Click for Video DESCRIPTION


Welcome to the modern nose clinic, we know your nose.

This speech is designed for our employees and people considering joining our organization. Our core values are very important to us, and we'd like to take a few moments to explain why.

Hi, I'm Doug Skarada. I'm one of the providers here at the modern nose clinic. And we thought it'd be helpful to explain why we have core values, what they are, so you can understand a little bit more who we are as an organization.

They're really very important to our culture. This is how we hire folks and how we reward folks within our organization, and how we really set our course. So we're going to just take a few moments and go through them. I apologize for the outdoor noise. I just love this spot; it's a beautiful summer day. Early in the day and we've got traffic, all right, here we go.

First of all, we will work in our organization to try to make it easy for people to learn what our core values are. For one thing, I know this is all, but we've got them on my fishbowl in my office out here if you'd like to read them there. We also have them on our little brochure that some patients take home because it's important to do. We are right inside here. And we're also gonna have lots of little fun games where we reward people, who can recite what the core values are, or folks who demonstrate their core values. Because we'd rather reward people here then for good behavior than punishing them otherwise. And I think I'll just sit down here in one of the rooms, and I'm gonna go over the first core value.

First Core Value: Elevate the Clinical Experience

The first core value is to elevate the clinical experience for patients and providers. It is our belief that medicine is broken on many levels.

We believe that providers are burnt out and that translates into less than ideal performance in a workplace, it also decreases job satisfaction. Many decisions in medicine are all designed around driving up profitability this is not to minimize the importance of having a profitable organization.  

We just don't believe that's the most important first priority for our organization.

So we believe that the clinical experience should be elevated for the patients but also for the providers. And to that and you will notice in our organization that we're always looking to see how we can make it easier for you to accomplish your jobs. So this is a pretty good core value to start with we want to elevate the experience for the patients and provide them something more than what they would typically experience.

We routinely refer to this as trying to provide Nordstrom's care instead of Kmart care, and I'm going to say that most of the medicine is moving towards Kmart care because that has more profitability in the existing model. But we believe that you get more job satisfaction when you can spend a little bit more time with your patients. You can take the opportunity to connect with your patients. You can represent our organization yourself. You're not hiding behind a physician. And I think the patient really enjoys that. They want to know who you are. They want to believe they can call up and they can ask for you and you can answer their questions. They want to believe that you're going to advocate for them. Because you will in this organization. You will elevate the patient experience and in doing so, we believe you will also elevate your own experience.

But this goes far beyond simply giving good patient care. We're actually going to give you that extra time to walk the patient to the elevator. To check them in in a very relaxed process, to be able to engage the patients. We're continuously looking to how we can establish those relationships, also because you the people component are the most important component of this organization. You are the modern nose clinic. The providers are one part, but they probably only represent about maybe 30% of the overall experience.

So the first core value to elevate the clinical experience for the patients and the providers is very important to us. When you talk about the culture you think about organizations such as Nike, Apple Computer. Where they are renowned for being a desirable place to work. That's exactly what we desire to have here. Although, we have our own identity and our own vision.  

We certainly will have a different approach than any of those organizations. But the second core value is absolutely essential, and amongst our core values this has been maybe a little bit more commonly violated amongst employees and fellow employees, will point this out, and we will continuously try to coach to eliminate walls and barriers going up.

Second Core Value: Engage Each Patient with Teamwork

So the second core value is to engage each patient with teamwork. Emphasis teamwork, enthusiasm energy, and passion.

Now, most people here are going to be enthusiastic and passionate because we're creating a system where you can really shine. Where you can actually be the best, you can be. We have this notion of a unique ability, and a unique ability: means the thing that you do that you're best at. For instance, one person, their unique ability might be planning parties. And you'll know you're doing your unique ability when other people comment on it. Wow, you do a really good job planning parties. And when you're doing that you lose track of time, and you really feel great satisfaction because you're doing that thing that you're best at.

So here we're identifying individuals who happen to be very engaging, enthusiastic, and passionate people fundamentally.

And we're trying to put you in a situation where you can shine. So we find that those pieces of it are less of an issue. Although, it is important that even if you have a bad day that you think about it from the patient's perspective first.

For instance, at Disney World or Disneyland with all their employees, I'm going to guess that not every employee every day is in a very good mood. Sometimes they'll show up to work, and maybe they spilled coffee on their lap, or maybe their child is struggling in school, or sick but then they look in a mirror, and they say I'm on stage and they create an experience.

I've been to Disneyland and I actually been to Disney World also, and it is special, and it's not happening by accident. So it is important that even if you show up and you're not in a good mood, or not having a good day. That you're thinking about the patients first and your co-workers first. If you are doing so poorly that you can't do that, we do you can take you to know you can take that day off and go home, and you know to take care of issues. But when you're at work, we do want you to have enthusiasm energy and passion.

But teamwork is the one we have struggled with at times and that's because we have a vision. That almost everybody in this organization could do almost everybody else's jobs and we don't believe that that happens by accident. We believe that happens by a concerted effort, and there's sometimes is a desire to kick back because you're like my department well we got a little break finally and we've been working pretty hard so we're just gonna sit here and we're gonna chitchat.

Then down the hallway, there's another department where somebody's child is sick or somebody's not here that day and one person's trying to do the job of two or three people. So we're always very happy when we see people who are looking to help other people first. And so that's what the second core value teamwork, we don't like walls. We want to cross train folks. We think it'll give the correct individual improved satisfaction at work knowing they're able to do multiple different things.

So we want to avoid people who are overly specialized or above helping out other folks. Our reason for being, which is another speech it's really why this organization exists. Is to innovate for excellence and I'd say, our third core value is to innovate through creative ideas and continuous self-improvement, I think we do a very good job with.

Third Core Value: Innovate Through Creative Ideas and Continuous Self-Improvement

Those employees who we've had some employees who are absolutely wonderful people and very qualified and any organization would love to have them. But they were not comfortable with change and so this will not be a good fit for folks who, who want to be set in their ways and they're not. They don't have their eyes open to the possibility of making things better. So one thing I can say with confidence is that the modern nose clinic is better today than we were six months ago.  

We fully intend to be better six months from now than we are today. And I feel that all of our individuals of our team really embrace the third core value to innovate through creative ideas and continuous self-improvement. This really feeds back into many of the other aspects of our organization in terms of solving problems, we've all been in organizations where the solution to the problem is that a so-and-so is a bad person and that's and they need to stop being bad. But we don't believe that's the case we believe that you really want to understand why we're having a given problem and then try to solve it in a way that that everybody's happy.  

Often times it has to do with doing a process differently and to reapproaching it.

So, I think that our third core value is embraced well in our organization.

Fourth Core Value: Strive for Perfection

And really the last core value is the icing on the cake. It is maybe is somewhat less concrete but it is somewhat the culmination of everything else that we do. Nobody can be perfect but we would like to strive for perfection. Even things we do a very good job with, we are constantly thinking about how we could do it better. And in striving for perfection I believe that we deliver excellence.

And so again I think that when the first three core values are followed the fourth core value occurs automatically. So these are four core values.

So thank you for taking the time to get to know our organization a little bit better. Taking the time to learn about our core values and for those of you who are already working here or starting we are excited to have you and we will do our best to support you and live up to our organization's goal of the core values.

This is Dr. Douglas Skarada signing off, take care.