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https://us02web.zoom.us/j/83497318670?pwd=1JRPGYXr3EYNrjBs5KdLOTbbVTxGxl.1

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The proposed Agenda and Supporting Documents are below.  These are open meetings, so you can feel free to invite any residents who might be interested and to share these materials with them.

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Please contact Dan Seeger in advance of the meeting if you have additional agenda items to propose so we can prioritize the use of time. 

The 3/27 meeting to discuss the Budget and the Strategic Plan was cut short by a medical emergency. No date has been set to resume as yet.

Nancy Morrill’s Report

Draft Bill of Rights

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But the typical resident of a managed community has fronted most of their nest egg to get in, and is paying substantial fees to live in their community. They have also invested the emotional capital to leave their former community and friends and find new friends in the new one. The transition is a hard one. These two factors make it easy to intimidate a resident. A hostile executive can say and do things that are perceived as threats.

The senior housing industry and its life care segment are growing and changing rapidly. Many boards of directors and CEOs are contemplating whether to curtail operations that provide a continuum of health care from independent apartment living to skilled nursing in a hospital-like setting. The title of the article is ominous: No Margin, No Mission.

There is joy in the trouble of serving the people on loves.

Let us love one another, with no exceptions.

When the plan’s content is developed privately or in secret, without the stakeholders hearing the views and ideas of their fellow stakeholders, the process breaks down. Instead of a collaborative outcome, it becomes a hierarchical decree with winners and losers. Outside of paramilitary organizations, orders and decrees don’t work well. (Arbitrary decrees don’t work well inside paramilitary organizations either—but that’s another topic.)

Responses to the series of four planning questions that Dan Murray, our CEO, solicited from residents were not shared with the community. This denies us, the stakeholders, the opportunity to think and be influenced by each other’s perceptions and concerns.

Such mutual listening is an essential part of the planning process. We have published a small number of the answers on this website and circulated them among us by email. Many residents have let me know that they appreciated the opportunity to read my views and those of other residents. But some have also complained that they themselves are “talkers, not writers” and would like the community to hear and openly discuss the answers to the questions.

Indeed, such discussion stimulates creativity. Students of organizational development and the group problem-solving process know that diverse opinions produce the best solutions. Like-minded people miss opportunities by not thinking “outside the box.”

This is why the best practice in strategic planning is iterative. The work of planning sub-committies is reported out to the the body of stakeholders periodically and the planners listen to the resulting feedback. It is a learning model.

Artists and architects make pencil sketches called “studies” to render their ideas in a way that facilitates reflection and revision. Groups can foster a similar reflective process by making the planning process visible and soliciting feedback as the plans evolve. When an individual or a closed committee filters input without publishing it, this collaboration is short-circuited. The end product, the decisions, must then be “sold” to those who were not doing the filtering.

The public discussions will happen anyway. But when that discussion occurs after decisions are made, it results in disappointment, dissent, and lack of enthusiasm for the plan.

Many strategic planning efforts fail because the plan is not embraced by those who must perform it. When they finally see the end product, they don’t feel that it is their plan.

Our next meeting is scheduled for Thursday afternoon, July 25, 2024 at 3:30 p.m. in the Blue Room and via Zoom.  Here is the Zoom link:

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/85878270705

The Agenda and related documents are below

These meetings are open to all Pennswood Village residents, so you should feel free to invite any resident whom you feel might be interested.  You can also forward this message with the Agenda and related documents to them.  Or you can encourage them to visit our website at PV-Eldercare.org.

The Zoom meeting room will open 15 minutes early so that we can resolve any connectivity issues before the meeting’s starting time.  If you are unfamiliar with Zoom we encourage you to come early, or to attend in person in the Blue Room.

I look forward to seeing you on Thursday.

Dan Seeger

Answers to Financial Questions

Dan Seeger reiterated his request to Tim McQuaid for a follow-up meeting to clarify and explain the brief responses made at the budget presentation.

Concerns about Rumors

Dan Seeger, on behalf of the Eldercare Discussion Group, wrote to Dan Murray expressing our concerns and asking for more community discussion of 1) how Pennswood deals with individual employees and the resident community when termination of employment is deemed necessary, and 2) a more fulsome response to Alice Crozier’s question about CCRC marketplace changes and regulatory changes that “paused” plans for health center construction and renovation.

Surprise Announcements of Healthcare Policy

Brad Sheeks, a member of the Healthcare Advisory Committee, requests that his committee object to the fact that important changes to healthcare services are announced without prior consultation with the resident committee charged with providing advice on such matters.