Assisted Living Leadership in Action
When organizations need ways to engage staff and enable and encourage everyone to be successful, leaders often step up with innovative initiatives.
Core Operating Philosophy: Love Greater Than Fear According to Loren Shook, president/chief executive offi cer of Silverado, his organization established this several years ago to engage and guide the work of team members throughout the organization. “This is a way of thinking. Love is a big, powerful word that scares some people but that helps people solve decisions in the most daunting of times,” he said. In essence, the program established the fundamentals of how the company reviews and addresses problems and what is expected of leadership.
The program involves eight concepts that the com- pany can teach: trust, respect, accountability, courage, transparency, appreciation, purpose drive, and fi nan- cial responsibility. Then they developed teaching tools to provide examples that leaders could put a context to and understand.
How It Works Shook off ered one story. The company had a culinary director who was talented and hard-working but took her cue on how to treat her team from TV cooking shows where fl aring tempers and demands for perfec- tion were the norm. The administrator met privately with this person and talked about the Love Greater Than Fear principles, explaining that yelling and screaming was not showing respect or getting the best out of her team. Together, they walked through diff erent ways of doing things.
After about three conversations, the culinary director “got it,” Shook said, and she is now a successful team director with a high-performance, effi cient, and happy team.
Installing the ‘BHAG’ Program Tim Nelson, a principal at Olympus Retirement Living in Arizona, and his team established a BHAG (Big Hairy Audacious Goal) program to help managers reach obtainable but ambitious goals. “These are goals that are ‘out there’ but attainable. When you set them, you will hit them,” he said. These are goals everyone can understand and get behind. They are things that energize and excite people, and they work
together to devise the best way to succeed. Not only are the goals audacious, but often the strategies to reach them are as well. It’s not about the same old way of doing things.
How It Works Nelson off ered an example. “Say that you’re an admin- istrator and you want to set a revenue goal. You get together a fi nancial objective and a best-case scenar- io: If we are functioning on all cylinders and every- thing works perfectly, this is where we’ll reach 100% effi ciency. Then we look at where we are compared to our maximum potential. If we’re at 20%, for ex- ample, we can set a goal of reaching 50% or 60%.” He stressed that while these goals should be “audacious,” they shouldn’t be impossible or completely unrealistic.
Nelson will sit down with team leaders and work with them to determine if they are setting the right goals. “We have great conversations; some are hours long and others take 15 minutes,” he said. Once they agree on goals, they then set structures on how they will move forward to accomplish them. This also serves as a test to ensure they truly have a BHAG. Nelson explained, “If I ask how long it will take them to ac- complish a six-month goal and they say something like three weeks, it’s not a very big goal.”
During the program, Nelson said, “I usually had quick weekly and/or bi-weekly meetings with each director and once you get in a fl ow they last 15 minutes each time... but if there is something they are struggling with or we need to solve an issue we would take all the time we needed to fi gure it out.”
One administrator used BHAG in three troubled build- ings. Within a year, they had perfect surveys and re- ceived high employee and resident satisfaction survey and received top national scores on customer service. “They knocked it out of the park,” Nelson said.
While everyone on the team and throughout the organization benefi ts from and celebrates these kinds of positive results, those leaders who hit their BHAGS get rewards such as expense-paid trips. Additionally, Nelson said, “The program helps you weed out those leaders who are out of step with the organization’s mission and vision and aren’t able or interested in set- ting lofty goals and challenging themselves and their teams.”
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