It’s About People Dammit! (By Michael Schaefer)
Amid the noise of automation and AI, the true north of property management endures: skilled professionals navigating human complexity with insight and care.
In an ever changing and uncertain environment where calls for ‘automate’, AI’, ‘quicker’, ‘faster’ and the like reverberate through company boardrooms, departmental and industry gatherings, one must pause and relook at a property manager’s core function in an ever changing and uncertain future.
The Community Scheme industry, a trillion Rand industry typically run by volunteer trustees/directors with a property manager’s assistance, remains arguably the only high value industry that still offers a personal face to face value proposition. It is my view that while there are certainly opportunities to better automate, utilise and incorporate AI in daily functions and to improve efficiency and clients’ experiences, this must, and should never be, at the expense of the personal value-proposition offered by an undervalued industry of seasoned and skilled professionals.
As any veteran residential property manager will attest, the role extends far beyond that of an asset manager, fundamentally the role of the property manager but extends, and so encompasses, a highly complex subset of interpersonal skills required to manage the multiple, and often diverse, personalities that make-up any one community scheme.
Internal frictions, sharing a common misunderstanding of prevailing and applicable legislation, only exacerbate the difficulties faced by property managers (and) which must be navigated delicately to ensure workable solutions within the legal framework and for the common good of the collective, no easy feat!
So, while weary property professionals listen to the echoes of the latest buzz, know the more things change so the tendency to remain the same often prevails; oh, and the people.
