By Stephen C. Schultz
The sun glanced off the window and reflected at a strange
angle to the floor and up the wall. As I looked outside, it was obvious that
spring had arrived. There were bright green leaves having recently unfolded on
the shrubs outside. Tulips and Hyacinths stretched upward, bending occasionally
in the cool canyon breeze.
The boxed lunch from a local deli that included a ham
sandwich on rye bread with potato chips, a cookie and a pickle stared back at
me. There was the regular lunch time discussion with the laughter that rises up
and then fades just as quickly. The room consisted of a large mahogany
conference table with twelve plush captain’s chairs. The chairs were full of
colleagues, all of us eating lunch after a morning training session.
We were the sales and marketing team from two private
psychiatric hospitals. We had gathered at this particular location because Melody
was in town training us on the latest skills associated with Professional Sales
Skills (PSS), the State of the Art sales system put out by Time Life
Corporation in the early 1980’s.
Melody was in her mid thirties and wore a slender charcoal
grey suit/skirt. She had blonde shoulder length hair and spoke with a southern
accent. She was the corporate regional trainer and flew out the night before
from Macon Georgia specifically to meet with us.
The conversation around the table started to subside. Our
1:00pm start time soon passed and before we knew it, 1:35pm had come and gone.
A small chorus of questions started to build as people wondered where Melody
was. I stood and poked my head out the door. I caught the eye of Kathy, the
Executive Secretary to the CEO of the hospital.
I whispered; “Where’s Melody? We've been waiting for a while
now and she hasn’t come back from lunch.”
Kathy glanced at me with a mixed look of horror and sadness.
“Oh…I am so sorry! No one told you? Melody got a call at about 12:15 pm from
corporate. She was let go and she is on her way to the airport.”
This experience made an impact on me early in my career.
It’s an experience I have never forgotten. I have no idea if Melody was really
any good at her job, or why it was felt to be necessary to fire her over the
phone. There was a lot I didn’t know about “Corporate” and why they did the
things they did.
I did know one thing about “Corporate”. Whenever we heard
they were coming to town there was a collective groan. No one ever looked
forward to “Corporate” making a visit. Routines were disrupted. Stress levels
increased. Schedules were changed and once they were gone, things slowly got
back to “Normal”.
At this point in my life, I might be considered a “seasoned”
professional on the downhill side of my career. As our organization has grown,
one might conclude that my office is at “Corporate” headquarters. However, ours
is not a corporate setting that encourages the use of that term. In fact, we
actively discourage it. We are not an organization of “Top Down” directives and
impersonal memo’s. Yet, there is a feeling of accountability across all of our
treatment programs.
Ours is an organization that doesn’t fit the norm in modern
day corporate circles. We don’t aspire to have “Corporate Titles” that espouse
a certain hierarchy or position. Ours is an organization of "Individually Branded" treatment programs as opposed to a "Branded Organization" of individual treatment
programs. To many, this may be a silly distinction that seems like semantics. However,
it’s an important distinction that directly impacts culture of a program. The
culture of any treatment program directly impacts the care and success of the
students, clients, patients and families of those that are receiving that care.
Our leadership recognizes that the caring and compassionate interaction
between therapists, teachers, families and the direct care staff happens at the
program level. This is where the healing takes place and families’ lives are
changed.
While no professional organization or work environment is
perfect, (simply because it has humans involved) there are some work and
treatment environments that are better than others. If you are a parent or allied health
professional, it’s important for you to explore treatment options for your
family or clients.
It is important to remember that the culture of any
organization is a direct reflection of those in leadership positions.
There is also the old treatment saying; “Kids don’t care how much
you know until they know how much you care.”
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