Author: Steve Moran

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.

NIC has designed their spring conference with the specific challenges and opportunities that are on the minds of senior living leaders.

In this environment, it might seem disrespectful to talk about making senior living fun. Except we know that fun is … well fun.

Joe Biden announced broad sweeping changes for nursing homes that include much bigger sticks and the promise of better carrots.

Mark Rober lays out the 4-step process he uses when creating anything new. Are you skipping to step four most of the time?

The great opportunity is to capture the stories of residents, families, and team members. It starts with you stepping up to be the singer.

It’s so easy to fall into this trap. But it makes us less effective as leaders, less effective as family members, and it makes us less human.

These are worthy concepts for all of us. If you were to grade your organization on these 5 concepts what grade would you receive?

What if this year were the year you decided not to grow at all, but rather the year you decided to get better?

There has never been a time when this was more critical in senior living. It’s the difference between thriving and just surviving.

I sat down this evening and decided to make a list of reasons why you shouldn’t, and I won’t, miss the spring NIC conference.

It feels like the other foot is about to drop, that we are just one random floating virus away from complete disaster.

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.