As of 2018, there was 316k strata and community schemes in Australia – that means at least 316k people sitting on strata committees (granted some may sit on many, however, some buildings have up to 9 members).
Conservatively, let’s say that there are 500k people sitting on voluntary strata and executive committees across Australia – dare I say, this would have to be the quickest growing membership of any type of voluntary committee, Australia-wide.
In my time as a strata manager, I have worked with high performing committees and low performing committees. There’s no formula to what creates a good committee for a scheme and often a scheme will need to go through pain for good people to come out of the woodwork and jump on a committee.
A committee should:
- spend money, not penny-pinch;
- try and be as efficient as possible and respect peoples time;
- defer to experts as required;
- have a basic knowledge of the Act/s under which they operate;
- make sure they have liability insurance;
- communicate openly with owners and occupants; and
- meet relatively often and deal with decisions at properly convened meetings
These hundreds of thousands of strata and executive committee members:
- are unpaid (generally);
- don’t know each other well;
- often have disparate interests;
- share little in common other than ownership of a strata or community title lot;
- may have a lot of time on their hands or little time;
- may have experience in being on professional committees or it may be their first experience; or
- might want the best for their community or might be there for only personal interests or a vendetta
There’s no easy way to address the above issues – I believe that committees are getting better as they now have more experience and better access to information. However, I believe that all committees would benefit from considering a flatline management structure (which works incredibly well in business and high-performance voluntary organisations like sporting clubs).
We have prepared a brief overview of a flatline management structure for schemes we manage to consider, which could work for your own. Committees should be the realm of those interested, with the requisite skills to push issues in the right direction, who defer to experts rather than ignoring them and who sponsor each member’s interests, skills and passion rather than operate by the ‘many chefs in the kitchen’ mentality.
