Last weekend I spent a day in the saddle helping my brother round up a small herd of cattle from their summer pasture (it wouldn’t be an Andrew Packer blog post without some reference to being a hick). We were in the high mountain valleys on the border of Wyoming and Idaho. At the upper reaches of the pasture where we pushed the cattle, the Aspen leaves had already shifted color, moving from the perfect green of summer to a vivid red or a bright golden hue. It was startling to see that fall had already claimed the high country around Jackson Hole. For those of you unfamiliar with the mountains, change comes early and often there, a beautiful summer day can disappear into a rolling thunderstorm in a matter of minutes, and just as quickly the sun and the heat can push the thunderstorm out. You can shiver in your sleeping bag at night, waking with frost in your hair, only to be sunburned and sweating by ten in the morning. The only constant in the mountains, besides the stones of the hills themselves, is change.

Commerce today is in a similar state of flux; change is omnipresent, with the metamorphosis of technology and best practices moving forward at breakneck speed. The march of progress is leaving companies who are unwilling or incapable of keeping pace languishing in the past. These companies are left with little alternative but to adapt or wither away. The property management industry has been notoriously reticent to embrace the change and innovation which have swept through almost every other industry. Unfortunately, inevitably, change has finally caught up to us. With change here to stay, it’s important to determine how you as a company will deal with the tidal wave of change that is bearing down on all of us.

There are four ways your company can interact with change: Ignore Change, Fight Change, Embrace Change, or Drive Change. Each of the four tactics for dealing with change has its own merits and can be effectively utilized in different situations. A healthy company will strive to utilize all of these strategizes when dealing with change. Conversely, each of these methods for dealing with change can result in potential pitfalls for the unwary, and so the negatives of each approach must also be taken into consideration.

Ignore Change: This would seem to be the most prevalent method for dealing with change. It's easy to sit back and say “This ‘item, issue, technology, etc.’ is just a fad, and will fizzle out soon.” In reality, careful neglect can be an effective method for dealing with change; it provides a slow, deliberate approach and avoids potential knee jerk reactions. It can help your company avoid costly adjustments to products, policies, and procedures put in place to confront changes which are indeed just ‘fads.’ (My nephew grew a ridiculous mullet, and kept it much longer than he would have if his parents and his uncles had simply ignored it rather than bug him to cut it.) However, failure to move can also be extremely costly. Take for example properties and property management companies who have yet to deploy effective online marketing solutions. Because they are ignoring inevitable change, they are leaving leases, and revenue, on the table.

Fight Change: There are some changes that are worth fighting. Let’s say for example you have noticed a slide towards casual dress and behavior at your work place. This does not have to be a change you accept, and may be worth fighting in order to maintain your carefully cultivated corporate culture. However, it is vital that you be discerning in determining which changes you want to expend capital, both hard or political, fighting. Pick your fights well, for there are few things more costly than battling for a lost cause. Property management companies are pouring tens of thousands of dollars into costly print advertising circulars that sit, unopened and unlooked at, in the local Piggly Wiggly, when they could get many times their ROI through an effective SEO or SEM campaign.

Embrace Change: When the inevitability of change is apparent, the most effective method for coping with it is to embrace the change early, entirely and effectively. By being an early adopter of changing trends, you are able to effectively position yourself ahead of the curve and ahead of your competition. Online payments have been ubiquitous for the past few years, but the most effective and profitable companies have embraced the changing payment preferences of their residents and driven all or most of their payments online, and as a result, have seen tremendous savings in manpower and increased rent collection. The same can be said for those companies who have embraced online leasing as the wave of the future. Juxtapose this successful adoption and embracing of a positive trend with those who have failed to do so, and are losing leases to competitors who offer the online conveniences the discerning resident of today expects. It is also possible to embrace change too readily, to hitch your horse to the wrong cart, and so it’s important to carefully determine which changes are to be adopted by your organization. If you would like to know more about embracing change too early, just ask the guy who spent thousands of dollars on his sweet Laserdisc player and collection.

Drive Change: Driving change and innovation is the most difficult way of confronting the inevitability of change. If it weren’t, everyone would be doing it. It takes a forward thinking corporation to cultivate the company culture needed to effectively innovate on every level. For years corporate culture has held fast to the mantra of “trust” in the corporate system, to ensure its employees follow rigid top down policies and procedures. New research indicates that the most innovative and successful companies are relying on every level of employee, from the leasing agent to the CEO, to effectively and passionately innovate their way to the front of their market. Trust your employees to know how to do their jobs more effectively. And if you can’t trust your employees, it might be time to start re-thinking your hiring practices. Sam Walton, one of America’s most successful entrepreneurs stated, “Our best ideas come from clerks and stock boys.” Hire the ‘clerks’ and ‘stock boys’ that are going to innovate your company into the future. This driving ambition for change should be tempered with common sense because not every idea is a good idea. Just ask anyone who tried “New Coke” in the early 80s.

Just as fall has come to the hill country of the West, so change in business, technology, and society is upon us. And as there is beauty to be had to the transition of summer to fall, and even fall to winter, so too is there benefit to be had from the rapid pace of the change occurring all around us. As Gene Roddenberry (If you know who I’m talking about, you’re probably a nerd too.) said, “It isn't all over; everything has not been invented; the human adventure is just beginning.”

By: Andrew Packer