The Power of Inspection in Maintenance Leadership

[Paul Rhodes] Chances are you've heard it before. A very, very quick cursory Google search of this particular quote turned up multiple very, very famous and historical and really, really smart people over time that have used this statement. I have had this statement told to me in numbering in the hundreds of times.

So chances are you've heard it at least once. Our topic today is what does it really mean to inspect what you expect today on the maintenance mindset. App work is one of our founding sponsors, much more than maintenance.

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You know, inspect what you expect. Stop there just at the beginning. Let's focus on that first word.

What does inspect mean to you? I mean, I know when I talk about an inspection or performing one and getting ready for one or reviewing the results of one, I have a thought in my head for what that means. But I wonder if it's the same thought that you have.

For instance, within the multifamily industry, we have a lot of inspections that we end up going for. On the maintenance side of the house, some of the most essential are a regular property inspection, where you look over your entire community. For business, especially where occupancy is concerned, a make ready inspection is critical.

What about an amenity inspection? Due diligence. Now there's an inspection that doesn't happen every day.

But it's extremely critical from a financial state standpoint, a business development standpoint, and even down to our individual job responsibilities and tasks. What about a safety inspection? Have you ever conducted one of those?

I mean, there's a lot of synonyms for it. A safety audit, a safety review. Matter of fact, every single one of these things that we've discussed or I've brought up could be called any number of things.

And in the end, they come back to an inspection. You know, as I was beginning to think about how to approach this particular topic, an article came across my desk from ASHRAE. Now, ASHRAE is the American Society of Heating, Refrigeration, and Air Conditioning Engineers.

I mean, this is a group of individuals that their job is to tell manufacturers the standards on how to make indoor equipment. They review energy audits. They look at, create the standards and update the standards for comfort and what is expected in the microcosm of air conditioning.

But it's even bigger than that. They review entire buildings and look at their energy footprint and how a building, a property, a location uses energy, especially regarding the indoor environment and refrigerated spaces. So they get involved in just about everything.

I mean, they have an impact everywhere. Well, I find it interesting that they actually break down their inspection to three levels, level one, level two, and level three. I mean, that's kind of simple way of identifying them, but they have different purposes and different focuses.

You see, an ASHRAE level one audit is a simple walkthrough. In other words, it is the way conditions are right this instant and what you experience on a normal day. An ASHRAE level two inspection, that is described as a physical and a financial or data inspection.

In other words, they take a walkthrough looking at conditions the way they are today, and they look at the background information that explains why conditions are the way they are today. The third level, and just by way of a little side note, these by no means are intended to be a full instructional course on what the differences between the levels of ASHRAE are. I'm not qualified to speak towards that.

But in general, a level three ASHRAE audit is an audit focused on historical performance so that you can look ahead. In other words, how's our building, our space, our equipment operating right now? What is it that led up to how it's operating right now?

And what information can we take from those first two levels that we can use to make decisions about the future? Now, I happen to really, really like this testing framework, this inspection framework, level one, level two, and level three. And I happen to believe that it has a direct correlation or a direct application to how we perform inspections on our properties.

Let's discuss them first together, and then we'll break them out into the three individual levels and how we can use them in various ways at our communities. A level one inspection, property inspection, property, let's call it a multifamily inspection, is a how is it right now inspection. In other words, this is an inspection where we begin to review the conditions on whatever it is we're looking at.

If we're looking at the entire property, how is the property set right now, right this instant? A level two, for us, that is a scheduled event. And it would end up including both the physical property conditions, as well as a file audit, or a financial review, or a PO, spreadsheet, P&L, all of that data that we bring to a lot of meetings.

And that would be considered a level two review. A level three multifamily inspection would end up taking both the property condition today, all of that data that we brought with the level two, but then a sit down time where the leaders get together, review that information, verify that everybody has the same understanding of the information, and begin to suggest or make decisions for going forward. Now, you may have already realized that these inspections will require a partnership at all three levels between a property's leaders, and that is leaders on site, as well as corporate if you happen to work for a larger organization.

And then it requires a partnership with the workers on site. In other words, maybe here's where we begin to get to the second half of that statement, inspect what you expect. In other words, do the people on site have the same level of expectation surrounding inspections?

A way to apply this or a way to think about this is let's begin at a level one multifamily inspection. We could think of this again as a property inspection or a make ready inspection. Those are probably the two most common ones that occur for our on site maintenance teams.

So the very first one is a look at the today situation of whatever our topic is. And it goes for that partnership requirement for leadership and the property workers to have an expectation. The property workers, the expectation needed for that is that the property is always ready.

Now, if we're breaking down definitions and terms, what does always mean? I mean, let's be honest, a lot of our management companies and the way we process data and the way we look at things, we want the property written down inspection to be great, positive, glowing review.

[Paul Rhodes] But if we believe that the property is always in good inspection ready state, do we need to schedule a level one review? My argument is no.

[Paul Rhodes] If we as owners, managers, CEOs, regionals, property managers, maintenance supervisors, all of the levels of leadership, if all the levels of leadership have the understanding that the property is always inspection ready. In other words, it is always meeting or attempting to meet the good standards that our management companies or our owners practices, policies, and expectations are, then inspections should be able to occur on Friday afternoon at 430 the same way that we could schedule them for three weeks out. This is a level one review.

In other words, you just show up. But the partnership there is that everybody shares the same expectation, meaning the leaders have got to have a positive intent and focus on specific areas that they can provide feedback towards. So in other words, for a level one review, the first thing, you cannot perform a level one inspection or audit or review remotely.

You cannot have, in my mind, somebody from corporate or a regional leader that performs a true level one multifamily inspection by cell phone. I mean, our on-site workers now, it's pretty standard to where every on-site person has a cell phone, at least, if not smartphone, based on the continuing acceptance of technology. And I still think it's impossible to do a remote inspection where somebody from the office carries their cell phone around, puts it on camera mode, and walks around the property to perform the inspection.

No. There, I'm sorry, that's not a complete inspection. How can you get a sense of a make ready just out of a camera?

I know we use it for tours and for remote tours and that. And for that instance, that's good. But if we're talking about making business decisions or even getting a sense of how the property is performing currently, then I firmly believe that this has to be done in person.

It might be challenging based on travel or how your leaders are positioned within your organization. But really and truly, you can't get any better than seeing the physical thing, interacting with it. When you go into the apartment, what does it smell like?

What does the texture on the wall say? How clean does the apartment look? Okay, we can see that through the camera.

But how clean does it feel?

[Paul Rhodes] There's a difference there.

[Paul Rhodes] You know, one of the ways that we can look at a level one inspection goes back to another common statement, trust but verify. You know, I would ask my maintenance teams, how are things going? You know, typical one word answer, fine.

We're overworked. We got too much to do. We're understaffed.

All of those normal answers you get. Okay. But again, what does the term fine mean to the maintenance associate?

It could mean that our maintenance person, technician, supervisor, to them fine is that they've got all their work orders done so they can leave and go home on time and no call came in last night. That's fine. But is that the same meaning as what our leaders need to see or confirm?

The only way we do that is to go in person and actually walk around and see. And this is where that positive intent comes into play to where we've got to be sure that our leader has the type of relationship with our maintenance person that when we point out things that are deficient or things that need to be changed, we do it in a way of wanting the best for the property and for our associate, for our worker.

[Paul Rhodes] That requires a couple of things.

[Paul Rhodes] The first is a relationship. In other words, I need to know my maintenance technician, my maintenance person. They need to know me.

A relationship is required for that positive intent assumption to really, really work. The second thing is there needs to be a mutual understood respect that I want the best for you. And the best for you is identifying that when you open up the closet to the water heater, there's a lot of dust and dirt and old parts that have been thrown in here.

And when the new resident comes, if they open it up, what do they think when they look at this? More on that point in a couple of minutes. But you know, it is a partnership.

And the third piece of that partnership to assume positive intent and get our employees as leaders to assume positive intent is to identify true, real, honest areas where success has occurred. In other words, if the last time I was here, I came as the leader and I'm inspecting make ready. And the last make ready I saw, we identified the need to clean out the water heater closet and all the spare parts there.

The next time I come for a inspection, I better make a point to be intentional and open up the next closet and identify and acknowledge that, hey, do you see this? You did a great job of cleaning out this water heater closet. There's no dust in here.

There's no old parts. It's fantastic. Congratulations.

We acknowledge the change in behavior towards positive. There has to be, I'm not sure it has to be a mathematical ratio of one positive for one negative. I'm not sure that I buy into the positive sandwich level of change.

You know, you say one positive thing, then you say one criticism, and then you say a third positive thing. I got to admit to me, whenever I identify somebody doing that to me, it feels like they're treating me as a mathematical equation. And I'm not sure that's the reality we're going for.

Not only does a leader have to have positive intent, but our employee needs to understand that that is what it is, even when a correction is needed, even when a change in course is needed. Now, the part that we need to come back to, I brought it up, we were talking about that, make the water heater closet in the dust. And I made the statement of, imagine you were a resident and opened up this closet and saw the dust and the dirt.

That view, or as we've done on a recent episode, reframing is I believe essential when we begin looking at inspections. I mean, if we're walking around an entire property and you see some graffiti on the wall, you will have a different response to that graffiti based on your view. In other words, if I happen to be the overworked groundskeeper or entry-level maintenance technician and I take a look at graffiti on the wall, all I see is more work.

And not only that, it's a brick wall. So that means pressure washing will only do so much. I got to get in there and scrub with a chemical that it may take me a little while to identify that chemical, that I'm gonna have to fight the fight in order to order the chemical and the scrub brushes and the PPE in order to do this correctly.

And all I see is something else on my list that I have to do that automatically goes to the top of the list that I'm, without a positive intent relationship, I'm going to have to get even further behind on what I'm supposed to be doing this month. However, viewed from the lens or the frame of a resident that sees graffiti, they see a property that is not caring for their surroundings. They possibly see a crime on the rise because often graffiti is viewed as an indicator of crime.

Correct or not? Remember, this is changing the lens of view. In other words, we're changing the perception.

What if I looked at that graffiti on the wall from the lens of an investor for the management company that owns this property? What would I think about that? What does that say for an investment strategy?

Maybe it says, hey, this is a community that's got a large opportunity for improvement. In other words, if I invest my money here, we have a big improvement that we can do, which will lead to larger financial growth. That also brings to the challenge of this change in view.

It's possible that that last change in view can lead to the first change in view changing to, well, you know what? As the groundskeeper, if I leave the graffiti there, that means investors will want to spend their money and that's good for us, right? I know that's a huge exaggeration, but I'm hoping Mr. and Mrs. Lissner, you get my meaning. When we do inspections, our scoring and our thoughts about an inspection are subjective. They change by our role, by the day. Heck, they can even change by season, weather, year, whether the coffee was good that morning, whether I've had lunch or not.

Maybe even by the relationship that I'm having with people in my outside of work life. This is why that relationship piece and having understanding of what the positive intent is by an inspection. I can remember when I began standardizing inspections for a management company that I began and I explained by asking the regional team and the corporate team, how often should a property be operating in their good, acceptable, standard level?

And the response I got back from the corporate team was all the time. Our properties, they do. They operate that way all the time.

I said, great, then I will start inspections next week. Okay, where are you going to start? I don't know.

[Paul Rhodes] Well, let me know when you get that schedule. No. And the looks I got back from people were curious.

[Paul Rhodes] A couple were downright offended or argumentative. What do you mean you're not going to tell me when you're going to go buy my property? You just said the properties are always in a good shape.

Always means I could go leave here right now and head out to any of our properties, and they should be at an acceptable standard. Well, they're not. Okay, then do you want to amend your previous statement?

As a speaker, when I go to give a class, a course, when I go to develop somebody, I have a habit of asking for feedback. How was the lesson? How did it work?

Was it applicable? Did you have actionable information that you received from attending my session? And I'm very, very glad and relieved to say that quite frequently I get back positive results of, yes, it was great.

I learned something. This was wonderful. And those are good.

They're validating. They're good for my ego.

[Paul Rhodes] But if I'm honest, I'm looking for the negative, the not condemning information.

[Paul Rhodes] But if all we get back is positive results, then nothing is identified as needing to change. And in my case, in this example, if all I get back is positive responses that everything was great and wonderful, well, then good. I covered everything appropriately, completely, and I'm not going to change anything between now and the next time I do it.

Because the only way we get to identify areas where we as individuals can change is when we identify deficiencies. Because if it wasn't deficient, we wouldn't change. What that translates to is I absolutely cherish when I'm speaking.

And if I happen to be speaking to you, dear listener, and anywhere, I do give you permission to come up to me at the end or end of the session. And respectfully, please, no four-letter words or colorful language. But let me know areas where I could have served you better in that class, in that time.

Where did I miss the mark? Because I cherish that information. Because I know for a fact, I am not a perfect presenter.

I am not a brilliant writer. And you know what? Our teams are that way too.

If we're all honest as employees, we know that we are not living a hundred percent up to the job expectations. Now, some of that is ignorance. We don't know or have the specific define of what the expectations are for any job that we do.

And if somebody gives me a good score, when I can clearly see that there are deficient things, then I'm not going to change anything about my property until the next time. That's where that positive intent comes into. In the same way, I would hope that an attendee of my class or my session would come up to me and tell me where I could improve because I know I need to improve.

We as leaders, when we are performing these property inspections, we need to have the positive intent of, I'm identifying this particular deficiency because I want you and this property to get better. That's ultimately where that expectation comes from.

[Paul Rhodes] So how can we do this? Let's have a strategy.

[Paul Rhodes] First, have a strategy of paying attention to the details today, right here, right now, where they are. I actually refer to this as the airport faucet strategy. You see, I do travel a lot and for the past 20 years of my career, I've spent some years, over 40 weeks a year on the road, Monday through Friday, spent a lot of time in hotels, into and out of airports.

I can't say it's the best part of my job, but I must not like it too little or be too averse to it because I continue to show up at the airport. But you see, the reason why I say paying attention to the details as they are right now is the airport faucet strategy is because I can't tell you how often I've come home from the airport after going through multiple airports or spending all week on the road and I get to my house to go to wash my hands at my bathroom faucet and I instantly just stick my hands underneath the faucet and expect water to come out. Have you been to an airport lately? All the faucets in an airport are infrared, meaning you put your underneath and the water comes out.

You get used to that in an airport and I confess I've gotten used to that so much from time to time that I come back home and I put my hands under the faucet and then I have that moment of realization of, oh, I'm not paying attention to the details right here. When we as leaders go to perform an inspection, level one inspection, pay attention to the details right that instant. What does the dumpster area look like?

What does the roof line? What about the gutters? What about the trees?

Are they overgrown? Do we have a potential liability hazard that you can see as you're doing whatever kind or type of inspection that you're doing? And look, framing things, taking a different view, the different perception.

I've talked about that in terms of a mental exercise, you know, looking at things like a new resident, looking at things as if you were a maintenance technician, a corporate, an investor, an owner, all of these different things. But really, framing is not just mental. Change the physical.

By that, I mean if you are performing inspection, a property inspection, and you take out of that office and you turn to the right all the time, or for those of you on video, maybe I should be pointing this way to go to the right. Do yourself a favor and change direction. Don't walk the same way every time.

Pick a different path. I had one regional that she was six foot seven tall. She's a very tall woman.

And she wore stiletto heels. So she was taller even so. When she went into doors of apartments, she had to duck her hair, duck her head so that her hair or her head didn't hit the doorframe.

But I was fascinated by when she would show up to my property to do an inspection. She had slacks on. She still wore the heels.

I mean, very business, very professional. But when we went to go into a vacant apartment, she kicked off the heels. And not only that, she had a towel with her so that she could get down on her knees and one of the coolest things that she did, and Mary, if you're still out there, I do remember, she would go into the bathroom, put the towel down, get on her knees, and then not to just look underneath the cabinet, but she would get down on her knees and stoop down so that she could actually see under the bathroom countertop, under the banjo, you know, that's that counter that goes over the top of the tank that we maintenance technicians are just oh so thankful that some interior designer thought it was a brilliant idea to run the counter across the top of the toilet. Yeah, try and replace a fill valve or even a flapper in between the tank and the countertop. But the reason I bring that up is Mary was very, very detailed to her.

She'd look in between that area and oftentimes find gum or things that we or our cleaners had missed. Change your physical place, elevation, change your transportation. If you do an inspection by driving around the property, next time walk.

Next time get in a golf cart if you have that. Change framing, not just mentally, but physically. Oh, and by the way, one other thing, change the time of day.

I know that may be challenging depending on where you have to travel from or to, but it's a good idea to view the property in the morning, at lunchtime, and in the evening because things change. Different things look differently when you're laying your eyes on and when you go do a level one inspection, they change based on all the variables. So if we're going to go see the way things are now, unscheduled, positive intent, and multiple different views.

All of that summarizes level one multifamily inspection. We're going to take a break to pay some bills. And when we come back, we're going to talk about applying a level two framework and a level three framework to a multifamily community.

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[Paul Rhodes] All right.

[Paul Rhodes] Welcome back. Now we're talking about inspections in the multifamily world, and we're using our, from an organizing principle, ASHRAE levels. Level one is the go there, see what it's doing right now in person.

Level two is taking that, see what it's doing right now in person, and applying data, background data for how or why it's applied. So we're going to talk about working that way. And level three, that's a performance inspection.

In other words, taking both parts of level one and level two, and then applying to that decision making or thoughts on decision making. So we're at point level two now, and level two is really boils down to one word in my mind for multifamily inspection, and that's compliance. Yes, level one, we see how it's doing.

Level two is where we get into why is it doing how it's doing. That's where from a maintenance standpoint, a maintenance leader on site, supervisor, or whoever is responsible for leading the maintenance team must be prepared. This, I think, is one big difference between a level one multifamily inspection and a level two, and that is preparation.

If we're saying on one hand that level one inspection can occur at any point in time, that means that it's possible my maintenance supervisor may not have all the information and may need to go do some research to find an answer to a question on what the current conditions are, just because running a property is busy and there's stuff going on all the time. That's different in the case of a level two inspection. A level two inspection is a scheduled event with prior knowledge that it's about to occur, and the reason why is because, as we're about to discuss, our on-site maintenance leader needs to have some information compiled in order to make this inspection happen as efficiently and over as short a time frame as possible.

In other words, my maintenance leader needs to know as a beginning about occupancy and exposure. In other words, if our property is at 93 percent unoccupied, and we have an exposure over the next six weeks that we're going to drop down to 86 percent, what does that mean? Meaning at 93 percent, we've got 12 apartments vacant.

If we get down to 83 percent, we now have 30 apartments vacant, and I'm just running numbers. I'm sure somebody math is going to figure out that I am now working on a property that has, I don't know, 562 and a half apartments, because my math is not very mathy. But our maintenance leader for a level two inspection should know that level of detail, because if over the next six weeks we're going to drop that far in occupancy, our maintenance leader is going to have to be ready for what we're doing in response.

Not only that, that information will feed other questions that will need to be known on this level two inspection. Things like, well, if we have that much exposure over the next six weeks, that explains why last week I put in however many POs in order to order the vendors and the painters and get those scheduled beforehand. Plus, we need a lot of parts and caulking and tools and faucets and fixtures and filters and all of the things that we're going to need to get at least some of those apartments ready in a short period of time so that our office can begin leasing.

This implies that our maintenance supervisor is involved in the budget sense, because if our exposure is that big, then our budget is going to be much exposed. Meaning, if we budgeted on an annual basis for our property to be operating at 90% occupied, that means that we had planned on ordering only so many drip pans or only so many air conditioning filters. We planned that out last year during budget season.

However, now we've got an exposure going forward that our current performance, well, we're going to be over budget and that's going to come out during a level two inspection. And our maintenance supervisor needs to have an answer for what that looks like, why it is, and show that right now we've spent a lot more money than what we had originally planned back in January. Why?

This is why. Apartments needs all of the reasons. Our maintenance supervisor also needs to be planned for status updates on projects.

For instance, maybe your property on a previous inspection, you identified the need to clean out the gutters. Well, in order to clean out the gutters, we needed to find a vendor because our property doesn't have the ladders or the tools necessary for getting up to that level. So, the maintenance supervisor brought in three vendors, got one scope of work for those three vendors to give them prices, and it's at this point that during a level two inspection, we go into depth about what those look like so that during a follow-up level three inspection, we can make decisions on how that's going to look, get all the scheduling done, and have all of that happening.

What about our current needs at the property? If a level one inspection is just how we perform right now, level two, what needs do we have based on our current performance? In other words, this is a data-driven opportunity for our on-site maintenance team to provide reasons for where we are right now.

The reason why the dumpster looks so bad is because we didn't have the money in the paint budget, and when I requested it prior, it didn't get approved for me to paint it. So, we pressure washed it instead, and it looks better, but that's why it is the way it is today. All of this goes back to the fact that a level two inspection is focused on what it is right now with background information, and maintenance leaders on-site, this is your opportunity to shine.

This is your opportunity to provide those reasonings why things are the way they are, not defensively, not disrespectfully, but just they are. It's possible that this is the point where we, as on-site personnel, get the opportunity to point out deficiencies to our leaders in the financial realm of, you know what, the pressure washer that we used for that dumpster that we just finished with, it's on its last legs. Matter of fact, it took us four hours to do just the dumpster area where, really, it should have only taken us an hour and a half, and that includes the half hour of setup.

We had to keep going back and forth because our old pressure washer kept blowing seals and gaskets that we had to constantly change and repair while we were doing that simple job. Pointing things like that out to our leaders is necessary for us, and it goes back to that positive intent turned the opposite direction. Level one, we discussed leaders having a positive intent to ensure that our on-site workers are not being set up to fail, but when we point out deficiencies, it's an opportunity for improvement and an opportunity for recognition.

In level two, the positive intent still continues from leaders down, but the opposite way has to be observed as well. If I'm an on-site maintenance supervisor and there are things that previous decisions were made that have made my job more challenging and difficult, okay, my job is more challenging and difficult. Guess what?

Entropy is job security. Things are going to fail. Things are going to break.

That's not an excuse. That doesn't mean—here's that positive intent part—that doesn't mean I get to point out to my leaders, well, because you turned down the pressure washer, it took us too long. You don't need to point that out.

Chances are your leader remembers that decision. They may have had other reasons why they made that decision, and in the end, today, where we are in current situation, it doesn't even matter. What matters is we use the pressure washer.

It still works. I can still get the job done. It just takes longer than normal.

So this is what we did. The facts are it took four hours. It may have taken less time had we a new pressure washer, and that's it.

Move on about it because the positive intent is if my leader cares about me and wants to see my development, it reverses. This is called—the concept here is 360 leadership. In other words, if I am the follower in this equation, if the leader has positive intent towards me, I have positive intent towards my leader because the reality is if my leader succeeds, then my leader wants me to succeed too.

Therefore, if my leader gives a decision that I don't agree with, they're still my leader. I need to make the best I can with the resources I have available to me. In other words, you know, boss, leader, the decision you made where we're having a hard time meeting time, but we still—we got it done, and we could get it done.

Any chance on getting a new pressure washer next year or next quarter or next time period, any chance on doing that, that's it. No blame, acknowledgement of where we are, and moving on. That way, my leader knows I support them in their decision, and they hired me for my opinion.

In my opinion, we do a lot better with a pressure washer. I get the fact that the answer was no, and I'll live with it being no, but I would be irresponsible in doing my job if I didn't bring up a possible solution to an issue. It's amazing how the statement that we began this entire episode with, inspect what you expect, leads to interpersonal issues, soft skills, leadership skills, managerial, budget, financial, all of these things, which is why a level three inspection, I refer to as a performance inspection, because you see a property that has employees that are—the big buzzword right now is engaged.

That means that the employees are on board, and they are empowered to do what they need to do in order to meet whatever standards our inspections are designed to verify.

[Paul Rhodes] I mean, let's keep in mind, inspection, it's a verification. Inspect what you expect.

[Paul Rhodes] That means I expect this level, so I'm going to be sure we're at this level. If I expect this level and I hold you to this standard as a leader, I'm failing you. If that standard is higher than expectations, I'm failing you if I haven't empowered you to make decisions beyond what expectations are.

At the same time, if I'm a leader and I hold you to an expected level, or I have an expected level and I don't hold you to that expected level, I come in lower than that expected level, then as a leader, I'm setting you up to be disciplined. Because if the organization says, you're supposed to be at a level 100, and I treat you as it's acceptable that you're only performing at 80, then the rest of the organization is looking for 100, and the rest of the organization perceives that you are deficient because you are doing 80. But I, the leader, have actually failed you because I'm only empowering you to do 80.

That remaining 20 in this made-up fictional leveling, I've set you up to fail. And that's where level three comes into play. Level three, I would consider as a performance inspection.

We take information from the hands-on, the actual way things are today inspection, the level one inspection, and we apply to it the data that we mine, the information that we gather, the why things are the way they are in level two. And we sit down and we begin to ensure that the on-site team is empowered to either make decisions that they need to make, or empowered to go out and investigate possible solutions to deficiencies identified during level one and level two so that the leaders can approve them. You know, a level three inspection, that performance inspection, I like to look at it as steering a car.

I was a part of a committee a while back for a new organization that this organization was growing in its size, and the committee was charged with creating a direction to go. And they had a big decision to make of, do we do this one thing or do we do this other thing? They'd explored multiple different options.

And in the end, it came down to an A and B choice, and they had to make a choice between A or B. And we went around the table at the committee, and everybody did an in-person vote. It was a very safe space to where we didn't need to do blind and point fingers and blame.

And it was a very, very good discussion. And in the end, there was about half that decided choice A and the other half decided choice B. I think it was slightly weighted towards one or the other, but in the end, it was there.

And then the leader of the group made a final decision, but they made the final decision based on the fact that the committee brought up that both would be equally relevant and have the same chance for success, just they were different directions. But the leader brought up this point, and I love it to this day. It does guide me an awful lot more than I think I even realized.

The point he said was, it's easier to steer a moving car than a parked one. Therefore, we're going to decide this way. And then we go.

And from that standpoint, we didn't even look at the other option anymore. Everybody was on board because it's easier to steer a moving car. A level three inspection gives us either a clear direction we need to move, and then we move, or it'll give us options that we need to investigate.

So safely, within whatever decision-making ability and enablement that you have within your role, move the car, steer it. That may mean taking a U-turn later, but unless you commit to moving in one direction, then nothing is going to change. So a level three inspection, that's where we take that information and compile it and move it forward.

Make choices. You see, level one and level two inspections at the end of the day, they both indicate muscle memory, especially if we're performing level one on a cadence of every month, quarter, biannually, annually, depending on which inspection we're looking at. But if we have that level of inspection performed a couple or a few times, you begin to see trends.

You can plot them on a chart. You can put them on a spreadsheet. Results from both, which is awesome.

But unless that information over time, those trends are put into decision-making, then the level three audit is not actually occurring. Level one and level two indicate muscle memory. In other words, we've made these decisions over and over in the past, which has led us to this level or this type of performance.

Level three audit says, because of that muscle memory, we are where we are. What can we change to change our performance? For instance, what if we begin to notice that during the second quarter of the year, we have a lot more move-outs than any other quarter?

[Paul Rhodes] Why?

[Paul Rhodes] Well, in surveys that we've done with residents, the moving out is because the part of the country that this property happens to be in gets really, really hot during the summer and residents just get fed up and they don't like the heat. Well, does that mean then that going forward, what if when the apartment was vacant, if we're dealing with heat, what if we do a thorough preventive maintenance and double check the refrigerant levels and the performance of our air conditioning systems during the vacancy of the apartment so that the air conditioning equipment operates better so that over the lifespan of our new resident, when they live there, their indoor environment is more comfortable during the hot months? And then we, at the end of Q3, beginning of Q4, what if we go in and that's the point at which we do a preventive maintenance and we train our on-site maintenance teams to talk to residents and point out the fact that we just went through a summer with three weeks that were over triple digits of stupid hot temperatures. Go back and view some of the maintenance mindset minute for the definition of stupid temperatures.

But here's the thing. If we begin having a strategy that we identify during a level three audit, then the next time we come around Q3, Q4 with our level one or level two audit, we can identify the decision that was made at the beginning of the year during the level three audit and see if it made a difference. See if our resident satisfaction scores or our CX scores or whatever type of metrics that we're keeping track of have adjusted.

That's just one example of how a level three audit can occur. Oh, and from a takeaway for our session today, to kind of begin to summarize and bring this all down to one level, inspect what you expect.

[Paul Rhodes] Keep in mind that we're just dealing with snapshots.

[Paul Rhodes] Details matter. Positive intent. And not only that, if you are a leader who doesn't report to that property on a regular basis, a little side note, be situationally aware.

If, if leaders, you're approached by residents, keep in mind that it's possible that resident may have been dealt with differently than a decision that you're about to make with whatever that resident is coming to you with. If your decision, your decision is different than what the property manager's decision or the maintenance supervisor's decision or anybody else's decision is, in effect, you become mom or dad that is being played against dad or mom. And as parents, for those of you listening who are parents, that is a tough thing to navigate.

The way around that is ensure that mom and dad are on the same page in the same book. And ultimately, that's the goal of any of these levels of inspection. Be sure that our on-site teams are meeting the expectations that are set.

In order to do that, it's possible you identify deficiencies in empowerment, finances, performance, staffing, time management, workflow, supplies, maybe even that the whole property is performing at a different level than the level it is marketed at. I hope you've enjoyed it looking at our statement of inspect what you expect today. I would love to hear your thoughts and comments, maybe even share some tips or tricks.

You can share those things at the Multifamily Media Network webpage or direct message me on LinkedIn or do yourself a favor, like and subscribe this video on whatever platform that you happen to be looking at. Until I hear from you, because I'm curious where I'm deficient in this opportunity that you have for a level one inspection of this particular episode. Thank you for joining me.

I hope you have a fantastic rest of the week and I'll see you somewhere.