By Jack Cumming
As this article is written, the news is filled with stories of the second attempt in as many months on the life of presidential candidate Trump. The Secret Service pleads that it is understaffed. The mission of the Secret Service is to protect the democratic process and the nation’s leaders by shielding designated persons from harm. The agency also conducts investigations.
Performance and Review
As a governmental agency the Secret Service operates within a political context, and it is bound by budgetary and statutory constraints. As such, there is a hierarchy of authority and limitations on how the agency functions. It also works in a very public forum, and its processes and methods are subject to criticism from the media, Congress, and the public.
The people of the Secret Service are dedicated, professional, and called upon to act with dispatch at times that require much discretion. Imagine being an agent who sees a gun barrel pointing from a concealed location. The choice to fire a weapon must be made instantly and reflexively to neutralize a threat. In that instant, the agent has to discern whether it is merely a child with a toy or something more menacing. Moreover, the agent’s action will later be scrutinized by politicians with leisure to spin the outcome in a quest for partisan advantage.
That is not dissimilar to the kind of judgments that we expect executive directors and others in senior living to make, though EDs generally have more time to think. Like that agent, though, the ED who makes a major decision can expect critical scrutiny. The scrutiny can come from organizational “superiors” or, more insidiously, from the corporate grapevine. Just as national-level politicians seek advantage, so corporate gossips seek to influence politically the decisions at the top.
What’s Best
Think of a group of, say, five friends who come together to start a business. They aren’t subject to second-guessing. If they attract early investors to support their idea, it’s most likely that they will have more encouragement and co-thinking from their funders than the kind of destructive scrutiny that comes with hierarchy, corporate policies, and budgetary constraints. Their test is quite simple. Do they succeed with the mission, or do they fail and close up shop? They don’t need lofty mission statements and wordy strategic plans since they know from the git-go what they are about and how they are going to get there.
If left to its own devices, like our five-person start-up group, the Secret Service might prioritize the person who seems most likely to be under threat instead of prioritizing the person in the highest position in the governmental hierarchy. Even as a figure of controversy exposed on a golf course, Mr. Trump was not entitled to the level of protection accorded the president working quietly in his office.
Similarly, in senior living, the small start-up group could prioritize residents, knowing that attracting customers will be the key to business success. That changes as hierarchy evolves, the business becomes corporate, and residents become the equity source for “obligated groups.”
Pitching In
With that more personal start-up business, residents might even feel committed enough to pitch in, thus lowering staffing needs and allowing more favorable pricing. The divide between providers and residents could be blurred by the mutuality of shared purpose. Customers can become enthusiastic about a business that puts their interests first. Remember how it was enthusiastic customers who sparked Amazon’s growth before new leadership began to put central control and corporate aggrandizement above all else.
With a government agency like the Secret Service, obtaining needed resources requires moving a budget allocation through a partisan Congress. With a start-up business, like Five Guys from Oshkosh, our model of five friends, the only constraint is the value that they can give to customers — residents, in the case of senior living or multifamily housing. With a more established entity, as many senior living businesses have become, success and innovation require the ability to move needs and concepts through a central control hierarchy with its own interests and factions.
That spontaneous cooperation that is characteristic of successful startups can get lost as a business matures into hierarchy, functional silos, and excessive processes. In a mature business, a young person with a great idea can no longer go casually to the CEO/owner to get permission to act. In senior living that loyalty to each other that characterized the residential experience in early spontaneous efforts at cohousing gets lost in the buzzwords of workforce challenge, lagging occupancy, and corporate function.
Positive Leadership
The right leadership can restore that creative spark and that sense of commonality and success. Leaders like that are rare. They may not be the most popular or most congenial of those presented by search firms. In truth, they often emerge spontaneously and would never endure the process-laden mechanics of a typical search.
Entrepreneurs looking for a successor often spot that kind of leader if they stumble across them, but that kind of insight and that kind of leadership is lost with the retirement of the founder. Once a business has switched from spontaneous creativity to the academic business school process track, it can be hard to get the train’s momentum back onto the better, more creative track. That loss of what’s best rings true for business in general — more true for the not-for-profits — and is of the essence for government agencies.
