Build a Culture of Ownership
The Values and Culture Project
A structured process for building a culture of ownership on a foundation of values
Culture does not change unless and until people change. A Values and Culture Project fundamentally transforms the culture of healthcare organizations by helping your people be better people. In today’s turbulent, uncertain and hypercompetitive world, it’s not enough to just hold people accountable. In this environment, you need leadership in every corner, not just in the corner office. You need a Culture of Ownership to enhance clinical quality and patient safety, employee engagement and patient satisfaction, and to be a great place to work to enhance recruiting and retention.
From: A Culture of Accountability
- People can only be held accountable for what they have been assigned to do – not for taking, or not taking, initiative.
- Accountability implies low trust and punitive consequences.
- You cannot hold people accountable for compassion, pride, loyalty, and joy, and trying to do so will almost always have a perverse effect.
- A culture of accountability is transactional.
No one ever changes the oil in a rental car!
To: A Culture of Ownership
- A “Proceed Until Apprehended” mindset where people go above and beyond what they are accountable for.
- Ownership implies high trust and positive mentoring.
- Owners treat others with respect and empathy, take pride in their work and in themselves, and are loyal to their colleagues and their organizations.
- A Culture of Ownership is transformational.
You don’t have to hold people’s feet to the fire (accountability) when they are willing to walk across hot coals on their own (ownership).
A Values and Culture Project is a long-term commitment to building a Culture of Ownership –
not a program of the month. Each project is custom-tailored and constructed around this general process.
Assess
- Critical review of your statement of values and culture philosophy, including how it is presented on your website, in your recruiting materials, and is enculturated into organizational practices.
- The validated VCI-17 Culture Assessment Survey complements other employee engagement surveys and gives you a unique perspective on problem areas and opportunities for improvement.
- The Cultural Blueprinting Toolkit™ helps you design and build your Invisible Architecture™ for a more positive Culture of Ownership.
- Follow-up surveys measure progress toward meeting goals.
“The Culture Assessment Survey gave our leadership team an objective and unvarnished window into how our people perceive our culture, quantified the collective impact of negative attitudes and behaviors on patient satisfaction and financial performance, and helped us identify key opportunities for positive culture change. It was an essential first step for galvanizing our team for the values and culture journey we are taking with Values Coach.”
Jamie Wiggins, Senior Vice President and Chief Nursing Officer
Children’s Hospital of New Orleans
Inspire
- A custom printing of the new 4th edition of The Florence Prescription: From Accountability to Ownership with a foreword from your leadership team creates common cultural expectations.
- Posting The Florence Challenge™ Certificate of Commitment establishes standards for a workplace that is emotionally positive, self empowered, and fully engaged.
- The Pickle Pledge™ and The Pickle Challenge™ help to eradicate toxic emotional negativity.
- The seven promises of The Self Empowerment Pledge™ and the 21-module PledgePower™ course create a mindset of initiative and resilience.
- “Lion in the Mirror” presentations give your people practical and proven tools for self-mastery, self-confidence, and goal achievement.
- The Twelve Core Action Values™, a 60-module course on values-based life and leadership skills, inspires your people to do their best by being their best.
At Children’s Hospital of New Orleans, Joe’s 90-minute “Lion in Your Mirror” course is an integral element
of the Quality and Safety program as one element of 3-year Values and Culture Project.
Engage
All managers complete a 2-day course to become Certified Values Coach Mentors (CVCM) and learn how to use The Twelve Core Action Values to be better leaders, coaches, and mentors.- An eclectic group of associates completes a 4-day course to become Certified Values Coach Trainers (CVCT).
- All associates complete a 2-day course on The Twelve Core Action Values that is team-taught by the CVCT crew where the focus of Day One is on building character and the focus of Day Two is on achieving goals.
- Special efforts are made to engage medical staff, board, volunteers and other important constituencies.
- Values Coach supports the organization in engaging and sharing with a broader audience, including employee family members, local school systems, the business community, and/or others as appropriate.
“The Values Trainers at Midland Health and Midland Independent School District have, through their teaching and their examples, have had a highly positive impact on the cultures at both organizations. Just as inspiring has been seeing the personal commitments they have made, and how so many of them have changed their lives in quite profound ways.”
Alisha Acosta, Director of Patient Experience
Midland Health, Midland, Texas
Sustain
- The Pickle Pledge, The Self Empowerment Pledge and PledgePower course, and other elements of the Culture of Ownership program are woven into daily huddles, leadership messages, physical facilities, and in other ways consistently reinforced.
- Culture of Ownership and The Twelve Core Action Values are included in new employee orientation.
- A small group of Master Certified Values Coach Trainers are prepared to continue The Twelve Core Action Values and Culture of Ownership training in a self-sustaining manner.
- Values Coach can support the creation of custom publications, training resources, web pages, social media and other initiatives to keep the spark glowing.
- Fulfilling the requirements to earn the INSPIRED Award for Values and Culture Excellence inspires ongoing commitment to cultural enhancement and to personal and professional development.
“FCH will remain committed to The Twelve Core Action Values in the years to come. These values are visible on a daily basis in our hallways and observable in conversations with patients, families, and co-workers. They have shaped our culture of positivity, ownership, and resilience.”
Chris Nichols, Chief Executive Officer
Fillmore County Hospital, Geneva, Nebraska
(From the hospital newsletter, summer 2018)
For more than 20 years, Values Coach has exclusively and obsessively focused on helping
healthcare organizations be better at what they do by helping their people be better at being who they are.
Our Guiding Insights
- Because culture is shaped by the collective attitudes and behaviors of the people who work there, culture will not change unless and until people change.
- People will not fundamentally change unless they are inspired by their own personal values, but most people are not clear about what those values are.
- The more people are clear about their own values, the more committed they will be to the values of their organization (Kouzes and Posner), but they need help in clarifying their true values and new techniques to do a better job of living those values.
- Organizational values define strategy but personal values shape culture; therefore, one of the best investments an organization can make is in personal values training.
Our Commitment
Values Coach remains a small and tightly focused company that works with a very select clientele so that we can do whatever it takes to achieve an outstanding outcome.
Our Promise
Your commitment to a Values and Culture Project will result in a culture transformation that has a positive impact on quality and safety, employee engagement and patient satisfaction, productivity and financial performance, your reputation for being a great place to work and in which to receive care and, most important, on the lives of the people who work with you.
“Our engagement with Values Coach has resulted in substantial productivity savings, measurably enhanced morale, and record high patient satisfaction scores, but the most important benefit has been the impact on helping individual employees change their lives for the better.”
