Jack of all Trades

Being a community manager is easy; anybody can do it, right? Hardly, as few professions require the range of knowledge that community managers must possess. On any given day, a manager might wear many hats: legal expert, financial analyst, general contractor, and mediator. Your community manager might start the morning outside with a landscaper, spend the afternoon with an engineer poring over construction plans, help your board president keep the peace at a night meeting, and then—just when you think your manager is done role playing for the day —s/he gets a call in the middle of the night about a plumbing problem. How can a person learn about all these different operational issues of community associations?

The scope of topics included on the National Board of Certification for Community Association Manager’s (NBC-CAM) National Certification Examination illustrates the diverse types of knowledge that community managers must have. Indeed, NBC-CAM has identified the following eight vital skill areas:

• governance and legal matters
  
  
• budgets, reserves, investments, and assessments
  
  
• financial controls
  
  
• meetings management
  
  
• risk management and insurance
  
  
• contracting
  
  
• property maintenance
  
  
• human-resources management

Just how much knowledge your community manager should have about each topic depends on the type and size of your association. It’s important for every manager to know about governance and legal matters, meetings management, and budgets, reserves, investments, and assessments, but other topics might be less relevant on a daily basis. Extensive knowledge about human-resource management, for example, is probably less critical when there are no onsite employees. However, for others this category is crucial -- some associations have more than thirty employees, making human resource management an important skill area for those managers.

Everyday tasks also run the gamut. In addition to knowing the basics such as how many directors are required for a quorum, your community manager needs to stay current in a range of fields. The community manager needs to know what types of insurance coverages are available to protect the association from disasters, as well as what laws pertain to environmental issues, from recycling to use of pesticides. When making a budget, your community manager needs to know how to analyze trends, plan for the future and scout out alternative sources of income.

How can just one person keep up to speed in so many different areas? Continuing education is one good route. To do this, your community manager should be taking courses through the Community Associations Institute as well as other organizations, including the National Association of Housing Cooperatives and the Club Managers Association of America. California managers could also attend courses offered by the California Association of Community Management. Some of these organizations offer online courses and continuing-education courses at no cost.

It is important that your community manager stay informed. When s/he does, all those hats s/he has to wear won’t feel so heavy.

John Lawton, CMCA®, RCM®, PCAM®
President
HRW, Inc.
Raleigh, NC