What does it mean to have a “culture of value”? We’ve been exploring this question for some time and suspect that we will continue exploring it well into the future.
Across the past 18-24 months, we’ve discussed flexible cultures, kindness cultures, quality cultures, and many more cultural attributes. The next frontier is a culture that supports a mission of ‘Value’. Just like we need to align our care ecosystem with the value drive of payers and referral partners, we need to align the internal expectations of each team member for this same drive.
Installing Culture is Different than Installing Software
As we learned on the March 15 Think Tank, organizations that are further down the path realize, without the proper emphasis, that culture tends to trail all other capabilities in the value stack. This stands to reason: For years the emphasis was on number of visits to the detriment of the clinical efficacy of each visit. And our non-clinical services have been measured in hours rendered versus services rendered. In short: We need to flip the switch from “showing up” to “showing impact.”
A foundational premise of operations management is that we must understand “what is” before we can determine how to get to “what could be.” And, let’s be honest, what we are today is volume-oriented. To prove that, the average business need only ask themselves one question: How much of our margin today comes from value? Even if you say 10-20% – which would make you far and away a value-based leader – this means 80-90% of your margin is from volume.
Culture is a Verb – Not a Noun
Once you look in the mirror and accept your volume identity, here are the two steps for getting moving. Step one: Change your use of culture from noun to verb. As in, today you are going to culture – actively and intentionally. Step two: Set about reculturing ingrained behaviors, processes, and practices away from the volume mission and towards the value mission. Soup to nuts we need to reimagine how, when, where, and by whom the work can best be done.
This is How We Culture
Modeling the value culture as leaders will mean recasting any number of conversations happening both inside and external to your organization. We’re only going to adopt different behaviors, processes, and practices after getting into the right mindset. For example:
Of the four key layers of the value stack – Culture, Data, Performance, Integration – we know culture is the foundational layer. And we know it’s not something that can be simply installed after the other infrastructure is in place. As it turns out, culture is the horse pulling the rest of the value cart.