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When most
people think of advocacy they think of legislation.
But we are not convinced that legislation is the most
effective means to bring about change.
There are three approaches that we perceive for bring
America’s elderly and those who are aging the reliable and
trustworthy services that are the basis for responsible aging.
Entrepreneurship. Most change in
America is led by entrepreneurs who seek to improve life by
introducing innovative products, services, and approaches to
fulfillment. Those
who succeed are often richly rewarded but it is rare that
entrepreneurs are motivated solely by financial rewards.
These are visionary people who imagine a better world and
who seek to play a small (or large) part in bringing that world
into existence. Developers are
sometimes seen as entrepreneurs, and they may well be, though
developers tend to be more motivated by the profit potential
than by the creative opportunities.
Typically, they operate within the minimum standards of
building codes and the maximization of opportunity possible
under zoning codes. Our focus here
is on the entrepreneurial opportunities in senior housing and
services offered by the emerging swelling of the ranks America’s
aging population and by the entrenched paralysis of conventional
thinking. The chief
deterrents to entrepreneurial activity in the senior space are
the fragile vulnerability of the population served, which can
invite unwelcome adverse publicity, and the micro regulation of
reactive legislation which impedes innovation by mandating such
matters as staffing ratios and the like. Innovation and
entrepreneurship are rare, though not nonexistent, in the
nonprofit, tax exempt, and public, government agency, sectors of
the economy. Most
often, entrepreneurs rely on the availability of venture and
equity capital to finance their vision.
Such capital is unavailable, aside from donations, to
nonprofit enterprises.
Government enterprises have access to money generating
capabilities of the state but they are impeded by the political
considerations of contending political parties and special
interests.
Litigation. Managements
sometimes become arrogant in their decision authority and they
may make decisions, or introduce practices, that are detrimental
to their customers and that are violative of the implicit
covenant of good faith and fair dealing which underlies all
trust-based undertakings.
Senior housing and services are such trust-based
undertakings. Regulators are
charged with ensuring that services comply with statutory
requirements but statutes can be politically motivated and
regulators often give priority to some aspects of their
statutory authority in preference to others.
Regulators are typically constrained from making
determinations in equity since they can be criticized if they
are seen to exceed their statutory authority. In these
situations, the trial bar can play a positive role.
Most contracts for senior services are contracts of
adhesion. Seniors
who may desperately need services are forced to accept the
one-sided contracts offered by providers or do without the
services which may lead to diminished health and even loss of
life. Even these
unilaterally drafted contracts then frequently preclude the fair
process of judicial proceeding since the contracts may include
mandatory arbitration provisions.
That can result in disputes being brought before forums
that depend principally on provider funding for their business
success. Unfortunately, this tendency of the legal system to act against
the protections that seniors might need as their cognition wanes
and the desperation of their needs accelerates, has discouraged
the trial bar from being as involved in senior issues as might
be desirable in upholding the public interest in fair contracts,
fairly administered, and fairly fulfilled. Nevertheless,
litigation (and legislation encouraging a private right of
action in defense of residents) remains a critical component in
seeking to give seniors the trustworthy senior services that
they need.
Legislation. As noted
elsewhere in discussing Bills of Rights, legislation is coercive
and results in pushback by those who are reluctantly required to
meet a good faith standard that they might otherwise prefer to
avoid. Still, legislation is often the only approach available
to those who believe that they have been duped by
misrepresentations or by providers who put enterprise interests
before the welfare of those they exist to serve. |
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Business Maxims and Principles
The purpose of business is customer value; profit will follow
from gains in customer value. Business without integrity is predatory; mutual trust and candor lie at the heart of positive business dealings. Make those who buy happier than those who didn’t.
Instead of
investing in selling a bad product, change it to a good product
and people will buy it.
You can’t manage what you don’t measure.
People don’t do what you expect, they do what you inspect.
In maintenance what you miss now is a job you won’t want to do
later. You snooze, you lose.
Top tier people hire top tier people and more and praise
them; second tier people hire third tier people and criticize
them
For profit entities are generally lower cost than nonprofit or
governmental entities. Ownership provides
a performance incentive that is
missing in nonprofit or government enterprises.
Organizations perform better when they obsess on customers in
preference to greed. Optimism is the
fuel for innovation, but business judgment calls for
caution and realism to temper the optimism.
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