Trust your decision-making instincts
and learn from mistakes. When it
comes to making decisions —
whether it’s, ‘Should I do this
deal; should I not do this deal?’
— learn that when you grow
your business, you want to
grow it smart.
Don’t grow for the sake of
growth. Do it because it’s the smart thing to do.
It is much easier to take a
challenge, make the decision,
move forward. Hopefully, you’re
right more than you’re wrong. If
you’re wrong, don’t make the
same decision again, and admit
that you’re wrong.
For good or for bad, I’m one
of those people who makes a
decision and I don’t look back.
For me, I don’t mind being
wrong. (Although,) I don’t want
to be wrong twice about the
same thing.
Employees are advised to do
the same. We want to motivate
everyone to make decisions. …
There are some companies
out there, where people are
afraid to make a decision
because they’re worried about
the risk associated with that.
That is not the atmosphere we
have. Most important, I’ve created a culture where if things don’t
work, people feel confident to
come to me and say, ‘We were
wrong. We made a mistake.’
Try to create an atmosphere
where when somebody is
wrong, they own up to it and
work toward fixing it.
Set goals for growth. For the
goals, I would break them into
three parts. What is the short-term goal — maybe it’s hitting
your budget or doing a certain
amount of acquisitions — also
medium- and long-term goals.
While we can keep people
focused on what they need to
do on a daily basis, we also can
think ahead a year from now
and five years from now to how
the business should look. It continues to keep us challenged on
growing the business.
Create structure. As you get bigger, your business becomes
more complex.
The more employees you have
from an operation standpoint,
ask, ‘How do you make sure
they’re working effectively and
they’re trained well? How do
you create a structure where
the financial information flows
seamlessly?
I try to create an environment
where people are not bogged
down by bureaucracy.
We rely on the people in the
field to tell us when things
aren’t working properly, and
we have ways for employees
to make suggestions that we
take to heart.
HOW TO REACH: Campus Apartments, (215) 243-7000 or www.campusapts.com
