Guest Post: Glenn Van Ekeren is the President of Vetter Health Services in Omaha, Nebraska, a company committed to providing “dignity in life” for seniors. Vetter Health Services owns 32 long term care, assisted living, and independent living facilities in the Midwest. As President, Glenn helps to insure the company’s Mission, Vision and Values is consistently lived throughout the organization.
“At the end of every day of every year, two things must remain unshakable our constancy of purpose and our continuous discontent with the present.”
Robert Goizueta, Coca-Cola
In the first post of this series, Glenn discussed having the ‘right focus.’ In this post, he concludes with his thoughts on ‘people’ and ‘execution’:
How about the right people? There is never an excuse for not surrounding ourselves with talented people who support our vision, values, growth, development, and mission.
Somebody once said, “Love is blind, but hiring shouldn’t be.” Are we selecting people who encourage us to go to new heights by aligning themselves with our vision? Are we surrounded by people who endorse our values and are passionate about doing something extraordinary? Do we model how we expect other Family members to behave, think, dream, and serve?
Pursuing great will require us to surround ourselves with people who can support who we are, what we believe in and where we are planning to go. Otherwise, we should be eliminating potential candidates as fast as an American Idol audition.
Allow me to suggest another ‘people angle’ to consider. Personal growth precedes organizational excellence. Rare, or even non-existent, is the organization that can move to higher levels of effectiveness without leadership who are committed to re-thinking, re-evaluating and re-inventing their effectiveness on an ongoing basis. Those who endorse, no embrace, this way of living will do uncommon things in uncommon ways.
Execution. It’s the final link in our pursuit of world class. Plan. Follow thru. Evaluate. Measure. Reinforce. Adjust. Track. Team members hold each other accountable to achieve what has been planned and tenaciously hold fast to our beliefs. When it’s done, we celebrate. A worthy goal is to find more and more things to reward and more ways to reward it.
Pursuing world class is about putting our vision and values into action in extraordinary ways. It’s the daily display of treating others as the most important person in our lives. Pursuing great understands how the vision propels us to new levels of quality. Are we doing things that make a difference in people’s lives? Are we doing them in a way that is consistent with our values, in line with the mission and capable of moving us toward our vision?
Extraordinary companies do ordinary things extraordinarily well. They are continually developing or have already mastered the strategies, ideas, and tools needed to achieve extraordinary success. Excellence is exemplified in every area of operation.
Building a world class company is an exciting, open-ended, fun pursuit that will never be quite complete. It’s a wonderful path to enhancing our reputation, attracting compassionate, competent team members, and succeeding in ways we never thought possible.
Right Focus. Right People. Right Execution. A winning combination that moves us to World Class.
