Once the meeting is over, you’ll have a lot of raw information from your employees. They will have created a vision of the ideal practice, listed reasons they want to work towards creating this practice, created a list of behaviors that will move them “towards” or “away” from achieving this vision, and a plan for how to actually execute the behaviors that will help them make their vision a reality. Each of these pieces of the process for creating a collaborative vision for your practice are covered in greater detail in the video you’ll share with your staff during the meeting.
Your task once the meeting is over is twofold. First, you’ll need to use the information your employees have generated to create a final vision statement for your practice that they can refer to on a daily basis. Second, you’ll need to provide appropriate support as they work towards achieving this vision. Let’s discuss how to create the final vision first.
Start by taking a look at your employees’ description of their ideal practice. During the meeting, we specifically guide you to capture only key words and phrases, so that’s what you’ll have at this point. For example, they may have written:
- No drama
- No gossip
- Makes me feel energized
- I look forward to coming to work
- Provide exceptional care
The easiest way to capture this information is to create a series of “we want” statements. For example, “We want to work in a practice that’s free of drama and gossip. We want to look forward to coming to work and feel energized while we’re there. We want to be known for providing exceptional care and service.”
You can see from this example that I’ve grouped descriptors wherever it makes sense. Also, I’ve added some words that clarify exactly what it is we’re trying to accomplish, even though they were not necessarily written on list
You can have as many “we want” statements as you need to, and you can group them into separate paragraphs wherever it makes sense. For instance:
We want to build a culture where we work hard in a busy but fun environment. We want this hospital to be a place where we are positive and energized as we continue to make a difference, learn and grow and deliver amazing care and service.
We want to work together as a team, assume the best about others around us and care about how we individually impact the team and the culture. We want to show up at our best each day and feel rewarded by the difference we make in the pets’ lives and in the lives of the people that trust us to care for those pets.
Next, take a look at the reasons your employees feel like they want to do the work to make this practice a reality. You’ll capture this information during an activity called “defining the why.” Use this information to create one or more “we believe” statements that articulate why doing the work needed to change the practice matters. For instance:
We believe creating this kind of culture matters for our patients, our clients, and for each other and makes our own lives happier and more fulfilling.
Finally, create a series of “we will” statements using the list of “towards” behaviors your employees built. These are behaviors that will move them towards achieving the vision of the ideal practice they’ve created. For example:
We will work each day to become a team member that helps us move steadily towards this vision of the future by coming to work with a positive attitude, focusing on the needs of the patients and the clients first, and communicating effectively with others in our practice.
We suggest combining your towards behaviors into statements like this and then also posting your towards behaviors in a more detailed fashion somewhere in the hospital that employees see every day. That’s usually somewhere near the food. You can post your other flip chart pages there as well for daily reference or create a set of documents that capture everything you wrote on your charts. It may work better though, if you have room, to hang the actual charts that the group created together. It seems to have more meaning that way.
You’ll find a document with these instructions, as well as a couple of sample practice vision statements you can reference as you work to create your own, by clicking on the resources tab on this page.
Once you’ve created a vision you’re satisfied with, send it out to everyone and ask for any feedback or edits. Once it’s finalized, post it in a place all of your employees can see. This way, it can serve as a constant reminder of what you’re working towards and how you need to get there.
Even if you decide not to post the actual flip charts in the hospital, we’d recommend saving them by either taking a picture or them or saving the actual hard copies themselves. You’ll want to reference this work as you revisit your progress in future meetings and also as you work to make other changes in your practice using other VetLead courses.
