Moving On Up

January 31, 2024

This year started off with us trying to find a new home to move into. Not a simple or easier way to kick off 2024, but a great way to refresh our lives.

New location, new mindset, and fresh start.

Of course, I made a digital tracker that centralized all the data around potential homes including the price, location, number of bedrooms, bathrooms, features, images, and more. It can filter views by property, drag and drop locations by status, give individual ratings based on our opinions ... I was so dang proud of this tracker and really felt like I had accomplished something.

But in reality, I hadn’t even moved the needle.

It still took weeks to find a place, countless emails, texts, viewings, and overall rental chaos. The day before we found “the one” I had a total meltdown in the car in which the hopelessness of the home-finding finally hit me all in one fell swoop. It was brutal.

Funny enough, I had made a classic operational mistake— believing that creating was succeeding.

In operations, a huge part of what we do is create standard processes to streamline and standardize the work of our teams (aka standard operating procedures). In this process, sometimes we get fancy. We develop intelligent data structures to allow us to create automations and integrations with other tools. We set up notifications and dashboards to report on findings. It can quickly snowball from a checklist into an entire procedural ecosystem.

But this can be a trap. Just because we create a way of working, doesn’t mean it actually helps the team.

Even with the best of intentions, you can create a system that ultimately gets in the way of the work or is a distraction from actually moving the needle. In searching for a home, the process was more old school. Phone calls and texts to brokers led to tours the next day, where we would immediately love or hate it.

I found myself not my updating my gorgeous home tracker because ultimately the process didn’t need it. We could easily remember which ones were contenders and forgot about the ones that were duds. I had created a system that didn’t work for the team and instead put up too much red tape.

So what did I do? I archived the tracker and kept it simple.

The great news is, not only did I relearn that very valuable lesson (yet again), but we also ended up with a home that I can’t wait to make our own.

Now onto the nesting phase! Home Goods here I come. 🎉

— Ariana