What Does Your Culture Look Like?

I was asked this question at a recent speech. “Describe your culture.” It was a thought provoking question. I mean, we have designed and built our culture around the framework of core values, our painted picture and purpose. But what does it look like? What does it feel like?

I thought about walking through our front door to the Nurse Next Door “Heart Quarters”. What do I see? What do I feel?

Liveliness. Energy. Happiness. Creativity. Caring and kindness. Fun.

And then I thought about it a bit more deeply. “Self governing” was what I said next. And then I described what I meant by this.

In our culture, our people have unfettered access to information. We don’t restrict what you can and can’t see. You want to know how much money we made last year? We have open book financials so that everyone can know the answer to financial questions. Through our daily huddles our people get to hear, on a daily basis, our strategy that is going to help us execute on our top goals for the year. Through our huddle you get to share what problems you are having that day. Through our quarterly updates, you get to understand how we as a company are tracking in terms of progress to our annual goals. And also where we failed to execute. And through our painted picture everyone knows and understands exactly where we are headed, what we are working toward, and how we are going to get there. Our vision isn’t inside of our leader’s heads; it is out in the open, for everyone to see and understand.

And when you provide your team access to this kind of information, it starts to empower them to make the right decisions. It builds a level of trust that cant be built if you don’t.

And because we have such strong core values, you don’t always have to defer to your “boss”, or the “rules”. Instead you defer to our core values and principles. They always point you in the right direction of what decision you should make.

And so we have a culture of self governance. And the beauty of this? There is universal vigilance in our culture. Everyone on our team is responsible for our culture. Know one tolerates slacking, no one tolerates a wrong culture fit.

So, our people govern their own actions, and in turn, they self govern our own culture. All because we have culture inspired by our core values. Which makes Nurse Next Door such a great place to work.

Sure makes my job easier. And fun.