Healthcare Design - August 2019 - 58

The

Center

RETURN ON
INVESTMENT

Building a strong corporate culture is key to
staying nimble in a changing marketplace
By Debra Levin

ELL BEFORE I read my first management book

or earned a graduate degree in organizational
leadership, it was clear to me that people want
to be a part of something that brings them a
sense of fulfillment. It's not rocket science. At
the 10,000-foot level, most organizations are
the sum of their people, and the environment
created for those people will either support
and encourage them to reach their fullest potential or reduce them down to
a smaller version of themselves. A healthy culture is jet fuel for an organization with a strong mission and dedicated employees.
That's why I've always taken the culture of The Center for Health Design very seriously-as seriously as managing the bottom line; in many
ways, even more so. It all starts with hiring the right people and not getting in their way. We have some of the brightest minds working at The
Center, people not only engaged in their
daily work but invested in the larger mission
NEW DESIGN PROJECTS
of industry change. Providing autonomy yet
support, offering opportunities for explorOFFER AN IDEAL TIME TO
ing areas of personal interest, and not having
ASSESS AND REWRITE A
hard lines on mechanics like work hours and
PROVIDER'S CULTURE.
process but rather quality and outcomes all
help to keep people connected and make sure
that The Center is the culmination of a collective voice and not a singular
one. Turning around a toxic culture is far more challenging than turning
around a negative bottom line and can take much longer. There's little
hope of sustainable profitability without a healthy culture where all are
invested in its success.
Management guru Peter Drucker put it best when he said, "Culture
eats strategy for breakfast." Until we move to a workforce composed
mainly of robots, you can invest all you want into your business strategy,
but without the people and culture in place to achieve and maintain that
direction, things are doomed.

AUGUST 2019

HCDMAGAZINE.COM

In healthcare design, we've frequently pointed to culture as key to leveraging the investment in capital building projects. The culture
of a work environment drives the behavior of
employees, which in turn directly impacts patient care. Because corporate culture grows
and evolves over time, embarking on a new design project offers an ideal opportunity to also
assess and possibly rewrite the culture of an
organization, if needed.
Leadership is paramount in setting culture.
I've had myriad CEOs proudly walk me through
their newly built projects, and I'm always impressed by leaders who stop a tour to greet an
employee by name or bend down to pick up
a piece of trash from the floor. Spending the
resources on a new building without making
sure the culture champions the same goals the
building was designed to support is like rowing
in two different directions at the same time.
Corporate culture, when teamed with the
built environment, directly impacts quality, process, and performance. For example,
in the 1980s when our industry moved from
a physician-centric healthcare culture to a
patient-centric model of healthcare delivery,
new designs had to be created to support that
change, such as patient and family kitchens to
allow access to favorite foods and nurses' stations that minimized barriers to encourage
patients and families to comfortably interact
with staff.
All indicators are pointing to dramatic shifts
in our healthcare system in the next decade,
as technology and new treatment modalities
allow for options and opportunities not yet
available in our current healthcare system.
Add to the mix 74 million aging baby boomers
with greater expectations than their parents'
generation, 71 million millennials who grew
up with technology and social media at their
fingertips, and a healthcare financial model
that's no longer sustainable, and it's clear that
our industry is ripe for change. Having a clear
definition of a healthcare institution's values
and being engaged in a way that supports culture change will be critical to capitalizing on
this evolution and maximizing outcomes. 
Debra Levin is president and CEO of The Center for
Health Design. She can be reached at D L E V I N @
H E A LT H D E S I G N . O R G .

http://www.HCDMAGAZINE.COM

Healthcare Design - August 2019

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Healthcare Design - August 2019