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Meet the new COO of the wellness centre

ROSALIE MACEACHERN rosaliemaceachern4 @gmail.com

Three months into the job, Pictou County Wellness Centre chief operating officer Graham MacNeil is moving fast.

He has already turned out an annual business plan and an interim strategic plan for the centre’s board of directors.

“I’m action-oriented and at 62, I may not be here for a decade, so I’m going full speed right now,” said MacNeil who started the job in April while the facility was closed due to COVID restrictions.

He used the down time to first establish a rapport with staff and the centre’s tenant, the Pictou County Y.

“I wanted to hear what they had to say, to learn what I could from them and to establish I’m always open to communication. From there I examined the building, the facilities and the operations. COVID gave me the opportunity to focus solely on how we can make a transformation and that’s what we need to do,” he said.

The centre’s success will always be gauged against two measurements — one is finances and the other is usership, he added.

“I came into this job with 40 years of business experience so there is a lot I’ve learned elsewhere that can be applied to this operation. What’s been established early on is that we’ve got plenty of room for growth.”

Over the past couple of months, he has papered a full wall in the Tim’s Community Room with flip chart pages, with questions, ideas and challenges highlighted in various colours.

“I want to be able to see and to understand how things are working and to identify how to make them work better. Somebody else might approach the job quite differently but this is a very visual strategy that I’m relying on. I know what’s on every one of those pages because I put them there.”

One of his early moves was to undertake what the corporate world terms a SWOT analysis of the operations of the facility which opened in 2012 with two NHL-sized rinks, an Olympic-sized pool, gymnasium, fitness areas and community spaces.

“It is a common approach in the business world to assess your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. It is effective at figuring out where you stand and where you want to go. The way I look at it, we have an operations manager (Chad McDavid) who manages what is going on today and I’m the general manager for what is coming in the future.”

MacNeil believes the community work he has done through the years, including serving on or chairing boards for minor hockey associations, church committees, Pictou County Fuel Fund, Weeks Junior A Crushers, Pictou County Tourism and Little Harbour Pickleball Development Committee, all provided experience and an understanding of Pictou County.

“I recently chaired REN (Pictou County Regional Enterprise Network) so I’m well-versed in economic development and I understand how much we need population growth. Fittingly, our wellness centre is a real engine for economic development, whether it is attracting business or doctors to the area,” he said.

MacNeil grew up in Little Harbour, on the same property where he now lives, though he was a New Glasgow resident for many years. He has a degree in business administration from St. Francis Xavier University and worked as a beer sales representative and a stock broker before joining Maritime Inns and Resorts in 1989.

“The hospitality industry is tough and providing a high level of service is vital to surviving but the numbers also have to work. My work was largely behind the scenes and required a lot of attention to detail and that is serving me well in this job,” he said.

MacNeil and his wife Carolyn, a respiratory therapist, raised two children in Pictou County.

“I’ve got lots to learn but I don’t need time to find my way around the community. This is my community and because I want my community to do well, I obviously want the wellness centre to do well.”

Early on, MacNeil reversed the name of the facility in his mind to help him get a better understanding of its mission.

“I’m not going to be pushing to change the name but for my own purposes, I started to think of it as the centre for wellness and in my mind, that is a really broad mandate.”

Perusing a variety of research, he identified seven components of wellness: physical, emotional, social, occupational, spiritual, intellectual and environmental.

“When you look at those components you can see that the possibilities are limitless. We can’t afford to have people thinking we just run a couple of rinks. We’ve got so much more potential and we need a lot more activity in the building.”

MacNeil has already identified 60 wellness-oriented groups he believes the centre can partner with.

“We’ve got community rooms here that these groups should be able to use at a reasonable rate. These groups may be able to bring events here, as well. We need to get more people through the doors and we need to become the site of many more community activities.”

MacNeil concedes the centre has been dogged by a degree of controversy since it opened. (Initially, some opponents believed it exceeded the needs of the county and some objected to a land transfer tax that contributed to funding while there was frustration with a string of significant operating deficits, particularly in its early years.)

“In the past, there were people who were opposed to the wellness centre and people who were largely indifferent. We’d like to have more of those people on board. The fact is we already have the facility so let’s make it work for us. Let’s redefine wellness so the facility better serves the community.”

MacNeil reiterates he feels a sense of urgency about enhancing the role of the centre.

“I’m pushing ahead and I’m pushing the staff and the board because we all want to see change happening here. We need it to happen.”

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2021-07-22T07:00:00.0000000Z

2021-07-22T07:00:00.0000000Z

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