The Appreciative Inquiry Culture Change Underway at Schlegel Villages

In the two years Dorothy Simpson has lived in the Village of Riverside Glen in Guelph, she’s witnessed a variety of enhancements to life in the village that can be directly attributed to a culture change underway within the entire Schlegel Villages organization.

As a resident member of the advisory team leading this shift in thinking through an organizational change process known as Appreciative Inquiry (AI), she’s been directly involved in the innovations.

“I’m amazed at how they all speak out and how they all work together with everything,” says Simpson, of the team that last year led the organization through an AI summit where eight major aspiration statements/operational goals were developed.

These goals were developed when front-line team members, residents, families and management gathered to discover the organization’s strengths, and design a way to build upon them as the organization evolves.

The process, says Simpson, was truly collaborative and she says she and her fellow residents couldn’t be happier to see how the culture shift is creating a truly social model of living within their villages.  

One example of an operational goal that Simpson says does this is “creating meaningful and shared activities” among residents and team members in both long-term care and retirement wings of her village.

She says the freedom all residents have to participate in activities throughout the village gives them a greater sense of independence. She says people are free now to “go where the party is.”

“At one time we stayed in our part and retirement stayed in theirs and now we all get together,” says Simpson.

“If they have music we want to listen to, we go down there and if we’re playing cards up at our end and they want to join, they come up.”

Since January, each of the organization’s villages has been working towards implementation of their operational goals, which range from flexible dining to promoting cross-functionality among the various team-members.

Schlegel Village’s president and CEO James Schlegel, says the organization is at the beginning of a never-ending transformation process that could re-define approaches to long-term care.

“I think we always want to be somewhat impatient about continuing to advance the cause of culture change; of putting living first within a congregate care setting,” says Schlegel.

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