Robert G. Kramer, founder of aging services think tank Nexus Insights and co-founder, former president and CEO and current senior adviser to the National Investment Center for Seniors Housing & Care, recently spent a few minutes with McKnight’s Senior Living talking about the state of senior living.
Kramer will be honored March 7 in Chicago with the inaugural Career Achievement Award of the new McKnight’s Pinnacle Awards. See mcknightspinnacleawards.com for more information and to purchase tickets.
Q:You’ve said that senior living is approaching a pivot point at which it will begin serving a new generation. How will operators need to change to meet new expectations?
A: Boomers are much more sophisticated and educated about what they want than their parents were. Mom had accidental longevity. She didn’t expect to live that long. Boomers think, “I may live longer, but I want purposeful longevity.”
Operators are going to have to learn to listen to the customer and not be condescending and paternalistic.
And the biggest change will be that successful operators, in what they offer, are going to be combating and reflecting a different way of thinking about aging and combating the ageism in our society. What it means is moving from what I would call a declinist view of later years to an engagement view of later years. If we don’t change, many boomers are going to see senior living as senior dying, a place you go to die and, therefore, want to avoid as long as you can. We have the opportunity instead to turn our settings into aspirational settings where we are redefining what to expect out of aging.
Q: If you had one piece of advice for senior living owners, operators and leaders, what would it be?
A: Really listen to your customer. Not the customer of the past, but the customer of the future.
Think how long it takes you to retool, to build a new property, to basically conceive of the product, to design it, to deliver it in built infrastructure and to open it. Well, that customer of 2030, they’re going to be here really soon.
And also, with the buildings you have now, are they going to be obsolete? Are the buildings you’re building now going to be attractive to boomers, most importantly because of what happens inside of them?
I would particularly answer your question with this quote of Bill Gates. He says, “We always overestimate the change that will occur in the next two years and underestimate the change that will occur in the next 10. Don’t let yourself be lulled into inaction.”
Are all the things I’m talking about going to happen in the next two years? Absolutely not. But if you think, because of that, they’re not going to happen and you’re going to be lulled into inaction, you’re going to go out of business. You’re either going to be acquired or you’re just going to shut down.
Are the boomers moving into senior care communities right now? No, they’re not there yet. They’re 10 years away from being our customer there.
But the reason active adult has become such a hot product type is, everyone wants to get brand loyalty now by serving these boomers. But understand, if you’re just seen as offering a care-driven product, you’re the end-stage place of last resort for a boomer. So you’d better change your image.
Don’t be lulled into inaction. Don’t underestimate what’s going to happen in the next 10 years. You do so at your peril.
Q:Is there anything else you’d like to share?
A: The average senior living operator, from the C-suite to the front line, has come out of the last nearly three years exhausted, overwhelmed. You’re just simply fighting day to day to keep your residents and your staff alive and also survive financially.
I don’t want to make light of that. So many heroes, and so many operators, and so many on the front lines — whether they’re caregivers or dining staff or maintenance — have gone above and beyond, and many are emotionally, physically, mentally just exhausted and financially stressed at the same time.
What I’m saying is, we have huge opportunities in front of us, and we need to focus on these opportunities and how we’re going to position ourselves. I’m incredibly bullish about our field and about the senior housing and care sector. I’m bearish, though, on the ability of many operators to make the pivots they’re going to need to make and to be willing to make the investments they need to make.
This Q&A has been edited for length and other considerations. Listen to the entire interview in this McKnight’s Senior Living Newsmakers podcast. Also see What senior living can learn from the Southwest Airlines debacle.
