The two key levers

Read somewhere recently that the leader of a company ought to be able to write down the company’s key strategic objectives on one piece of paper.

The idea is to make sure that the preponderance of the organization’s energy is oriented in the direction of a few key goals, rather than spread across many, minor projects that won’t move the dial.

For Adaptive, the objectives are incredibly straight-forward:

  1. Continue to do great deals, ones where we get both a material cash fee (which allows us to live) and an ownership stake (after investors make an out-sized return).;
  2. Accelerate the growth our management business (which organically grows through #1) by taking on the management of very high quality buildings filled with very high quality tenants.

That’s not to say that our business is simple. There is an incredible amount of complexity: finding deals, finding the capital for deals, obtaining debt, managing contractor relationships and construction projects, managing the financial reporting, structuring transactions to make the tax-efficient, building the organization, setting rents, finding tenants, managing maintenance expenses, etc.

But, doing more good deals and getting good management assignments are the two levers that can materially change the trajectory of our business.