Greystone Communities Comes to Valley Manor

We were thrilled to finally have the Greystone team arrive on Tuesday for their site visit at Valley Manor. Their team consisted of 5 individuals with distinct skillsets in the areas of physical plant, marketing, operations, finance and project manangement.
The Valley Manor team consisted of myself, Cheryl, Scott, Eric and Jim. We started our day with a 1.5 hour tour of the facility and grounds followed by a 1.5 hour information sharing and ideation session. We then continued our discussions over a working lunch before breaking out into smaller work groups to focus on the specific areas of physical plant, operations, marketing and finance. Other staff and some resident board members joined the breakout groups to participate in these strategy sessions.
After giving the Greystone team an opportunity to collect their thoughts and share notes, we all reunited for a wrapup session and discussion of next steps. On their way back to their hotel, I took on them on a quick stop to see Kirkhaven (from the outside) and to see what the Strathallen Hotel is doing to dress up the exterior of their old building.
I had an unrealistic hope that their arrival would instantly and magically
discover some "silver bullet" to solve all our problems. The truth being, they came, they looked and they listened. Then they confirmed what we already knew. The good news is that they also told us they have seen this before and that we were more timely them many in starting to take corrective action. They were optimistic that they would be able to present us with both short-term and long-term strategies to reposition us for improved occupancy. One of the team members stayed in Rochester an additional day to conduct a competitive analysis, while the others will return to Texas where they will continue to formulate our plan.
They will be back in a few weeks to share some initial feedback and process with the Valley Manor board at the May 29 board meeting. The project is not expected to be finished for another month or two at which time a final plan will be presented to the Seniorsfirst board. In the interim, they will continue to work with us, have additional site visits as needed and plug away at the project objectives. The broad perspective and experience they add to the talent and experience our own team brings to the table, should result in a comprehensive and effective strategic plan for the future direction and operation of Valley Manor.

In other news.................the HR Committee discussed and approved surveying our staff again in 2008 with the same Employee Opinion Survey used last year. They concurred that we should be surveying our staff annually, the same as we do with our resident customers. In 2009, they have opted to try using a national employee survey tool to enable us to benchmark our results with other organizations. Cass will spearhead a process to evaluate and select an appropriate survey tool to accomodate this objective........................
the Marketing Committee met for the first time with Jim sitting in the VP of Marketing and Community Services seat. The meeting included a lot of strategy discussion, planning and organization. The team of Jim and Cilla bring a new passion and vision that will be exciting to watch unfold. Aside from a good meeting, the other hilarious occurence at this meeting was the "unknown visitor". Seems there was a community networking group also meeting in the building and one of their participants mistakingly was directed to our Marketing Committee meeting. Between Jim, Cilla and I, we all thought the other had invited her to join our committee and just went with the flow. Ironically, she was in the marketing business and knew Jim. She fit in well and actually contributed to the meeting discussion. After the meeting, I asked Jim who she was and he and Cilla both said "beats me, I thought you invited her"(LOL). When we finally solved the mystery, it was really pretty funny...........
the Development Committee also met this past week and they spent most of the time talking about ways to engage our board more in fund raising and friend raising. Major gift giving and grant solicitation is a key ingredient to our fund raising strategy, but that can't be accomplished by Jean alone. Most not-for-profit boards are very active in the fund raising efforts and with the Committee's leadership, we hope to better engage our own board in this objective.

Was it me or were there a lot of things going on around the facilities last week? The Spring Fling events were fun and kept the place jumping with novel activities. Retirement parties, interviewing and touring prospective staff, Greystone visit and of course business as usual.

Friday afternoon, I attended a Workers Compensation Self-insurance Trust annual meeting held on behalf of another organization of which I serve on the board. It was very interesting to compare them to our own Self-insurance Trust and I was able to gain extensive insight into this subject matter that will undoubtably serve us well in our own program planning. I'm sure you're jealous that I got to spend my Friday afternoon at the Holiday Inn in Buffalo listening to this exciting topic presentation for 3 hours!

By week's end, I felt I had covered a lot of ground with a lot of different topics and meeting agendas. Not sure where the week went and I didn't have a lot of time for routine desk work, but I am tired and looking forward to my weekend.

This coming week I will be in the office for Monday morning and all day Friday only. In between, I will be attending our NYAHSA conference in Saratoga along with Amanda and Cheryl. Some good educational topics and always good networking opportunities make this conference a must to stay on top of current events in our field. I'm actually not bringing my golf clubs (a first) this time as I continue my quest to make golf an enjoyable pasttime and not an annoying obsession. I haven't even swung a club yet this year!

Hope you all have a great week..................