Author: Steve Moran

It’s a great time to reflect on lessons learned last year and explore ways to improve the life of your community and your team.

Here are the things that Malcom McLean did to turn shipping upside down and there may be some serious lessons for senior living.

I get that it’s complicated. But solutions will only come when the industry admits we have some bad actors doing terrible things.

The fundamental problem is that residents are supposed to get with the program rather than a program that is driven by the residents.

Our happiness is almost entirely determined by the standard we judge ourselves by. This is worth thinking about.

No one wants to get anything wrong EVER. But . . . this is not a reality; we all get things wrong. And it’s actually a good thing.

For those of us in the industry, every year the list comes out, there is always some “What the hell?” head-scratching.

Over and over again I hear these stories from good leaders. But this might even be good news because it is fixable . . .

What if you had access to an endowment to make sure you could pay all your bills, allowing you to create the ideal senior living community?

It seems to be moving into the category that Memory Care occupied 7-9 years ago, as the “can’t miss” new product for today.

It seems unlikely that we as an industry could ever spend enough to make senior living cool. But something like this might.

Some found ways to first survive and then thrive. Others continue to struggle and some have simply closed their doors.

From swag to content to vendors to technology. Here are some of the highlights from SMASH 2021.

A huge party with lots of music and dancing. In a moment that was missed by most, a horrible ugliness happened.

You need to increase revenue. Increasing rates is not the answer!! But what if you . . . can I get a little crazy here?

We mourn the loss of a great leader in senior living. Gene’s legacy will live on and continue to enrich the lives of generations to come.

Learn the secrets to getting occupancy HIGHER than before the pandemic. This senior living organization is doing it.

This retention hack may sound a bit crazy. But when you really think about it, it actually makes sense . . . and it’s super easy.

It’s fascinating to be at a conference like SLIF, filled with C-suite executives, when blockbuster news breaks, like the implosion of Eclipse.

The short answer is: I don’t know but I hope so! This organization is using accreditation to show they’re the “best of the best.”

You will make your community a better place, the world a better place, and . . . You will have higher occupancy!

There are 5 Communities in my neighborhood and I have no idea what makes one better, or even different, than the other.

When things are going bad it is likely a combination of these things, all of which can be fixed, though some of the fixes are painful.

Right now, like never before, senior living operators need to focus on what their core mission is. Where do you need to focus?

One day as people drive by where your community sits, there is instead an empty lot . . . would anyone notice? Would anyone care?

There was hope that this monster was rapidly on its way to being tamed. Now it’s back and bringing a new set of challenges.

It may make us uncomfortable. We may try to avoid talking about it. But we’d be better off addressing these and trying to fix them.

How Atria’s One Thing Campaign could transform the lives of your residents and staff, and make you more money.

Senior living professionals, residents, and their families list things that senior living operators do that are awful. What would you add?

Headlines that tell us that the vaccine isn’t 100% effective. It makes you wonder if you are putting yourself at risk of dying.

Tremendous opportunity to innovate still exists. But it requires taking some significant risks and experimenting with big ideas.

When thinking about quality in senior living, the right question is: What would delight residents, family members, and even team members?

We have enough trouble with unfair headline-grabbing attacks from the media, we simply do not need this kind of attack.

We love hearing from our readers, viewers, and listeners. We would love to hear your thoughts about these poll results.

This made me so frustratingly mad, that I wrote a letter to the Author and submitted it to the Letters to the Editor department.

Great leaders start with how they think about their place in the world, their business, their teams, and their customers.

I have been thinking a lot about conferences this past few weeks. I am like . . . a little kid thinking about Christmas.

I’m not so sure we learned much from the pandemic and it drives me crazy. Here are lessons we could have learned (and it is not too late).

Leaders hate it when things go wrong and they hate it most of all when they are at fault. But does casting blame really make it better?

People’s needs are complex and they need someone serving them who is compassionate, understanding, and solution-oriented.

There are reasons your competitors are succeeding and you are not. Do you want to be the ass-kicker instead of getting kicked?

Can you create a high-trust, high-performance culture that minimizes waste and maximizes mission-driven efforts?

Ever hired someone and then find out they turned out to be big fat liars? Here’s a single question that can help you uncover the truth.

I have always thought of gossip as this near-universal bad thing. But there is actually a term for good gossip.

On June 10, 2011, with trembling fingers, I pushed the publish button for the first-ever article at Senior Living Foresight.

We keep dancing around this issue, this truth: nursing homes are obsolete, they are past their prime, they need to be put out to pasture.

This is a conversion that both baffles me and saddens me . . . maybe even frightens me. How do we combat this kind of thinking?

What would 40 seconds of compassion mean to your team members, your residents, your family members . . . your prospects?

I am 100% convinced this would be a fast & inexpensive path to full occupancy, though totally counter-intuitive.

Life and business are massive, imperfect, messy, continuous experiments. Risks are necessary for success. How do you take risks carefully?

But how does one become okay with this, if you are the owner; if you are a senior-level manager; if you are in the industry?

If you trust you will get burned from time to time. If you don’t you are in a constant tug-a-war with your team. Which side do you bet on?

This issue of Rock Weekly caught my eye because it talks about a new frontier that is still in its early stages: healthcare at home.

I recently came across a document from the 1940s that seems to accurately talk about what ineffective organizations are like.

While I dislike it when people call themselves servant leaders, I believe that being a servant leader is the right approach . . . sort of.

The question every leader, every manager needs to be asking is this: What kind of manager/leader are you going to be today?

As an industry, we mostly just stand by and take this. We need to be much more aggressive about being better about telling our story.

One of the most distressing parts of doing leadership development is that most leaders way overestimate their effectiveness as a leader.

Just as Apple and Facebook are embroiled in a fight over consumer data privacy, in a very real sense, senior living is at a crossroads too.

I am pretty well convinced that most leaders have not spent much time thinking about what really matters to them.

Only Steve Moran could make a connection between million-dollar electric sportscars and senior living . . . what do you think?

If we are honest, the good old days were not as good as they could have been, not even as good as they should have been.

The best and easiest way to minimize failure is to keep doing the same old things we have always done. There are two problems with this . . .

Reading the earnings transcript made me feel like I was reading a modern version of “The Emperor’s New Clothes”.

Are for-profit nursing home operators (and by extension assisted living operators) the enemy? I think not.

As leaders, we often have to make big decisions and choices where the outcomes are, or feel like they are, scary. What will you do?

AHCA and LeadingAge announced a sorely needed long overdue reform agenda for nursing homes, they are calling the “Care for our Seniors Act”.

I knew my team liked being a part of the organization and mostly liked me as a leader, but . . . you don’t know what you don’t know.

A leadership lesson that is critical: Leaders get blamed not for the problem but for not solving the problem.

It is our industry. And we are not carrying the water when it comes to helping people understand what we do, and what the differences are.

There are a few people in the industry saying we need to be radically reinventing senior living. But we are mostly seeing the same old thing.

I can’t believe these comments. How could anyone think this is a bad idea? HOW COULD A CEO think this was a bad idea?

The last year has made us all experience some symptoms of post-traumatic stress. What about post-traumatic growth?

It’s a brand new way for me as a leader to think about my team members. Do you even care about how your team members sleep at night?

Each of us plays a role in the big story; each of our lives makes up a part of the metastory. What role do you want to play?

Their approach is to give residents the best possible last chapters. The goal is to enable each resident to be the best version of themselves.

Senior living needs to evolve to something better. Or maybe what we really need is something more radical; a complete reinvention.

There is a great danger that 2020 was so terrible that we would be satisfied to just get back to 2020 life before the pandemic overtook us.

I have, swirling in my head, this huge jumble of frustrated, angry thoughts. This is wrong, and it makes our industry look terrible.

AHCA/NCAL CEO Mark Parkinson weighs in on the future of nursing homes after the impact of the global pandemic.

I got to thinking it might be interesting to ask Senior Living Foresight fans for their predictions for 2021. Take a look . . .

It is easy to hate the message and the messenger, but this is the public perception reality. What’s the proof you ask?

Only about 10% of organizations actually translate their values into behaviors. This is a huge huge problem.

Steve shares 10 predictions for the senior living industry in 2021. Because of and in spite of the 2020 pandemic.

It has been a weird year, to say the least. We believe, in the end, more good has come from 2020 than meets the eye.

We are on the cusp of a new beginning. This is our opportunity to reinvent senior living and help our residents live amazing last chapters.

Imagine two old guys bashing each other with canes or ramming wheelchairs to get the last apartment in your senior living community.

When The Tam leadership heard they were going to be first, there were tears of relief. Watch the interview.

What would it be like in your community if every one of your team members said and believed they were your brand?

Twice in my life, the death of someone I didn’t know has profoundly rocked me because that person had a profound impact on my life.

This doesn’t happen in normal times. And it is unheard of in the middle of a pandemic. But, this is not even the best story of all.

Adopting one, two, or six of these hacks will turn you into a better leader, make your team trust you more, and lead to higher margins.

Hospitality has many parallels with what we do. Here is what Danny Meyer had to say, with application to the senior living industry by me.

A better story, a new story, a different story that goes so far beyond safety to create a crazy compelling reason to move into senior living.

This is a time we need to be pulling together. We need to be battling the common enemies of COVID-19 and bad press, not eating our young.

The “ 24/7 News Cycle” is poisoning senior living leaders. We are being sucked into a vortex of negativity that is crushing how we do business.

If a week ago, you had told me I’d be writing an article defending REITs or driving traffic to a competitor’s site I would have said you were nuts.

Respond immediately, with empathy. Try to take the discussion off-line. This is all good but it actually misses the big point!

There is no doubt that a vaccine will have a huge, positive impact on senior living. However, the challenges we already had will reemerge.

A once thought impossible, unattainable record was broken. As I look at senior living I find myself “believing” we have a belief problem.

Do you know about the Dunning-Kruger effect? I am fearful that it too often impacts leaders in all walks of life, including senior living.

Ageism in hiring is a hot topic. But sometimes an older candidate is just an old bad apple as opposed to a victim of ageism.

While cold food was a problem it was not THE REAL PROBLEM. In many cases, solutions to big problems don’t cost anything at all.

How do you handle the throngs of vendors that want your time? Are operators being too nice? Sometimes no is kinder than maybe.

We have always been mildly embarrassed by this part of senior living. Now there is a desire to act as if our embarrassing cousin is not part of the family.

NIC knocks it out of the park with their opening keynote with Mark Parkinson, the CEO of AHCA, and Andy Slavitt, the former acting administrator of CMS.

A LeadingAge document that came across my desk today ends with an urgent plea for action on 5 fronts . . . So what’s next? How do we thrive?

I am fearful that this will be dismissed as criticism and a lack of appreciation for all that these organizations have done. Trust me, I am watching.

What’s it going to look like? Why will people love it? Here is why you will love being a part of the 2020 Senior Living Executive Virtual conference.

At times it feels like it will never end, that it will never get better. I promise you that we will get through this. We will come out stronger and better.

It used to be pretty simple, someone owned a senior living company and controlled everything, taking little if any input from investors.No more . . .

It is not just a single incident or a handful of incidents. It is a significant and real problem that continues to plague the country.

This year . . .The world . . .The world of senior living is completely different. It is entirely possible that you need it more than ever this year.

We tend to think good leaders must be mavericks. Somehow we are a lot better at remembering the successful mavericks than the crash and burn ones.

Faith Ott was the first business owner to believe in the mission of Senior Living Foresight and has become a close friend, mentor, and cheerleader.