by Julie Adamen
 

b) Managers, like everyone else, judge their contribution or worth  through the recognition they receive from others;

c) For managers, negative recognition significantly outweighs positive recognition. It's no wonder community managers have difficulty in seeing  and owning  their effect on the people they touch and the communities they manage. 

Seldom are managers thanked for their contribution to the good, big or small. Yet when something goes wrong, real or perceived, it is immediately brought to the manager's attention, many times in very abusive and/or in a public manner. Great work is handled with silence and errors are handled by hanging.  That fact allows some managers to wallow in the "my job isn't important" and "woe is me!"  mode. I say baloney.  Managers, if you want concrete evidence of your profound and lasting effect on the  communities you manage, there is no need to have Clarence the Angel visit you.  It's just a short stroll down memory lane:

Want evidence? Take over an account from another manager.

Evidence:  Exhibit A: When a manager is assigned a new account there is a no small amount of trepidation. "Oh, no. I know who managed this account before me. It is going to be a nightmare!" In my own experience as a portfolio manager this prescient dread was well-founded, whether the previous manager worked within the same company or not. In fact, the worst two accounts I ever took over were both managed by my fellow employees. Minutes? Hadn't been done in 7 months. Notes for those meetings? MIA. Nonprofit status? Not filed and now delinquent. Tax returns? Not filed in two years.  Paperwork? Stacks everywhere, some stuffed under the desk in a 1" space. Correspondence? Not answered in months.  Services orders? I had to physically go through every service order I could find in the piles that were left me, some going back 4 months or more. I had to call the complainant, ask if the issue had been taken care of and if not assure them it would be and apologize on behalf of the company. The only thing that wasn't at a total standstill in this community were the angry residents, who were hard at work preparing torches, pitchforks and a suitably and perhaps justifiably large bonfire. Did the last manager have a profound and lasting effect on everyone and everything in their wake? You bet. Do you think the new manager (me) had a lasting and profound effect on the community when I tidied up this mess? I know it did. 

Exhibit B: Contrast the above with the absolute surprise and delight to which managers are treated when handed an account that is in order. Minutes written and filed, paperwork up to date, website functional, action list current, service orders up to date, well-written contracts, good sub-contractors. In short, a functioning community. Yes, that community will still have all its foibles du jour, but today they are up and running and the day-to-day business affairs have been handled cleanly, neatly, professionally. The community is moving forward and the Butterfly Effect is in full evidence: The community is well-run, contractors are in place, the residents are relatively content and your life is much easier.  It's like a sunny day in your cubicle!  The competent, thoughtful and professional work of the previous manager touched you personally and professionally, and rippled through the community as a whole, in a wonderful and profound manner.

Exhibit C. Some associations seem  destined for mediocrity. The Board doesn't demand much, the owners likewise, and thus the manager lets this account slide while handling all the other more pressing issues on their plate. So, the minutes are done, but not last months' and they aren't done very well. Actions items are completed, but some are still pending, but only from the past 60 days… not too bad. Correspondence? It's only 30 days old… not too bad. Could have been worse? Yes, but more importantly, could have been better. Like Charlie Brown's Christmas tree, a few lights, ornaments and a little love go a long way. The Butterfly Effect in terms of mediocrity is equally as important as the positive and the negative  effects noted above,  because mediocrity forever begs the question: Where could that community have gone if it were managed well  by the Board and/or staff? 

Seemingly Small Acts with Real Big Unexpected Results

Beware the Brilliant Disguise. When I was a portfolio manager (back in the day), one of my accounts was an under construction, 1000-unit condominium complex. Let's just say the residents there were simply not a happy group. It was an account with the personality of a pit bull. The units were closing escrow as fast as they could be built - almost 50 per month.  Those units were going up so fast the developer had a hard time keeping up with installation of the common areas - both softscape and hardscape. Common areas were constructed,  but more slowly than the units being sold and occupied. It was controlled chaos with a lot of unhappy residents. One day I received a letter (yes, a real letter) from one of my unhappiest residents, complaining that the 10 common area sprinkler heads in the flower bed right next to his unit weren't working. This was accompanied by three more pages of complaints.

Being young and stupid, I proceeded to sit down and type (yes, type at a type writer - and dinosaurs ruled the earth) a two page response, recounting our awareness of the problem of those 10 sprinkler heads, but there are actually over 35,000 sprinkler heads in the complex and the vast majority of them work well and the vast majority of the landscape was doing fine and no I was not going to withhold the landscaper's check because of 10 blocked sprinkler heads! That very afternoon, I mailed it. Without thinking, reviewing, asking someone else to read it - anything. I sure set him straight and boy did that feel GOOD.

Then the homeowner received my letter. The Butterfly Effect in all its ironical glory was visited upon me in the form of a concentrated and concerted effort led by that man to get rid of me. That one act lead to a long chain of events, one act affecting another, then affecting another. Within a few months I had to resign due to the resultant stress of those events. That butterfly had big-ass wings.

Save yourself from the Brilliant Disguise. An action, word or deed can disguise itself as small,  yet turn out to have a real, real, BIG effect. A word of advice to all managers: STOP, THINK or even SLEEP ON IT before you mail that letter or hit the "send" button. As you are able to surmise, the Butterfly Effect is a daily, hourly, even minute-by-minute occurrence. In terms of being a community manager, your effect can be subtle or gross at any one given time, and not necessarily the way you meant it.

Everything you do matters.

There are many "big" actions in which managers have a great effect on their communities. Exposing corruption, introducing new ways to save energy, finding better and less expensive contracts - any one of a number of things that allow the  manager to see their effect immediately, and make them at least a temporary hero in the eyes of their Board and residents. But while managers think that those times are the only times they are having a "real" effect,  that is not true. The real effect, the real  flaps of the butterfly's wings happens in the thousands of small things managers do every hour of the day: The simple act of handling of a problem resident professionally  and without emotion, making sure  vendors are paid on time, returning those calls and emails in a timely manner, and just making the job work as best you can and at all times.  Touching those around you as you would wish to be touched. In the Butterfly Effect, the first act may seem unimportant, but it is the certain chain of events that follow the first flap of the wings that become more important and relevant to those around us.

It's a Wonderful Life 

Some of you may need a more convincing of the Butterfly Effect. All right, try this little test: All you have to do is simply give a stranger a compliment. My favorite is to notice and then compliment another woman on her terrific selection of shoes or purse. "Fabulous shoes!" I say as I pass her in the airport or grocery store. The fun is in watching her light up and say thank you and then tell me here she got them.  It's such a small gesture to notice and compliment, but that gesture makes a difference. The difference maybe for a moment, or maybe for a day, and it makes no difference which, but that difference causes others to be different.  Or  say "Hello" with a smile to a total stranger as you pass them on the street. Usually they are startled that someone is actually talking to them,  but once they recover almost they will answer  "hello" and smile back at you. Each of these simple exercises proves that the smallest, simplest gesture has an effect on others, including total strangers. 

Community management is an intense service industry. Managers can and do have a profound effect, touching dozens, sometimes hundreds, of people in a single day. The good - and not so good - works of community managers and the effect thereof is profound and lasting. And we don't need to get to the point where Clarence the Angel has to visit to remind us of that fact.

By the way, nice shoes.  Where did you get them?

(1)  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butterfly_effect

Click Here To Listen to NPR's Short on Theorist Edward Lorenz the first to use term The Butterfly Effect to describe Chaos Theory as it relates to weather

It's a Wonderful Life (1946), based on an original story by Phip Van Doren Stern, Image Credits Click Here.
For more about It's a Wonderful Life see Reel Classics ^R on the web: Click Here

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