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Health for All

Capiche Conversations: Interview with Janet Troy, Executive Director, Ashland Community Health Foundation

Posted by Capiche on
 September 25, 2023
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Interview with Janet Troy, Executive Director, Ashland Community Health Foundation, conducted by Vicki Purslow, Capiche Research Analyst and Co-founder of Majoring In.

Founded in 1977, the Foundation was established to provide a way for community members to support the work of Ashland Community Hospital. Over the past 46 years, the generosity of its donors has had an incredible impact on the variety and quality of health care services available in the community.

In 2021, the Ashland Community Health Foundation’s board of directors approved the expansion of its mission. Now, the Foundation supports community health and wellness initiatives in Ashland, Talent, and Phoenix.

ACHF Team

ACHF Team: Kathleen Mackris, Nicole Gutrich, Janet Troy, Stephanie Roland

Q: Between 1977 and 2021, the Foundation supported some innovative projects and programs at the Ashland Community Hospital. What are some of the projects that stand out most in your memory?

Janet: Through the generosity of our family of donors, we were able to touch every corner of the hospital. We were very involved in the renovation of the Emergency Department and the Family Birth Center, as well as the creation of the Chapel and Comfort Care Room. Our funding of equipment purchases allowed the hospital to have the state-of-the-art technology it needed to best serve our community. Our Foundation has supported the School Nurse Program for decades, ensuring that nurses are available when students need their care and support.

Q: I know your team was excited when the Foundation’s board of directors approved the expansion of its mission. Working with consultant Cynthia Scherr, of Scherr Management Consulting, you created a new strategic plan. What are some of the highlights of the new strategy?

Janet: Our new strategic plan guided our transition from a traditional hospital foundation to a community foundation focused on supporting health and wellness needs in Ashland, Talent, and Phoenix. One of the most significant changes made as a result of our expanded mission has been an increased focus on our grantmaking and scholarship programs. We are now awarding grants to a more diverse group of local non-profits committed to building healthier communities. We have also broadened our scholarship program to support both nursing and allied health students interested in careers in the Rogue Valley. At the same time, we have the ability to offer our donors additional opportunities to make a meaningful impact in the community through their contributions to the foundation.

ACHF Board

ACHF Board of Directors

Q: Wow – that really broadens the focus of the Foundation! How wonderful to be able to reach further into the communities of Ashland, Talent, and Phoenix to help support community-based projects! What are some of the projects that you have funded?

Janet: We focus our grantmaking on projects that create or expand health and wellness services in Ashland, Talent, and Phoenix. We tend to define health and wellness broadly, so we fund a wider range of projects designed to promote health in many settings. We value collaboration and partnerships and most of the projects we have supported involve organizations working together to create solutions. Our first round of community grants in 2022 supported La Clinica, Mercy Flights, OHRA, Rogue Valley Farm to School, Rogue Valley Mentoring, Talent Maker City, and the United Way of Jackson County.

Q: So far in 2023, ACHF has granted close to $510,000 to support health and wellness initiatives and scholarships. Please tell me more about the projects and programs you funded.

Janet: This year, we awarded grants totaling $258,000 to 11 nonprofit organizations through our community grant process. These organizations are involved in innovative partnerships that provide medical and behavioral health services, promote prevention and inclusion, support nutrition and early literacy, and more. Addressing the shortage of health care professionals is an important goal of our Foundation, and our scholarship program continues to grow each year. We have awarded almost $192,000 to 43 local students attending nursing and allied health programs through September this year. We also continue to grant funds to Asante Ashland Community Hospital and have awarded more than $60,000 to support their school nurses and lab and engineering departments.

Q: Your nursing scholarships have been a hallmark of the Foundation for years and remain central to your mission. Tell me more about your nursing scholarship program.

Janet: The William G. and Ruth T. Evans Endowed Nursing Scholarship was established in 2002 by Ruth Evans. Mrs. Evans was a retired nurse and her husband, Bill, was a retired family physician. The scholarship was created to honor Bill after his death and help address the nursing shortage in the Rogue Valley. Since its creation, more than $1.2 million in scholarships have been awarded to over 300 local students attending nursing programs at OHSU Ashland Campus at SOU and RCC.

Q: Although the Foundation continues to support its original mission, it makes sense that an expanded strategic focus would lead to renaming the Foundation and creating a new brand. You hired Capiche Consulting to help guide you through this process and continued to work with Chris Cook, Capiche’s principal, during its implementation. Who was involved with the rebranding, and what did it consist of?

Janet: The decision to expand our mission led to our consideration of a new look and feel for our Foundation, in addition to the introduction of a new name that is a better representation of who we are today. It was not a decision that our board of directors and staff arrived at easily but we are pleased with the changes we made as we embarked on this new journey. The process that Chris guided us through was thoughtful and strategic. We learned so much about the importance of creating a brand that reflected our new identity and the pieces that are part of the brand puzzle. Developing our positioning statement, brand promise, key messaging, and more was very educational and insightful.

Website on Devices

Photo by Ruby Slipper

Q: What was the next step after landing on the brand messaging tool?

Janet: There is more involved in the development of a new brand than I ever imagined. It required us to take a fresh look at our website, newsletter, signage, and even our stationery. We debated about colors, fonts, and a new logo. It was a fascinating process, and I’m very happy with the outcome.

Q: You continued to work with Chris after developing your new brand. What else did Chris help you with during that time?

Janet: Chris was very helpful in teaching us how to spread the word about our work. Initially, she helped us develop a communication plan and assisted us by writing newsletter articles and press releases. She helped us develop a media strategy and contacts so we could share our story in the most effective way. Most importantly, she gave us the tools we needed to manage this activity independently.  For me, that is one of the best gifts a consultant can give an organization.

Janet Troy

Janet Troy

Q: Looking back, what was the value in working with Capiche to complete your name change and rebranding?

Janet: We are well-versed in the field of philanthropy but not experts in brand development. Chris shared her expertise at a time when we were preparing to embrace an exciting new strategic direction that would shape our future for years to come. Her knowledge and professionalism were a real plus as we navigated unknown territory.

Q: How can people interested in community health partner with the Foundation?

Janet: There are so many ways that interested individuals and businesses can partner with us to build a healthier community. Our Patrons Campaign and Lights for Life are long-standing community traditions for giving. We accept gifts of all sizes and shapes, including donations of stock and vehicles. Some of our supporters prefer to give once or twice a year, while others prefer to set up monthly donations. Many community members have also included us in their estate plans. We now offer donors new ways to start their own named funds or endowments, and our expanded mission provides more opportunities to make a difference in our community. I encourage folks to visit our website (achfoundation.org) or contact our office (541-482-0367) to learn more about work.

ACHF Offices

ACHF Office

SERVICES CAPICHE HAS PROVIDED FOR THE ASHLAND COMMUNITY HEALTH FOUNDATION
  • Rebranding/Name Change
  • Brand Toolkit Development (Key Messages, Graphic Standards, and Style Guide)
  • Liaison with Graphic Designer and Web Developer
  • Marketing Communication Strategy
  • Media Relations, PR, and Newsletter Writing
  • Team Training
Chris shared her expertise at a time when we were preparing to embrace an exciting new strategic direction that would shape our future for years to come. —Janet Troy Click To Tweet
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Happy Customer Experience

Business Success: It’s All About EX (Experience)

Posted by Chris Cook on
 January 24, 2019
  ·  No Comments

Promise Big and Deliver Bigger

What do successful companies have in common? They all have robust, differentiated brands; fervent clients; and a culture driven by a shared vision, values, and purpose—all focused on their clients. As I’ve recently been reminded, the secret to success lies at the intersection of client experience, employee experience, and brand experience. These functions work together to deliver your firm’s brand promise and showcase your value proposition.

In this blog post, I recall a recent conversation I had with Alder Yarrow, CXO (chief experience officer) at San Francisco design agency CIBO, and inspiration from the article referenced below by Tim Asimos. I’ve got to admit, the CXO title was new to me—and I LOVE it! Here we go! Thanks, Alder and Tim!

Your brand is not a logo, label, or website—it’s your promise: At its core, a brand exists in the mind of your audience. It’s the sum of their thoughts, feelings, and experiences with your firm—the good, bad, and ugly.

Every brand, regardless of the industry, promises something. Marketing and branding should reinforce what your existing clients experience when they interact with you and offer potential clients/customers a glimpse of what they can expect.

Branding is the process of defining, conveying, and maintaining your firm’s core values and differentiators. It’s about figuring out who you are, what you stand for, and why it matters to your audience—and then reinforcing that promise in a meaningful and consistent way.

Strategic marketing promotes that promise: To successfully hold its place in the market, an organization needs a codified brand strategy. Marketing plans are fluid and change over time as new information and opportunities become available. But the brand strategy should remain intact over a long period of time. (Think how long “I ♥ New York” and “Virginia is for Lovers” have heralded these super-successful state tourism brands.)

The promise is realized through experience: Your firm’s brand promise can only be realized through the experience you serve your clients. No amount of marketing and communication can change what clients actually experience. This is why it’s critical to align brand experience and client experience.

We all can think of a brand whose marketing promises are completely incongruent from what customers actually encounter. Sadly, Gallup surveys have consistently found that most companies fail to live up to their brand promises. Experience is where your branding is either validated or discredited. So get clear on your brand promise, build your marketing strategy around it, and let customer experience be its showcase!

How’s It Going?

We’re always eager to see great brands in action, so please share your successes and best practices. Please post here or email me at chris@capiche.us. I’d also love to chat. Perhaps we can help you build a brand experience that matches your desired brand. Call me at 541.601.0114.

Here’s to your successful brand!

Note: This post was inspired by Tim Asimos’ article “The Convergence of Experience To Deliver Your Brand Promise” and a recent conversation with Alder Yarrow, CXO at CIBO.
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Branding Strategy Meeting

What’s Your Brand?

Posted by Chris Cook on
 June 20, 2018
  ·  No Comments

Branding is all the buzz and has been for some time, but branding can be confusing. What exactly is a brand? And how do you come up with your brand?

Let me answer by saying what a brand isn’t.

Your brand isn’t your logo, your colors, your fonts, or your website. These are simply reflections of your brand. Furthermore, you don’t “come up with” a brand—you uncover it. It’s what is real, honest, and believable about your organization or product.

It’s your DNA.

A brand also is the sum total of all associations made with an organization or product. It’s the good, the bad, and the ugly—the attributes that are called to mind when one thinks of your organization or product.

Every organization has existing brand associations it wants to emphasize, maintain, and even possibly lose. Brand development moves you from your current brand to your desired brand. And to be successful, your desired brand must be in sync with your organization’s values, vision, passion, and purpose.
Branding Sweet Spot

Differentiation and Integration

There are two key principles of brand development: differentiation and integration.

  • Differentiation suggests that the only sustainable market position is one in which you are offering something significantly different from and better than your competitors. These differentiators must evolve from current brand associations and be infused into the customer’s experience in real ways to be credible.

Only through research can we can identify an organization’s current brand associations and relevant differentiators—along with understanding client/customer needs and perceptions.

  • Integration means all marketing communications and activities reinforce the same core differentiators. In other words, integration requires that the organization is using one clearly defined voice across the board and up and down the line.

An organization’s brand should drive marketing strategies and all business decisions and give the organization something to live up to. For example, Apple invests millions of dollars annually to showcase its brand of innovation and high design. And Zappos’ entire culture is created to live its brand of happy employees, which leads to great customer service (and significant profits).

When your people are living your brand, their personal values are in sync with the company’s. They are happier, more productive, and your best ambassadors. Involve them from the start; get clear on values, vision, passion, and purpose; walk the talk; and enjoy your success!

SMART Brand Strategy
SIMPLE The more details we provide, the more vaguely we communicate
MEANINGFUL Must emphasize something that matters to our target audiences
ACCURATE Must truly describe the organization or product
REINFORCED Strategic business decisions must enforce the brand strategy
TANGIBLE Must be exhibited in clear ways in every customer experience

Uncover Your Brand

If you are ready to uncover your brand and solidify your company culture, give us a call at 541.601.0114 or contact us today. Let Capiche help you take your organization to the next level!

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Superhero Woman Finds Her Strengths

Identify Your Distinctive Strengths for Increased Business and Personal Success

Posted by Chris Cook on
 July 21, 2017
  ·  No Comments

What sets you apart? What is the cream that floats to the top? The icing on the cake? If someone were to ask what your top three strengths are, what would you say?

Whether you are promoting yourself or your business, you’ll excel when you know and understand your strengths—so you can put them front and center.

If you are looking for a job or promotion, you need to know your strengths. If you can’t articulate them, you can’t expect your boss or potential employer to, either.

If you are looking to grow your business, increase your client base or expand your market share, you need to know your business’ strengths. If you’re not sure of them yourself, how can you expect your clients to understand them?

Here’s a four-step process to identifying what sets you and your business apart:

  1. List your strengths. Include skills and knowledge you’ve acquired through experience and education as well as softer intrinsic strengths such as insightfulness, empathy or stellar customer service.
  2. Ask for input. Ask colleagues or clients for honest feedback.
  3. Revisit past feedback. Reread old performance reviews and think back on coaching from previous bosses (businesses can check out YELP or TripAdvisor reviews).
  4. Modify your list. Adjust your original list to reflect what you’ve learned. Make sure the strengths are specific so they are credible and useful.

Now what? Use these distinctive strengths to build your brand—either personal or business. It all follows the same formula in the end: identify and promote your strengths to the people you want to influence. BAM. Done!

A great resource for identifying personal strengths is Strengthsfinder by Gallup. I use this regularly for my coaching clients with great success. Check it out and let me know your thoughts.

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Once upon a Time on a Typewriter

Tell Me a Story

Posted by Chris Cook on
 June 19, 2017
  ·  2 Comments

We grew up on stories. We fell asleep to bedtime stories. We learned to read by deciphering stories (See Dick. See Dick run. Look, Jane. Look, look. See Dick.) Stories are what make us human. It’s how we make sense of the world, going back to Roman and Greek mythology and earlier.

To make your product or service stand out from the rest, create and tell a story. Find a way to connect with your audience. Stories connect people. They elicit emotions, and positive emotions drive sales.

Research shows there are seven distinct types of stories.

  1. Overcoming the Monster.
  2. Rebirth.
  3. Quest.
  4. Journey and Return.
  5. Rags to Riches.
  6. Tragedy.
  7. Comedy.

Which of these types of stories would be best suited to portraying your brand?

Looking at some popular brands today, two “Journey and Return” stories come to mind—TOMS and Warby Parker. According to the TOMS website, Founder Blake Mycoskie “witnessed the hardships faced by children growing up without shoes” while traveling in Argentina in 2006. “Wanting to help, he created TOMS Shoes, a company that would match every pair of shoes purchased with a new pair of shoes for a child in need.” Since then, more than 60 million children in 70 countries have gotten new shoes thanks to TOMS. In addition, TOMS has helped restore sight to more than 400,000 people in need. In 13 countries, TOMS provides prescription glasses, medical treatment or sight-saving surgery with each purchase of TOMS brand eyewear. The company has also taken on the causes of clean, sustainable drinking water and safer births.

Warby Parker’s story is told on its website. Also an eyewear retailer, Warby Parker was started out of a rebellious desire to upend the norm of expensive eyewear after one of its founders lost his glasses on a backpacking trip and couldn’t afford to replace them. Similar to TOMS, Warby Parker partners with nonprofits such as VisionSpring to distribute a pair of glasses to someone in need for each pair sold.

When I googled “top brands 2017,” a few stood out because of their stories.

Ferrari wanted me to Shift to the 12th Dimension in a two-minute video that evoked a “quest” for the speed-driven experience only a Ferrari can produce.

Nike wanted me to “Just do it”—yeah, I can “overcome the monster” of inactivity by wearing their athletic gear.

Also setting me up to “overcome the monster” was Lego. This 85-year-old brand tempted me with superheros like Spiderman and knights saving the kingdom.

Capiche’s brand is one of “rebirth,” or metamorphosis. After 25 years as a professional marketer, I found a way to combine my new coaching credentials with my love for marketing. What came about was a combination of workplace culture and branding—more specifically, helping organizations uncover and then live their brand.

What’s your unique brand story? How are you living it? Let’s talk.

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Sign Pointing to Stage

Keep Drama on the Stage—and out of the Workplace

Posted by Melissa Michaels on
 September 27, 2016
  ·  4 Comments

In the requisite Stein on Writing, publisher, writer and master editor Sol Stein reveals this secret to successful plotting: create a crucible.

If you’ve ever seen Mike Nichols’ Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, you know how compelling a crucible can be. When you pit two forces of nature like Martha (Elizabeth Taylor) and George (Richard Burton) against one another, the results are explosive.

As Stein writes, “Characters caught in a crucible won’t declare a truce and quit.… the motivation of the characters to continue opposing each other is greater than their motivation to run away.”

While such a formula makes for gripping drama, that’s the last thing you want in the workplace.

Good leaders know how to navigate conflicts, dissipate tension and redirect negative energies into positive, productive outlets. Most importantly, they themselves are not the source of drama.

Unfortunately, those leaders are rare. A recent Australian study suggests there are more villains at the top than we realize—1 in 5 CEOs may be psychopaths (versus 1 in 100 in the general population).

“Typically psychopaths create a lot of chaos and generally tend to play people off against each other,” says Nathan Brooks, the forensic psychologist who conducted the study.

A profit-driven corporate culture often propels sociopaths—who unabashedly violate ethics in pursuit of the bottom line—to positions of power, even though such behavior collectively costs companies hundreds of billions annually due to employee turnover and disengagement.

Just as the recent Wells Fargo scandal teaches us, myopic thinking may yield short-term profits but reaps incalculable damage. Sure, there are the obvious costs like $185 million in fines, $5 million in customer refunds and the potential billions in class action lawsuits from customers and the 5,300 terminated employees.

At a deeper level, however, the damage done to the Wells Fargo brand is incalculable. A bank losing the trust of its customers is tantamount to drinking Jonestown Flavor Aid.

Let’s play a word game. What do you think of when you hear Enron, Exxon and Monsanto? It’s probably fraud, Valdez and mass farmer suicides. Even when they change their names and attempt to reinvent themselves, corporations can never escape the toxic taint of corruption.

This is why it is so crucial to carefully define, protect and live your brand. From the epic to the everyday, how companies and leaders behave has lasting ramifications.

While we may not be in a position to shape the epic dimensions of our organization, all of us play a role in the everyday, and reducing drama in the workplace has widespread benefits—including boosting happiness and health, which subsequently reduces turnover, increases engagement and heightens productivity.

In this SmartBrief article, Dr. Nate Regier offers three tips for quashing office drama:

  • Practice transparency. In times of conflict, honesty is indeed the best policy. Instead of passive-aggressively venting your frustration, explain why a certain behavior is bothering you. Sidestep blame in favor of expressing your feelings. This is a common tactic in couples counseling for a reason—it reframes the concern as an expression of feeling rather than an attack and helps each understand the other’s perspective.
  • Offer your expertise. This doesn’t mean going around handing out uninvited advice. Rather, it means genuinely assessing the problem and offering to share relevant knowledge if desired—the last part being key.
  • Set realistic limits. In a conflict, identify your non-negotiables in a non-threatening manner. Once both parties have a clear understanding of the stated goals and obstacles, it’s easier to chart a path to resolution.

This kind of “compassionate accountability is key to productive relationships and communication,” writes Regier.

What are your workplace drama stories? Do you have any tips on how to cope with psychopathic bosses and smooth out tensions in the workplace?

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Wheres the Beef? Why Customer Experience Is the New Marketing

Where’s the Beef? Why Customer Experience Is the New Marketing

Posted by Melissa Michaels on
 February 19, 2016
  ·  No Comments

What motivates you to try a new product or service? Is it a million-dollar ad campaign full of sound and fury? Is it that steady stream of robo emails you keep marking as Junk? Or maybe it’s those sidebar ads that pop up based on your content browsing habits.

I’m guessing it’s none of these because you—like most of today’s consumers—have a finely attuned BS barometer. In other words, you don’t believe the hype.

Instead, you probably seek out recommendations from friends. You listen to word of mouth, and you do your research. You carefully study Amazon and Yelp reviews, looking for verified purchasers and reviews that ring true.

In a consumer world where everyone is connected, shoddy quality and poor customer service have a global ripple effect that can deliver a deathblow in minutes.

That is why, according to Experience: The Blog author Augie Ray, companies shouldn’t be so much concerned with content marketing strategies as with customer experience.

Where’s the Beef?

The days are gone when a company can glide by on glitz, buying its way into consumers’ hearts with earworm jingles and inane catchphrases. We’re inured to their tactics because we see through them.

Transparency is the new watchword. If it isn’t WYSIWYG, people tune out.

As human beings, we crave authenticity. We demand substance—from product quality to customer service, every element of the experience must deliver genuine value.

Make It Real

We want to associate with organizations that possess a deep sense of purpose and values that echo our own—companies that live their brand.

One reason Thrive Market has been so deliciously successful is they began with a clearly defined mission: “to make healthy living easy and affordable for everyone.” And the many people who care about eating healthy, living sustainably, and helping to feed hungry families have been recommending them like crazy.

Rather than jumping into social marketing campaigns, Augie Ray argues in a recent interview that companies should be “focusing on improving the customer experience and then activating trusted peer-to-peer word of mouth.”

Be All That You Can Be

Cultivating a positive customer experience is not a skin-deep exercise. It goes down to the bones of your organization—your culture.

As we’ve repeatedly explored in past blog posts, your culture is your brand; your brand is your culture. Creating a workplace that is a palpable example of your core values helps nurture those values in your employees.

I’m Lovin’ It

If you want your employees to deliver a WOW experience to customers as Zappos does (see How to Live the Brand), you need to create a culture where you’re wowing your employees.

We already know from research that having happier employees means greater productivity and superior customer service (see The Top 4 Employee Needs to Fulfill for Greater Happiness and Productivity). The question is how to get there.

Be More

Honing your leadership capacities will help you foster a healthy, happy culture, and that in turn, will build the “empathy, loyalty, and trust” Ray describes as crucial to a successful company.

Ray writes, “The importance of purposeful, ethical leadership is underscored in Edelman’s annual Trust Barometer report, which finds that the biggest gaps companies have are in attributes such as listens to customers; treats employees well; is ethical, transparent and open; and puts customers before profits.”

Just Do It

Like a Zen koan, the paradoxical truth is that by prioritizing employee happiness and customer experience over the bottom line, companies ultimately profit more. How can organizations not see the value in that?

Call 541.601.0114 or email Chris Cook to start building a healthier, happier organization today.

Note: Special thanks to one of our readers (Lisa Baehr) for sharing Augie’s interview and inspiring this article.

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Climb Every Mountain

What’s Your Theme for 2016?

Posted by Chris Cook on
 January 5, 2016
  ·  2 Comments

Here’s how to set yourself up for success in the new year.

Guess what? You get to choose the way you show up in 2016. Barring certain life circumstances, you can set the tone for personal and professional experiences. Whether you are conscious of this or not, you DO set the tone for your experiences.

Think about this as you look back on last year.

  • Was it a good year?
  • What tone did I set for the year, and how did it play out?
  • What am I grateful for, and what do I appreciate about last year?
  • What is there for me to acknowledge about myself in 2015?
  • How would I rate 2015 on a scale of 1 to 10—personally and professionally?
  • What would have made 2015 an 11 out of 10?

As you think about 2016, what tone do you want to set? How do you want to experience 2016? How do you want people to experience YOU in 2016? (Think of it as creating your personal brand.)

  • As you look ahead to 2016, what excites you?
  • What are your key goals and objectives for 2016?
  • What state of being will best serve you in 2016?
  • Where and how do you want to stretch yourself in 2016?
  • What will make 2016 an 11 out of 10 year for you, both personally and professionally?
Climb ev’ry mountain,
Ford ev’ry stream,
Follow ev’ry rainbow,
’Til you find your dream.

Finally, what is a possible theme for the year that could serve as a structure to lock in a SUCCESSFUL 2016? Think about a song, movie, book, or TV show.

I’ve given this a lot of thought, and I’ve picked a song with rich meaning and memories—Climb Ev’ry Mountain by Rodgers and Hammerstein. How well I remember going to the theater with my mom to see The Sound of Music and leaving the movie singing at the top of my lungs.

Want some help focusing in on your theme for 2016? Call 541.601.0114 or email me for a complimentary coaching session. Now’s the time to get clarity for a great new year. Cheers!

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Music Conductor Conducting the Sunset over Ocean

5 Leadership Capacities That Will Make Your Organization Shine

Posted by Chris Cook on
 October 8, 2015
  ·  No Comments

Want to be energetic? Enthusiastic? Hopeful?

Who doesn’t?!

Are people in your organization energetic, enthusiastic and hopeful?

Here’s the secret. I got it from education writer Michael Fullan, who lays out five leadership capacities in a simple way while weaving in knowledge and research from yesterday’s and today’s thought leaders.

The five critical leadership capacities Fullan describes in his book Leading in a Culture of Change are:

  1. Moral purpose

  2. Understanding change

  3. Relationships, relationships, relationships

  4. Knowledge-building

  5. Coherence-making

If you want an organization filled with people who are energetic, enthusiastic and hopeful, you’ve got to make sure your leadership team embodies these capacities in all they do—and that the entire organization is on board with the culture these capacities make up. This is essentially your organization’s brand.

The challenge for each individual is to live the brand and to let it inform every single decision made for the organization.

Moral Purpose

Moral purpose relates to three key elements necessary for a successful organization: vision, values and purpose. Successful organizations are clear on these, and their employees embody them in every action. For example, if sustainability is one of your organization’s values, you wouldn’t send out countless direct mail pieces printed on glossy unrecycled paper. If you were a public school system with a purpose to educate all students in your district, you wouldn’t discriminate against a student with disabilities or low income. Tony Hsieh used vision, value and purpose as the foundation for his world-renowned start-up Zappos. We all know how that worked out!

Understanding Change

To understand change and get others on board is tricky, and 70 percent of change initiatives fail. This is according to John Kotter, who spent 40 years researching change efforts in thousands of contexts. Do you want to know what works? In his book Leading Change, Kotter outlines the eight change accelerators. Get the book. Read it. It’s great. Why reinvent the wheel?

Relationships, Relationships, Relationships

When talking about building relationships, the first thing that comes to my mind is emotional intelligence. It’s different from IQ in that you can develop it. People with average IQ and high EQ outperform people with high IQ 70 percent of the time. In a nutshell, EQ is understanding yourself and others—combined with having personal motivation and regulation to communicate effectively and navigate relationships. It will get you $29,000 more per year, make you 58 percent more effective at your job and rank you with 90 percent of top performers.

I’ve taught classes on leading with emotional intelligence and written lots of blogs on the topic. You can read some of them here:

Want to Accelerate Your Career? The Magic Formula Equals EI Plus Coaching

What Tops the List of Lessons Learned by a Recent Master in Management Grad?

Hughesisms: Work Ethic Trumps Talent

Knowledge-Building

Knowledge-building and knowledge-sharing are critical for the growth of any person or organization. The challenge is that individuals will not engage in sharing unless they find it motivating to do so. You can encourage their motivation by making them feel valued and connecting it to your organization’s moral purpose.

“Leadership and learning are indispensable to each other.”
—John F. Kennedy

Coherence-Making

Finally, to build coherence, a leader must be relentless in the first four capacities—that means having moral purpose, understanding change, developing relationships, and building and sharing knowledge. “The Coherence Framework has four components: focusing direction, cultivating collaborative cultures, deepening learning and securing accountability,” says Fullan in Coherence: The Right Drivers in Action for Schools, Districts and Systems.

Over time, you will find the most powerful coherence will come from having worked through the ambiguities and complexities of hard-to-solve problems. You will learn as you go. Coherence binds the brand to the culture and creates the culture necessary for the organization—and its people—to flourish.

Develop Your Leadership Capacities

Capiche works with leaders and leadership teams. Let me work with you to develop the five leadership capacities to forge a strong brand and culture. Call 541.601.0114 or email me to get started today.

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Why Businesses Fail—and Succeed

Posted by Chris Cook on
 March 18, 2015
  ·  1 Comment

Adam Cuppy Presenting
Above: Adam Cuppy speaking on leadership (photo by Jim Craven; courtesy of The Southern Oregon Edge)

Why do most businesses fail? Is it lack of resources? Poor marketing? Untrained employees? Or perhaps it’s their location—the company’s too far away from the epicenter of their industry, too under the radar to get noticed.

None of the above, according to Coding ZEAL co-founder Adam Cuppy. He thinks it’s because “their leadership is very poor.” His fellow founders Sean Culver and Trever Yarrish agree.

Drawing a diagram of a snow-capped mountain, Adam explains, “Leaders tend to think they need to … stand on top of the mountain. Reality is,” he continues, “they’re the one holding it up.”

Instead of being on a power trip, leaders should practice humility and service. By switching from proclaiming to listening, managers learn valuable truths from their employees, customers and the community.

Leaders can get stuck in a circular loop, asking and then answering their own questions. This is when stagnancy occurs.

The leader who stands on the top of the mountain “always has the answer.”

Coding ZEAL turns that model upside-down. “As leaders, our responsibility is to ask questions constantly,” says Adam. “The problem is that if it’s the same person that’s answering the question, you run into a dilemma because it’s not giving an opportunity to the other people in the organization to help you answer that.”

At Coding ZEAL, every new employee becomes a partner in a way. The structure is not flat, but it’s agile and encourages creative collaboration.

Hire for Culture

The three founding partners agree culture is crucial to their success. “We hire for culture fit and we hire for empathy and we hire for capacity,” says Adam. “You don’t hire for current talent necessarily. That actually becomes an added benefit.”

Coding skills and algorithms can be taught; empathy, zealotry and excitement must come from within.

We’ve blogged about the centrality of culture to authentic branding in past articles such as Creating Your Brand from the Inside Out: Why Your Culture Comes First, and Coding ZEAL is yet one more successful example of this principle in action.

Growth

“We are only limited by our perceived constraints,” says Adam.

That optimistic philosophy has paid off. “We’re at a point now that is super exciting and fun,” says Adam. “It feels we’re constantly bursting at the seams. We’re always in that catch-22 of capacity being maxed out and needing to hire more people.”

Good leadership involves finding that sweet spot between too many and too few employees. You don’t want to grow so quickly that the culture becomes diluted, nor do you want to grow so slowly that your employees become overworked.

Pair Programming
Above: Coding ZEAL developers pair programming (photo by Jim Craven; courtesy of The Southern Oregon Edge)

Pair Programming

Guided by Kent Beck’s extreme programming (XP) principles, Coding ZEAL developers practice pair programming. Not only does this allow veteran programmers to mentor newer employees, but when two minds focus on a task, they can spot and resolve problems far more quickly.

“Randy is bringing his expertise to the table, Sean’s bringing his expertise to the table, and where they overlap, greatness happens,” says Adam. “Where they don’t overlap, the other one’s learning.”

By investing in skill-building and education, Coding ZEAL is laying the groundwork for happier, and thus more productive, employees.

Code Occasions

“People are everything, you have to rock everybody’s world,” says Adam.

Knowing how mentally taxing coding all day is, Adam notes, “It’s imperative that there be developer happiness.”

Coding ZEAL leaders recognize that for their programmers, “much of that happiness has to focus around … mental space,” Adam says.

That is why they came up with the idea of code occasions. Coding ZEAL actually pays for its developers to go off and play, to create and imagine and implement their own ideas in a fresh and stimulating environment with one or two coworkers.

“It’s the inspiration, that cross-pollination,” says Adam, “that’s huge in everything we do.”

Employee Happiness

Coding ZEAL T-ShirtWhen you have happy, fulfilled employees whose creativity is stretched and nourished, the company flourishes, too.

Driven by a superhuman enthusiasm, Coding ZEAL developers gladly devote hours of intense focus to deliver products that exceed customer expectations. For them, this isn’t a job; it’s a calling.

By cultivating employee happiness, Coding ZEAL leaders enjoy unbridled loyalty from their programmers, whose emotional connection with the company results in sentiments like, “I will show up on the weekends if I have to. I will do what I have to because I have this vision driving my ambition,” explains Adam.

If poor leadership is why businesses fail, Adam’s, Sean’s and Trever’s empathetic leadership is why companies succeed.

To read more wisdom from Coding ZEAL founders, see our last article on the secret to exceeding customer expectations.

Blog Branding Emotional Intelligence Happiness at Work Leadership Coaching Organizational Development Science of Happiness
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