This is a guest post by Ann Congleton. In it, she notes that four groups of residents have been selected to consider contents for a new version of Values and Practices, the statement of direction that has been shared by all Kendal affiliates until now. I did not know about these groups until Ann brought them to my attention, and apparently the information of who is in them and how they were selected has not been made public, which is disappointing. In any case, Ann has three suggestions for work the groups might undertake, and I hope they are taken to heart.

— G

It seems very encouraging that the KCC Board/management is seeking resident collaboration in developing a new booklet to replace the Kendal Corporation’s Values and Practices. The current booklet, available here, can no longer be used because of the KCC’s decision to disaffiliate from the Kendal Corporation.

The KCC Board/management’s initial step toward resident collaboration appears to be modeled on the “focus groups” commonly organized in today’s world by marketing and campaign managers. There does not appear to have been any announcement of the focus groups except for a short paragraph in a May 4 administrative memo on Viibrant entitled “May 2023 Community & Operations Update.”

Two of the four focus groups apparently met June 8, and the remaining two will meet on June 13 and 15. They are by invitation only, and each will meet for only an hour. The Viibrant paragraph does not mention any channel for community input to the groups, nor is any direct communication with individual participants invited, since their names have not been released, even to the other participants.

Nonetheless, the groups, when they actually meet, could choose to initiate community thinking about very valuable possibilities. This blog post is meant to suggest three such possibilities, and I hope other community members will post their suggestions also, since the booklet seems likely to be treated as representing the whole community.  One convenient way to offer a suggestion is simply to click on the “LEAVE A REPLY” button at the bottom of this post and type it in.

The first of the THREE SUGGESTIONS here is about the part of the current Values and Practices booklet which the participants have been asked to consider, namely the part about “values,” pp. 3-15.  The second suggestion is that the revision process be suspended until the Task Force on Structure is established. The third suggestion is that when the revision process resumes it be structured as a community building exercise.

First Suggestion: Have the booklet express our “values” concretely. The most serious problem of the existing “values” sections seems to me to be that they are mostly too abstract to reflect the actual “character of place” the Kendal founders were hoping to create. For example, the present booklet’s aspiration “To Encourage and Welcome All People…” (p. 3) is too abstract to capture the founders’ concrete goals, which included, for example, achieving a significant degree of economic diversity among the residents.  Capturing this “value” of economic diversity would involve mention of the concrete “practices” that were devised by the founders for achieving it. Thus economic diversity was built into the architecture of Kendal at Longwood (KAL) by including cottages affordable by retirees from what came to be called “lives of service,” and the value was built into the policies by what the founders called “the socialization of fees.”

A point at which the present booklet does include something concrete enough to help articulate the distinctive character of place the founders of Kendal hoped to create is the statement that

“…we typically do not employ activities directors except in health center settings for those residents who need such assistance. Rather, associations made up of community members organize virtually all aspects of social, cultural, intellectual and spiritual life.” (p. 7)

Other concrete founding values which continue to be reasons retirees choose KAL over other CCRCs include its being small enough for community members to know each other face to face. The literature on community size indicates that being a face to face community calls for a population of under 400, as noted by George Alexander in a previous post on this blog. This aspiration was so basic for the founders that Crosslands was created as a second face to face community rather than enlarge KAL.

Also describable concretely are the values and accompanying features that differentiate KAL from the many self-described “luxury” CCRCs whose glossy brochures turn up in our mailboxes.

Making the new booklet more concrete would of course be easier because the KCC’s disaffiliation from the Kendal Corporation means that the booklet no longer needs to cover all of the Kendal Corporation affiliates. However this revision is clearly not possible in the one hour each group will have. Nor is there any indication that it can be hoped for from the presumably even more limited “core working group” to which the materials from the focus groups are to be passed. But there seems nothing to prevent the focus groups themselves from using their time to develop a restructuring of the revision process.

Second Suggestion: Suspend work on the booklet until the Task Force on Structure has been established. The following motion was passed by the KCC Board in June of 2019 in the wake of the series of controversies that began when the Board decided in 2013 to have only a single CEO for the whole KCC rather than continue to have individual “Executive Directors” for KAL and Crosslands. In the wake of continuing controversies that intensified in 2019 when the Board confirmed its single CEO decision, the Board set up a “Transition Committee” including both Board members and residents. That committee, in its “Transition Update #9 – June 21, 2019,” announced that

“… the Board… approved the creation of a task force after the new CEO is hired. The task force will include representatives of the Board, residents and senior staff, including the new CEO. The task force will evaluate the information we have gathered through surveys, community meetings, residents associations and other forms of community engagement. The task force will recommend to the board a structure which is responsive to resident and staff concerns.” 

Of course the CEO search took time, and COVID began soon after she arrived, so the task force on structure was not formed then. However, this June’s focus groups could ask that it be formed now.

Among the structures a Task Force on Structure could help the community consider would be a structure under which KAL and Crosslands thrived in the years following the creation of Crosslands, years in which structure was still fluid. The structure that seemed to have worked well and be worth trying again was a “troika” including an overall CEO (then called simply the “Director”) who was assisted by an “Administrator” (eventually called “Executive Director”) for each of the CCRCs. Recreating the “troika” structure today would meet the problem of coordination which arose when there came to be only the two Executive Directors and no overall CEO for coordination.

The second pre-COVID item that this June’s focus groups could draw upon is the so-called Braun Report submitted by the consultant from the Kendal Corporation who came in 2013 to assist the Board in the wake of controversies including the Board’s decisions to have only a single CEO. Those controversies are mirrored in the very low ratings for “resident engagement,” ratings of around 3 on a scale of 8, that Kendal at Longwood has been receiving in the Holleran surveys since the emergence of the controversies.

The consultant from the Kendal Corporation, Judith Braun, did extensive studies at both of the CCRCs and found that both the residents and the staff of both KAL and Crosslands strongly favored an Executive Director for each community. She also found a strong desire among both the residents and the staff of each CCRC that the individuality of each campus be preserved, and the Board included this preservation in its description of what it was seeking in its CEO search.

There does not appear to be anything preventing this June’s focus groups from calling for the establishment of the Task Force on Structure before creating the new booklet.

Third Suggestion: Make the process of revision into a community building exercise. Once the Task Force on Structure has been established, the booklet revision process could help the Task Force in its own planning work. In addition, the revision process could have a community-building effect and produce a sense of community ownership of the booklet if the revision were done through a process resting on community-wide involvement rather being simply an administrative activity as currently planned.

Processes resting on community wide involvement, processes of which the Quaker process is one but not the only example, include shared deliberation and decision making.  By moving away from such processes, “we” have wound up with a more corporate/marketing process, which includes resting on “focus groups,” such as the upcoming V&P booklet groups.  

Some may say that community-based processes inviting all comers cannot work – too chaotic or too slow.  But a reply might be that that there now exists on the back wall of the KAL dining room a community product, “our” mural of the “Harlan Glen Meadow in Spring.” To learn how this came about, we need only look at the delightful slide-history by one of Kendal’s most community oriented photographers, Bob Warner. That slide-history can be seen here.

Another example of an emerging and potentially community-wide “action” which could grow from its current grass-roots beginning to a result shared community-wide are the current conversations about a possible Lenni Lenape “land acknowledgement.”  Further examples of community-based projects are the current work on Energy and on saving the Big Woods.

Like the accomplished mural and the possible land acknowledgement and restoration of the Big Woods, a KCC booklet could come into existence as the result of a community action. Such a process could not only create the booklet but help build community rather than exacerbate a sense of top-down assertion of control. 

What we know from these examples is that community-wide actions can work, and there seems to be nothing preventing the focus groups from using their time to think about ways the revision of the booklet could be a community-based project.

Conclusion.  This post has been put together in a hurry since the focus groups are already beginning, but I am hoping to post some further discussion soon, and I hope very much that other community members will also post thoughts here or contribute them in whatever way they can.

If this June’s focus groups choose to use their time to begin laying out a path toward the Task Force on Structure whose creation was approved by the KCC just before the COVID shutdown, that Task Force on Structure could then take up the project of orchestrating the full and inclusive community discussions that could not only produce a new booklet but could also reaffirm the splendid character of place for which Kendal was created.