hat’s not my job!” I said indignantly when the office manager suggested I come into the clinic for a day to work as a Medical Office Assistant at our family business - Medi-Kel Clinic. One of her co workers had been bold enough to question how I could be making financial decisions concerning wage rates, if I did not really understand the value of the job I was pricing.

My initial reaction was predictable given the mindset that managers ought to remain above the fray so they can be “objective” about jobs in the business. Really though, it was a pride issue. I thought the job was beneath my ability.

As soon as the words were out of my mouth, I felt a conviction that the co-worker was right and I was wrong. If I was to be true to our core values in the business, I had a duty to listen and respond.

I am the business manager of my wife’s medical clinic. There are six doctors at the clinic and seven office staff who have the position of Medical Office Assistant or MOA for short. As the business manager I oversee an office manager who oversees the staff people. I work out of my home. I am not working on site and as the saying goes “out of sight, out of mind!” 

However, it quickly comes to the mind of the staff who the boss is when it is time to develop budgets or make spending decisions.  Often, I have heard the concern that it is difficult to work with me because I am not onsite.  This sometimes results in a feeling from staff that I do not understand their day to day pressures.

Working in a medical office can be a very difficult job.  There is an organizational culture in medical practice that values people for what they can produce.  The value of the Doctor is very high.  On the other hand, office staff are not valued very highly.  In fact, Doctors can be quite rude and arrogant with their medical staff, although we strive to avoid that happening at our clinic. So office staff can struggle with a feeling that leadership does not value who they are or what they do.

So when I was approached by the office manager with the idea that I try it out for a day to really get a feel of what the staff do and how important their job is to the business.  I thought why not? 

Well, the day arrived. It did not get off to a very good start.  I arrived 3 hours late for my shift! There was a slight communication problem on my part as to when I was supposed to be there.  Of course, all the staff were saying.  “Looks like he has chickened out!“   Anyway, I did finally arrive and I spent 6 hours working as a Medical Office Assistant. 

This being my first day, I had to be shown everything and I was prone to making a lot of mistakes.  One poor patient was left sitting in the waiting room for an hour because I had forgotten to register them and get out their chart! 

It was a somewhat humbling experience for me. I felt weak because I did not know what I was doing.  I felt afraid that I was going to make a mistake.  I felt rushed by all the demands of the patients and phone calls and faxes! I felt intimidated by the responsibility we had to care for people’s medical concerns. I felt what a rookie MOA feels on their first day!

The next day, I got a call from the Office Manager and she had a very good report from the staff about my time there.  It seems that the staff people were much more impressed by the fact I actually showed up for work and I was willing to be a rookie MOA for a day than by the fact I did a poor job registering patients. One of the comments from the card they sent me to say thank you stated,. “We’re all so glad you were willing to work with us and see our world first hand.”

Seeing our world first hand is exactly what Jesus came to do and it is exactly what He is sending us to do! This is the starting point for our clinic’s organizational culture. It is precisely because of Christ’s incarnation that we are called to incarnate His presence into our world. In John 20:21 Jesus says to his disciples, “As the Father sent me, even so, I send you!” Christians at work are sent into the world to be for the world what Jesus was for his world, the visible presence of a loving God who cares for His world and those who live in it.  

Starting a Business is Like Making Soup

So how did we arrive at this starting point and what difference is it making in the way we work in our medical clinic?

In some ways, starting a business is like making soup. Your business plan is your recipe. Your product, risk capital and personnel are the various ingredients for success. The launching of the business is the heat that “cooks” the broth and your clients are the patrons that enjoy its taste.

I was having lunch with my family at a restaurant. As the waitress introduced the menu, she recommended the soup. I asked her what kind of soup it was. She said it was a “curry cream base with vegetables, rice and mushrooms.” As soon as she said “curry” I could taste it!  So I ordered it and it was great.  This illustration serves as a metaphor for the point I want to make about starting a business. While we may have an excellent recipe and great ingredients, unless we consider the flavour of the base we intend to use in our business, we may end up with bad tasting soup!

So the question is, what is our “base” and where do we get it? The mistake entrepreneurs often make is that they throw all their ingredients together into the pot without thinking about the “flavor” they are creating. Every business has its own business culture.  Often this culture develops unintentionally as a by product of the people, products and facilities.  Therefore, it is important for a business person to be intentional about creating a healthy organizational culture.

To do this, entrepreneurs need to think intentionally about their vision, mission and core values. The “curry cream base” in my soup illustration flavored all the other ingredients.   This is how a business vision and core values are to work. They are to influence the organization, the personnel and the relationships in the business such that there is a consistent flavor to the mix. 

The challenge is that every ingredient has its own flavor.  Unless our process of business start up is done properly, other flavors can overwhelm and dominate the taste of the soup.  If I dug up a potato and dropped it into my soup, without washing it or peeling it, the taste of soil would dominate the soup.  Thus, we need to recognize the flavors that the business ingredients bring with them and provide a means to influence these flavors so that the soup tastes good.

In the case of medicine, the dominant business culture is flavored by money. The Canadian medical system is chronically short of resources to meet the demand for services.  Physicians often feel they are getting the short end of the stick when it comes to being paid for their services. Thus their primary concern in business becomes profit. If the business exists for the sake of money, physicians will find they are never satisfied.  Money will always demand we serve its interests. It will dominate our decision making. It becomes the measure by which everything is judged. Often it will lead a business person or a physician to crash and burn in their effort to satisfy its insatiable appetite.  It is the influence of money that we must be careful about in the creation of a base to flavor the business culture we foster in our medical clinic.

Addressing the Dominant Business Culture

At our clinic we have thought about the “base” for our soup. We recognize that there is a dominant business culture and that unless we intentionally address it, we will find that our soup tastes bad.  Organizational culture at its deepest level is relational. So we identified the primary stakeholder groups in our clinic and developed a set of governing commitments that will guide our relationships with these stakeholders. 

For example, our first commitment is to recognize we are subject to a higher authority. God is the one who has provided us the resources, the gifts and the abilities to practice medicine.  Ultimately, we recognize Him as the owner of the clinic and we are his stewards to carry out his purposes to care for and love people. This helps us counteract the dominate business culture that places the physician at the centre of the business as the owner and operator and makes money the dominant influence.  Instead, at Medi-Kel, we see the purpose of the business is to create value in community, value that includes finances but also includes relational, emotional and spiritual value as well. We desire our physicians and staff to grow as people when they work at our clinic. 

All People are Relational Beings of Infinite Worth

The dominant business culture in medicine often establishes a relational hierarchy between medical and non medical personnel.  In this culture the physicians have to make the critical decisions and face heavy demands.  This contributes to a perception that staff people are simply instruments of productivity. In this view, the more a staff person does for the physician the more valuable they are as a person. In the dominant culture relationship is based upon performance.

We have a great staff team at our clinic and the physicians are well served by the team.  However, all physicians AND staff are valued members of the medical services team.  At Medi-Kel every person, physician, staff and patient is a relational being of infinite value and intrinsic worth.  Relationship is based upon who we are as people and not primarily on what we do for each other. There are no “big people” (physicians), “little people” (staff), or “problem people” (patients) and neither do we consider there to be “important work” (medical care) and “ordinary work” (administration).  Everybody’s work contributes to the success of the clinic and every person is valued equally as a member of the clinic family.

This emphasis on work relationships is guided by a set of TEAM relational values that govern how we manage conflict at the clinic. We are committed to transparency (T), empowering one another (E), being accountable to one another (A) and minding our manners with one another (M).  Specifically, we are to keep short accounts by communicating and resolving tensions with one another quickly. We seek and extend forgiveness. We value relationship above who is right or who is wrong. We believe the best about each other and give each other the benefit of the doubt by asking questions before making statements. Finally, we own and deal with our own issues, weaknesses and shortcomings realizing that we are all prone to mistakes. 

The flavor that this has created at our clinic is popular. A bank teller remarked to me how different our clinic was than others that she had visited. Job applicants specifically seek us out because they have had a great experience as a walk in patient at our clinic. Patients have commended the staff and physicians for the extraordinary patient care experience. One of the Medical Office Assistants wrote to the Clinic owners, “The work environment is like no other that I have ever experienced.”

The Gospel is the Base that flavors the Soup

So what is the source of this base? How does one foster a business culture that is creating an extraordinary medical clinic?  What is the “curry” in our business that makes everything taste good? The source of flavor is the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Most people think the gospel is about a private spiritual transaction one makes with God to secure one’s eternal salvation. Since it is about what happens after a person’s life, it often seems irrelevant to life in this world. Rather, the gospel is a story about how this world is being transformed. In Genesis, the story begins in a garden. From that garden flowed rivers to water the earth. The garden was the source of life to that which surrounded it. In John’s gospel, Jesus taught that everyone who believes in him, out of them will flow rivers of living water.  The gospel is about a creation made new through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.  For those who accept this gospel, out of them will flow blessing that brings new life to that that is surrounding them. The base that flavors the “soup” at Medi-Kel is this new life that seeks the blessing and renewal of the life of others around it.

Thus the taste that people experience at our medical clinic is not just a nice flavor because we are nice people. It is the aroma of eternal life that is present in our faith in Jesus Christ and in our witness of the good news about his death and resurrection.  This clinic is not just another medical clinic, it is a real world, concrete, tangible embodiment of the gospel.   That is why people like the taste and in tasting it will want that flavor to be the flavor of their lives as well.

Shaping our Work Values around Jesus

In conclusion, to be successful as Christians at work in our medical clinic we must address both the professional medical culture that frowns upon faith based medicine and the dominant business culture that tempts us to pursue money above all else.  To accomplish this at Medi-Kel Clinic, we have shaped our work and our business around clearly defined vision and core values. It takes determination to walk a different path but we have discovered at Medi-Kel Clinic that it is possible.  By allowing the good news about Jesus to be our starting point, the base that flavors our broth, the taste that transforms our work, the mold that shapes our motive, we find that the “soup” we make is irresistible!