Culture Fulfillment Case Study: Briggs Family & Cosmetic Dentistry

Briggs Family & Cosmetic Dentistry is a family business led by Dr. Roger Briggs, father, Dr. Brad Briggs, son, and Janet Briggs, Dr. Roger Briggs’s wife, Janet Briggs, the office manager. As a family-centric business already mindful of values, they recognized that their business’s legacy stems from culture.

Like so many businesses, they faced challenges maintaining their culture and values after the disruptions caused by COVID-19.

That’s where The Culture Fix® Coach, Judy Cirullo, PT, ACC, CPC, stepped in. With a background in the medical industry as a Physical Therapist Private Practitioner and her current expertise as a culture coach, she brought invaluable insights to the company. Judy took on the project, fully mindful of the unique challenges in the medical field, and worked closely with the company to address these challenges.

One common challenge faced by businesses in the medical field is the scarcity of time. Cultivating a strong culture requires time, but lengthy meetings or training sessions are often impractical due to busy schedules. There are financial concerns about potential revenue loss if staff must allocate significant time to culture-building activities.

The strategy was to meet the team where they were at and gradually introduce culture-building activities into their routine without disrupting their revenue-generating activities. This involved breaking down the culture-building process into small, digestible segments and conducting monthly 90-minute workshops to gradually introduce and reinforce core values. Existing lunch breaks and extended meeting breaks were used to engage with the team over several months.

Core Values

While Judy was working with the team on developing their core values, they decided to use the legacy message from the mission to create 3 powerful core values. When this process was nearly completed, they stumbled upon 25 core values in a forgotten handbook that they never knew they had! Despite this discovery, they chose to continue with the values they had already begun creating as they fit their business's core purpose and mission..

This is a common pitfall in many businesses: core values are often documented but then forgotten. That's why The Culture Fix® methodology emphasizes incorporating core values into various aspects of the business and integrating them into everyday behaviors and processes. Core values are meant to be lived rather than stated.

One of the key principles of The Culture Fix® is creating and giving life to the values, known as CoreVals™. We've distilled this crucial step into three parts. Firstly, use meaningful words. A statement that provides purpose and meaning will help everyone understand why their work matters. Next, connect the CoreVals to company folklore. By sharing the organization's philosophies and the stories that shape its history, their team will continue to remember and increasingly relate to your CoreVals. Finally, use descriptive language. While words like "proud" and "passionate" are great, a strong set of CoreVals needs to explain these concepts with actionable, descriptive terms.

At Briggs Family Dentistry, they began by considering the significance of their mission statement, or CorePurpose™, in preserving their legacy, and decided to extract three core values from it.

Brigg’s Family Dentistry Core Purpose:
We are committed to building trust-based relationships, making things clear & understandable, and positively impacting the lives of others.

From this statement, they created these Core Values:
We Pursue & Embrace Positivity
We Respect Through Serving
We Inspire Trust

These are effective core values because they are specific and inspire action.

It's essential to create printed displays for core values and their descriptions. The Brigg's Family Dentistry CoreChart™ exemplifies their dedication to growth and their commitment to being a trusted service provider.

Storytelling

As previously mentioned, company folklore can play an impactful role in crafting core values. These stories illustrate a company’s innate character, which set a precedent for behaviors and processes in the workplace.

Judy Cirullo shared a piece of this process: “They shared these stories without me prompting them, which is more meaningful. I would then ask them, What do these stories mean to you? What do they tell you about how people perceive this business? This helped them articulate the significance of these stories, which we then incorporated into their core values.

For example, a patient had been told by another dentist that they needed extensive dental work. However, when they visited this dental practice, the dentist took the time to explain what was truly needed, the stages of treatment, and why. Despite initially needing extensive work, the patient was astounded by the care and explanation given. This story exemplifies the value of Inspiring Trust, as the patient ultimately had confidence in the dentist and the entire team.”

CoreScore™ Tool

An impactful approach to assess the alignment of employees with your organizational values is through the implementation of our CoreScore™ system. This neutralizes the traditional method of ranking, as the reference point to measure is not other employees, but rather the organizations CoreVals and progress toward Core Purpose.

The CoreScore system offers a structured framework to evaluate the degree of alignment between employees and your CoreVals. By utilizing a rating scale ranging from, you can accurately measure how consistently individuals embody and exhibit your values.

Briggs Family & Cosmetic Dentistry developed a customized spreadsheet to evaluate how effectively their employees were embodying their core values. This has become such a great tool for them, because they included details by categorizing tasks according to different descriptive behaviors and core values.

For instance, to illustrate the core value of "We inspire trust," they outlined particular processes and protocols that exemplify this value, such as "maintaining reports" and "reviewing schedules to stay up to date." These behaviors are specific to each position. They have a dedicated sheet for each position, detailing the corresponding Core People Processes™.

By leveraging the CoreScore™ system, they acquire a visual display to identify the employees whose scores indicate a misalignment with their CoreVals™, specifically falling into the red category. Once these individuals are identified, they can easily engage in conversations that center around their organization's values. 

Using core values as a reference point can help neutralize difficult conversations as they become less personal and more focused on a shared framework.

These conversations create an opportunity to provide constructive feedback. They can also lead to unhiring™, when it would benefit both the culture and the individual to part ways. Together, they can explore potential paths for transitioning out of the organization, emphasizing that finding a better cultural fit is ultimately in their best interest as well.

Conclusion

Briggs Family & Cosmetic Dentistry's case study demonstrates the profound impact of deliberate culture-building efforts. Under the leadership of a family deeply dedicated to their legacy, the practice acknowledged the fundamental importance of culture in their business triumphs. 

With the adept guidance of The Culture Fix® Coach, Judy Cirullo, PT, ACC, CPC, their strategic approach involved embedding core values into various facets of their operations. This method effectively fortified their desired culture, transforming values into actionable and measurable principles. 

A special thank you to our Coach, Judy Cirullo, PT, ACC, CPC for sharing this experience with us. And thank you to Briggs Family & Cosmetic Dental for your commitment to leading with values, as you keep both your patients, and your team members, smiling.