TRACE STRATEGIES
Client Story · Property Management

The process is the system now.

DG
David G.
Principal · Property Management · 2,400 doors · 30 staff
2,400
doors
30
staff
3 wks
new-hire ramp
The situation

Twenty-four hundred doors, thirty staff, and an onboarding program that consisted of following Denise around for a quarter. The knowledge was real and the results were good, but every new hire cost a veteran three months of shadow time, and every departure took institutional memory out the door with the cardboard box. Owner statements went out on time because two people worked the last weekend of every month, every month. David could grow the portfolio or keep the quality. He was tired of choosing. The audit mapped what the veterans actually did, which turned out to be both simpler and smarter than anyone had written down, because no one had ever written it down.

What the audit found
E

The process lived in people

The real procedures existed only in veterans' habits. Training meant cloning by proximity.

A

Statements were a weekend job

Owner reporting was assembled by hand from three systems, on personal time, twelve times a year.

T

Growth had no defined shape

More doors was the goal, but nobody had set what good growth looked like per hire, per manager, per month.

What we installed
01

Wrote down what the veterans do

The playbook is theirs, captured and organized. New hires learn the system, not a person's shadow.

02

Made owner statements build themselves

Reporting assembles automatically and a human reviews it, on a weekday, before it sends.

03

Defined what a grown portfolio requires

Doors per manager, hires per quarter, in writing. Growth decisions stopped being gut calls.

The results
12 wks → 3
new-hire ramp
24
weekends per year returned to staff
31%
more doors, same headcount, one year later
8 weeks
from audit to new onboarding live
In their words
DG

Onboarding used to take months of shadowing. Now the process is the system, we hand new staff the keys.

David G. · Principal · Property Management

See if anything's broken
before you spend a dollar.

The Operations Audit Workbook walks you through your own operation and shows you the gaps. Free.

Get Your Free Operations Audit →