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MANAGING
THE MANAGER
By
Eric Glazer, Esq.
Published
October 8, 2012
The
amount of hats that a community association manager often has to
wear is amazing. Simultaneously, he or she needs to serve as the
number cruncher, interior designer, police man, collection
agency, master of ceremonies, complaint department, tech expert,
unit owner liaison and of course chief cook and bottle washer.
All the while performing each and every function with a
cheerful and professional appearance and ALWAYS looking as if
you have every situation under complete control, even if nothing
is. Throw in the
fact that managers are often dealing with a Board member or two
who simply doesn't trust them, but really doesn't have a reason
for doing so, and you can see that the life of a Florida
Community Association Manager isn't all flowers, rainbows and
those annoying little yellow smiley faces that everyone seems to
be putting in their texts and e-mails these days.
Despite the daily grind, most hang in and accomplish
their professional objectives each and every day without
complaint. But how
do you know that they are doing their job well.
Perfect attendance isn't enough.
How does one judge the performance of your manager?
You may think that one way to judge their performance is
to see if expenses have been kept in check.
I would agree that a good manager should assist the
association in saving money wherever possible.
But suppose assessments remain steady yet the place looks
terrible? Suppose
the manager convinced the Board to be penny-wise and pound
foolish?
What about maintaining protocol at meetings and in the
association's office? A
manager who is somehow able to bring order to chaos, whether at
Board meetings or in the association's office is worthy of a
Noble Peace prize.
Here's a real hard task.
Having the ability to tell your Board that they CANNOT
take an action that the manager knows to be illegal because it
violates a provision of
Florida
law or the governing documents.
Lawyers have a saying that it's often times more important
knowing what not to ask, rather than knowing what to ask.
For managers, it may be more important to tell the Board
what they can't do, rather than what they can do.
So the question is…..has the manager kept the Board out
of legal quagmires or is the Board involved in more and more
lawsuits because of alleged misdeeds?
These are just some criteria we may use when evaluating
the performance of the managers who manage.
Perhaps the best criteria though is to simply look at the
faces of all of the residents in the community since the manager
started working there. If
their typical frowns are turning upside down and they are
beginning to look more and more like those annoying little
yellow smiley faces I mentioned earlier ------ make sure you
don't let this manager slip away.
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