Defending the Vulnerable Without a Title

Despite the tremendous concern and compassion I felt through so much of what we were attempting to work through with the team being paid (heavily) to care for Granny, I maintained all the self-control I could muster with hopes of displaying enough of a pleasing personality to earn at least adequate ...

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Sympathy and Understanding Grow in the Trenches

Albeit years later, I remember seeing Granny’s black eyes like it was yesterday. I’m a fixer, sympathy has never really been something I’ve done well with. That said, I’ll let you guess at the emotions I was flooded with. Unless I’ve missed one unintentionally, we’ve looked at all eleven of Napoleon...

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Family Strain, Institutional Pushback, and Professional Risk

Our conversation with the CEO and nursing director, neither of which had a direct hand in any of Granny’s day to day care but did hold final responsibility for the staff who did, was on February 14, 2020. We were cordial, but we were also very direct in detailing the twenty-plus falls in just three ...

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Neglect Meets Advocacy

I can’t say I ever enjoyed doing incident investigations through all the years I spent in safety. That said, the investigations were much easier for me to stomach that providing direct care. I’m fine with seeing my own blood, give me a piece of duct tape and we’re good to go, but I might just pass o...

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When Care Becomes Concern

Each adversity I’ve walked through to this point has been sequential. Truth be told, that’s how life works: a series of highs and lows that we each work through. If we’re intentional about identifying and nurturing any possible seed from each adversity, we have a strong shot at making sure each high...

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Disruptions Turn Chaos into Adaptive Readiness

I don’t think anyone could have predicted all that unfolded globally from March 2020 through the end of 2021. To that end, I could make a strong case in saying we’re still experiencing many of the ripple effects from all that today. And as I’ve stressed so many other times to this point, I’m certain...

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Mastery of Detail Grows in Trenches of Scarcity

When the ripple effects of scarcity spill into every waking moment, there’s little choice but to begin sifting through every possible detail in identifying each contributing factor and the primary root cause behind it. Today, Cindy and I include components of the DISC Model of Human Behavior in near...

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The Quiet Strength

As much as I wish I could say that I learned to display empathy and earned cooperation quickly, I can’t. The adversities Cindy and I were working through during Matt’s elementary school years proved to be some of the toughest I had experienced to that point. While I have since been able to find the ...

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Facing the Mirror

My senior year of high school was a whirlwind. While I did the bare minimums to skate through my required classes, I was working as hard as I knew how in what turned into a full time job before I even graduated and dove in head first to every other kind of shenanigan I could find as soon as I clocke...

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Identifying Key Experts

Earlier as we looked at maximizing the return on investment in relationships, I stressed the importance of choosing them wisely and nurturing those relationships to ensure everyone involved had ample opportunity for growth. While identifying the key experts we’ll need in our lives in order to compen...

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Learning from Failure

In June of 2000, I was only about a month into my new role facilitating (I’m intentionally not calling it leading and you’ll see why shortly) the 5S implementation across 200,000 square feet of the facility I worked in. In case you’re familiar with the idea, Sorting everything in a work area, Settin...

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