A New Hip & Reflections About a Strong & Healthy Culture at a Surgeon’s Office

Cultural Insights Podcast

Welcome to the May Cultural Insights Podcast!

Cynthia & Will share their cultural insights on:

1. Cynthia's recent hip surgery experience
2. How the culture and staff helped mitigate her anxiety and improve her well-being about the surgery
3. If she conducting a C5 Assessment with this particular medical group, what key indicators would she look for that indicate a strong & healthy culture or a toxic culture
4. What coaches & consultants might want to be aware of / observe out in the real world about company culture
5. Feedback from the surgeon (leader) about how they staff the office, assess individuals for fit, and align values with the organization's mission

Review the Article: Reflections About a Strong & Healthy Culture at a Surgeon’s Office & A New Hip

Listening/ Transcript Read Time: 12 Minutes

William Gladhart:
Hello, and welcome to the Connect2Metrics Cultural Insights Podcast for May, 2023. We’re happy to be here. And, I’m Will Gladhart, the CEO of Connect2Metrics. And, I’m here with Cynthia Kyriazis, the Chief Experience Officer for the Culture Think Tank. So, we are here today to talk about a couple different things, and of course it’s always about culture. But, Cynthia recently wrote an article and had an interesting experience at her surgeon’s office. So, Cynthia, would you like to tell us a little bit about what happened?

Cynthia Kyriazis:
Well, hi, Will. Yeah, I would be happy to tell you because it was just as surprising to me as it was to tell you about it. Some of you may know, some of you may not know that I needed hip replacement surgery. And, I made an appointment with a surgeon who had been very strongly referred, had never had major surgery, had never been to a surgeon’s office or anything. So it was a new experience. And, for whatever reason, I got there and I was of course seeing everything through, shall we say, a new pair of eyes. Never been to that type of office, never had this type of experience. So, I was waiting in the waiting room and there were many people in the waiting room that needed some type of joint replacement. And I asked, “Is this because boomers are getting older and destroying their joints?” And the answer was, “Yeah, pretty much.”

So, as I’m waiting, I’m observing, again, with a new set of eyes as a person involved in culture these days, rather than just a patient. And I was observing the activity and the interaction at the front desk, not only between the individuals who work there, the front desk folks that help in nurses, but also between those individuals and the patients in the waiting room, as well as one particular interaction on a phone with a patient. So, I’m watching all this through the lens of, “Huh, this culture seems to be pretty connected.” I was already pretty impressed with their processes and systems, it was very smooth. Even when I had been taken into the back room to have X-rays and to go into the consulting office with the physician, the process was just very smooth. You could tell that they had thought it out, had made changes along the way and were very efficient at taking care of their clientele.

So, I’m observing something in the office. And all of a sudden, one of the women who answers the phone, one of the nurses I guess, she was on the phone with a patient and it was obvious that the patient had a lot of questions and was very concerned. And for all I know, very panicked a little bit about getting answers, because of course I could only hear one side

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