It has been over 14 months since I have been able to sit amongst my books. 

 

You see, my wife and I sold our house in town of 21 years and moved to a one-bedroom apartment while we continued our plans to build a new home designed by my wife’s brother, Dan. Well, one delay led to another and we ended up firing our first builder and signing a contract with a second general contractor months after we had intended to start building. All this occurred while my books, many on anthropology, sociology, philosophy, management, and art collected over decades of study and research, sat in tightly packed boxes in our garage. 

 

I had kept out a few books to reread, like Julian Jaynes’s 1976 mind-bending The Origin of Consciousness in the Break-down of the Bicameral Mind, but the majority of these volumes were kept locked away for what I had hoped would be a brief period. 

 

Ah, my.

 

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As part of a leadership team of a former employer, I was told to read a book with a seemingly trite title of Why Should Anyone Be Led by You? authored by Rob Goffee and Gareth Jones and published by the Harvard Business Review Press. It was essentially many case studies and interviews across a wide spectrum of leaders and organizational experts. 

 

As with any required reading assignments, I started my reading as drudgery, but I became more engaged by reading the values quoted by one of my favorite observers of the American Scene, Studs Terkel:

 

We have a right to ask of work that it include meaning, recognition, astonishment, and life.  (p. 74)

 

And the conclusions drawn by the authors of this book including:

 

Authentic leaders require authentic followers—followers who care enough about the overarching purpose to challenge the leader’s position if they feel his or her judgment is impaired.  Further, leaders themselves must encourage strong followers.  (p. 211)

 

I began to wonder why the organization I was with then didn’t have published values and what cultural implications have I missed with all my staff and me performing our assigned duties off campus. Without explicitly stated values, I was taught as a social scientist to default to culture. Culture, of course, is ideas, meanings, knowledge, and, yes, values, conscious and unconscious, shared by a community of people. Unfortunately, I was estranged from the hospital culture, and Culture, to quote management guru Peter Drucker, eats strategy for breakfast. 

 

Not seeing the plate quite yet, that was strike two on me.

 

Now rereading this book and noting my frequent underlining and my notes in the margins, I can see clearly that I was becoming enlightened and aware and upset and disgusted and cheated and confused. 

 

Yes, I began to see that the organization I worked for at the time and I had different values. Furthermore, without a values statement, the organization and I made some assumptions about the other. This apparent organizational void could be violated and be used by those with their own personal agenda.

 

Ah, yes. And people do want to believe the worse about others.

 

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Values or a value statement is another banner, like the mission and the vision statement that organizations fly at the masthead of efforts and enterprises in which they intend to continue or to undertake. 

 

Values are simply an expression of what an organization believes. Some organizations will incorporate a code of ethics along with their values statement. This code is a brief statement in how they intend to put their values into practice.

 

Unlike the mission and the vision statement, however, values are not always explicitly stated. And yet, stated values may reveal more about an organization’s personality and approach as well as give direction to strategic planning and daily action. 

 

It is too easy for many of us managing daily operations, often on the fly from one crisis to the next, not to think about the values, if there are any.

 

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There are organizations, however, that do publish their values. Here is a selection:

 

Ben and Jerry’s has a product mission statement, a social mission statement, and an economic mission statement followed by detailed explanations and five value statements in how those missions will be fulfilled.

 

Coach has the following “core values” with detailed descriptions:

•       The Brand is Our Touchstone
•       Customer Satisfaction is Paramount
•       Innovation Drives Winning Performance
•       Our Success Depends on Collaboration

 

Disney ranks its order of Values: Safety, Courtesy, The Show, and Efficiency.

 

Mary Free Bed Rehabilitation Hospital in Grand Rapids, Michigan, uses a series of bullet points:

 

•                 Focus on patient care
•                 Strive for excellence
•                 Collaborate to achieve results
•                 Take responsibility for performance
•                 Are truthful and respectful
•                 Embrace innovation

 

One exceptional example is Mercy Health St. Mary’s also in Grand Rapids, Michigan, which has a mission, a vision statement, and a promise along with the following core values and guiding behaviors:

 

•                 REVERENCE – We honor the sacredness and dignity of every person.
•                 COMMITMENT TO THOSE WHO ARE POOR – We stand with and serve those who are poor, especially those most vulnerable.
•                 JUSTICE – We foster right relationships to promote the common good, including sustainability of earth.
•                 STEWARDSHIP – We honor our heritage and hold ourselves accountable for the human, financial and natural resources entrusted to our care.
•                 INTEGRITY – We are faithful to who we say we are.

 

Guiding Behaviors

•                 We support each other in serving our patients and communities
•                 We communicate openly, honestly, respectfully and directly
•                 We are fully present
•                 We are all accountable
•                 We trust and assume goodness in intentions
•                 We are continuous learners

 

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As much as I like the values of Mary Free Bed Rehabilitation Hospital and of St. Mary’s Hospital, you can see even in this small sample, that published values are not just the domain of nonprofits and the caring professions. 

 

Published and discussed values bring clarity to how work is performed by removing ambiguity. 

 

Wouldn’t life be a little better if we could perform our duties at work without making assumptions?

 

How do you make decisions about where you go for your health care?

It is a given that everyone will need health care or the services of a hospital.  What isn’t a given is that everyone will chose your organization. 

I recall what I deem as a successful marketing trip was one I made to a small physician’s office along with some members of my professional team.  I arranged this luncheon meeting with the physician and his staff because I was puzzled why this physician rarely used our clinic.  We were the closest office to what I assumed was his patient population and we had plenty of openings for new patients.  Along with my staff, I brought a great lunch for everyone there. 

After the usual discussions about things we had in common—e.g., weather and my presentation—I could see that the physician had one eye on the door and was preparing to develop his excuse to depart.  Earlier walking through the hallways to get to the meeting room, I had noticed wall hangings of local Native American Indian art.  Taking the conversation in a new direction, I mentioned the physician’s art and that I had worked as an archaeologist as an undergraduate student and told him about some of our sites, findings, and my dealings with the local tribes.  The physician’s eyes lit up and we talked until it was impossible for him to ignore his afternoon patients. 

On the drive back to my office, I wondered what would be the results of this unusual meeting.  As I was preparing to leave the office to my next appointment, the office medical secretary reported that we had two new referrals from the physician we had just visited less than an hour before.  Clearly this marketing trip could be easily measured and was time and money well spent.

A slam dunk for this referral-directed marketing approach!

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Gone now are the days that community hospitals could expect their community to go to them for help.  Also gone are patients accepting a referral from the family physician without question or without an Internet search for other options. 

It is now the norm that people will do their own referrals (thank you very much!) for the best care at the best prices and they are willing to drive the extra miles if need be.  This approach of taking more responsibility for one’s health care seems to reflect the desires of both the ever-increasingly-better-informed patient and their health care payer.

This, of course, demands a paradigm shift in the traditional approach of marketing health care to maintain what market share you have now and what you need to do to grow new business.  A successful marketing plan can no longer be strictly focused on physicians and nurse case managers as it once was when professional referrals drove new patients and revenue.  Health care marketing is more challenging now and demands a multi-faceted and all-inclusive approach.  Fortunately there are successful examples out there. 

In an earlier piece I discussed the importance of taking one’s organization’s mission, vision, and values to the streets and articulating them in the form of storytelling.  This is a powerful and meaningful approach that has been proven to stick in the minds of physicians and patients alike.  This is brand management in action and helps differentiate your organization from your competition.  And like an effective mission statement, keep your message to whomever you are seeking to make a connection; also, make it concise and easy to remember.

Regardless to whom you are directing your compact and easy-to-remember message, along with knowing and living the values and mission of your organization, make sure you have your facts straight.  Making stuff up and hoping you don’t get caught is not even an option with everyone having easy Internet access.  Always verify your data and take as long as you need to be satisfied with your resources and your information.

Retailers have long recognized the importance of reaching out to their customers and then holding onto to their business.  This is a new lesson for us who have been focusing on the traditional referral sources of providers and hospital discharge planners; intermediaries or gatekeepers, if you will.  Retailers know they have to connect directly with customers by:

• Raising awareness of services with print ads in newspapers and magazines, billboards, television commercials, and mailers.
• Making it easy for customers to connect with information on location, hours, and a telephone number via Internet website and Smart Phone. 
  • I would recommend going one step further and provide a prominent telephone number that connects customers to an individual that has been trained to answer all questions that may come up.  Furthermore, post that person’s name and position to truly begin a relationship.  Wow your customers and differentiate yourself from your competition with the best service even before they step in the door.  Don’t ever go cheap when positioning the right people to take calls and give out information.
  • Providing consistent and timely follow-up to everyone and with every call.

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Measuring the success of your marketing efforts is a must! 

If you can’t show a return on your investment, why bother?  Depending on the nature of your marketing campaign here are a few ways you can measure its success by:

• Increase in referrals for services
• Increase in website hits
• Increase in revenue trends
• Increase in public awareness of your services via polling.

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I have always found marketing to be fun, especially when meeting people face-to-face. 

I take time to prepare myself for how I want to present and I get to know my product or service so that I can talk about it with knowledge and pride.  I have, however, learned to read my audience and be ready to find a unique way to find a thread of connection and be ready to run with it.  You never know when you may have to talk about marathon times or the Hopewell along the Grand River. 

As a leader, how do you know that your performance is meeting your organization’s expectations? How do you lead with honesty and integrity and then, when in doubt, know where to look for direction?  If you don’t know your organization’s mission, vision, and values take a moment to look.

Your organization’s mission sets a standard for behavior and leadership.  Furthermore, It is the glue that binds all employees and gives direction in making plans.  It is a compact statement, maybe under twenty-four words, is easy to remember, and includes your guiding core values.  Here are some mission statements, as concise as eight words, from nonprofit organizations that I find compelling:

Lifestrong: To inspire and empower people affected by cancer.

Wounded Warrior Project: To honor and empower wounded warriors.

Oxfam: To create lasting solutions to poverty, hunger, and social injustice.

Cleveland Clinic: To provide better care of the sick, investigation into their problems, and further education of those who serve.

The U.S. Fund for UNICEF fights for the survival and development of the world’s most vulnerable children and protects their basic human rights.

AARP: To enhance quality of life for all as we age. We lead positive social change and deliver value to members through information, advocacy and service.

Leukemia & Lymphoma Society: Cure leukemia, lymphoma, Hodgkin’s disease and myeloma, and improve the quality of life of patients and their families.

National Multiple Sclerosis Society: We mobilize people and resources to drive research for a cure and to address the challenges of everyone affected by MS.

Mayo Clinic: To inspire hope and contribute to health and well-being by providing the best care to every patient through integrated clinical practice, education and research.

Susan G Komen for the Cure is fighting every minute of every day to finish what we started and achieve our vision of a world without breast cancer.

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Compact and inspirational?  Absolutely.  The words in these missions are carefully chosen and clear in order to set a context; these mission statements can direct action plans and to help prioritize tasks and options when there is uncertainty and ambiguity.  They explain the “Why” the organization exists.  You can see why it is so important to get the mission statement right. 

Vision statements look toward the future and what the organization is striving to become.  Values are added to provide the “How” the mission and the vision will be accomplished and a template for plans, objectives, and action steps.  Furthermore, values define the organization’s character.

Mary Free Bed Rehabilitation Hospital in Grand Rapids, Michigan provides a good example of keeping the Mission, Vision and Values succinct, easy to remember, and service oriented:

 

Mission:  Restoring hope and freedom through rehabilitation.

 

Vision:  To be a national leader in high value rehabilitation and post-acute care, and to develop an integrated system of care throughout Michigan.

 

Values:  At Mary Free Bed, we:

• Focus on patient care
• Strive for excellence
• Collaborate to achieve results
• Take responsibility for performance
• Are truthful and respectful
• Embrace innovation

 

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In leading marketing efforts, I have found it imperative in dealing with the public to know my organization’s mission, vision, and values.  I would go as far as to state that if you want to have any traction in building a new relationship, a new contract, or simply wanting to be viewed as credible, you need to live and talk about your mission and values.  I have always made sure to have true stories to share that exemplifies how my organization puts our mission and values to work:  I believe that this approach is brand management in action.  I have found this approach an effective tool in dealing with people across the spectrum:  physicians, hospital administrators, board members, athletic directors, and in interviewing candidates for new positions.   

My experience has taught me that my organization’s values need to be taught to your new staff, repeated in your team meetings, and emulated by you for you to have the credibility to lead in your organization.   By living the missions and values like those noted above, brings an honesty, integrity, and transparency to your practice as a manager.  This practice prevents what I would call an ambush when dealing with issues that may come between you and your staff.

There are, of course, those managers in all businesses who find it easier to wield power by withholding information or by using intimidation.  Maybe it is because of insecurity or uncertainty that they feel that they cannot lead without having a “leg up” on their staff.  Whatever the reason, if you practice following your organization’s mission and values, your actions will have credibility and preempt this unsavory practice.  Often forming peer groups can be helpful for those managers who struggle with leading teams.  Here, one can share frustrations and look for answers without feeling threatened.

Granted, leadership can be most challenging with teams composed of professionals who are well educated, questioning, and assertive.  Personally, I love these kinds of teams.  I look forward to learning something new every day and this is the product of forming teams of this caliber and by you keeping an open mind.   And it this kind of relationship that makes the above organizations’ missions real for everyone involved.