WellPoint strategy refresh: shifting the culture to achievement-driven, focused performance

Transcription

1 view from the top In late 2008, in response to a dramatically changing and challenging economy, WellPoint Inc. announced a refresh of its long-term strategic plan. David Casey, vice president of workplace culture and chief diversity officer, discusses how the health benefit company s leaders are realigning the culture to support the directional shift.

2 WellPoint strategy refresh: shifting the culture to achievement-driven, focused performance Even in the most resilient of companies, long-term strategies that guide fulfillment of the mission are being rethought, retooled and refreshed in response to challenging market conditions caused by the economic crisis. WellPoint Inc., the nation s largest health benefits company, recently did just that. David Casey, vice president of workplace culture and chief diversity officer, discusses the company s Strategy Refresh announced late in 2008 and how WellPoint s leaders are realigning the culture to support the directional shift. When Anthem, Inc. and WellPoint Health Networks, Inc. merged in 2005 to become WellPoint Inc., then CEO Larry Glasscock moved quickly to integrate the two companies and build new customerfocused culture of innovation. Five core values customer first, lead through innovation, one company/one team, personal accountability for excellence and integrity were established to support WellPoint s mission and vision of transforming health care and becoming the most valued company in its industry. During the first four years following the merger, a strong emphasis was placed on culture integration, by emphasizing the one company/one team value. WellPoint created a Workplace Culture Distinction Team, certified in the Senn Delaney culture-shaping process, to make that culture a way of life throughout the enterprise. By the end of 2008, the majority of WellPoint s associates had been engaged in the culture-shaping principles and were living the values. The global economic crisis dramatically changed market conditions. Like many companies, WellPoint reexamined its longterm 2010 strategic plan. It s strategy refresh was announced in late The aspirational mission of transforming health care was shifted to a more focused promise of simplifying the connection between health, care and value. When a company s business strategy shifts, there must be a leader-led effort to realign the structure and culture to execute the new vision and ensure the best performance. The following interview with David Casey examines how WellPoint s executive leaders are realigning the culture through a consistent, focused and disciplined approach. The insurance giant is focusing on excelling at day-to-day execution, expanding naturally from its strengths as a human and values-based company and serving as an advocate for responsible health care reform. The value of personal accountability for excellence has become a focal point for building a highly focused and achievement-driven culture. view from the top: WellPoint Inc. s David Casey [2]

3 Why did WellPoint decide to refresh its 2010 Strategy? We came out with our strategy refresh toward the third quarter of We realized we didn t need a new strategy but we needed to refine and refresh the strategy that we had in place to meet the challenges of a rapidly changing economy. We announced our previous long-term strategy back in It pointed to where the company needed to be by When we brought Anthem and WellPoint together we wanted to boil the ocean. There was so much to do and the complexities of our industry are so large, we wanted to try to take on all of it and be successful at everything. What we ve realized over the past 24 months is that we can t do that. We re going to have to really focus and leverage things we re really good at and the things that are essential for us to be a leader in our industry. Does the WellPoint culture that you ve been shaping since the merger need to change to support the refresh? We acknowledged and explicitly articulated that there were two keys to our success with this refresh strategy. One is having a disciplined management process, a very consistent, focused and disciplined way that we run the business. The other key is focusing on our culture. We did not have to go to Angela Braly, our president and CEO, or Randy Brown, our chief HR officer, and ask that it be included. It was included from day one. It is very clear to our highest levels of leadership that one of our keys to success will be continuing to cultivate the kind of culture we need to drive our business strategy forward. Where are you in implementing the strategy refresh? We have announced it, we ve gotten buyin, our associates understand conceptually During our culture-shaping journey, we ve introduced more than 20 concepts to the organization through the Senn Delaney model. We have narrowed that to 10 concepts that we want to continue to reinforce more than others that are in direct alignment with our refresh strategy. The biggest roles that my team plays is to ensure that culture touches every part of our talent management lifecycle, from our branding and sourcing initiatives to recruitment, development and training, compensation, benefits and retention prowhat the refreshed strategy is. Our mission is to improve the lives of the people we serve and the health of our communities. Our objectives are to create the best health care value for our customers, excel at day-to-day execution, expand naturally from our strengths and advocate responsible health care reform. Now, we have to roll up our sleeves and get to work on what it means from a day-to-day operational standpoint. We are in the throes of really trying to sink our teeth into it. We need to be clear on what we have to stop doing. We need to get serious, clear and focused around what our Blue Chips really are. If we can t boil the ocean, we need to decide what the one or two pots of water are that really need to get boiled to make sure we can effectively deliver for our customers. How are your culture and business strategy interconnected? In the past, a part of our business strategy has been to be a fast follower in the market. We would see some of our smaller and more agile competitors respond to market demands with innovative concepts and then, given our size, scale and scope, we d learn from them and work to outperform them. Being the largest health insurance company in the country, we realized that we can no longer afford to do that. We have to be a leader. We have to shift from being a fast follower to really having a culture that s comfortable with being innovative with all the pros and cons that come with that. You oversee workplace culture. How is your team planning to align the culture to the updated strategic approach? Mergers and acquisitions were a big part of our growth, and merger and acquisition integration was a big part of our focus. A big part of my team s focus over the past 12 to 14 months has been to shift from culture integration to culture We will build on our strengths of being a human company and a values-based company... We will strongly emphasize two dimensions of our culture: being highly focused and achievement driven. alignment with our strategy refresh. My team is responsible for program design and consulting at the corporate level for the entire company. We will continue to use a disciplined, structured and leader-led culture-shaping methodology, following the DURAM model that Senn Delaney created. We will also continue to leverage the common language and conceptual clarity we ve built using that model. We will build on our strengths of being a human company and a values-based company. That has been a big part of our focus with culture integration; making sure we didn t lose sight of the people aspects of these companies we were bringing together. We will strongly emphasize two dimensions of our culture: being highly focused and achievement driven. view from the top: WellPoint Inc. s David Casey [3]

4 grams all the way through separation. We stepped back to hone in on the blue chip of delivering consistent service and being faster and simpler with everything we do. As a senior executive, how do you show up in those values and principles to the organization below you? Can you speak about that in relation to the behaviors you want people below you to adopt? We hold dear and believe true that people pay way more attention to what you do than what you say. That is a very big part of the leadership development programs that we design and all the different reinforcement mechanisms that we use to drive our culture. We formally and explicitly cascade behavioral goals related to our values beginning with our president and CEO and executive leadership team. The understanding of the impact of the Shadow of the Leader is very well understood in our company. All of our leaders know it begins with them. We also believe that shaping our culture is both an outside-in and inside-out approach. We know that behavior change requires both of those. It s not about telling our leadership and our associates what to do, it s articulating to them how to be when they come to work every day. That does start at the top. We re never going to move away from that concept. Can you provide a tangible example? One of the things we did last year goes back to our commitment to this being a leader-led process. We started noticing that when the economy was taking a downturn, we had some pretty significant business misses and morale in the company started to waiver. We were trying to assess whether the business challenges we were facing were due to our own operational issues, or whether they were larger issues in the economy. We decided that before we would just go out and tell our leaders how to show up, and to be in a good spot on the Mood Elevator to lead their people, we wanted to give them an experiential process to make that happen. The Corporate Workplace Culture Team partnered with our more than 80 Senn Delaney-certified facilitators, our learning and development team and our field HR partners to create local leadership exchanges and expos, which started in July They were created to get peer groups of leaders together at the local level. We held approximately 130 two-hour sessions at WellPoint locations across the country where we reconnected them to some of the culture concepts we felt would be most relevant for the task at hand. We reinforced the Shadow of the Leader, the Accountability Ladder; a number of things that would get them reconnected to some of our culture-shaping concepts. But it was more than a talking-head lecture; we gave our leaders a safe environment to openly talk with other leaders about their personal and professional challenges, concerns and worries. But it didn t stop there; we were not looking to create a victim-lens environment. We wanted to focus our leadership on taking personal accountability and rallying around what we can do to turn things around. We closed the sessions by asking leaders what they and their teams can do to help us overcome some of the business challenges that we were facing. We d never invested so many resources in slowing down to go faster like that. We received extremely positive feedback from our leadership. We were able to give our leaders an opportunity to focus on where they were on the Mood Elevator and how they showed up to get our overall workforce in a good place. More than 75 percent of our leaders attended a session even though they were not mandatory. We met or exceeded all measures used to assess the success of the sessions. Was there a direct benefit from these leadership exchanges and expos? Though it s hard to measure cause and effect for these kinds of things, I believe that there s a strong correlation between our associate level of engagement and the fact that we took the time to slow down to go faster by giving our leaders an opportunity to get a sense of self awareness of where they are on the Mood Elevator instead of just dictating to them to go show up in a good way and lead your associates. There is an overall engagement index included in our annual associate survey. The results we got back in September 2008 showed that 71 percent agreed or strongly agreed that they were highly engaged to work here. We felt extremely positive about that. Our leaders also received very strong scores on an index embedded in the survey to measure manager effectiveness. Our focus on culture not only helps us figure out how to work together and how to get our work done, it also helps us attract and retain some very high-level talent and keep our workforce highly engaged. When you talk about moving from a fast follower into being a leader, what does that actually translate to in terms of your customer first value? Before, our vision was to transform the health care industry. What we realized is view from the top: WellPoint Inc. s David Casey [4]

5 end-to-end transformation was too daunting of a task to declare in the strategy. We stepped back to hone in on the blue chip of delivering consistent service and being faster and simpler with everything we do. We will continue to increase satisfaction and retention of our customers by building trust. We have to consistently deliver on our core business first we have to pay claims, we have to pay them on time and we have to pay them the right way. That is not our challenge alone; there are suboptimal processes across the entire health care system. Certainly, we play a part in that. Our refreshed strategy is about making sure we can deliver on the basics and that the system works before taking on something as monumental as trying to transform the whole health care system. Have your core values changed? No, but we did change the order of our values for a reason, and we have a rationale around how they are listed. The order used to be customer first, lead through innovation, one company/one team, personal accountability for excellence and integrity. The reason behind that order was customer first and lead through innovation were what we were going to do. One company/one team and personal accountability for excellence were how we were going to do it and integrity was foundational to all of that. We have to make sure that we re recognizing and paying people for living these values in a demonstrable way, otherwise they are just words on paper. How we are articulating the new order of our values is customer first, integrity, personal accountability for excellence, lead through innovation and one company/ one team. The customer will always be first and nothing else matters if we don t do it with integrity. How do you get the organization to shift focus from one company/ one team to personal accountability for excellence? A big part of my team s job is to make sure these core values, whether explicitly or implicitly, show across the entire talent management cycle. For example, when we design our compensation and recognition and rewards programs, we have to make sure that we re recognizing and paying people for living these values in a demonstrable way, otherwise they are just words on paper. Our performance coaching process is another good example of that. When everyone sets their annual goals for the year, one of their behavioral goals must be tied to our core values. In the past, when we first came together as WellPoint and Anthem, we dictated that everyone would have a goal around one company/one team. But as the company has matured and we have integrated, we ve backed off from being so prescriptive around what the value has to be. We are still declaring that one of your performance goals has to be around one or all of our core values. The way we do our performance goal-setting for the year is that our CEO and executive leadership team develop their goals first, and then get them signed off on and approved by the board. What they will do then is cascade them down to their leadership teams and those teams will build their performance plans from there. And so it just cascades down throughout the organization ensuring we have alignment from the top down and bottom up. Has your work on the culture from top to bottom been helpful in these challenging times? Without a doubt! Business strategies can change. Where you put your emphasis on operational issues may change. Two things that are foundational won t change regardless of what our business strategy and structure are: We will always pay attention to the 40,000 associates who get this work done everyday and we will never compromise on our values as a company. We took more than 3,000 of our leaders and 33,000 of our associates through our structured culture-shaping process over several years. How many companies would make that kind of investment? We were going through mergers and acquisitions. We had market share to get. To have a company make a true commitment to slow down in order to go faster with each and every one of their associates we feel is distinct and gives us a true competitive advantage. It s driven our ability to be successful in a very challenging environment. People understand the business decisions we ve had to make. We ve been transparent with them about that. I think there s a strong level of trust there. And it s because of our focus on shaping our culture. It s getting people to understand how they show up as individuals impacts how the team functions and how the team functions impacts how we function as an organization to serve our customers and communities. I would categorize our workforce as resilient, hopeful and optimistic. In addition to our associates confidence in company leadership and strategy, they understand there are some larger forces at play in our economy that we can t control gravity issues. Given the deliverables we ve declared that we own and control in our strategy, I think our associates are feeling really good about that. I know I am! view from the top: WellPoint Inc. s David Casey [5]

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