Start at the top
If you want to bring a new brand to life, you need to define what your brand will stand for. In order to do that, you need to set the example from the top. Your managers and employees will breathe life into your new image, but they won’t be able to take a first step without a detailed and workable plan of action from upper management.
When Swedish first took over as president and CEO of Trinity Health nearly six years ago, he quickly identified the people who needed to hear his vision first: the people on the top level of the organization along with him. Those are the managers he could hold directly accountable for accepting and promoting his future vision for the health system.
“Early in my career, our key executive leaders totaled probably 40,” Swedish says. “I first had to communicate my beliefs and my definitions of leadership, my standards of excellence as a new CEO, and then I put the questions to them. Given what they now know of what they represent and knowing my expectations of what success looks like, how do you establish this culture imperative that leadership first strives to understand, and then strives to achieve?”
He wanted to take ownership of the transformation of the company.
“Obviously, I had a lot of influence behind the design and the thinking of it,” he says. “I wanted to provide them with the guidance that would get all of us to a common understanding of our destiny as an organization.”
The ultimate product of Swedish’s collaboration with his direct reports was a brand definition known as “unified enterprise ministry,” known commonly throughout the organization as UEM.
“Unity is a standard that we strive for, to help overcome this natural disconnectedness of a large-scale organization,” he says. “The word ‘enterprise’ was carefully chosen — that tells you it is all about complex organizations taking risk, which has historically not been a goal that health care organizations have strived for. Ministry, by definition, means to serve. As a faith-based organization, that is a very critical statement of fact and commitment. So when you put that all together, the unified enterprise ministry is our brand, and it represents our culture as risk takers with a desire to overcome the natural fragmentation that occurs in large organizations.”
