Ric Ransom, CEO of Columbia, Mo.-based MU Health Care, believes that culture should be judged by how people act when senior leadership is not in the room.
In a Sept. 29 LinkedIn post, Mr. Ransom said the word “culture” is used so often in leadership conversations that it can lose meaning.
“Do teams speak up about problems before they escalate?” he said. “Do they cover for each other across disciplines or does friction accumulate? Do they tell patients the truth when the news is hard?”
At MU Health Care, Mr. Ransom said system employees talk about culture in terms of expected behaviors, not values posted on the wall.
While values matter, behaviors are what Mr. Ransom said he can observe and hold people accountable to, including how decisions are made, how conflict is addressed and how people are developed.
“The organizations I’ve seen succeed over time are the ones where culture isn’t a communications exercise,” he said. “It’s a management discipline.”
