Mike Beirne 

Like many of you out there who have spent an adult lifetime in this trade of Property Management, we all view our activities as very diverse and pride ourselves on this occupational personality trait. Running a property and all its facets can produce a daily challenge and surprises. At the risk of diminishing this time-honored bragging right of all property professionals, from a management standpoint, is that still as effective as a way to manage as it used to be? While the “basics” of every job description in the craft will never change, the renting public, the means and vehicles to attract and the industry itself are changing rapidly. Is your organization seeing that and changing with it?

Technology is consuming our business and redefining it. Being a private pilot, a craft that has become very advanced and is very structured, I often use my experience as a metaphor and comparison to the evolution of our industry. I believe a lot can be learned from the advances other fields and crafts have conquered. Even in such an advanced endeavor though pilots of the most advanced aircraft in the world, such as the F-18 Eagle suffer a malady they refer to as a “helmet fire”. This condition is when the best trained in the world have to multi task on several advanced technologies at the same time while flying a supersonic aircraft and even the best trained “overload” and freeze up.