Prometheus Real Estate Group

REPORT ::

Prometheus Real Estate Group is the largest private owner of multi-family properties in the San Francisco Bay Area. It specializes in the acquisition, development, and management of high quality residential and commercial properties.

The organization is a flat organization led by a small Executive Team and populated with empowered individuals. The executive team includes the President, three Vice Presidents, and two Senior Vice Presidents. One of the Executive Vice President handles the acquisitions and investment activities, another oversees the development activities and one is Chief Financial Officer. Also, one Senior Vice President leads the Operations group and the other leads the HR team. The next level includes 12 Vice Presidents who lead different parts of the business and work closely together in many different ways to support the field operations or the property management operations.

This audit explores the limitation and issues in the Prometheus organization. This report asserts that one of the key issues in the organization is communication and motivation. Prometheus organization is a flat organization where employees are empowered with the freedom to think, make decisions and act like entrepreneurs. This creates confusion, at times, for the employees about whom to report. Also, there is no effective communication or handover of the tasks or duties to the other peers. This stilted interaction among employees makes it unable for them to build rapport with each other. This lack of rapport and trust augments the demotivation that pervades the organization. That, in turn, results in inefficient performance in not leasing out the apartment, thus impacting the organization.

⁠⁠⁠Communicational barriers exist at organizational as well as individual levels. This adds to the already existing organizational problems. Enhancing the quality of communication will promote a better connect amidst peers and thereby facilitate performance as well as motivation. To alleviate these communication concerns, it’s imperative to zero down on the key reasons for these concerns.

First step could be to initiate one on one discussion sessions with team members to be able to surface the core problems. Also, setting communication guidelines and norms to urge honest and clear idea exchange would create lesser, or perhaps no confusion. Training / knowledge transfer sessions on effective communication would help the employees connect more efficiently. Working towards building better communication bridges between cross functional teams to have efficient dependencies while cutting down on redundancies will certainly help achieve objectives. Setting clear/realistic goals and effectively communicating about performance will motivate the employee to achieve goals and improve performance. Rewarding and appreciating the employees for sharing valuable information and positioning the property on rent.

While analyzing the issues of the Prometheus organization, we realized that main cause of the problems is the communication and coordinating activities. Ineffective communication of information and tasks that are done and what’s needed to be done is hampering the performance of the employee. The new hire or new staff who is filling in for someone would have no idea of what’s the task or the goal needed to be achieved. Moreover, the employees felt that they were undervalued and under rewarded for their work. Addressing these issues will motivate the employee to perform better and achieve organization goals.

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METHOD

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The data needed for the study has been collected from the employees through direct interviews and through questionnaires. Analysis and interpretation has been done on this data to arrive at the most feasible solution.

We interviewed following personnel working in several different positions at Prometheus Real Estate Group:

1. Adrianne: Assistant Neighborhood Director (Asst. Property Manager) Prometheus Real Estate Group– Santa Clara, CA.

2. Vanessa Barajas: Neighbor Ambassador Prometheus Real Estate Group– Santa Clara, CA.

3. Kevin Kamal: Neighborhood Service Manager (Maintenance Supervisor) Prometheus Real Estate Group– Mountain View, CA

4. Andrew: Neighbor Ambassador (Leasing Specialist)Prometheus Real Estate Group– Santa Clara, CA.

5. Darren White: Neighborhood Service Coordinator (Maintenance Admin. Asst.) Prometheus Real Estate Group– Sunnyvale, CA

The interview questions revealed communication problems experienced by the employees in the organization.

The questions were as follows

● Do you find it hard to get some people to cooperate?

● Have you been in a situation where you have been left out of the communication loop ?

● Are you experiencing a delays in replies to your messages?

● Do you feel groups in the organization are failing to reach their goals?

● How often are mistakes cropping up in the organization ?

● Are employees resorting more to criticism and placing the blame on other people ?

● Morale of teams is going down and productivity is dull ?.

The following questions were formulated to access the level of motivation the employees in this organization maintained

● Do the staff feel they have been provided with meaningful work.

● Does the organization offer frequent opportunities to award the employees?

●Allow employees the opportunity to connect with those whom they serve to obtain feedback.

●Does the organization give them a path to monitor their progress with milestone along the way?