The Power of Process

In this week’s Auben book club, we discussed our newest selection, Process: How Discipline and Consistency Will Set You and Your Business Free by Mike Paton and Lisa González.?

It’s a new book for me and for the organization. However, it’s part of the Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS) book family which Auben incorporates significantly into many aspects of our operations. (We use many tools from Traction. And Rocket Fuel has been a defining book in my journey to help match my visionary qualities with the integrator characteristics of many of my team members).????

Our Process book club is being led by Augusta Market Director Erica Barraza and Augusta Inspector Cindy Price. In this week’s session, both Auben Realty Augusta team members were discussing how a map of all of the Augusta assets helped them create a better process for Auben’s Hurricane Helene clean-up. What was amazing is that a Google Map pinned with all of Auben Augusta’s managed assets, initially created for routine inspection purposes, was able to be quickly repurposed to be the blueprint we used to organize and orchestrate our disaster response.????

How did a map which was created by Cindy Price over a year ago become the Rosetta Stone for our disaster response???

As stated in Process:

“A strong Process Component builds a high-level blueprint for executing consistently well today and improving and innovating as required.”???

I think the main reason this innovation was possible is because we had a team of local experienced specialists who were able to meet, discuss and even argue about the best approach to respond to a crisis which would have been nearly impossible to prepare for. The thought of 100 mile-per-hour hurricane winds coming to Augusta is nearly implausible enough to be preposterous.??

As one Augusta native said to me last night, “Augusta is where you go to flee hurricanes!”?

Yet, as impossible as the destruction of Hurricane Helene seemed, the team immediately embraced the reality of the cleanup. The team repurposed our conference room into a “war room” to hold meetings to effectively and efficiently create a process for Auben team members to put eyes on over 500 residences in less than a week—in a city where driving anywhere was fraught with challenges!??

Routes and groups of homes were divided up geographically, and the team was mobilized into action. Everyone at Auben became an inspector on the “tree team.” Every day tired Auben team members came into the office from their own damaged homes to help Auben Residents. A vacant apartment behind Auben’s office, which did not lose power or water, became an Auben laundromat and a place where people could take warm showers to scrub off the sawdust stuck to their skin. A week after the storm hit, large bottles of Advil and chainsaws were as common as pens and paper in the conference room.?

Elderly residents and homes with trees on them were responded to first. And the team worked diligently to ensure the safety of our residents. Resources were also brought in from other markets, as people came to lend a hand and bring necessary tools not available on the depleted shelves of Augusta.?

As tragic as the storm damage was, the Auben Augusta team’s response really was an awesome display of a group galvanizing its efforts to handle the issues themselves, while still being able to draw from regional and national resources.?

?It was a great example of the importance of the model we are building of integrated services. For more about Auben’s integrated services, check out this video on our POD System!