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The Time Machine
By Julie Adamen
Welcome back. You made it to your second day in community management even though you had second thoughts with your second coffee. I’ll bet that when you went to bed last night, you either fell asleep from total and complete exhaustion – or you didn’t sleep well because your mind was spinning! All that stuff to do and remember, and how will you EVER manage it all?!
On your first day you spent a considerable amount of time sorting out paper, services orders, letters, sticky notes and association data. This morning you don’t really feel any less confused (this is NORMAL) – but at least the paper is stacked in a somewhat better order. Yesterday, you worked a bit on the micro – today we’ll incorporate the macro- management aspects of your job in to something cogent, and that begins with the right scheduling tools.
The Tools. You need something, or a couple of things, on which to post all your future activities to help you begin and stay organized in your job as a manager. This can be a Day-Timer, a desk calendar, MS Outlook, a PDA, or some such thing to act as your personal “Master Calendar.” This tool must be able to meld your personal hourly, daily, weekly and monthly schedule with the Annual Calendars of your communities (Annual Calendars are addressed later in this article). The idea here is to be able to keep track of not only your time but of all the events of the communities you manage and to keep all of those events flowing without running in to each other. From appointments with the landscape committee on Thursday mornings to when to begin preparing the mail out for the annual meeting(s), the Master Calendar is your guide to knowing what you should be doing and when. Your Master Calendar should always be at your fingertips.
TIP: Always have paper and pen with you when you are not in the office - next to your bed, in the kitchen, at soccer games – to jot down things as the days and evenings go by, then add these tasks or ideas to your Master Calendar and/or list of Action Items (This is why many managers are going to PDAs – they go anywhere and most can plug in to Outlook). Not only will you be more productive, your stress level will go down as you don’t have to worry about forgetting something important (like making sure the sprinklers are turned off for the Board President’s daughter’s wedding).
Your schedule, or where to find the stuff to post to your Master Calendar. As a community manager, you normally work month-to-month, or, board meeting-to-board meeting. Board meetings are where you will take direction from the Board on certain items they want you to complete prior to the next meeting, or by the following meeting. Most of us in the business call these “Action Items.” So, as logic would have it, one of the very first things you need to find out is when and where are the board (and committee) meetings you are expected to attend. These dates may have been left for you by the previous manager or not, but you can usually find this information in the Minutes of the last meeting. If the Minutes have not been written from the last meeting (a very real possibility) – talk with your employer first, then the Board President and committee chairs. Once you have this information, put it on your Master Calendar. Now you have the ability to begin working toward the various tasks that need to be completed for the community.
A Word on Minutes…. Based on my experience, most community managers still take and type the Minutes of their Board meeting(s). To those legions of managers who still have this task, my advice is to complete the Minutes of the meeting as your FIRST task, or Action Item, of the month. This way you don’t forget what happened, or what that scribbling you did in the margin means. It also helps you to prepare a coherent Master Schedule for the month. All of these mean better time management and less stress for you.
Basic time management for community association managers. Most communities require you, the manager, complete certain tasks on a regular basis. These routine tasks, depending on the community and the task, will need to be completed weekly, monthly, quarterly or yearly. The trick to getting these tasks, or Action Items, finished on time is to not only insert the completion date required by the task on your Master Calendar, but also to schedule the time it will take you to do the required “leg work” to complete that item. Remember: The majority of people underestimate the time it will take to complete any given task. That said, for example:
11/7/03 and 11/8/03 Complete and mail Board packet for XYZ HOA
11/15/03 Board Meeting Date for XYZ HOA
Now, you may have some time intensive tasks to complete for XYZ prior to the next meeting. Those tasks must be scheduled to give you sufficient time to complete them prior to completing the Board packet – especially in the case of obtaining bids from vendors. For example:
10/20/03 – RFP’s[1] emailed to vendors a, b, and c.
10/29/03 – Bids due from vendors a, b and c.
11/7 – 11/8 – Board packet out
11/15/03 Board Meeting
TIP: Inevitably you will deal with an unplanned crisis anywhere from one to five times per month, especially if you manage several accounts. It always helps to schedule yourself and additional day or two longer than you think it will take you to complete the task. You will feel under less pressure if you need that extra time – and you’ll feel great if you don’t because you got that task taken care of ahead of schedule!
TIP: Dealing with your people while trying to actually finish a project. In our business, it is very easy to get caught in the whirlwind of the many perceived crises of your homeowners and Board members. Although it is your responsibility to manage those people and their issues, managing the time you spend doing so is also up to you. Spending an inappropriate amount of time in sympathetic conversation and/or general hand holding can keep you from moving on and completing tasks that are the business of the community. Although we’ll discuss the people management end of the business in a subsequent issue, it is imperative that whatever crisis has occurred, you compartmentalize that crisis (i.e., not be consumed by it) and move on to the normal routine of task completion.
The Annual Calendar. The Annual Calendar is for the community itself, and has on it things the community must do every year without fail. All events on the Annual Calendar(s) should also be on your Master Calendar. These would be things such as:
Budgets
Audits
Tax Returns
Annual Meetings
Reserve Studies and/or Updates
Although the timeframes, dates and complexities of these tasks vary from state to state (due to state law) and community to community, there they are. So you don’t get caught like a deer in the headlights when your Board President casually asks if you have completed the upcoming year’s budget, or has the audit been mailed, it’s best to continually maintain and review all of these tasks – which is easy since you already inserted them all in your personal Master Calendar. (Note: Many management firms require you maintain an Annual Calendar for each community so in the event of your untimely departure from management, the next manager will have a starting point). A copy of the Annual Calendar should be kept in your Master Files for your Association – along with the governing documents and contracts.
Items on the community’s Annual Calendar have not only a date they are due, either by law or as dictated by the governing documents, but many of them have deadlines and events that must be scheduled around them so each of these individual processes run smoothly and on time. For example:
1/5/04 – Nominating Committee meets
1/6/04 – Call for Nominees mailed out to membership
1/25/03 – Nominees finalized by Committee
2/20/04 – Proxies mailed
3/19/03 – Meet with Inspectors of Election, count and tally proxies
3/20/04 – Annual Meeting
3/20/04 – Organizational Meeting
Obviously, this is simplified; but by maintaining an Annual Calendar for each community along with your personal Master Calendar, you are able to begin a time-line for managing each event. You know the Nominating Committee is meeting on the 5th – so you know you must attend or not. You also know that you must complete the Call for Nominees as proscribed by the Committee the day after the meeting, so you’d better schedule the mail out and complete the verbiage for the letter and form calling for those nominations prior to the meeting of the Nominating Committee.
TIP: With many of these “macro-tasks” having timeframes, disclosures and various requirements set forth by law (or the governing documents), you need to avail yourself of that information. If law governs the timeframe of the event and you are working for a management company, most likely your firm will have that type of information available to you for review. If you are on site you can find that information through your association’s attorney, or your local CAI chapter can probably refer you to it. If not, look on the Internet. Although some requirements and timeframes, if not met exactly, make little difference, others are terribly important (such as notifications of assessment increases – if you blow that and someone challenges you, the Board may have to delay that increase for months – resulting in a revenue challenge for which you (and the Board) didn’t plan.
In this business, tasks to be completed and deadlines to meet are never ending.
The secret to staying sane and ahead of the curve is to manage your time well by continually using your time management/task management tools effectively. Your basic time management tools are the Annual Calendar for the “macro” tasks of the community and your personal Master Calendar for melding those larger tasks with the everyday “micro” tasks that are a part of every manager’s life. The minute you stop managing your time is the minute the endless cycle of community management tasks will begin to overtake you. Schedule yourself for success.
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