How Can We Do Something Like This?

By Steve Moran

I came across this powerful Instagram post from Adventist Health and immediately wondered how we might learn from it to make senior living better.

The Opportunity and Challenge

People mostly go looking for senior living because they have a logic-driven need, but they ultimately make their choice — about both whether to move in and which community to move into — based on emotional needs. Too often in senior living, we sell as if the decision is primarily logical. We tend to think that people have two scorecards they are filling out.

The first will determine whether or not to actually move into senior living. The second will decide which community they will move into. In some cases this scorecard will be in their head, and at other times it will be written out.

Regardless of whether this is true and what goes on that scorecard, at the end of the day, the community that feels best will win the day.

This is a challenge, and yet it is often little things like this that make a huge difference. It is why senior communities will offer coffee and cookies in the front lobby.

It is also a huge opportunity because it means that you can win without having the newest, most opulent, best located community.

Big Questions

• The big question every community should be asking is this: How does this community feel?
• What are you doing today to make your community feel amazing?
• What could you do?