You probably remember the moment in the 1939 classic film, The Wizard of Oz, when Dorothy Gale emerges from her old house, looks around her new technicolor world, and informs her dog, “I have a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore.”

I had a similar feeling last week during the quarterly meeting of the LeadingAge Board of Directors. If my dog had been nearby, I might have told him, “I have a feeling we’re not in January anymore.”

During our Zoom meeting, we approved a strategic plan that board members and LeadingAge staff have been working on since January.

Not surprising, the monumental changes we’ve experienced over the past 6 months gave all of us a different view of the planning assumptions we’d made at the beginning of the year. Some of those assumptions no longer fit our current reality. They weren’t bad assumptions for January. But they weren’t the best assumptions for July.

So, as we prepared for the board meeting, board chair Carol Silver Elliott and I decided to follow the advice we’ve been giving LeadingAge members since the coronavirus invaded our world.

We adapted. We exercised the kind of flexibility that these times demand. We remembered that every successful strategic planning process must be dynamic. And then we decided to ask the board to adapt the strategic plan to reflect new realities.

The strategic plan approved last week identifies 4 outcomes that LeadingAge will work to achieve during the next 3 years to help us equip and position members for success, advance models that respond to a diversity of needs and preferences, and leverage the strengths of aging services providers for greater impact.

Board members agreed that we can’t pretend COVID-19 will be a distant memory when the new fiscal year begins on Oct. 1. We could very well be dealing with the pandemic and its aftermath for a good part of the next 3 years. Likewise, long-standing racial justice issues, brought into the spotlight by the Black Lives Matter movement, will continue to be relevant to our organizations for a long time to come.

To help us navigate these challenging times, the strategic plan calls for an increased focus on “governance, diversity, equity, and inclusion within LeadingAge member organizations.” These elements had been part of initial drafts, but gained increased prominence as events unfolded.

The plan also calls LeadingAge to focus, over the next 3 years, on supporting the continuum of aging services providers who find themselves operating in a rapidly changing environment. In addition, the plan directs us to focus on designing and developing a stronger, more effective system of accessible, affordable services for the post-COVID world—a system that is responsive to a diverse aging population.

You’ll be hearing much more about this agenda over the next few months. It’s ambitious, for sure. And it underscores for me the resilience of our board and the resilience of LeadingAge.

That resilience is what made last week’s board discussion and action so noteworthy. By continuing our strategic planning process, even through the pandemic, the board sent a powerful message that aging services organizations need to continue looking to the future even as we continue to navigate today’s challenges.

Board members also gave us all a good example of how to conduct planning during a pandemic. They were willing to admit that “we’re not in January anymore.” They weren’t afraid to let go of outdated assumptions. And they felt free to re-imagine our organization’s path.

We’re feeling resilient at LeadingAge. We hope, over the next 3 years, we can help you feel the same way.

You probably remember the moment in the 1939 classic film, The Wizard of Oz, when Dorothy Gale emerges from her old house, looks around her new technicolor world, and informs her dog, “I have a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore.”

I had a similar feeling last week during the quarterly meeting of the LeadingAge Board of Directors. If my dog had been nearby, I might have told him, “I have a feeling we’re not in January anymore.”

During our Zoom meeting, we approved a strategic plan that board members and LeadingAge staff have been working on since January.

Not surprising, the monumental changes we’ve experienced over the past 6 months gave all of us a different view of the planning assumptions we’d made at the beginning of the year. Some of those assumptions no longer fit our current reality. They weren’t bad assumptions for January. But they weren’t the best assumptions for July.

So, as we prepared for the board meeting, board chair Carol Silver Elliott and I decided to follow the advice we’ve been giving LeadingAge members since the coronavirus invaded our world.

We adapted. We exercised the kind of flexibility that these times demand. We remembered that every successful strategic planning process must be dynamic. And then we decided to ask the board to adapt the strategic plan to reflect new realities.

The strategic plan approved last week identifies 4 outcomes that LeadingAge will work to achieve during the next 3 years to help us equip and position members for success, advance models that respond to a diversity of needs and preferences, and leverage the strengths of aging services providers for greater impact.

Board members agreed that we can’t pretend COVID-19 will be a distant memory when the new fiscal year begins on Oct. 1. We could very well be dealing with the pandemic and its aftermath for a good part of the next 3 years. Likewise, long-standing racial justice issues, brought into the spotlight by the Black Lives Matter movement, will continue to be relevant to our organizations for a long time to come.

To help us navigate these challenging times, the strategic plan calls for an increased focus on “governance, diversity, equity, and inclusion within LeadingAge member organizations.” These elements had been part of initial drafts, but gained increased prominence as events unfolded.

The plan also calls LeadingAge to focus, over the next 3 years, on supporting the continuum of aging services providers who find themselves operating in a rapidly changing environment. In addition, the plan directs us to focus on designing and developing a stronger, more effective system of accessible, affordable services for the post-COVID world—a system that is responsive to a diverse aging population.

You’ll be hearing much more about this agenda over the next few months. It’s ambitious, for sure. And it underscores for me the resilience of our board and the resilience of LeadingAge.

That resilience is what made last week’s board discussion and action so noteworthy. By continuing our strategic planning process, even through the pandemic, the board sent a powerful message that aging services organizations need to continue looking to the future even as we continue to navigate today’s challenges.

Board members also gave us all a good example of how to conduct planning during a pandemic. They were willing to admit that “we’re not in January anymore.” They weren’t afraid to let go of outdated assumptions. And they felt free to re-imagine our organization’s path.

We’re feeling resilient at LeadingAge. We hope, over the next 3 years, we can help you feel the same way.

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