Last Friday, we hosted our first online Stakeholder Forum.  This event was the first of its kind in the Long-Term Care industry, that we know of anyway

In the Forum, President and CEO Joe Steier held four one-hour sessions throughout the day to accommodate shift changes and work schedules, to allow for maximum opportunity for all stakeholders to participate.

Joe was live without a net, taking questions from the field and answering them on the spot.  No topic was off limits, no question too tough.  Also on hand to field questions were Cheri Glass, VP of Human Resources, Paul Sumrow and Kelley Helgeson from Signature Rehab, and Dianne Timmering, VP of Spirituality.

Everybody wants face time with the big guy, and this event provided that opportunity for the front line stakeholders, who are the primary point of care with our residents, and whose voice is very important to the mission and vision.

Comscore recently released the online video rankings for February 2012.  Almost 38 billion video views with 147.4 million unique viewers – almost half the population of the U.S.  The average viewer watched 21.8 hours of online video content.

What do these numbers mean?

It means TV as we know it is on the way out.  Traditional broadcast mediums just can’t compete with the on-demand, hardware-agnostic, mobile delivery, and social nature of online video.

Read the press release here.

Today the Department of Spirituality is one of the biggest draws for recruitment, attracting stakeholders to the only for-profit corporation (that we know of!) that offers such a thing.  The department employs a full-time chaplain in each of our 73 buildings, who is part of the interdisciplinary team and makes valuable contributions to the patient care and outcomes.

Joe and Dianne recently delivered the keynote speech at the SHRM conference in Louisville, KY, around the theme of “God In The Workplace.” Check out their reflections on this compelling topic.  Go to article >>

• “We’ve gone from ‘broadcast’ to ‘narrowcast.’”
• “You used to sell to eyeballs and ears; now you’re selling to hearts and minds.”
• “A brand is nothing more than a promise delivered.”

I appreciate their plight.  They are just doing their jobs, trying to make a living.  But little do they know how tough their target is.

You see, as our President and CEO Joe Steier is fond of saying (not necessarily in a flattering way), I’m not a “corporate guy.”  I come from a media, entertainment, and entrepreneurial background. This is simultaneously a blessing and a curse.

An entrepreneur is scrappy, in contrast to a lifelong “corporate guy,” who may be used to plenty of headroom and paying too much for products and services because there was a budget.

It serves me well when I need to think outside the box, which is always.  It serves me well when I need to find ways to get things done, beg/ borrow/ steal/ cajole/ convince/ jedi mind trick/ etc.  Ok maybe not “steal.”

So, the sales reps don’t know this when they pitch me.  They figure they’re talking to a corporate guy who may not know the difference between SEO and SEM, and who may be seduced and possibly even a little intimidated by “real-time analytics” and “social media dashboards.”  There’s certainly money to be made selling in the gap between intimidation and understanding.

A rep from Meltwater News has called me probably 10 times (after I passed), and continued to send me emails, pitching their “social monitoring and engagement solutions” – otherwise known as “google alerts” and “facebook.”  I appreciate your tenacity buddy, but move on down the road and quit wasting my time.

The highest level of communication occurs when the sender fully understands the receiver, and the message is tuned perfectly to the receiver’s frequency.  This requires heavy lifting on the part of the sender, not the receiver.  The sophisticated source understands the burden of clarity rests on his own shoulders.  Shotgun (mass media) and brute force (hard-sell) tactics are never employed by the sophisticated source.  The sophisticated source will not attempt to send a message that is not relevant to an intended recipient; this by definition excludes any impersonal or mass communications (see also “spam”).  Spam is a bludgeoning tool that gives commercial communications a bad rap, and is one of the unsightly by-products of the digital revolution.

The perfectly tailored message goes down like butter, not medicine.  The properly formatted message is more like music to the ears, instead of noise.  If the sender does his homework, it’s easy and enjoyable to listen, because the message is pre-aligned with the listener’s interests, vernacular, idiom, agenda.

So should be all of our communications, whether personal, professional, commercial, or artistic.  Ahh, what a wonderful (and much quieter) world it would be.

Here’s a rundown of the pros and cons.

Limitations of print media:

• can’t share
• can’t link in or out
• can’t revise later
• takes up space in your bag
• one shot deal (e.g., newspaper ads)
• gets ink on your hands
• uses natural resources, paper, energy
• requires more labor to produce
  • writer
  • editor
  • graphic designer
  • publisher
  • printer
  • distributor

Limitations of digital media:

• anyone can publish, therefore less inherent credibility