William “Biff” Comte would rather be the tortoise than the hare. He knew the path to profitability at AccentCare Inc. wouldn’t be quick or easy, especially if he was going to involve employees in the process. But he thought steady consensus-building would be the surest route to success.
“This isn’t a race,” he says. “We’d rather be the turtle and get there than be the rabbit and run out of energy after a couple of months. You’ve got to play for the long term.”
When he stepped to the starting line, taking over as chairman, president and CEO in 2003, Comte saw a $40 million in-home health care company losing money fast. By the time he got there, the corporate office had seen significant turnover. And metrics were almost unheard of — to the point that he wasn’t sure what the remaining employees were doing every day.
The venture-backed start-up began in private-paid personal care but hadn’t decided exactly what it wanted to be when it grew up. As a health care veteran, Comte knew the company would need to broaden its approach by getting involved with government payers to enter the skilled nursing arena for programs like Medicare.
So he began the process of weaving feedback from more than 10,000 employees into his own observations so he could form a clear picture of what he was working with — and how he could use that to get where he wanted to go.
“We knew that we needed to go in that direction, but it’s one step at a time and until we knew where we were, we couldn’t figure out where to go,” Comte says. “So we spent a lot of time talking to the employees.”