A Miracle or Something Else?

By Steve Moran

HumanGood and Las Ventanas have become my Las Vegas home away from home when attending SMASH and CES. When I reached out to Dan Ogus about staying there, he suggested that I take the time to meet their executive director, Yvette Duarte, telling me I would be glad I did. He was right. One of the things he told me: Since being there, she has had a huge increase in their net promoter score.

If every executive director led like she did, turnover would be low and occupancy through the roof. You can watch my interview below, but here are the highlights:

• She has been leading this community for just a bit over a year, and when she got there, it was really struggling. She came from another HumanGood community.
• Prior to going on-site she spent a lot of time “behind the scenes” studying what was going on at the community — looking at resident and team member surveys and financing.
• When she arrived at the community her first goal was to really get to know the community and its rhythm. This means getting to know residents, team members, and family members.
  • Who are they?
  • What do we know about them?
  • How do they spend their time throughout the day?
  • Who comes to dinner, who participates in happy hour?
• In the first couple of months she spent nearly all her time just getting to know people.
• She started looking for what was missing in the community. What did it need in order to be better?
• Communication with residents is key. She believes it is impossible to overcommunicate. She does a weekly update where she talks about what is going on — what they are working on and thinking about.
• She is also always looking for ways they can improve from a leadership perspective.
• When she first arrived one of the complaints about “the new executive director” was that she was never in her office. That was because she was always out connecting with residents and team members and just figuring out what was going on. Her goal is to give the residents a voice in how the community operates.
• When a resident complains about something, she takes down the complaint — writes it down, part of her active listening and trying to figure out what is behind the complaint. She is not afraid to apologize if warranted. Then she always gets back to the resident with a response.
• Her process is similar with team members.
• She is very transparent with the budget — where the money goes and how priorities are set. This means talking about what the numbers mean, why money is being spent on various things, and what it would mean if the priorities were different.

The bottom line is that since arriving, they have had a substantial occupancy increase, and they have a lot of happy residents, family members, and team members.

Enjoy this interview.