Author: Steve Moran

The risk of not knowing is massive. There is also risk for a damaged reputation, which makes it harder to attract new residents and staff.

We are heading down the road to a disaster for senior living operators, residents, and team members, and only the capital providers can change that. 

Once you believe in the possibilities for your community, you can develop an action plan to get there. What do we have to do to get to 90% occupancy?

If we approach all audiences the same, we are setting ourselves up for failure and our audiences for frustration and confusion.

We have a great opportunity to not be like other companies and to instead be like companies that realized customer service is everything.

Next time something goes wrong in your community, it is worthwhile to think about it in terms of how you can use it to your advantage …

It got me thinking that someone should start a senior living advocate business. Learn more about this in the article …

How are you doing with involving your residents in growing your business … other than collecting money from them?

More and more I realize that we don’t actually have very good models for getting old. This is particularly true when passing the traditional retirement age.

I worry that in senior living and most of the world of business we have come to expect praise and accolades for simply delivering what was paid for.

If you do this, everything else you worry about will take care of itself. Your occupancy will be crazy good. Your recruitment and retention will be a snap.

Getting there is not a matter of spending more money. It is 100% about mindset. It does not look the same in every organization.

Hardly anyone loves failure, particularly with that failure being their own fault. Worst is when it takes someone else to help you see it.

You can make it better in your life and in your community. What you can do to make it better right now as you read this article is simple, but not easy.

Senior living operators have been salivating over the “tsunami” of boomers that will “fill every senior living community.” This is insane!

As a leader it is even worse, because your “stuckness” cascades to others in your organization. The big question is this: GETTING UNSTUCK?

We believe other people think the same way we do. It just simply isn’t so. What is possible in your life if you write a list of goals …

I am afraid that rarely do leaders ask themselves how often their policies and their attitude toward customers create friction that will lead to conflicts.

The current CEO embraced the changing world, figured out how to pivot, figured out what would best serve the customers, and they are thriving.

Often, we make decisions based on previous success without thinking through how much of that success was based not on ourselves but on luck.

I more and more worry that our biggest problem is that we are not asking the right questions. Here is my list we should be asking as leaders.

Being willing to change direction, to stop persisting, can pay huge dividends for you, for your organization, and for those you lead. 

Great leadership that understands that the path to high occupancy and profitability is all about fewer guardrails, not more guardrails.

Every team needs at least one person who, while being a huge fan of the organization and the leaders, is willing to challenge everything.

I have this vision of some senior living executive committing to making living and working in your community feel great every day. Here is what it would look like.

How much better would your life be if you had quit some of the things you did quit — but done so earlier?

19 reasons I might be a bad leader.

Don’t get me wrong, these are big issues that seem intractable, but when we get them right, people will flock to senior living.  

I CANNOT REMAIN SILENT ON THIS ONE! This is a horrible mischaracterization of a good company and leaders.

I worry, though, that by staying silent we become complicit in the harm that is being done to older people. We should be willing to call out bad operators.

By not talking about the problems, we send the message that we don’t really understand what our customers, what our prospects, need and want. 

There are senior living communities and senior living organizations that looked around and said, “The old way is not working.”

Every single time these horrific things happened because of leadership failures, those leaders made every single senior living community look bad.

There are other operators that don’t have much status in the current world of senior living that most of us inhabit. And they have a few goals for this!

Each of them are things that can break the industry or be tackled artfully to make the industry stronger.

As we dreamed together of the possibilities and problems of senior living, I found myself making a list of missed opportunities, or, accurately, untapped ones.

It is possible to like a leader and not really know if they are a great leader or not. Here are the comments of team members from that Foresight TV episode.

If you do this, you will be transformed as a leader. You will better understand the challenges your salespeople face every single day. 

If my dream for Brookdale were to become a reality, every single senior living organization would be better today than it is.

As I embark on a conference trip, I hope to spend some time learning from people. Here’s a list of questions whenever I meet someone for the first time!

The problem is that leaders only have one set of eyes and ears and it is impossible for them to understand the complexity of their own enterprises.

By Steve Moran A few weeks ago I wrote an article titled “The Nursing Home Flim-Flam Game.” I sent...

If a company had only high-performing executive directors they would have only high-performing communities. 

This is a list of interesting articles that have relevance in providing first-class senior living. There is something here for everyone!

I believe it doesn’t have to be this way at Brookdale. That in a few months, they could have an occupancy that beats the industry average.

Senior living has a lot of room to get better, but most people who are experiencing senior living as consumers are happy with the product they are getting.

There is a ton of public exuberance about senior living, I heard from the stage …“It remains a great investment.” But in the halls …

Senior living should be nearly as safe as flying. Right now, I am fearful that the predominant feeling is, “I am glad it didn’t happen to me.”

The world of senior living is changing and will change even more. These trends will rule the next decade of senior living.

The big idea is that we have only limited time and energy and the very best way to spend it is to make an impact on the world.

The other big problem with mission statements is that they are often states of being rather than aspirational.   

Take this quick quiz, and grade your transparency as a leader.

People traveling, unless they are extremely wealthy, have no choice but to put up with shoddy airline service. That is not true for senior living. 

Good intent is why nursing homes and other senior living communities have such a poor reputation in the marketplace.  

As a leader, you are not the only one languishing. So are your residents, their family members, your team members, and your investors.

If we want people to see senior living fine and wonderful places to work, we must celebrate the good and condemn the bad.

The bigger the organization, the higher probability of this being a problem. It is hard, but it must be guarded against. 

Leaders by their very nature are fixers. In conflict they love being the tiebreaker … but there is a problem.

Every single person in your organization is a moving part, and each of those moving parts is complex. They have different skills, personalities, and needs.

I considered starting a new series titled “Leadership is Hard.” But at the same time, it’s also simple, and perhaps that is what makes it hard.

What could you do if you applied the MacGyver principle to the “impossible” challenges you face in your community, your organization?

An article titled “Without These 8 things, Businesses Will Fail,” got me thinking about what those things are in senior living.

Great leaders need to be on guard for any signs that they and their organizations are even a little bit like what happened in Uvalde.

This question gives me one of those “head exploding,” “pound the ground with both fists,” “scream at the sky,” “howl at the moon” kind of headaches.

Most organizations are struggling to hit occupancy, and if I were to ask the leaders their reasons, they are most likely unacceptable.

Each week there are dozens of cool things that happen in your organization — some of which you may not notice at all and others that might get noticed.

If you are pondering any of these questions, you need industry insiders and experts who will help you figure them out.

We live in a culture that increasingly celebrates perfection and brutally punishes people for even slightly missing the mark on perfection.

Reachable goals should not be easy. They should be set at a level that, with high performance, the goals can be met.

What makes these leaders so terrible is that they immediately go defensive rather than trying to find common ground.

One of the biggest challenges leaders face is thinking that they don’t have any drama, but the truth is, they are the cause of all the drama. 

The Argentum 2022 conference is history. It was the first conference produced by HPG, and they did a great job.  

If you are leading an organization that is floundering in mediocrity, you have a tremendous opportunity to turn things around.

It would be easy to make a list of risks and ventures people took that turned into dust, yet risk avoidance can be a terrible strategy.  

Believe it or not in a twisted way, if you want a better more positive organization you need to as a leader be less positive. Here is why.

Would you stay and hope the universe will get you to higher occupancy or do something radical because you are in a desperate situation?  

Workers pick places to work largely on pay rates. Having a single toxic person makes it more expensive to hire future workers.

I believe there is a tremendous opportunity to help team members working in your communities have better conversations.

If you were ever feeling cynical about the senior living industry you will not be after reading these responses.

The needs in this area are great, though not as sexy. But I find myself drawn to the idea that it is a noble enterprise.