We started talking about the secret to success in business like there was only one. You didn’t fall for that did you? Time to continue our journey on the Secret to Success in Business with a look at committing to continuous improvement.
Commit to Continuous Improvement
Decker Properties has been around for nearly 40 years. I think we’re doing great, but I know better than to think that we’ve arrived. It’s embarrassing to think about how we used to do some things. In the beginning, I can remember outfitting apartments with used appliances and deliberately avoiding frills that I perceived troublesome and prone to failure, like automatic defrost refrigerators!
We used to fill out preprinted leases by hand and then meet with the new resident for signing. We felt compelled to explain the lease in these meetings and the appointment would last half an hour. Our staff would have to remember which apartments included which utilities and other details subject to human error.
As technology evolved, we began scanning in the paper lease to produce an electronic document that we would email to prospective residents. But this was hardly an improvement. Our residents would have to print out the lease, sign it and then scan and email it back to us. Often, residents owned only a smart phone and didn’t have convenient access to a printer. Our lease requires multiple signatures and initials in several different places in the lease. A new resident often overlooked a required signature or initial.
Once, a single lease had to be printed three times: First by us to email to the resident. Then the resident would print it a second time to sign it. Upon return it to us, we would print the lease out for the third time, manually sign and then scan the completed document yet again to email to the resident. Then we would file the paper copy. Every step was prone to human error or misfiling.
Today, our leases are entirely electronic and produced by computer at the click of a button. The lease is distributed electronically for electronic signature. The document will not allow the user to proceed until all required signatures and initials are completed. The details of who is responsible for utilities are automatically programmed into the electronic document. All parties to the lease can sign at the click of a button. The document is never printed out and is filed electronically. The time and inconvenience saved are massive.
There are other electronic productivity improvements as well.
Instead of opening hundreds of pieces of mail and logging in paper rent checks, tenants make electronic payments and can view their ledger and payment history online at any time. These payments are made over a secure portal without cost to our residents. There is no more speculation about payments being lost or delayed in the mail. This also eliminates the previously frequent questions from residents checking to see if payments were received or inquiring about their balance.
In fact, residents increasingly expect this level of customer service and convenience in signing leases and renewals and submitting payments. Residents expect to have information like payment history and rental agreements readily accessible at the resident’s convenience.
Adopting various technologies has allowed us to eliminate rote processes that can be done by machine so we can pay more attention to those details that can only be executed by people.
Our standards are ever evolving as well. Excellence today is merely average tomorrow. The days of used manual defrost refrigerators are long gone. As said before, we’re trying to deliver an apartment that looks like new construction. And even new construction amenities are a standard that is always rising.
I attend the parade of homes in my area annually to keep abreast of design changes and trends in housing. I am always sure to check out the most expensive, luxurious homes with the finest features. Then we brainstorm how we can recreate this million-dollar experience in our new construction apartments. Lately, that has meant the inclusion of walk-in tile showers in our apartments with two full baths and attached three car garages prewired for electric vehicles.
We particularly gravitate toward changes that are not easy to copy. Warren Buffett would call this building a mote. We were early adopters of laminate flooring and then luxury vinyl plank flooring that both look like hardwood floors but are affordable and at least in the vinyl plank version, impervious to water and spills. The problem is that anyone can copy this and everyone has.
A better example is our walk-in showers with heated tile floors. These showers require a footprint that is larger than a conventional bathtub. You can certainly incorporate them in your new construction plans but once the building is built, if you didn’t install the walk-in shower, it’s game over – you can likely never retro fit one in.
Most apartments are about as interesting and unique as a set of identical twins at an undertaker’s convention. New construction apartments often rent well because nothing sells like new. But what about 20 years from now? Were you forward thinking enough to anticipate what the market would want even decades into the future?
The first apartments I developed in 1997 were on a golf course in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin. When the Fairways were first built, I would like to think they were the best apartments in town. Of course, that’s subjective. But more objectively, they were the most expensive apartments in town. But what about today? Thanks to our commitment to maintain and even reposition and redevelop the property through time, the Fairways remains one of the most expensive rental housing choices in this small town.
This chapter is called The Secret to Success in Business as if there was only one secret. Already I’ve snuck in a second one about the need for continuous improvement! But the most important point of all is this: Success is not the exclusive territory of creative genius. Success does not require dreaming up the next new thing. That success flows from continuous improvement and the excellent execution of mundane details mean that success is within the grasp of just about anyone.
This post is drawn from a chapter in my next book due in August, How to go to the Super Bowl for Free and Other Lessons from a Lifetime in Business. You can reserve a copy when it’s available at the red email button below.