While our world is changing from the outside in, it is also changing from the inside out. We are navigating uncharted waters with payment reform, technology, partnerships, emerging competition, and a consumer population with expectations and preferences that we have not previously experienced. We are also experiencing new power models, as described by Jeremy Heimans and Henry Timms in their recent book, “New Power: How Power Works in Our Hyperconnected World–and How to Make It Work for You.”
“Old power models ask of us only that we comply (pay your taxes, do your homework) or consume. New power models demand and allow for more: that we share ideas, create new content (as on YouTube) or assets (as in Etsy), even shape a community…The future will be a battle over mobilization. The everyday people, leaders, and organizations who flourish will be those best able to channel the participatory energy of those around them—for the good, the bad, and for the trivial.”
The focus on participation, cooperation, collaboration, and sharing should not be overlooked. “Our world is a little more Yelp and a little less Frommers”.
This fact alone has enormous implications for the work we do and how we do it. How do we engage a public beyond just those we serve? How do we mobilize those in our sphere for partnerships, action, support, donations, and more? What do our organizations look like when the walls or boundaries are porous rather than protective? How do we ensure that our content is not just consumed, but is shared and spread, often sideways, and becomes contagious? How do we engage the public to better understand what we do?
In the realm of aging services, we are challenged every day to connect with more people and organizations in new and different ways…partnering with hospice, hospitals, physician groups, or the local community colleges. Advocating for jobs in aging services before the Workforce Investment Board, tapping evidence-based practices to ensure we are being the best that we can be, and extending missions to serve underserved populations, including younger individuals with disabilities and perhaps even children and families.
Increasingly, LeadingAge members are community-based organizations serving families with a particular focus, in most (but not all) cases, on older adults. We are essential to the people we serve, those we employ, and those who we will serve in the future. Yet, we are constrained by old power models, defined by regulatory structures, attitudes, traditions, and assumptions about quality, aging, care, older adults, and much more.
In the fall, LeadingAge published “A New Vision for Long-Term Services and Supports,” our vision for an integrated service delivery model. The premise is simple: older adults are at the center—their needs and preferences drive the services they receive. The success of the model is dependent on participation, cooperation, collaboration, and sharing by all the stakeholders—family, care coordinator, service providers—and is a system that facilitates collaboration among all those parties and more.
Many LeadingAge members have already embraced this puzzle—they are person-driven, have thorough and thoughtful care coordination, and operate a multitude of services. If technology allows, they share information among all parties to advance the best interests of the individual.
The individual must be at the center of this model, driving preferences, articulating needs, and getting access when and if needs arise. This model would represent a new power model. The key ingredient that is missing is funding constraints: what’s covered and under what circumstances and by whom. Imagine the experience for the individual if he or she did not have to navigate various funding sources depending on the services accessed.
As it is, form follows finance and, as a result, we have the system we have…for now.
As new power models become more widespread as the drivers of our economy and the essence of the consumer experience, I imagine the value placed on participation, cooperation, and transparency will strongly influence how we, as community-based organizations serving families with a particular emphasis on older adults, operate, communicate, and participate with the community at large.
“New power models, at their best, reinforce the human instinct to cooperate by rewarding those who share their own assets or ideas, spread those of others, and build on existing idea to make them better.”
As nonprofits with deep roots in your communities, this is not a bridge too far, but a natural evolution of where you have been and where you are going.
I look forward to navigating uncharted waters with you as we build the links to the new power world.