Focused Goals

Focused Goals

"Goals are dreams with deadlines". - Diana Scharf Hunt

"If you can dream it, you can do it. Always remember that this whole thing was started with a dream and a mouse." - Walt Disney

 

There was a study done on the 1969 Harvard MBA class, which reviewed the success of graduates who had written goals at the time of graduation and compared them to their peers that either had no specific goals or had goals but did not put them into writing. The results are really astounding.  First, only 3% of the class had written goals, but the small group that did have goals, made more money than the other 97% of the class.  To put that into perspective that means that a student with very focused long term goals was making almost 30 times as much as his average peer without a focused goal.

I have always been a huge believer in stated goals (not just putting it in writing and hiding it under the mattress, but put it out there for the world to know about).  The motivation of crowds is a powerful thing. Setting and publishing both short and long term goals in my eyes is the only way a company or individual can reach its full potential.   How can you get to a place that you didn't even know to aim for?

At Signature Community we are hyper focused on our commitment to goals and making them happen. Every week each member of the Signature team states a key weekly goal to their peers and gives an update on last week's accomplishments.  Sometimes they miss their goals, but in many cases they hit their goals or exceed and interestedly enough in just about all cases our subsequent goals have been more challenging than the past one.    What this public goal setting has shown me is that when good people are given the opportunity to pick their goals they will strive to reach and even exceed them.

Early this year I set a huge stretch goal for our company --- 100% occupancy by mid-July. Every manager, leasing agent and maintenance manager then adjusted their market goals to tie in with that goal. As of now all but a few markets have hit the 100% occupancy challenge and those markets that didn't are very close to hitting it.  It has been pretty amazing to witness the intense focus that Signature Community operated under during these past few months in order to hit this goal.   Many people questioned me and asked why the mid-July focus?  Why not September which is the typical end of season? Why push everyone so hard?  Why not push rents and increase resident turnover?  Well my thought process is pretty simple -- I want the Signature Community team to be the best in the industry and in order to do that they need to set and reach goals that others only dream of.  We did that at Signature this year and that shows the world that we don't just make lofty goals we make them happen!!

Thanks for Making It Happen at Signature Community.

Nick

 

Reaching New Heights

Reaching New Heights

This past weekend, I completed my first ultra-marathon, which is a foot race of 50 miles or more. The format of this race was 24 hrs of running, to see who can go the furthest. Sleep is optional but not recommended. The race was in Philadelphia and the route is an 8.5 mile loop on the banks of the river. When the race started at 10am the temperature was 90 and high humidity!

My original goal for the run was to complete 100 miles in 24 hrs, but within hours of running in the hot sun, I knew that even with all my extensive training and preparation, 100 miles was not in the cards for that day. I realigned my goals to keep within safe limits, of success yet still a big accomplishment (this was my first official foot race longer than 26.2 miles). I pushed all thru the day and night and finished at 76 miles in 23hrs and 35 minutes.

I am happy with my achievement and know that someday I will be back to accomplish the original 100 mile goal that I set for myself.

My thanks go out to everyone that gave me support before and during the event, especially my parents, grandparents, my wife Yael, and daughters Becca and Bryna. At 4am, when it was still 80 degrees (after 19 hrs of continuous running) you really can't focus on much, but I do remember that all the thoughts going through my head, was a replay of all the words of encouragement shared before the race. Thanks for bringing me across the finish line.

At Signature Community we had our own ultra-marathon going on the past few months. We set an obscene goal of 100% occupancy by mid-July. Sitting here today, we are in view of the finish line. In the next few days we will cross the line. So far Albuquerque, Kansas City both Plaza and Ambassador districts, El Paso and New York have reached the goal. We anticipate announcing more early this week, but I want to mention that we really did do an amazing accomplishment in such difficult economic times. When a market reaches 100 percent occupancy, we have a party for the entire Signature Community team in that market. We are also planning to have a resident appreciation party every month that the community or market maintains the 100% occupancy.

Hitting 100% occupancy is an incredible feat and every market that hit it should be proud! We really did show our competitor’s who is the leader in customer service is, which is why our residents love the place they live.
Thanks for making it happen with Signature Community and for your personal support in getting me over both the goals I set for myself this summer.
Thanks for making it happen!!
Nick

Coach Wooden

Coach Wooden

 

Coach Wooden, one of the winningest coaches in any sport ever, having won 12 consecutive NCAA basketball championships, died last week at the age of 99. Coach Wooden's record is exemplary, but what really made Coach Wooden stand out in his profession was in his ability to turn out great people, not just athletes.  

 

I saw an interview from a few years ago with Coach Wooden explaining his accomplishments.  He started by listing the doctors, lawyers and teachers that went through his program.  Not once did he mention the successful athletes that he coached.   Coach Wooden didn't see his job as a basketball game strategist or a developer of young athletes.   His job was an educator of young adults.   He taught integrity, self control, leadership and responsibility first; the game was last.

One of my favorite children's book is an illustrated poetry book by Coach Wooden called, Inch and Miles: The Journey to Success.  (Teamwork, patience, hard work, integrity and determination are the central themes in his book (If anyone would like a copy for their children just shoot me an email).

At Signature Community we see our Rising Star program as a similar program that Coach Wooden espoused.   We don't just want our people to be good property managers or good at accounting we want good people that understand teamwork, integrity, hard work and a never give up attitude.  Winning transcends any endeavor not just property management.   We continue to develop the Signature Star Training center to give learning tools to our team and push daily the focus of teamwork and "being nice".

I can't emphasis enough the importance of always growing as a person not just learning technical skills but life skills.  Keep growing and making it happen at Signature Community.

http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/john_wooden_on_the_difference_between_winning_and_success.html

 

 

Nick

Recovery's Seven Secrets

http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2010/0607/opinions-rich-karlgaard-digital-rules-recoverys-seven-secrets.html

The one-year-old recovery is weak and uneven. It faces headwinds of fear, deficits, terror threats, entitlement bombs, higher taxes and moral hazards, as well as armies of hair-trigger traders with their eyes on a black swan. Have we left anything out?

Oh, yes. Some companies managed to do well despite it all. Somebody forgot to tell Apple about the bad weather--same holds true for Domino's Pizza, Trek Bicycle, Scottrade, Salesforce.com, NetApp, Monsanto. Across a range of industries some companies are chugging ahead.

What do the winners have in common? They excel at most or all of the following corporate skill sets.

Design. The data deluge has arrived, courtesy of billions of Web pages and millions of marketing channels zapping us like bolts of lightning from clouds of bandwidth. There is no elevator, no airplane seat, no bar, no loo that is safe from the barrage. Between our ears there has been no improvement in processing and analyzing. Maybe nanotech will make every man a genius, but that's a generation or two away. Meantime, products must stick out to get noticed and be loved fanatically by users to get real momentum. Great design will prevail, whether it's an iPad, a Flip cam, a room at the W, a seat on Virgin or a bottle of Coke.

Speed. The pressing fact of business today is compressed margins. If you can't win on cost, then you must find other routes to margin. Good design is margin. So is speed. Last winter I broke my hip cycling and, fearing the loss of all my fitness, purchased a $4,000 spin trainer. That's what athletes do when they're desperate. But the spin trainer kept missing the ship. Meanwhile, my hip healed. One day I woke up and said: "Did I just pay $4,000 for an indoor bike?" I didn't need it anymore, so I canceled the order.

Blow the opportunity window and you blow the margin.

Cost. Maybe you can't beat a Chinese company on cost, but you can do much to bring your costs down. "Software as a service" from Salesforce.com, SAP and others gives you enterprise analytics at PC prices. Google may be known for its search engine and advertising model, but its cheap trick is harnessing millions of commodity servers to do the work.

Service. Customer-pleasing service can work at all points along the cost spectrum. Think Four Seasons at the top, Disneyland in the middle, Southwest Airlines at the bottom. The trick is being true to your brand and never promising service you can't deliver.

Take Southwest. How can this airline make you print out your own boarding pass, stand in line and scramble for available seats, and still have you feeling good about the whole deal? For one, that's how Southwest sets your expectations. Two, Southwest's attendants are given free rein to laugh and entertain you. The message is: We're all in this crowded aluminum tube together, so let's relax and have fun. Three, Southwest delivers where it counts: a good record of on-time arrival.

---

Communication outside. In a loud, overcrowded market with proliferating technologies and channels of communication that include everything from Forbes to Facebook to TV to Twitter, where do you even start? How do you allocate your ad dollars, your public relations? Which bases do you cover when you can't cover them all?

Start by asking these clarifying questions: What are the values of your company? How do customers participate in those values? You might end up doing things you hadn't thought of. Jon Iwata, chief marketing officer of IBM, regularly communicates to ex-IBM employees. Why? Because there are hundreds of thousands of them, and most of them will talk about IBM--for good or bad--on social networks like Facebook.

Communication inside. The first thing Johan Bruyneel did when he became Lance Armstrong's bicycle team director in 1998 was equip the whole team with radios and earpieces. That was once a star's perk, but Bruyneel knew that the Tour de France was a three-week expedition in which the mental errors of the entire team were cumulative. It was a difficult technical feat to fit every cyclist into the two-way radio loop, but Bruyneel pulled it off. As a team director he has eight wins and one third place in the Tour de France.

Purpose. In 2004 I was fortunate to hold one of the last recorded interviews with Peter Drucker, about 13 months before the great man's death. Drucker spent the last part of his career studying nonprofits--hospitals, museums, churches and the like. He felt they are as critical to a society's success as good government, entrepreneurs and thriving corporations. Drucker said one word separated enduring nonprofits from those that lapsed into bureaucratic stagnation or scandal: Purpose!

Entrepreneur and author Simon Sinek has discovered the same thing. All companies know what they do, says Sinek. They sell something, at a profit, they hope. The better companies know how to codify all the procedures and good habits that make success routine. The very best companies know why they do what they do. They have a purpose--a reason for existence that transcends profit. Driven by purpose, they create a movement and consequently get the most discerning and loyal customers. In today's crowded global marketplace customers "don't buy what you do," says Sinek. "They buy why you do it."

In this uneven recovery, with trust in tatters and fear off the charts, purpose has never mattered more.

Built during the recession

Built during the recession

A lot is talked about how recessions create opportunities. Apple computers, Microsoft software to name a few great companies were started in the worst of recessionary times.  Even more phenomenal in my eyes, as a real estate developer, was the building of the Empire State Building, during the depression. 

The facts are amazing:

102 stories, tallest building for more than 40 years
80 years later still one of tallest buildings in the world
Went from concept to completion in one year and 45 days
Constructed by 3,400 men
Built at a rate of 1 floor per day. 
  
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bEnCpWMl91s&feature=related

At Signature Community we undertook an initiative during this "Great Recession" to make use of the opportunity and convert the more than 100 units that we classified as down units and to bring them back on line and profitable.  Being in a recession and with the real estate finance market the way it is, we realized that this wasn't going to be accomplished with the typical spend and borrow methods of 2007. We needed to find new solutions and with the help of our entire organization we did. We set out almost 30 days ago to take 102 down units and turn them into revenue producing units in 102 days. The same pace in which the Empire State Building was built.  We are now 30 days in and as of today, we are on pace to make this happen. 

How are we doing it? Teamwork and outside the box thinking. 

Almost all the work on the projects are being done with the help of residents who are unemployed, under-employed and needed to take advantage of the Signature Residents Work program to pay their back rent. Our regional maintenance directors formed a collective to share insight on supply pricing and combine buying power to optimize pricing. Our leasing agents are selling out the apartments before completion to eliminate downtime and start the vital cash flow to pay for the improvements. Property managers are holding down the fort while most of our resources are involved in this initiative. Regional managers have been integral in keeping everyone motivated and focused on the goal we have of 100% occupancy on August 1st. And Dave McLain at corporate office has been overseeing this entire process to maintain quality, and speed, while still keeping costs at a minimum.

The effort that the Signature Community has put into this and the success we are having is nothing short of the building of the Empire State Building.

Thanks to everyone for making it happen at Signature Community.  

Nick

How do you improve something that you can't measure?

How do you improve something that you can't measure?

I am always amazed at how numbers can make ideas seem so black and white when the numbers themselves are always so obtuse.  There are so many ways of manipulating data that no one really understands anything anymore.  The numbers have gotten too big. The statistics are too manipulated and the politics or corporate sensitivities too great to allow numbers to be accurate.  The sub-prime crisis and the housing bubble are a clear example.

At Signature Community we were swayed by this trap in the heyday of the real estate market. When financial engineering had a lot more influence on real estate than the location or building.   We were more interested in the keeping rents high to show future profits and not paying enough attention to what really matters in business, cash flow.

Cash flow is monthly revenues less monthly expenses.  Forget about the amortization, depreciation and accruing expense. It's simple, what came in less what goes out. 

At the end of the day, our company's success or failure is going to come down to this simple formula.  Can we bring in more rents than we need to pay out in expenses?  The rest is just noise.  Over the past year we have pushed our managers at Signature to understand how this formula works for their properties and the focus of managing cash flow to positive territory has been amazing. We have always been an ideas company, but successful execution has not always been there. Today, managers are focused on monthly cash flow and they clearly see the results of ideas that we executed on. They are making things happen because they clearly see in the impact in black and white.

If only we could get big business or the government to start posting clearly defined cash flow numbers we would have a much better picture of where we really stand. 

Thanks for making it cash flow at Signature Community. 

Nick

Making the impossible happen

Making the impossible happen

I love watching ted.com. It's a bunch of smart & interesting people telling stories about what was accomplished with limited resources.  I was especially interested in this Mount Everest story from the lone medical professional on the mountain when a devastating storm struck the summit and killed 8 people.  The story here isn't about the tragic deaths, but the survivors, particularly one survivor that had been left for dead for more than 24 hrs in 40 below zero wind chills. He managed somehow to convert every ounce of his energy into the effort required to save his life and walk down the mountain.  Watch the video below because there is some science to this, but I am amazed by the sheer willpower of a human being to stay alive. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bgqc2m7aBzs

Science is still trying to explain some of the amazing feats accomplished by people when survival is at stake. Someday they will, but until then, we call it the power of hope and have to realize that it can do amazing things. 

At Signature Community we have been fighting for survival in a very bad real estate market, a horrible financing market and an even worse job market.  All the worst conditions when you are a real estate operator. Despite the terrible market conditions, we have done amazing things over the past 2 years that I don't think would have been possible except in times of extreme survival mode.  We are managing better with less. We are collecting more from fewer employed residents. We have taken a dire situation made fast, direct and tough decisions to cut costs, sell property or restructure deals that are giving us a chance to get to the other side of this mountain of economic problems. 

I thank everyone for thinking and doing what a survivor would do to get us out of this giant perfect storm.  I have no doubt that the lessons we learned and the instincts gained over the past 18 months will be invaluable over the next 18 years.

Thanks for making it happen at signature community. 

Nick