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Welcome to The Culture Code podcast. On this podcast, you’ll learn how to grow, shape, and sustain a high-performance culture with the CEO of LEADx, Kevin Kruse. From designing and delivering highly effective leadership development programs, to measuring and improving the employee experience, you will understand what it takes to cultivate a thriving company culture. Through interviews with Chief People Officers, deep dives into key topics, and recordings of our invite-only community sessions, we bring you cutting-edge, data-backed insights from the most desirable companies to work for in the world.
Kevin Kruse - LEADx: Hello, everyone. I'm Kevin Kruse. Welcome back to the Culture Code podcast. Our guest today is the Chief People Officer at One Medical, Christine Morehead. Christine, welcome! And where are you joining us from today?
Christine Morehead (she/her): Thank you. I am joining from the Bay Area in California, just south of San Francisco, where our company is based—out of San Francisco, California.
Kevin Kruse - LEADx: I was. I spent a month in San Jose; you might have heard on an earlier show and sort of loved the little crazy place I was in. Are you near San Jose? I assume so.
Christine Morehead (she/her): I'm actually halfway between San Francisco and San Jose.
Kevin Kruse - LEADx: So you know Santana Row?
Christine Morehead (she/her): Oh, yes.
Kevin Kruse - LEADx: I was in an apartment for a month above that stuff. I'm gonna bore the listeners if I do it again. But it's like retail Disneyland. It was quite crazy.
Christine Morehead (she/her): It is. It's a lot of fun.
Kevin Kruse - LEADx: Nice place to visit, wouldn't want to live there forever, though. So that's good. Okay, let's start at the beginning. For those who might not be familiar with One Medical, how big is your organization and in plain language, what do you do?
Christine Morehead (she/her): Sure. OneMedical is a human-centered, technology-powered primary care organization. We provide our care both in person and virtually, and believe that the hybrid nature of our care really leads to better outcomes because our patients can speak with their clinicians when they need it most, so either scheduled in an office, or we have 24/7 virtual care for them.
Kevin Kruse - LEADx: About how many employees?
Christine Morehead (she/her): We have over 4,000 employees.
Kevin Kruse - LEADx: So with this type of company, I assume the whole issue is about, you know, remote first, hybrid, etcetera, I mean, when you're providing care, you have to be there, right? But what about the quote-unquote back office or headquarters people? What's the model right now for?
Christine Morehead (she/her): Yeah, then. Well, after Covid. So after 2020, we went pretty fully remote. So we have office locations in a couple of different states that we're in that periodically our corporate staff, if you will, come and work out of. We use them for gatherings and for learning sessions. But mostly, we have our support team working remotely.
Kevin Kruse - LEADx: Great. Yeah, such a hot topic. How would you describe your company culture in just a few words?
Christine Morehead (she/her): Well, you know, one of the first things I did, and I've been at One Medical for 10 years. So when I first came, the company was much smaller, and we started an exercise with really determining what our values would be. And we came up with what we term our DNA. And it's really five pillars.
So one, I would describe it as human-centered and team-based as our two strongest strains of that DNA and really meaning, you know, we design everything we do around the individual. So whether it's in our offices, it's all designed around our patients. And for us on the people experience side of the house, it's designed around our team members. So human-centered, team-based.
We're a very team-based organization from how we deliver our healthcare. The in-office provider is working hand in hand with our virtual providers, and needing to be very team-based in theory because some, when you think of your primary care physician years back, they sat in an isolated office where nobody saw their patients but them. So we're looking for clinicians that really thrive and understand in a team-based environment, they're able to provide support for their members 24/7, and still have a sustainable work-life balance for the clinician because they are now sharing that experience.
So I would say, human-centered, team-based, we love to hire people who are intellectually curious. And this could be a whole other podcast, but I love recruiting, and how we think about who we hire, but we find that the most successful people are those that are always curious and wanting to learn. You know, your lifelong learners. They exercise unbounded thinking. So that's our way of saying, you know, looking at how people challenge the norm or problems they have day to day. Are they coming up with creative solutions? Can they think outside the box?
And then, lastly, driven to excel. You know, we want to be the best primary care organization out there. So we're looking for those people who want to just be the best in what they do. And that's what's going to propel the company forward.
So when I think of those DNA strands, and we weave those programs into every program we have and how we are working with the talent we have at One Medical, but it is a very supportive culture. And when you think of healthcare, you know, I think yes, you would imagine that every healthcare organization has human-centered at the core. But that's not always the case. And so we talk about it often. We find it's very grounding to continue to use those words and the verbiage in our programs, as I had stated early and just the more you cultivate and nurture your culture, you know, you can't control it. You can define it, and then nurture it, and through programs that reinforce that.
When I hear our team members using these same words back in their everyday conversation, I know they're living and breathing this culture.
Kevin Kruse - LEADx: Yeah, that's a great moment when you actually hear people use it in the language. What are some of the ways you foster or sustain this culture? Any unique rituals or traditions related to your culture?
Christine Morehead (she/her): Yeah, well, it starts with, actually, it starts prior to somebody coming on board. So we think about it in our employee value proposition, in our branding, in our interviewing process. We are looking for those skill sets, and you're right. They might not all present perfectly, because we're also looking for skill-based interviews. But you know, if you get the core of them, if three come through really strongly, we weave this conversation into our onboarding.
And then probably one of the programs I'm most excited about, which I did at my previous employer as well, at Virgin America, was a study to show really like along the employee lifecycle, where are the touchpoints? You can't be with them all the time and reinforcing it. But where are certain pivotal touchpoints, and one area we found is like at 90 days, when the employee's coming off the honeymoon phase, about day 90 right there. The job is getting hard, and they're saying, "Huh! Did I make the right choice?" So that's when we have a program. And it's called One Connection. And it's where we bring employees back together, and we do this very purposefully across departments. So you have a group of individuals who are, you know, they might be clinicians, they might be from your finance or marketing department. We bring them back about 90 days, and we're-induce the culture, the mission, and the jobs they're doing and what we're really trying to do is solidify the connection for them back to the mission.
The work they're doing now that, you know, 90 days into it, they have a little better understanding of what's required of them. How does that work actually contribute to our mission? And we have them make that connection and kind of share that back and share stories about it. So that's the connection to the mission and the culture. We do this little exercise where they're put in breakout groups, and they're just asked to storytell. And I love storytelling. I think it's how we actually launched our DNA back 10 years ago when we launched it through storytelling. But it's so powerful because they start telling a story with a prompt, "Tell me about a time you were most proud to work at One Medical," and they come up with a story that undoubtedly has all those strands of the DNA in it. And they're powerful, and they're emotional, as you can imagine, we're talking about healthcare. So it's usually, you know, there's, it's very impactful. But we also have people in finance and in other roles, that if you can tie what they're doing, our billing department, how they've uncoiled a nasty billing issue for somebody and the patient, just what made such a difference in this patient's life. So tying everything back to the mission and to our culture and keeping it strong.
And at the end of that program, you know, especially as you grow, when we were smaller, we'd bring all of these people into one room, and I would be there, and I'd lead this conversation. Well, with 4,000, it's getting more difficult. We do it remotely now, but at the end of that, this is the last thing I want to leave them with. Hopefully, you know, we've done a good job in explaining what our culture is, and that's what attracted you to come work for us. And now, with the rapid growth we're going to have ahead of us, you have to carry this. You carry the culture with you, protect it. When you see people behaving in a way that is not conducive to our culture, and usually that's around the human-centered part, say something. You know that TSA, say something, do something, go ahead and say something because you are in control of this. You are protecting the culture as we go forward.
So I leave them with that. And then, in all of our other learning programs, we have a full learning journey for people who are with us. A lot of it is around management, but we bring it up, and we try to bring that back and thread that through all of our programs.
Kevin Kruse - LEADx: Christine, so much good stuff right there in your first answer, and as I'm doing more and more of these interviews, I'm now purposely thinking in my head like I'm listening for the stealable ideas, right?
70% of engagement is correlated to the manager, and front-line managers touch more employees than any other leadership group. What are some of the ways you develop your front-line managers?
Christine Morehead (she/her): Well, one, thank you. Thank you for asking that question because one of the things we're most proud of, you know, and I don't even know if this is canned, I think this is a byproduct of all of the things that we are doing. But in our last several engagement surveys, we are scoring 89% on the question, "My manager genuinely cares about my well-being." And that's not something you can train or teach to. But I think it's the culmination of how we are preparing our leaders that that's a wonderful byproduct, something we're very proud of.
We have, as far as programs go, we start before somebody becomes a manager; we have a program that is called the Emerging Leaders Program. And this is before they become a manager. So this is that transitional period, because all too often, somebody raises their hand, they get tapped on the shoulder to lead people, and somewhere after that, you begin their formal training, right? We've realized, let's go upstream from that and talk about emerging leaders. And how do we get people to start thinking in a different way, working on some skill sets that they're going to need to become a good leader before they actually manage anybody. And part of this program, we have a waiting list to actually get into the program. And the person needs to raise their hand and say, "I'm interested in a leadership role," but they also have to, that goes hand in hand with their performance and being recommended by their leader to get into the program.
And in that program, we're doing things such as there's a communication piece in there. How do you communicate? And part of that is introducing them to the concept of real-time feedback. How do we give real-time feedback, and have those difficult conversations and have them in a way that is human-centered, using our language again so that people can hear the feedback without feeling attacked. And there's definitely an art to that, as I know you are very well aware of.
But so we start with that program, then we have different leadership programs, the New Leader Orientation, as somebody becomes a new leader, then it's the next step in that evolution: Leader Essentials. And then finally, our Lead atOm at One Medical is for our senior leaders. That's the last program that we just built out. We've had our first cohort go through it with several of our Vice Presidents, and our executive team is going through it concurrently, where we're getting 360 feedback, and we'll be working on some leadership principles along the way. But part of that has to be not just the leadership principles but how you show up every day. And I think that's what our DNA speaks to, and our values speak to how you show up. It's not just what you say, it's really how you behave that people are looking at. And that's going to, you know, if you say one thing and behave in a different way, you lose all your credibility.
Kevin Kruse - LEADx: Yeah, you started by talking about, you know, 89% on the survey about my manager caring about me. LEADx research on employee experience shows caring is now a top 5 driver of employee engagement. And as I'm 56 years old and think about my own leadership career, I mean, I make mistakes like crazy. I write about this stuff, I teach it, and I still make mistakes as a leader all the time. But I don't think anyone has ever doubted that I care about them, like my team, and when they know you care, you can get a lot of things wrong. You make all kinds of mistakes, and yet they're forgiving. There's grace there. So it's incredible that you started with that particular trait because it's kind of hard to teach. It does come from the values and the culture. And again, in terms of stealable ideas, I love that you're starting with that emerging leader program. I think it was Zenger Folkman research that said the average age of the first-time manager is 30, and the average age when people get management training is 35. We entrust them with the lives and minds of all these people for 5 years before we actually tell them how to do it, or, you know, best practices, I should say. So the fact that you're engaging your probably high-potential individual contributors in a way that's getting them ready and developed so that then they're receptive and hitting the ground running with your new leader essentials is great. It's great that you're starting early. Everybody should be doing that, really.
Christine Morehead (she/her): Well, Kevin, I also hear in your example a lot of candor, and I think that vulnerability and sharing... I try to do the same with my team. I've made many mistakes. There will be more mistakes I make, and being vulnerable about it and sharing that it's okay to do that, I think, is demonstrating something that's very important for leaders to emulate because we are going to make mistakes. And it's okay. And you're right, if they have trust and feel you care for them, they're very forgiving.
Kevin Kruse - LEADx: You mentioned the survey. How do you solicit feedback from employees about the culture and their engagement (e.g., engagement or other surveys, town halls, ?)
Christine Morehead (she/her): We do it twice a year. We do the full survey in the spring and then a shorter, more pulse-like one in the fall.
Kevin Kruse - LEADx: Other ways you are gathering feedback about your culture?
Christine Morehead (she/her): Yeah, we're also a lean organization where we have stand-up huddles every day. We have them in the clinical offices, and we have over 200 of those offices. You go in, there's a huddle board with all of their metrics. They're huddling every day talking about it, but we always leave space for escalations. That is typically the things that are not going right or something that's happened that somebody might need some help with. And how do you solve it? I've been in our clinical offices because the other thing we do is we also go on rounds once a month as leaders. We're highly encouraged to be out in the field, in our medical offices, observing and giving feedback, but also being there to support the teams doing the lion's work.
So one of the things I witnessed was clinicians coming together, and when it got to an escalation portion, one clinician shared a difficult conversation they had had with a patient. To watch the other providers give support and, in some cases, advice, like "Here's how I handled a situation very similar to that," was powerful. That kind of peer-to-peer support is just crucial in that team-based environment. So we get a lot of real-time feedback daily because we have those huddles. Probably that is even more frequent virtually with our remote team. I huddle with my team every morning, and that is where I am getting the pulse of what's going on in the organization. It usually will come up as an escalation.
Kevin Kruse - LEADx: Yeah, it's great. Related to culture, are there any special initiatives or results you’re most proud of?
Christine Morehead (she/her): Yeah. Well, about five years ago, with our new CEO, Amir Dan Rubin, he brought with him the CI CARE philosophy, and that is something we practice. It's a way to help people remember what great customer service looks like, you know, when it stands for Connect, Introduce, Communicate, Ask, Respond, and Exit. After you incorporate this into your practice, it's just what you do all the time. And when you think about it, it's so missing in a lot of clinical settings, where actually, you know, because the problem is, most clinicians have so little time with their patients. So there's not a lot of time to connect or introduce themselves. Asking permission—I'm going to do this, is this okay?—rarely happens, right? But it's so powerful because it puts the onus back on the patient to give that permission, and it just establishes a very different relationship.
And we take the CI CARE moniker through our interactions with corporate staff, so if we begin a meeting and there's somebody new on Zoom that we don't know, we all stop and introduce ourselves to that person. You know, it takes a little bit of time, but it just sets the tone in a very respectful nature of how we expect the conversation to go.
Kevin Kruse - LEADx: Yeah, that's great. What book would you recommend that your colleagues read? (or podcast, video, etc.)
Christine Morehead (she/her): This was supposed to be the fun part. The fun part. Easy for me is culture. This is so difficult, because, as we were sharing prior to being recorded. There's so many good nuggets out there, I guess if I had to pick one, it may be Brené Brown's Dare to Lead. I love the vulnerable piece of it and the radical candor, and I think if people were just very honest and direct, we could cut so much of the spin that happens out, and people saying, "Well, do you think what they really meant?" Have you ever left a meeting? And then, you see people huddling, trying to figure out what that leader actually meant, and I think, "Oh, my gosh, what a waste of time! Let's just be really direct and concise, and what we're saying, and trust the audience to have a direct message."
Kevin Kruse - LEADx: Yeah, I think that's what it would be. I think Brené Brown's work is great. I've shared on this podcast that Daring Greatly, when I was 40 years old and had just sold a previous company, her book hit me like a ton of bricks. It's like, all of a sudden she starts talking about, you know, self-worth, needs for external validation, and I'm like, "Oh, so that's why I am the way I am," and it really held up a mirror. And it's like, "Okay, I'm going to do some things differently now." So I recommend that book to a lot of people. It was actually a former team member that had recommended it to me. It definitely changed my life. So let's think about—you've been at One Medical for a long time, you've had a distinguished career—what's something that you know now that you maybe wish you knew on day one of becoming a Chief People Officer? Like, I don't know if you guys are on Slack or Teams, but if you could send a message to the younger version of yourself with a little piece of advice, what would you say?
Christine Morehead (she/her): Well, I would say, my advice to anybody going into the HR world is that it's a wonderful opportunity to be in HR right now. Secondarily, don't just focus on HR work, really to get to the pinnacle—and assuming you want to reach that C-level, that's an assumption I'm making—but if you do, learn as much as you can about business because it has really turned into a strategic role. In the best scenarios, you will find yourself as an advisor to the CEO because every aspect of business has a people component to it, right? So to be the best advisor you can be, you have to understand business. So steep yourself in—and you know, a lot of folks I know who go into HR, they go in because they're very empathetic, they're good with people, and somehow they've gotten advice to steer their career that way. But I would say, jump into business acumen, understand the balance sheets, and what businesses need to do to be profitable. Understand business strategy. And then, coupled with undoubtedly that HR background, you can develop into that really strategic partner, which it's wonderful to see. I have been doing this work long enough that I first started out in personnel, then moved into HR, and now I am in the People Experience team. But that is, in a way, it's an evolution of how the role has come and how far it's come, I would say. I feel I have a strong seat at the table as any of my peers on the C-suite. And that's the way it should be in most organizations.
Kevin Kruse - LEADx: Yeah, that's fantastic. Yeah, we were talking about this a little bit before we hit the record button about—I think it's the most challenging time to be a Chief People Officer but also the best time, just because, again, the work. The great work that you're doing is now touching every part of the organization. It's so critical. And everyone's finally realizing how critical it is. We're talking, Christine, it's November—we just hit it. We've crossed into November. Year's almost over. What are you and your team going to focus on when it comes to people stuff for next year?
Christine Morehead (she/her): Well, we have an interesting year coming ahead of us. This year, we were acquired by Amazon, so I don't know if we've chatted about that. But, you know, the first—and respectfully so—Amazon really has been a bit hands-off and just wanting to learn what we do because they acquired us for a reason, and I have a lot of respect for them for approaching it that way. As we go into next year, we're going to be looking to leverage what is best within both organizations and see how we can. Actually, there are so many ways they can help us with our growth. And that's what we're looking forward to: How do we really leverage what they know how to do best? And that's outreach to customers. So we think they're going to be very beneficial that way. They have a tremendous tech team behind them. We have our own proprietary technology. So we expect that they're going to be able to help us quite a bit to move that at a faster clip. So my team is going to be looking for, you know, how do we integrate? Where do we integrate and hopefully bring the best of both companies together?
Kevin Kruse - LEADx: What excites you the most about your company right now?
Christine Morehead (she/her): It is, and things are moving fast there, you know, when you think about the companies that could have acquired us. I think we found the right partner, because they do believe in growth, and they are very customer-obsessed, and that's a term they use often in the same way. We are very human-centered and focused on our patients. So I think the marriage of those two will mean really good things. And yes, that chapter is not yet written in that book. We look forward to it.
Kevin Kruse - LEADx: It's exciting to write that chapter. Christine Morehead, Chief People Officer at One Medical, thanks for spending some time with us today.
Christine Morehead (she/her): Thank you, Kevin. Thank you for shining the light on these very important topics. I appreciate it.