In this blog post, we are going to emphasize on the third habit of highly effective management committees to always take responsibility. Responsibility and accountability are the key to the making of any effective committee. We talked about Habit 2: How effective management committees always communicate in our earlier blog post. Read more….

Pointers to keep in mind for committee to behave responsibly and take responsibility:  

Do not resign at the drop of a hat – Probably, the easiest thing to do as a management committee is to resign. This is quite a prevalent trend in most societies. Members who do good work get upset due to nasty comments from residents or other committee members and as a result, resign. This is not a practice followed in effective committees. One needs to understand that as a committee member you are holding a responsible position and you need to behave responsibly. You cannot resign at the drop of a hat and have to develop a little tolerance to comments/nasty remarks and continue your good work. Do not ignore the comments, but understand the situation and then contribute positively towards it. Do not resign and leave in-between with the community that depends on you hanging in-air.

Take responsibility with an initiative to complete decisions taken – Taking decisions in committee meetings is very easy. But, ensuring the decision reaches the completion stage is the toughest part. One needs to follow up constantly and then ensure that the decision taken is finally completed. Most of the committee members are not from facility management background and what one lags is adequate knowledge to take decisions to the completion stage. Taking initiative and putting extra effort is the key. Research the issue and try to understand and gain in-depth knowledge about what is essentially required, call vendors and consultants for collecting information. Mobilize the people within the community for support and if it is a good initiative, ensure that it reaches the completion stage.

Focus on implementation of decisions – Most of the initiatives taken in apartments never reaches the implementation stage. One spends time in researching, collecting information, gaining in-depth knowledge but due to multiple discussions and arguments among committee members, the initiative never really reaches the implementation stage. For instance, someone in the committee suggests installing CCTV in the apartment for better safety and security of the residents. You take up the initiative, spend time in researching, calling vendors, taking price quotes but somehow realize that the committee members are not that enthusiastic about it. So, you go with the flow and drop the ball somewhere in-between and   it never gets implemented. Don’t let that happen, don’t drop the ball in-between. Ensure implementation of the decisions by convincing all the committee members about the importance of the initiative for the welfare of the residents.  

Be accountable post implementation of decisions – Accountability is something that comes with responsibility. If you hold a responsible position in the committee and are assigned the responsibility of an assigned task, you are bound to be accountable for the same. A lot of committee members take the implementation of decisions very seriously but do not want to be held accountable for the same. For instance, in some apartments, where CCTVs were installed none of the committee members assigned with the designated task were aware about the workings of the CCTV. Most of the committee members did not want to be held accountable and claimed about how their job was only limited to selecting the vendor and it was mainly the vendor’s job to come and install it. So, basically no one from the committee had a clue about how the system worked after installation. The assigned committee members were unable to answer questions mentioned below –

a)How will the CCTV footage be used?

b)What is the working process for CCTV footage?

c)How many times should one check CCTV footage?

d)Who and how will others access the CCTV footage?

As a result, a good as well as expensive initiative went waste in the above mentioned apartments. Accountability is very important for successful implementation of the decisions.

The formula for successfully implementing your committee decisions is given below:

Responsibility + Initiative (Research + Finalizing Vendors) + Implementation + Accountability

The above mentioned formula is followed by most of effective management committees. Do let us know if it worked for you by commenting on our blog. Log onto www.apnacomplex.com regularly for the post on next habit of effective management committees.