Who Do You Hire Next GM vs Ops Manager vs Head of Department

We break down how to choose your next leadership hire in a property management business by identifying the real bottleneck you are trying to remove. We compare what a head of department, ops manager, and general manager actually do, plus the hiring mistakes that quietly slow growth and strain culture.

• Why layers of management start to matter as teams grow
• How culture shifts when you add leadership layers
• What a head of department owns in property management
• What an ops manager owns in systems and processes
• What a general manager owns across the business
• How to spot whether you have a leadership or execution problem
•Common mistakes like hiring a GM too early
• Why juniors need a layer of leadership
• Why success measures and capability matter more than personality
• What leaders need to know about targets and ratios

If you're stuck with that, feel free to reach out to me.

Detector Inspector | Safer Homes

Transcript

Why The Next Hire Matters

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Alright, I'm really excited about this topic because it's something that I have just recently been starting to like think about just a little bit inside my business as I start looking at different layers of management. And I think that this is something that should be helpful for a lot of people, not only helpful for business owners that maybe need that extra C level of support, but also actually for people that are currently in a property management role, whether property manager, leasing, BDM, whatever it might be. And if you have ever been thinking about what the next step looks like for you, you also might be quite interested in having a listen to these different roles and where they sit inside businesses because it might be something that you might start wanting to work towards. So today's framework is around when you what when do you hire next? Um, sorry, who do you hire next? Is it a general manager, ops manager, or head of department? So we're gonna sort of break these these roles down to give you a little bit more insight into what where they sit inside a property management business and when you might need one of them. And if you're listening today, and like I said, you're a property manager, you might go, oh, actually, I really want to be an ops manager one day. And you know, this will give you a little bit of insight into what each of those roles are. So as we continue with growth, we are going to create some complex situations. Now, as I said in a couple of episodes ago, I will be completely transparent here. I didn't ever understand when I would, or actually, I don't even know if I thought about it. As a business owner, I had a big team of property managers, BDM, and I just always thought that my job role was to run the business. And so I never really had any thought in my head of, oh, I need an ops manager until a situation came up and an ops manager approached me to actually just talk about finding a role. And I was, you know, going to go into my PM collective community and, you know, you know, maybe give her some pointers of where to go. And somehow she ended up with us, and I didn't realize I needed her. And actually, if she's listening, she'll know this. That on her first day, I actually said to her, I don't know what to do with you. Like, I literally don't know what to do with you. And so fortunately she created her role. And as time went on, obviously, you know, we have refined that and and I have got her in a really amazing ops manager supports role. But that sort of begs the question for me next, is like, okay, well, when is she going to need support? Like, when am I going to need that next level person? Am I going to need a general manager? Do I need a head of department? Does she want to be one of them one day? Like, you know, all of those questions have started literally only in the last couple of days going through my head. So that's really where I'm thinking about. But you might be listening today and being like, well, I don't know, do I want a header department or do I want an ops manager? Generally, they're the two that will come first. And then you'll have your, you know, general managers probably something way, maybe, maybe not, way down the line. But let's go through and just talk about all of these roles and talk about why we sort of do really need to understand them so we've got a clear idea of where our growth is going. We can clearly create those team structures with regards to our existing team and whether there's someone that might actually step up really, really well into one of them, because it also is going to affect culture. The minute you start having some layers of management, culture will be affected. And you do need to tread very carefully when you decide to either bring in someone independently and potentially disrupt a long-term team, or if you bring in up, I don't want to say upcrake it, bring develop one of your existing team members into that role, how others might feel is a very, very delicate operation. I can say I've been so fortunate. I haven't had any of those issues. It's just worked in beautifully. I think there is some merit bringing someone in independently with a specific skill set that that is only seen as an absolute bonus to the team, is really where you want to go. I'm very fortunate with our ops manager. She brought in a completely new skill set, which only had a direct advantage to the team. So no one is going to ever be put offside by that because she's literally there to make their lives so much easier. So, but these are all things that you do need to think about so that you get that right layer of leadership in your team. So let's talk about the first one, which let's talk about head of department first, actually. So a head of department is going to be leading a specific function or team. They're going to be responsible for performance within that area. They're going to be developing people within that department. So in a rent role or a property management business that will look like a person who is who is leading just the property management team, not the sales team, just the property management. And they are responsible for performance only in that department, no other departments of the office. And they're the ones that are probably going to be doing the one-on-ones, checking in with the team, potentially supporting them when they're on leave, and also assisting with any escalations. So when a team is growing and needs a leadership, this is when I would be starting to think about that head of department. When you're still too involved in this area and you can't sort of get out of it to work on things that are better, better using your time, or when performance varies across the team and they need a little bit more of bespoke support, you might need to start bringing in that head of department. Then we've got the operations manager. So the operations manager is going to own systems, processes, execution. They're going to be making sure the business runs smoothly day to day, and they're going to be translating strategy into action. And that is exactly what our ops manager did. And that's exactly the reason why we went to ops manager first, is because we literally did not have systems and processes. Like we didn't have that. I don't know how we were running for 20 years without it, but we were. And that is where we were like, we need to, we need that skill set because we can't scale and get to the next step without that. So our ops manager absolutely makes the business run smoothly day to day. When the girls and the when our team has a template that's not working, or if they need we've had just recently in WA new changes to bonds, all of those processes all get updated by the ops manager. She sets it all up, she sets up training for us, genuinely helps the business run smooth day to day. So if your department feels very messy and inconsistent, that was us. This is a great place to have um to start with your leadership team with the ops manager. If you're constantly fixing problems and when the systems live in your head instead of in the business, yes, that was absolutely me. That is why we needed the ops manager and not a head of department. So that is why we uh jumped to that. And then you've got the general manager. So a general manager is going to be running the business with you, or they could be running the business for you. They're going to be overseeing all the departments. So if you've got property management and sales and finance or whatever it is, they're going to be overseeing all of them and they're going to be focusing on performance, growth, and leadership over the whole business and making sure the business has performance and growth. So a really, really sort of big job there. If you are someone who's no longer in the day-to-day, if you're a business owner and you've just stepped out of the business, a GM is a great person to come in and run it all for you. Or when you need someone to hold the entire operation so that you can continue to sell properties if that's what you love to do. They can just come in and look after everything for you so you don't have to do it. And when you want to step more into vision, strategy, or external growth, that is when you could really benefit from a GM. So really, like you might be someone who has fantastic visions and ideas, but just terrible at executing them, then having a GM, you can have these meetings with the GM, say this is what I want. I want our sales team to double. I want, you know, the property management to increase by this, I want to create that. And then you let them focus on that growth. So very, very different. So if I have a little think about where I am sitting to give some context, like obviously our ops manager amazing. Potentially, I mean, not that, you know, this is like far, far away, but you know, if I'm just going to sort of reflect on these things, I would actually probably say she's actually probably quite capable of being a GM. If I got to a stage where me and my business partner were like, you know what, we're not ready to sell the business, but we're just sick of like being in the business. And it was something of interest to her, I would actually put her in a GM position to focus on all the departments. To be honest, she is focusing on some of the other departments at the moment when it comes to the ops manager role. So that could be something, but that's a personal choice that she might want to do. She might want to stay an ops manager, but if not, there could be a position for her to go in that and then bring in someone to be the ops manager as a support. Because to be honest, she's now that she's set that up, it's more just of as supporting and staying on top of it. So that could definitely be a support role there. The header department, I while we sort of all take a little bit of that responsibility, probably at the moment, like if I wanted to remove more of my responsibilities, I would probably bring in a header department because I'm probably still quite hands-on in property management. Like if we're got someone on leave, like I'm very happy to just jump in and do some emails and do all that. I do it because I enjoy it, but I am still got my fingers in the pie a little bit. So potentially the team could benefit from like one-on-ones, like I don't do any of that. They could be responsible for like, you know, KPIs, I don't do, like, you know, all of that type of thing. Someone who could a head of department who could cover leave when there is one of the um property managers away, that would be really beneficial. So yeah, there could be definitely room for that. It is really hard, like when you don't know when to bring that person in. Like for me, because I do it at the moment and I don't mind doing it, that's why it's not really a pain point. But where someone like our ops managers come in, it's like I don't like I'm okay at processes, but she's really good at processes. So it's sort of like she's a bit more attention to detail than what I am. I can do them to a certain level and I can definitely do a good verte, like a I can do it good, but I don't really have an interest in it. So that's probably the difference of why that was better to be brought in as opposed to the head of department. But at the at the end of the day, the head of department is a the head of department is a a role that I'm comfortable doing, and it's not causing me any stress or anything like that. So that's why I don't feel, I don't know, don't feel pressured to sort of like rush to any any role like that at the moment. So hopefully that just gives you a little bit more of an overview on those, those roles and why you might need one more than the other. So instead of sort of asking yourself what who should you hire, just sort of ask yourself where do you have that bottleneck and what are you holding on to that you really don't enjoy doing? And is the problem leadership structure or execution? Because there that's really also then going to help you decide where you're going to get the most value out of that next that next role. So to break it down really simply, if you have a very messy department, an ops manager is probably the first um step. If you find that, you know, your processes and everything like that's running really well, but the team just needs that leadership, head of department might be a really good choice. And if your whole business is needing that oversight, then a GM might be the role to go to as well. So the mistakes that people tend to make is hiring a GM too early. I think, I mean, a lot of the people that I speak to are not at that level of needing a GM. So that might be a bit, you know, over a lot of people's heads. That's fair courts over my head too. Hiring juniors when they need leadership. So that could be a big mistake that people bring. Like you can't, if you are going to hire juniors, then you need to have a layer of, like you need to balance it with a layer of leadership because they need more. If you have experienced property managers, then you might not need that leadership as much. So you really need just to work out where that balance is. If you are expecting one person to do everything, like even for me, looking at our ops manager, like that's one person who's doing a lot, and I'm very mindful that as her job progresses and our business, how as our business grows, there has been more roles that she's taken on. And so I'm not in a situation where I'm just going to constantly build and build and build. I do think about it and I do have a plan of what that next step would look like for her and for the business because um we do forget about those roles. We do quite often put more and more on them. Maybe you've, you know, you've grown your team by five people or 10 people. As you grow your team, there is so much more work for them to do. So don't forget about people in that layer of management. Hiring people based on personality, not capability, can be something that um can be a bit of an issue and not being clear on what success looks like. So you have to have really clear communication with these layers of management, and you also have to be very vulnerable with business as well, and you need to give them enough information that's going to allow them to be able to track the performance of the business. There are business owners out there that don't want to give their leadership team access to some of the stats. Now, I'm not suggesting that you need to give them numbers as such, like dollar amounts, but they do need to understand business to a certain level to be able to support you the best they can. So that might look like percentages of what the wage ratio should look like, what the admin ratio should look like, what the profit margin you want the business to be looks like. They need to have a percentage. They don't have to know the numbers, but the percentage is what needs to be known. They need to know what the churn rate is, they need to know certain things so that they have targets. I personally am not a huge fan of the profit margin being a focus point. Yes, I mean to a certain extent it has to, but it also a profit margin is actually out of some control if you're a business owner that puts a lot of personal expenses through. And that's a pretty hard and unfair, in my opinion, unfair stat to be using. More so probably depending on the size of business, but you know, you do get business owners that can definitely put a lot of personal stuff through and make it very hard and unattainable for someone to build on that the profit margin. But definitely on other margins, I think it was really, really important to look at. So just be aware that you are going to have to share an extra layer that maybe you haven't done before and that might feel a little bit uncomfortable. So just be mindful of that. If you're stuck with that, feel free to reach out to me. I'm very happy to sort of go through how you can have those conversations so they feel comfortable. So hopefully that does help you, help the business owners that are listening, but also help people who are in a property manager role understand what those upper management roles look like in case it's something that you might like to work towards as well. So hope you guys find that one interesting and can't wait to chat to you guys next week. See ya.