Alan Creedy has been a mentor to me since 2010 but above that he has been a great friend and brother. I can’t say enough good things about Alan to do him justice. His passion and caregiving nature make him a respected truth speaker in this profession.
My first face to face encounter with Alan came when I was so doped up I can’t remember most of our conversation. Alan drove from Raleigh, NC to Zanesville, OH to meet with me only 10 days after I was involved in a near fatal head-on car accident. I had only been out of the hospital for 3 days and was laid out with a broke right femur (in 3 places) in the living room of my in-laws house. My wife called Alan to let him know my situation and that it probably won’t be worth his time as I was on so much pain medication that I couldn’t process much of anything. Alan still came. This speaks volumes about his character and the man his is.
So this is just one of the many reasons that I read and listen to what Alan says, its just a bonus that his content is superb and right on the money!
Here is a portion of Alan’s most recent article that should inspire you but also get your mind focused on the task at hand.
Doing Nothing Costs Too Much
By: Alan Creedy, Creedy Commentary
On my office wall I have framed photos of three men. If I asked you what they have in common I anticipate I would get many different answers but, for me, there is only one answer.
Each, in his own way, despite significant personal tragedy and unimaginable public pressure and emotional stress understood the importance of MAKING THE MAIN THING THE MAIN THING.
And this, dear reader, is the single reason so many of us mere mortals find it almost impossible to refuse distractions and remain stalwart in the face of resistance, resolute under pressure and persevere for long periods of time toward our goals. We have no real idea what THE MAIN THING is. We hear a lot about someone else’s main thing but we don’t have a strong enough hold on our main thing that we end up getting caught up in theirs. Or we are wise enough to recognize it is not ours so we do nothing. We function on someone else’s agenda or none at all. So, we go to default futures:
We Work In Our Business Claiming We Are Too Busy To Work On Our Business.
I am in my 34th year of commitment to the DeathCare profession and the 42nd year of my career. Like my heroes (but not to the unimaginable degree they suffered) I have experienced much of what they did. As I know many of you have. It has shaped me. I am grateful not bitter. If nothing else it has built my faith. Like many of you, it has prepared me for such a time as this. There have been times where I had no main thing and times, like now, that I did. Age gives perspective. I see the purpose in both times now.
DeathCare continues it long, accelerating decline. We (I) have obsessed about what is changing. But we have forgotten to take into consideration what is NOT changing. People will continue to die. Survivors will continue to have a need to reconcile that death emotionally and to honor the life of those they have lost. I was reminded in the movie “Lincoln” that it was Euclid that first used the phrase: “self-evident”. I would suggest that these things are self-evident.
If you are an owner or a general manager, partner…whatever… you have a moral obligation to yourself, to your staff, to the legal entity you lead and, most of all, to the public you serve to MAKE THE MAIN THING THE MAIN THING.
SO WHAT IS IT?
Rest the rest of “Doing Nothing Costs Too Much” on Alan’s blog
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As we struggle to conceive what is happening and what will happen with funeral service in the years to come, the following lines from a very famous book keep coming to mind:
He told them this parable: “No one tears a piece out of a new garment to patch an old one. Otherwise, they will have torn the new garment, and the patch from the new will not match the old. 37 And no one pours new wine into old wineskins. Otherwise, the new wine will burst the skins; the wine will run out and the wineskins will be ruined. 38 No, new wine must be poured into new wineskins.
It is correct to say that deaths will occur and that something will be done. At the same time the people seem to be calling for a “new wine” of what death and memorialization mean. Ready or not, this also means providing new “containers” for those memorial experiences.
Certainly we see some of this reflected in the surveys which say people want different kinds of spaces etc. etc. The challenge becomes capitalizing these projects and consolidating volumes so that they will cash-flow.
I recently talked with a hospice chaplain. She said that what she (and the non-churched families she services) wants is a non-denominational “chapel in the woods” sort of place (a nature setting, rather than the old neighborhood or a bland commercial zone) where they can gather and hold their memorial observances without the noisiness of a restaurant or the backward-looking traditions of a denominational setting, or the gloominess of dealing with a funeral home.
I think we need to look at our current facilities and operating assumptions and ask if they are containers for a vintage that is about to run dry. This won’t be the case in every part of the country, but for a growing number of owners, the time will soon come when what has been, will need to be replaced with something entirely new.
It’s doable, but it is a very different business model, with I think far fewer operator/owners in any given city or town.
Very much to learn…and un-learn in the process.