What does it really take to lead a funeral home in today’s environment? It’s a question that gets to the heart of something our profession has been grappling with for years and it’s exactly what Johnson Consulting Group set out to answer when they launched their Leadership & Management Program back in 2019.
On Wednesday, Vince Roberge, Senior Business Consultant and one of the program’s founding facilitators, pulled back the curtain on what makes this experience so different from the typical funeral service conference or continuing education course. What I heard was a story of listening, evolving, and ultimately building something that truly moves the needle for funeral home leaders across the country.
The genesis of the program is straightforward, and that’s actually what makes it powerful. Johnson Consulting Group was hearing from owner-operators who were watching the next generation of leaders that includes a son, a daughter, or a key long-tenured employee, step into larger roles without the tools they needed to succeed. These were people who knew the craft of funeral service deeply, but hadn’t had the opportunity to develop the financial acumen or leadership skills that running a business demands.
Rather than building a program in a vacuum, Johnson Consultant Group listened to what their clients were actually asking for. That responsiveness is woven into the program’s foundation, and it’s why the content has continued to sharpen over six years of iterations.
The experience kicks off before participants ever board a plane. Pre-course questionnaires and a a robust, next-level DiSC leadership assessment that also measures motivators and driving forces. This information give facilitators like Vince a window into each participant’s world. Participants are also invited to bring real financial documents from their own businesses: financial statements, sales reports, and market share data. Our philosophy with the Leadership and Management Program is that content has to be applicable to your organization, not a hypothetical one.
Once everyone arrives at Jake Johnson’s warehouse office in North Scottsdale, the work begins in earnest. The setting is casual and comfortable by design because the conversations that need to happen there aren’t always easy ones. Participants have the opportunity to make long term peer connections with other professionals who understand their challenges.
The first day and a half centers on human skills. Participants dig into their talent insights assessments, learning not just how they’re wired as individuals, but how their natural leadership tendencies and their blind spots show up when they’re managing a team. As Vince puts it, there is no DISC style that is better than another. The goal is self-awareness, not a ranking. And critically, the assessment is never meant to be a crutch. True growth requires stepping outside your comfort zone, and the program challenges participants to do exactly that.
The second half shifts to the financial fundamentals, the nuts and bolts of managing a funeral home. This is where Johnson Consulting Group’s deep bench of industry expertise shines. Working through benchmarks, expense categories, case mix analysis, and budget construction, participants start connecting the dots between how they lead their people and how their business performs financially. One moment that consistently resonates: understanding what it actually costs to serve a single family. For many, that number is genuinely revelatory.
One of the most common complaints about professional development is the “conference high” problem. Participants leave energized, get back to the funeral home, take ten calls, and everything learned quietly fades into the background.
The Leadership and Management Program is designed around that failure mode. Following the three-day workshop, every participant enters a four-month individual coaching engagement. Monthly meetings are focused not on what Johnson Consulting Group thinks your firm needs, but on what you believe needs to change. The goal is hand-in-hand implementation because identifying what needs to change is the easy part. Actually enacting change is where most people get stuck.
A virtual “class reunion” brings the program attendees back together to share what has worked, what has not worked, and what lessons can benefit the group going forward. It’s a peer learning model that doesn’t end when the luggage gets unpacked.
By working with real numbers from real funeral home businesses, Vince and the other facilitators have identified patterns that show up again and again. The most common? A misunderstanding of the high fixed-cost structure of traditional funeral homes and what that means when a growing percentage of cases are direct cremations.
Many firms fall into the trap of believing that more call volume always solves the problem, when in reality, strategic pricing and disciplined budgeting are the levers that drive sustainable profitability. Managing financials month-to-month against a budget rather than by gut feel or checking account balance gives leaders the visibility to make timely decisions before underperformance becomes a crisis.
When asked which tool participants use most after returning home, Vince’s answer is simple: meeting agenda templates. Not because the other tools aren’t valuable, but because so much of what holds funeral home teams back is the absence of structured, consistent communication. Regular one-on-ones, staff meetings, performance reviews, daily huddles are the unglamorous building blocks of a high-functioning workplace culture.
Culture, Vince notes, is something alive. Like any living thing, it needs inputs to grow: clear expectations, effective communication, and accountability. Both the positive recognition that reinforces great behavior and the constructive accountability that raises the floor.
The leadership gap in our profession is real, and it isn’t getting smaller. But programs like this one remind me why I’m proud to be part of this work and why investing in the next generation of funeral home leaders is one of the best things our profession can do.
If you’d like to learn more about the Leadership and Management Program or register for an upcoming session, reach out directly to Vince Roberge at vroberge@johnsonconsulting.com or visit https://www.johnsonconsulting.com/services/jcg-academy/
Join me on March 18th at 2:00 PM Eastern for the next Johnson Consulting Conversations, where I’ll be sitting down with Ed Defort, Publisher and Editorial Director at the National Funeral Directors Association, to discuss NFDA’s annual Consumer Awareness and Preferences Study. You won’t want to miss it.
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