What Would Ted Do?

(Kirsten Knows . . . )

The Lyft is a blue SUV. And the driver looks like Ted Lasso.

“Sorry, but I’ll need to rest a little enroute,” Kirsten tells him, then settles into her seat.

She will arrive at the cabana in twenty minutes and then convince the board to rehire the management company it had just fired. Just how she will convince them, she does not yet know. But then, she never does.

Kirsten is a gifted Fixer. Her superpower is to miraculously intuit, mere minutes before showtime, just what to say to save an account.

Here, she already knows what not to say. That winning approval of new documents is hard. And that significantly altering existing use restrictions in the new documents makes winning approval almost impossible.

The board has already rejected these excuses. It has, instead, convinced itself that the management company simply bungled the balloting. She must now convince them that the next attempt will succeed.

Eyes closed, her mind a blank slate, she waits for the answer to come. And what soon surfaces is a crystal clear memory of a conversation that never took place.

How Ted Won

At the table next to Kirsten, Rebecca was regaling Keely with the story of how Ted had outfoxed Rupert.

Rebecca, Rupert, and Ted each called Castletownbere Condominium home. Rebecca, as Board President, led the attempt to win approval of new WUCIOA compliant governing documents. Her nemesis, Rupert, vowed to derail the attempt. So, Rebecca tasked Ted with outmaneuvering Rupert and winning approval.

Ted brought his relentless optimism to bear on the task. Ted believed in the power of belief. And Ted believed he would ultimately get 100% voter turnout and win approval by 90% of the votes cast.

Table Use Restrictions

Rupert told owners that Rebecca’s real motive was to impose harsher use restrictions. Ted countered by convincing the board to take changing use restrictions off the table. So, the proposed replacement documents kept existing use restrictions, but added for future use a fair process for changing use restrictions at a later date.

Schedule Regular Updates

Rebecca told Ted that Rupert would just keep inventing an endless series of new reasons why owners should vote against the replacement documents. In anticipation of the series of attacks yet to come, Ted countered by making the second Tuesday of each month “Update Tuesday.” Establishing a predictable update schedule would keep owners curious as they waited for Ted’s latest countermove to be revealed.

Voting is Contributing

Rupert told owners that the new law did not actually require that owners adopt new governing documents. Ted countered with a Letter and Q & A that told owners why new documents were needed and how the new law called upon owners to actively contribute to an association’s success.

Answer Why Before What

Ruppert told owners that the new law was intended to give them a club of sorts with which to constrain the abusive reign of Rebecca and her board cronies. Ted countered by providing an Overview to owners that described how the new law was actually intended to encourage owners to more actively contribute to the association’s success.

Come With Receipts

Ruppert told owners that Ted’s Overview was a work of fiction that bore no relationship to what the new law actually required. Ted countered by providing an Annotated Guide which linked what the Overview said to specific parts of the new law.

Provide a Drones-Eye View

Ruppert told owners that the documents template used to create the replacement documents radically reorganized the order in which the new law addressed various topics, making the documents unnecessarily difficult to understand. Ted countered with a Summary of Key Points that revealed how topics had been arranged in an order that actually made the documents easier to use.

Normalize the Task

Owners later received a draft set of replacement documents, met to comment on them, and later received a final set, revised by the Board to account for the comments they had made. They also received a ballot on which they could vote for or against the final replacement documents. A notice that accompanied the ballot told owners the deadline by which ballots were to be returned.

Shortly after the notice of balloting was mailed out, Rupert told owners to vote “no” unless they were truly convinced that they actually understood the 100 plus single-spaced pages of legalese they were being asked to approve. Ted countered with an Explainer that reminded owners of how they typically arrive at a decision to download an app that uses coding they do not actually understand.

Ted Fails

Once the balloting deadline had passed and the votes were tallied, it was clear that Ted had failed. Voter turnout of 88% fell short of the 100% he believed he would achieve. And of votes cast, 85% voted to approve the documents, falling short of the 90% he believed he would achieve.

But Rebecca countered with the pragmatic observation that – thanks to Ted’s efforts  -  the documents had in fact been approved by almost 75% of the total votes in the association.

Kirsten To The Rescue

The Lyft having now reached the cabana, Kirsten mentally rehearses her new approval strategy as she approaches the cabana door:

(i) Table use restrictions;

(ii) Schedule regular updates;

(iii) Voting is contributing;

(iv) Answer why before what;

(v) Come with receipts;

(vi) Provide a drones-eye view; and

(vii) Normalize the task.

And now . . . SHOWTIME!!

But as she is crossing the threshold, Kirsten pauses momentarily to tap the “Believe” sign her mind’s eye sees taped above the door, and only then takes center stage.