It
has been an extremely busy summer- new buildings, a new program, many new
staff, a hurricane and even an earthquake, an unexpected resignation and of
course, the ongoing drama associated with the State of Connecticut budget and
the threats to non-profit funding. And
these are just a few of the items that have demanded attention of the
management team this summer! With all
of these things happening, it was very easy to get "lost in the
weeds!" But several interesting
things have happened in the last several weeks that made me step back and
reflect on who we are as an agency and how our corporate culture has affected
the quality of the service we provide and the perception of our agency in the
community. So what exactly is corporate culture
and what is the SCSI corporate culture?
Twenty
years ago, no one talked about a company or agency culture. For most people "culture" had to do with
nationality or referred to the arts- you were "cultured" if you liked Beethoven or English literature for
example. Today we use the concept of
culture to define a set of beliefs that govern what we value as an agency and
govern what we do as professionals who work within that agency.
The
first of these events was a request from L&M Hospital to participate in a
series of interviews examining the quality and status of behavioral health services
here in New London. The consultants
performing these interviews were from Maine and I was one of the last
CEO's interviewed. They had spoken
to many other providers in the area and they had several questions about Sound
Community Services and the work we do and the way we do it. In addition to their questions they also
commented to me about the information that many others had provided about the
services we deliver and asked me to react to the comments that other providers
had made. In a nutshell what they said
that many other providers in our area consider us to be the leader in providing
community based care for individuals who are extremely ill! I must admit, while I appreciated their kind
words, I took their comments with more than a few grains of salt. Similarly,
when a recently hired staff member who had worked for us a few years ago
shortly after the merger of First Step and IBH stopped me in the hall and
commented about how well run the agency was compared to the first few post-merger
months, I was pleased of course. And a
few weeks ago we were visited by several staff of a substance abuse agency from
Chicago who was interested in our use of Carelogic to support the provision of
clinical services. A few days later a received
a note from one of the visiting team who had been a CEO for many years and who
had worked in many mental health agencies that
complemented us on demonstrating the best clinical practices she
had ever seen! And while I recognize
that I and many others have worked very hard to shape Sound Community Services,
I did not give these comments much additional thought until the article about
the OASIS Center and our Social Rehab Program appeared in The Day (New London Day: An 'oasis' for the mentally ill). I hope you all read the article but more
importantly I hope you read the comments
posted by readers that
accompanied the article And what really
made me begin to reflect on who we are as an agency- our corporate culture if
you will- were the comments that were posted in response to that article.
For
those of you new to our agency, there was a time that any mention of First Step
in the newspaper would result angry letters to the editor about the people we
serve and how our agency did not belong in New London. At times, during the many meetings that we
attended with the New London Planning and Zoning Commission as we sought to
find a new building to house our agency my was breath was taken away by the
vehemence of the hate speech that was directed
at our agency and the people we serve when it came time for public
comment. This time the comments from the
public about the relocation of Oasis to Bank Street and our purchase of 21
Montauk however every comment that was published was unfailingly positive about
the very good work we do and the importance of the services we provide to the
community. I believe that the SCSI corporate
culture, which has changed and evolved since the old First Step/IBH days, has been the determining factor in this change.
This
is the first of three blogs about who we are as an agency and how we have
brought our agency to the place of excellence we now hold- a discussion of our corporate culture if you will. I invite your participation in that
discussion.
