When Strengths Become Weaknesses

I have held to an insight that has served me well and become a source of self-growth and blind spot checks.

Our greatest strengths are also the source of our hidden weaknesses.

We all know the person who is funny and brings levity to every situation. We love them for being able to take an awkward social situation and break the tension to put everyone at ease. This is their superpower. Overdone, however, this person can appear aloof or out-of-touch when their best friend needs an empathetic partner in conversation and the jokes no longer break the tension - they add to it. When strengths are over-flexed:

• The creative force on the team becomes the inhibitor to the team executing tasks
• The detail-oriented team member becomes the drag - slowing the team's speed
• The listening-ear leader becomes an enabler for others to lose accountability
• The networking guru becomes a distraction to deepening existing partnerships
• The thought leader becomes rigid in their own insight, losing insight from others

We all have our superpowers, and they make us great. They give us direction; they instruct our way of doing things; they are the emblems on our chests that build our personal brand.

But even Superman's strengths are inextricably linked to his weakness - so much so that the word "kryptonite" is culturally and ubiquitously understood as that one weakness drawn from their own source of strength. (Kryptonite comes from Superman's home planet, Krypton. Technically it is shards of his home planet that exploded. So it IS his home planet.

How's that for a metaphor?

Senior Living's Strengths

The industry we love has LOTS of strengths - so much so that different audiences simultaneously cheer and jeer at them.

• We are a caring industry. We are made up of people who genuinely care and have a passion for service. But too many have appropriated those qualities from us to simply use the shell of those words for their marketing purposes. Passion, Care, Excellence, Compassion, Love, etc. Overuse has obfuscated our origin. It allows wolves in senior living clothing, because everybody knows the right words to say.
• We sure know how to grow. We can bring financial resources to any problem and have deep relationships with deep pockets. But those resources come at a cost and it isn't just their expected returns. That cost is an abstract relationship between motivations and rewards. You could give me 5-7 examples off the top of your head of companies whose growth was their downfall. You'd have a harder time objectively pointing to 1-2 operators (not your own) whose growth accelerated their purpose and irrevocably enhanced our industry.
• We have grit and then some. Pandemics, natural disasters, economic downturns, staffing crises, sudden buy-outs, etc. There isn't a problem senior living has faced that they haven't proven they can overcome. But grit - overdone - is the very vehicle of our burnout. The human expense of mental health, time with family, rest - the toll exacted by our determination is a thousand small fractures that gradually and then suddenly shatters.
• We lead with our hearts. I'm so proud to be in a profession where a hallmark of leadership is whether or not you make heart decisions. We've all made the decision that's right over the decision that's numerically right. We care; we grow; we have grit. But, here's a real hard truth. Our heart leaders also need to develop their business acumen. Too many E.D.'s barely know how to read a financial statement other than to check whether their spending is below parameters set for them. Too few leaders could confidently point to foundational business concepts with any real specificity - such as change management (ex: Kotter's 8 steps; ADKAR), or adult learning principles (ex: Kirkpatrick's levels of learning evaluation; Bloom's taxonomy), or have taken the time to codify their own leadership methodology or principles. If we just lead with our hearts and never build our business acumen then the heads who make decisions above us will always, always, always have the upper hand in making decisions for our industry that don't serve the industry.

The things that make us great are also precisely the place where we affix our blinders.

List your own organization or team's strengths. If you think long enough on it, that's probably where your kryptonite comes from - its home base.

• Dimensions of wellness
• Aging in place
• Continuum of care / services
• Efficiency from economies of scale
• REITs
• Expansion of technology offerings
• Consultants (yep, raising my own hand here)
• Sales Methodology
• Conferences
• Pilot Programs

The list could go on, of course. These things DO make us great - sometimes. I am not advocating that we shouldn't have them. My commentary is simply the following. All of our strengths, left unexamined, eventually become self-forged chains. This can happen to a person. This can happen to a company. This can happen to an industry. This can happen to a society.

Purpose Isn't Static - It Matures

All things evolve - even purpose. My purpose today is an iteration of my purpose yesterday. It is less accurate to say that it has changed but rather my purpose continually matures. Conversely, change is merely a new direction. "Let's go this way instead." Maturity is clearer direction, whether your destination remains the same or altered.

So how can the purpose of senior living mature and not just change?

In the origin of our industry, the purpose was basically "if you can't live in your own home, we'll provide one for you that's nearly just as good (or, presumably even better)."

Or, "if you can't do the things you used to do for yourself, we'll help you with those things."

No amount of fluffy marketing can dress up what seniors knew in their hearts. We were selling them a permanent alternative to their homes - the literal place that stands as their metaphor for the value they've built in their lives - for what they have contributed to those who mean the most to them.

The competitive race for building a "better mousetrap" was rooted in an idea of how well can individual organizations compete to replace your previous home.

• Our activities are better
• Our food is better
• Our care is better
• Our location is better
• Our plan. Is better.

Oversaturated markets aren't that way because we care the most in those markets or have the best innovation there. Competitive oversaturation is the manifestation of the "better mousetrap" mentality of senior living. Period.

We publicly smile and applaud our friendly competitors and chant about rising tides. Then, we build a competitive offering right smack in the middle of all those 70% occupied communities and say behind closed doors, "well our boat is going to sit a little higher on that tide, because our stuff is better than their stuff."

In many ways, all the innovation, technologies, and pilot projects are still aimed at the better mousetrap.

• Which technology can make this a better alternative to your home?
• Which activities can make this a better alternative to your home?
• What partnerships can make this a better alterative to your home?
• What architectural design can make this a better alternative to your home?
• What operational excellence can we drive through our organization to generate better profitability and then somehow in a round about way we'll invest that back into this place - or if not this place, for sure a future place... and help THOSE seniors to have a better alternative to their homes?

A Future of Senior Living That Honors But Doesn't Revere Its Past

I know WAY too many people with the right intentions and demonstrated actions in our industry to ever become cynical about it. There is valid cause to feel optimistic, hopeful, and energized to move to a new era. Every day on LinkedIn, I see posts from or about leaders in our industry who are advancing us to this new era.

• Experimenting with new models of intergenerational living
• Advancement of storytelling through social media as a legitimate venue of marketing
• Side projects, side hustles, and what-if-we-could gambles
• Learning cohorts and self-run workshops/retreats outside of conferences

The clarification I seek for our own young company's path (Bella Groves) is to grow from a "better mousetrap" thinking to a "what does the mouse need?" thinking. Follow me for a minute. Solving the problem for the mouse could solve my problem too.

A mousetrap - the metaphor anyway - is about ridding the house of a pesky rodent. A literal better mousetrap means that it is better and more efficient at getting rid of these rodents. The better mousetrap is more efficient at the problem it already supposes.

What if instead of rethinking the solution, we rethought the problem?

If we rethink the problem, we don't need a better mousetrap. We need different methods.

Senior living has historically positioned itself as an A vs. B problem. (A = home; B = senior living). It's a binary here or there proposition.

What if senior living could become an A and B proposition?

Let's take all of our strengths, our resources, our connections, our enthusiasm, our PURPOSE and think of ways to break down the product silos of our industry (i.e. adult day vs. independent vs. assisted vs. memory care vs. home health vs. CCRC). What if senior living is no longer seen as just the final destination but rather a hub of resources?

We're trying to tackle this problem at a very local level and for a very specific need - dementia support for families in San Antonio.

1. An online learning center to help families research, understand and build skills and a support network for their own caregiving. (Solving the problem of lack of knowledge.)
2. A care coordination and management service to help families in the middle stages of dementia support. Blending home, time at Bella Groves, and continued autonomy in their community. (Solving the problem of social isolation and guess-work related to dementia support at home.)
3. A small, residence with a complete focus on dementia education to our high-staffing-ratio team. Less managers making decisions, less checklists. (Solving the problem of over-programmatic dementia care and instead becoming a "showroom of dementia knowledge" for our greater community of San Antonio.)

It's a small step and we're early in our journey, but we have taken that step. In truth, this isn't a wild idea. I have been a proponent of this for years - senior living as a service; senior living without walls; whatever name we want to associate with the concept.

Here's the crux of our change, though: we must evolve our purpose and build new strengths.

Strengthening Some Business Muscles

Without evolving our purpose from an "A vs. B" value proposition, many senior living communities of tomorrow will have beautiful but empty rooms. Without evolving our employment practices and thinking, senior living communities of tomorrow will largely only have staffing agency (or similar) passing-through team members. [For another article, I have many thoughts on how to leverage the passing-by team member rather than avoiding them. Career caregivers are fewer and fewer in number.] Some muscles we need:

1. Go Small - I'm so bullish and optimistic about the small businesses of senior living. We are a 32-bed dementia care facility in a small town on the outskirts of San Antonio, but we have generated excitement and drawn partners from the best corners of senior living. Our narrowed focus and our clearly defined purpose have been a lightning rod for partners, a calling card for local customers, and a rallying point - home base - for changemakers from caregivers to our E.D. Even large companies can adopt a small business mindset. Several operators are creating spin-off divisions with their own operating budgets and leadership structures to effectively test/pilot this narrowed focus. I'd love to see our top 20 operators (by size) sponsor or invest in a pilot senior living site for one of their top talents in their organization - an E.D., an R.D.O., a promising HWD. What if Brookdale had sponsored Bella Groves? (I worked with this organization for about 8 of my 12 years prior to my co-founding of Bella Groves.)
2. Business Acumen - we must keep our hearts but strengthen our heads. Investing in learning courses, seminars, tuition reimbursements, and other ways to sponsor knowledge is paramount to our future. We almost askew higher education as "we don't need that to take care of people." I think we do. Understanding how to do financial forecasting, understanding how investments influence our business, understanding organizational psychology, understanding adult learning principles, understanding new venture life cycles, understanding how to do market validation, understanding negotiating, understanding product roadmaps, understanding how to calculate your own customer acquisition cost, and so many other specific areas of business leadership knowledge is critical. If Executive Directors are really the C.E.O.'s of their business unit, shouldn't they actually be supported in having the business acumen of a CEO? Or is that just another one of our slogans without sincerity?
3. Case Studies & Partnerships - we could not even begin to think of attempting what we're doing at our small, family-owned organization without the support and buy-in of partners from the industry who are entering negotiated partnerships with us to co-facilitate and co-sponsor case studies. In short - we have a mutual "hypothesis" we're trying to prove. What do we bring to the table that other operators don't? A narrow focus; a genuine interest in utilizing their product/service to prove our concept; and the willingness and capabilities to provide substantive data, time, and skill required to distribute our findings to the masses. And (this is going to sound awfully self-congratulatory, but) me. The partnerships get my specific, personal brand that is certainly an intentional effort. My mindset, my discretionary effort, my dedicated heart, my thinking. Which brings me to point #4.
4. Personal Brand and Thought Leadership - if you don't already sense it now, you'll continue to observe it. Our industry has already begun the shift of going from company centered brand to individual thought leaders. It isn't "Company X" that we're necessarily following. It is "Person Y" who happens to be at Company X. Our industry is a talent-led one. (After all, each of our companies have touted some version of that for decades that it is "all about our people.") Well, those people in our industry have been too burned by putting their faith into any one company; they are hungry for individual leaders and will follow them from place to another. Look up from your desk and observe the world around you - we are a world of "influencers and followers" today. This is one of those things that is clearly visible and yet few acknowledge. I, for one, am happy to see more and more people making the effort to thoughtfully curate and build their own thought leadership. I could care less who you take a photo next to at what event, but I deeply care about your thoughts, beliefs, ideas, and stories of how you are executing your individual vision of improving our industry for others. If you are on stage at a conference and you deliver ideas or practices that clearly stand for something; draw a line in the sand; or advance a discussion that needs to be illuminated - I'm in your front row! If you are on stage and deliver the same, recycled feel-good but do-nothing script - the audience is tuned out and thinking about dinner.
5. Workshops Over Conferences - I've gone out on a limb on this one before, and whether you agree or disagree, you at least know where I respectfully stand. Many of our senior living conferences have too much pomp and circumstance. I know we have substance there, but if we're being honest - you know that most of your productive work is happening outside of the agenda for that conference. You've probably said it before, "I get most of my deals done at or after dinner." We can't be okay with that. That's like saying we pay for college to sit in class out of obligation but actually only learn on our own time or at the happy hour. If the only leg we have to stand on is to say that we do important networking and relationship building (again, outside the agenda), then lets just get together in smaller groups at a chosen location a few times a year and save our residents' money on the obligatory trade shows, sponsors, and social events of traditional conferences. I'd love to see smaller, workshop focused gatherings where we come together to bring our resources, knowledge and viewpoints to work on problems together. Even outside of in-person gatherings, we could have study groups, masterminds, and other consortiums where we work across company lines to tackle industry-affecting topics - workforce projects; customer surveys; actual pilot projects. And THEN - share our findings!

What are other strengths you think organizations and leaders in our field need to build?

Putting It All Together

Our strengths are the source of our weaknesses. Another way of seeing this is that we can't rest on our laurels of past successes and pretty but banal words - the lyrics of senior living. Try this exercise with your team - first list all your team's strengths on a whiteboard. Then the hard part - draw an arrow from each of those strengths and see if you can unearth potential weaknesses of your team related to those strengths. On our team, we call this individual exercise the "blind spot check".

Next, try to clearly define your team's purpose and how it has matured from a few years ago to today. Measure the daily and repeated actions on the team. What do you tend to focus on week over week? Your purpose isn't what you say; your purpose is what you do. The only real way to accurately get a pulse of your purpose is to objectively measure your team's habits in practice.

Finally, come to an agreement about how you will gain new strengths to counterbalance weaknesses. Take aim at specific ways in which you will improve your contributions to the team. Develop blind-spot checks to identify if you or your team are over-flexing a strength. Don't skip leg day.

What is your kryptonite? What is your weakness made from your home planet?

Whether you seek to improve your individual work-life or change an industry, the magnitude of your change effort doesn't change the method needed to achieve it. Naturally, we've been taught to examine our weaknesses, but we haven't been taught to consider that our weaknesses are just our strengths overdone. So the path forward is less about overcoming something wrong about ourselves. It is about understanding, refining, and refocusing something great about ourselves.

Lead well, my friends. Live your legacy today.

James

James is the CEO and Co-Founder of Bella Groves, a dementia education company in San Antonio, Texas. He is also the owner of Bear Wise Consulting, an executive and leadership coaching service for the senior living industry, and he is the creator of Level Up Leadership Podcast.