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The following is a guest blog entry from Larry Carlson. Larry is an advisor, board member, and author of Avandell: Reimagining the Dementia Experience. A longtime CEO in senior living, he now writes and speaks about helping older adults finish strong — living with purpose, vitality, and impact in their third age.
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It’s early. Just after sunrise.
The household is quiet, except for the soft hum of the coffee machine in the corner and the faint sound of a television no one is really watching.
She’s kneeling beside him. He’s confused again. Agitated. Asking for his wife—who passed years ago. His voice rising, his hands restless, searching for something he can’t name.
She doesn’t correct him.
She doesn’t rush him.
She places her hand gently over his and leans in just enough for him to see her eyes.
“Tell me about her.”
He pauses.
The tension in his shoulders softens. And for a moment, the room changes. He’s no longer lost. He’s remembering. And she stays right there with him—unhurried, present, steady. Not because it’s in her job description. But because it’s in her.
She didn’t learn that in orientation. She brought it with her.
The question is… did we hire for it?
Do we recognize it?
Do we protect it?
Do we build around it?
Because mission doesn’t live on the wall. It lives—or dies—in moments like that. In my experience, there are four places where that happens.
HIRING
If you don’t hire for mission, you won’t lead with mission. Too often, we hire for experience and hope for alignment. But the deeper question is whether the person sitting across from you already carries the heart your mission requires.
TRY THIS: Add one question to your interview process tied directly to your values: “Tell me about a time you chose people over efficiency.”
You’re not just listening for the answer. You’re listening for the instinct.
RECOGNITION
What you celebrate becomes your culture. If that moment in the household goes unnoticed, it slowly becomes optional. If it’s named and honored, it becomes the standard others move toward.
TRY THIS: In your next team meeting, recognize one team member specifically for how they lived out a core value, not just what they accomplished. Make the invisible visible.
ACCOUNTABILITY
Values that aren’t reinforced aren’t values—they’re preferences. The hard part of leadership isn’t writing values. It’s protecting them when they’re inconvenient.
TRY THIS: When addressing a performance issue, name the value being missed—not just the behavior. It changes the conversation from correction to alignment. From “what you did wrong” to “who we are.”
DECISION MAKING
Your hardest decisions reveal your real values. Strategy, budgets, census pressure—these are the moments when values are most at risk of becoming negotiable.
TRY THIS: Before making a key decision, ask: “Which of our values does this support—and which might it compromise?”
You may still make the same decision. But you’ll make it consciously.
Mission is not sustained by intention. It’s sustained by repetition—what you hire for, what you recognize, what you reinforce, and how you decide.
And over time, something begins to happen.
Those quiet, early-morning moments—the ones no one sees, no one measures, no one reports on—they become the culture. Not because you declared it. But because you built it.
