The managers of these organizations and these initiatives are unwilling to engage in a brutal self-assessment of their needs, their challenges, and their weaknesses. The result is that needs and weaknesses are masked.

I live in California, which is a two-edged sword. We have great weather, great scenery, great things to do, and some great cities. We also have high real estate prices, an incredibly unfriendly business climate, we are running out of water, have high taxes, and one of the most dysfunctional state governments in the nation.

Over the last several months there have been a number of stories about various state agencies that have embarked on multi-million dollar technology improvement initiatives and every single one of them has turned into a boone doggle. In some cases the new system just plain didn’t work and had to be completely scrapped. In the rest of the cases costs blossomed like a massive oil spill and the end result was a system that was suboptimal at best.

Brutal Self Assessment

With that as a backdrop, a couple of weeks ago, the Sacramento  Bee published an interview with a technology expert who was asked why this keeps happening.  His explanation was brilliant and simple.

The managers of these organizations and these initiatives are unwilling to engage in a brutal self-assessment of their needs, their challenges, and their weaknesses. The result is that needs and weaknesses are masked. 

There is great fear that an honest self-assessment will demonstrate they are weak managers and weak leaders.

A Difficult Thing

It is always difficult to take the thing we have built our life around, staked our future on and take the risk of asking yourself are there areas where I am really terrible.   If we are honest no one can be great or even good at everything. Everyone one of us has severe weaknesses. 

Being willing to face those weaknesses head-on then puts us in the position to figure out how to address those weaknesses and turn them into strengths.  

My speech coach and occasional executive coach Lisa Yakobi keeps pounding on me that I should never ever do anything I can hire someone else to do. That to be the very best senior living publisher I need to let others help, hire others to do the stuff that is not my secret sauce. 

I am finding that it is not such an easy thing to do. It has essentially nothing to do with cost, but more about the emotional attachment to control and do it myself.  Way harder than I would have ever imagined.

Even This Industry

As a guy who is constantly seeking speaking opportunities I probably should stay away from this area, but won’t. I am bugged that many of those who represent the industry are so reluctant to admit and acknowledge the truth that there are some really bad senior living operators. I honestly don’t get it. I am not talking about naming names. That can’t and shouldn’t be done. But seriously, we need to be honest. We need to say:

  • There are terrible providers out there and that is not us
  • That is not what we stand for
  • Those guys need to be put out of business

A couple of weeks ago I wrote a commentary on Bill Thomas’s idea that we needed to thin the herd by putting out of business the bottom 10% providers in every state . . . I guess.  I am not a big fan of government intervention because it seems to add a lot of expense and not be very effective.

But when we are willing to condemn bad providers where they exist we will prove our integrity and make life for providers, residents, and families better.

We all need, from time to time, to do brutal self assessments as an industry in our organizations at the local property level and even as individuals.

 Steve Moran