By Robyn Stone
After 3 years, the LTSS Center has become a cohesive team of researchers who have learned to be flexible and resilient.
Remember when we were young and actually cared about what we gave our spouse on those early wedding anniversaries?
Traditional gift-giving guides suggest a paper gift for the first anniversary because it represents the fragile and modest beginnings of a marriage. Couples are advised to celebrate their second anniversary by exchanging cotton gifts, which symbolize the need for a marriage to remain strong and to adapt to change.
As the LeadingAge LTSS Center @UMass Boston prepares to celebrate its third anniversary this spring, I was curious: what should our anniversary gift look like?
Turns out that gift should be leather—for reasons that fit us to a tee.
Let me be clear. I’m not a fan of leather, or any other gift produced at the expense of a fellow creature. But I was fascinated to learn why wedding websites recommend it.
A leather—or, better yet, a vegan leather—anniversary gift symbolizes a marriage that has reached the stage where it is durable, warm, strong, flexible, and resilient.
All of those adjectives describe the LTSS Center, a marriage of sorts between LeadingAge and the Gerontology Institute at the University of Massachusetts Boston.
After 3 years, we’ve become a cohesive team of researchers who feel warmly toward one another.
We’ve learned to be flexible in working through the challenges and opportunities of building a partnership among professionals working in 2 separate locations for 2 separate organizations.
And we’ve developed a strong sense of resiliency. Establishing a new research center was a lot of work. But there’s no doubt that we’ve already accomplished more together than we could have accomplished alone.
LOOKING BACK AND AHEAD
The LTSS Center officially made its debut in May 2017. Our goal was to create a robust research center that would combine the expertise of applied and academic researchers with the unique perspectives of providers and consumers of long-term services and supports (LTSS).
LeadingAge President and CEO Katie Smith Sloan declared at the time that LeadingAge and UMass Boston had “committed ourselves to improving the quality, affordability, and accessibility of long-term services and supports through data and evidence of what really works. Len Fishman, director of the Gerontology Institute at UMass Boston, looked forward to “being a part of what is destined to become one of the largest and most effective LTSS research centers in our field.”
We’ve made a good start on both of those goals. But don’t take my word for it.
Read our newly released 2019 Annual Report, which describes and shares findings from 6 LTSS Center research projects, discusses our collaborative efforts to bring our research to the worlds of policy and practice, and looks ahead to what we are on track to accomplish together in 2020 and beyond.
Clearly, our partnership is thriving. We’ve increased the depth of our research agenda. We’ve forged strong bonds with new partners. We’ve expanded our research team.
And we’ve learned many valuable lessons along the way.
LESSONS LEARNED
Like all new partners, we still struggle sometimes to combine our 2 groups. But we’ve worked hard to find common ground. I attribute our success on our ability to learn 5 lessons that could apply to any budding partnership:
- Work hard to merge the cultures of your organizations. That merger will never be perfect, but if you concentrate on common goals, and find ways to work together to reach those goals, you’ll get close enough.
- Draw on everyone’s talents. It’s so important to fully recognize, understand, and use the expertise that each partner—and each team member—brings to the table.
- Don’t let financial complications stand in the way. We learned early that you don’t need financial integration to make a partnership thrive.
- Get buy-in from the top. Katie Sloan and Len Fishman have demonstrated a continued commitment to our collaboration, and that has been critical to our success.
- Be willing to give up some of your former identity. Some people might find this threatening, and it’s certainly not easy. LeadingAge researchers found this out when they gave up their identity as the LeadingAge Center for Applied Research. But 3 years later, we and our Boston colleagues are working hard to build a new brand for the LTSS Center. We all recognize that our new identity has the potential to be far more potent than our old one.
OUR NEXT ANNIVERSARY
Next year, feel free to send us flowers. That’s the traditional gift for 4th anniversaries because it symbolizes how much your relationship has blossomed.
I fully expect that, this time next year, that gift will fit the LeadingAge LTSS Center @UMass Boston to a tee.
Robyn I. Stone, DrPH, is senior vice president of research at LeadingAge, and co-director of the LeadingAge LTSS Center @UMass Boston. Her widely published work addresses long-term care policy and quality, chronic care for people with disabilities, the aging services workforce, affordable senior housing, and family caregiving.