. — Mike Brewer
Discussion Prompt: Take your most stubborn operational problem and trace it up three layers. What structure is producing the symptom you keep treating? What would have to change there?