Over the last few years, we’ve been lucky enough to grow – quite a bit – and with rapid growth, comes pain. Our growing pains are hardly unique, and so the usual strategies apply: more meetings, process and procedure documentation, organisational structure with departments and leads.
These bureaucratic solutions come with their own problems, particularly a tendency to slow, or paralyse; anathema to a workplace that thrives on innovation. The layers and formalisation also make team connection harder, and thus reduces cohesion.
As an owner, it became increasingly clear to me: our culture – that which defines us – was something we were now going to have to pay attention to being intentional about caring for, if we wanted to retain our certain je ne sais quoi.
You can choose, and be clear about, where you are aiming, and what you exist for – your mission. We have, and we are.
Our mission is: to educate and empower our patients to achieve their health goals and live their best life.
The thing is, you can’t just decide on, and state your culture. A culture is lived; it is the agglomeration of behaviour.
Writing a rulebook for behaviour, however, is an exercise in futility. One cannot possibly pre-empt unforeseen circumstances, or indeed document expectations for all situations that are conceivable. Even if you could, no-one would read that exhaustive tome, much less internalise it, thereby rendering it useless.
Instead what is needed is a set of guiding principles to inform how we conduct ourselves. In short: values.
Values can – and should – be modelled and observed, but they can also be explicitly stated. Not stating our values doesn’t mean we don’t have them, it just means we didn’t consciously choose them, which doesn’t bode well for sculpting culture going forward.
Stating the values is not quite enough, they must also be agreed upon, and genuinely acted out.
We spent around a year trying to figure out our values. We looked to other businesses for inspiration. We workshopped ideas as a full team, lots. Then we workshopped those ideas. We searched deep, drilling right down to try and figure out what the essence of MFM is.
In the end they were so simple that I still can hardly reconcile how hard we had to work to bring them about:
- We care about People
- We celebrate Growth
- We’re committed to Excellence
- We act with Integrity
These values are our guideposts for how we conduct ourselves, and we actively reference them in our decision-making. When faced with a dilemma, anyone in the team can show how their decision and behaviour aligns with our values, and they’ll have my full support.
In contrast, when something doesn’t feel quite right for us, we simply reference our values to establish what isn’t in alignment, so we can fix it, and learn from it.
As I write this – more than a year on since we formalised our values – I can confidently say that they have had a truly profound impact on our team culture, more so than anything else I can recall.
Our values inform our behaviour, and define our culture; a culture I couldn’t be more proud to be a part of.
It’s a culture where every team member is empowered to act with integrity and make decisions confidently, knowing they have full support if they align with our values. We celebrate each other’s growth, encourage innovation, and strive for excellence in everything we do. Whether in our patient care or team collaboration, our culture thrives on connection, accountability, and a shared commitment to making a difference.
I invite you, as a patient, or any stakeholder of MFM, to help us honour the standards we hold ourselves to.
