Reinforce the message
As the leader of your organization, you want your vision and mission to become items that can remain in place and continue to serve as guiding principles after your departure. Making that happen takes reinforcement on a daily and weekly basis, even after you believe the vision and mission have taken root with your employees.
“You have to understand that you want your organization to keep growing whether you’re run over by a bus or not,” Covert says. “I don’t want my people to have confidence in Michael Covert. I want them to have confidence in themselves, confidence that they’re going to achieve our vision no matter what. When you can get an organization to that point, that is when you can become very successful.”
A key element of reinforcement is recognition. Many companies recognize the top sales performers and others who drive profits, but Covert says you should make it a point to recognize those who continue to help drive your vision, your values and your culture.
At Palomar Pomerado, employees are recognized for their service to patients and their service to each other. One employee-developed program, “Cause for Applause,” allows employees to write a note to Covert about a co-worker who has helped them. Once he gets the card, Covert writes a personalized thank you and it goes down to a supervisor who can recognize and celebrate both the nominator and nominee.
“You do need to have formal awards to recognize people for these kinds of contributions,” Covert says.
And recognition needs to have specific qualities in order for it to serve as a reinforcement mechanism for an organization’s mission and values.
“Recognition has to be meaningful to the staff,” Covert says. “Recognition doesn’t mean what we in management think it means. It’s a lot like mentorship. It needs to be frequent, accu
rate, specific and timely. You need to reward people at the time when good things occur. Maybe you can still give someone an award six months later and it will still mean something, but it won’t have the same effect.
“When you’re putting together an awards or recognition program, you need to have some large awards that people can shoot for, but you also need to remember to give them smaller awards that are meaningful to your people in areas in which they work.”
Reinforcing the mission of a company doesn’t entirely fall on the shoulders of the person at the top. Covert relies on his direct reports and managers farther down the ladder to keep reinforcing the messages that start in his office. Covert expects each manager at Palomar Pomerado to sit down with his or her respective staffs in regular discussion meetings.
“This type of communication happens at each level of the organization,” he says. “We’ll do our own employee engagement activities to test where we are, and then we have the expectation of our managers to sit down with the people on their staffs, talk about the issues they have and how management can go about supporting their efforts to do their jobs better. That happens on a week-to-week, month-to-month basis.”
The meetings are supplemented by periodic electronic communication via the health system’s intranet.
“Each week, we’ll have on our intranet the ability to communicate via a blog,” Covert says. “People can use that to come back to us with issues and ideas. But our managers are also meeting with our people face to face on their daily rounds. I’m meeting with people in the town halls that I put on. So keeping those messages about mission and vision in front of people comes back to being responsive to them and their questions and input regarding communication issues.”
Covert’s approach to maintaining the vision and mission for Palomar Pomerado has helped the health system grow in spite of the struggling economy. The system generated $1.4 billion in gross revenue in 2008, up from $895 million in 2004.
Covert says that, at the end of the day, building an organization focused on a uniform mission, vision and set of values and keeping that focus over the long haul is hard work. But the ability to do so is a common quality shared by many successful executives. Ultimately, success is driven by the organization, not the people leading it.
“General Electric was successful long before Jack Welch,” Covert says. “He did things to help them become better, but a lot of success comes from the inherent workings of the organization. We’re building a new hospital with all kinds of cutting-edge facilities and equipment, but when I meet with my staff, I remind them that building new facilities might be helpful, but it’s like plastic surgery. It doesn’t necessarily make you better for any length of time.
“In the end, it’s all about the people. It’s about passing along your vision, mission and values every day. That’s what will make the difference.”
How to reach: Palomar Pomerado Health, www.pph.org
