Body Corporate Mojo
BY: TIM SHEEHAN, MANAGING DIRECTOR
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This edition of Silver Community Link touches on the subject of ENERGY. One form of energy is that intangible personal quality: MOJO. I want to ramble on about the energy that could and should exist in your body corporate meetings. Your body corporate mojo is ultra important. Vague segue I accept - but I made it. Permission to ramble granted! I go to body corporate meetings and I also see a lot of people walking into body corporate meetings. Our Gold Coast office is open plan and lot owners walk through our office and past my desk on the way to their body corporate meeting. Quite frankly, and rather disappointingly, I don't see a lot of smiles. I imagine I would see more smiles and more laughs if I stood outside a funeral home watching mourners enter. From the body language it is clear many bodies corporate have lost their mojo. Austin Powers would be dismayed. I want you all to know that a body corporate meeting is not that bad. We have not had a death at a body corporate meeting (that I can recall), there have been no raids of body corporate meetings by the Hells Angels, raised voices are rare, and since we have introduced security guards with dobermans (or should that be dobermen?) very few meetings develop into a WWE wrestling match. Though, I would love to see someone turn up to a body corporate meeting in a wrestling leotard covered in fake tan. What kills your body corporate mojo? I have spent a lot of time thinking about why people turning up at a body corporate meeting appear to be in a funeral procession and I believe I know. These people have let their body corporate meetings become about yesterday - history - what should have been - blame - and finally retribution.
My theory is that it is difficult to be positive about yesterday. The best you can be is content with yesterday. Yesterday can give you a warm inner glow but it cannot set you on fire and make you bounce out of bed in the morning. In body corporate land we should all be at ease with yesterday and focused on tomorrow because tomorrow is the only thing that excites our mojo.
It is easy to fall into the trap of "yesterday". Look at the items that must be part of basic body corporate business:
- 1st item of business: Confirmation of previous minutes: What happened at the last meeting?
- Review of financial statements: What we spent yesterday
- Report from the resident unit manager: Things that happened yesterday. Problems that were dealt with yesterday.
- Correspondence list: Yesterday's communication.
If your meeting is too focused on yesterday (or history) then it is about questions like: What we could have done differently? Why did they decide to do it that way and not some other way? How much extra could have been saved? How much better it could have been? Who can we blame for things not being as good as they could be? Reading the legislation that regulates our bodies corporate one might conclude that once a committee has dealt with yesterday then it has discharged its statutory obligations and the meeting can close. Wrong! A committee can only discharge its statutory duty of care to the owners when it has thought about tomorrow and set in place a plan to deal with what tomorrow may bring.
Mojo and planning - I think they go hand in hand. Planning for the future ensures that history takes care of itself. I would love to see people walking into body corporate meetings with a spring in their step and a smile on their face. To help focus on planning and restore your mojo I suggest that before your next body corporate meeting you go through the following mojo affirmation exercise: "My body corporate mojo is awesome! We are concerned about tomorrow. We have a plan for the future. We are going to execute the plan. Our body corporate will be the best community in Australia. Owners, residents and service providers are all friends working together. Tim Sheehan rocks!" (Maybe you can leave that last one out?)
