Unifying the culture of a newly integrated health system, and equipping 1,000 leaders with the competencies to model it

We gathered input through 80+ interviews and a system-wide survey, surfacing employee perspectives on what it would take to work as one system. From there, we identified key cultural tensions (unity without uniformity, empowerment without chaos, innovation without burnout) and defined the enterprise's aspiration, beliefs, and ways of working alongside a cross-functional employee workgroup, refining them through co-creation sessions and async feedback from employees and leaders across the system.

Leadership then brought us back to build the competency framework. We researched the forces reshaping healthcare, identified the most critical demands on leaders, and designed four competencies, each with specific, developable skills underneath. We refined the framework through co-creation and feedback surveys, then worked closely with the HR and L&D teams to define a repeatable rollout model, including content structure, experimentation, and coaching practices that would enable L&D to carry the rollout forward.

From there, we designed and facilitated a hands-on Leadership Summit for the top 1,000 leaders to launch the first competency. In the one-day Summit, they worked through real organizational challenges and designed personal experiments to start practicing the competency immediately. Leadership development around each competency is now underway.