A retirement village, like our beautiful Mountain View, doesn’t stay afloat without good management. Management from the top level is important, but good management where it counts, down at the grassroots level, is vital.
Retirement villages are full of … well … older people. Ours is no different. And older people have very set ways and strong opinions. We are no different.
So how does someone who isn’t old enough to live in a retirement village, manage a retirement village?
Easy.
They have patience to spare, and they ooze calm. They can talk two people with completely opposite views, down from the same precipitous ledge, simultaneously,
Our fabulous manager, David P, who held the managerial reins for as long as I’ve lived here (almost nine years at time of writing), had all those qualities, and more.
David’s feet were planted firmly on the ground; nothing seemed to faze him. He dealt with the usual things a manager attends to in the course of a day, as well as a lot of extra little things.
You never know how much a person does, until they stop doing it.
All good things must come to an end,
and even the best relationships don’t last forever.
David called the Strata Committee to an urgent meeting and gave us the news that none of us saw coming, expected, or wanted to hear.
After much deliberation and serious thought, David had decided to leave Mountain View and explore another chapter in his life.
It’s what younger people (than us) do; they change jobs. Older people, like me, had one career all their working life; younger generations don’t operate that way – they seek change – some do it often, others, not so often.
Change is inevitable, but not always easy
After ten years at the helm, David decided it was time to move on. And we get that – the management job is stressful – and we’re very lucky to have had David as long as we did. But the time to say goodbye was now on a much nearer horizon.
David gave four-weeks notice, and that’s when the Strata Committee’s steep learning curve kicked in. Knowing that the process for selecting a new manager would be lengthy, we started learning more about the in-depth procedures for keeping our village running until a new manager was appointed. The company was going to provide a temporary manager, but we knew they wouldn’t be full-time because they also manage another large village, and besides, they don’t know our village, and our residents.
So the learning began in earnest with lots of meetings with David, while also preparing, at least emotionally, for the sad day of his departure.
The end of a Mountain View era
And that sad day dawned on the 6th of September. At a farewell event the day before, tears were shed and memories shared, as residents old and new gathered to say goodbye.
On his last day, David made a final victory lap through the village in the trusty buggy, and then he was gone. He has moved on to hopefully bigger and better things because change is always good, right? But change is also hard to accept, the older we get.
We wished David well in the new phase of his life, just as we wish Tony well in the new phase of his life, as our new manager.
A new era has begun at Mountain View Retirement Village.
