HOW DID WE GET IN THIS MESS?
I am old enough to remember Laurel and Hardy. One of their stock lines was “
Well, here's another nice mess you've gotten me into.” As an HOA Board member or just a homeowner have you ever felt that way? Have you ever just looked around and suddenly said: “How did we get here?” All of us have and all of us have scrambled then to get out of the mess. Peter Senge in
The Fifth Discipline mentions a few laws of how systems really work. In my last article I mentioned three things that sometimes indicate an organization has a learning disability. This article deals with some of the “laws” or processes that may be operating around us.
The very first one he mentions is “
Today’s problems come from yesterday’s solutions.” Oftentimes the current problem is a direct result of an old solution adopted months or years before. Like the “snake under the rug” story he tells (Please look at the book to see it.) We see the problem only to move the bump around a bit and the bump turns out to be a snake! Many times on HOA Boards, the ones left with the problem, actually inherited a solution of another Board. The only way to deal with this law of systems, is deal with a solution that tries to fix the system, not just the bump. Sometimes this is related to the idea of the law of “unintended consequences.” We try to fix one bump only to create several more once the “fix” works it’s way into the system.
Another law he mentions is “
The easy way out usually leads back in,” or as he describes it, “just give me a bigger hammer.” Sometimes organizations try solutions that have worked in the past or just easy solutions that may or may not address the real issues. It is easy to say sometimes “Well the last time we just found a new management company,” and do the same thing again. The problem may not be the management company itself, but the system the Board asks them to live and deal with. Getting a bigger hammer, by raising fee rates, or cutting services might be “easy enough” to do, but do they really address the systemic issue or just another symptom? Sometimes the mess just recycles itself, and quickly.
One other law is related to the learning disability of only dealing with events, rather than long-term processes. (I mentioned this one in an earlier article you can read
here.) The law is “
Cause and effect are not closely related in time and space.” I am an historian by education and sometimes people ask: “Well what caused so and so to happen?” The explanation is often much longer than they expected. The reason for that is cause and effect, unlike what we have learned, are sometimes not directly connected. Besides that, there may be many causes producing the one effect we see today. In this day of instant messaging and instant news, we allow people like newsmen to give us a 90 second sound bite description that pretends to address the event and its cause, and we are often wrong in doing so.
In life, and as members of an HOA, we need to stop and look and not assign just one cause to the effect we are dealing with. For example, what if the person’s lawn who looks so shabby isn’t just being lazy, but is a newly divorced single mother who is coping with a myriad of “shabby lawns” in her life? Ok, obviously the Board cannot solve all the problems of that particular person, but maybe the Board doesn’t have to send a warning letter about Covenant violations. However, what if COMMUNITY and NEIGHBOR suddenly became a real experience in her life? Could it be that at least one of her problems and the apparent problem of the Board might be fixed in another way?
How do you get out the mess you find yourself in? Here are a few suggestions:
1. STOP. Take a long look at the big picture, a panorama of processes, that led to the mess instead of just the mess.
2. Avoid the temptation to use “well tried solutions” when they may not address the real underlying systemic problems.
3. An HOA Board cannot solve everything, but it can do something to change the way the system works, not just produce quick fixes.
4. If you are in a mess find a way to stop messes from happening, not just look for a cleaning crew.
5. Look inside the Board’s processes, plans, and proceedures instead of trying to find the cause “out there.”
By the way, in the Laurel and Hardy sketches, it was usually Oliver (the plump one) saying that line…”Well here is another nice mess….” to Stan (the thin one.) It was always true that the mess they were in was not Stan’s fault alone. Ollie made decisions too. As an HOA Board who do you identify with?
Be watching for my next article dealing with why Homeowners Associations and Community Groups need to look at two words:
Community and Neighbor, and discover again what their over arching purpose really might become.
Dr. Michael McAleer