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The 10 Principles of a Love-Based Culture: How Authentic Business Leaders Trust Their Employees to Do the Right Thing
Love isn't a word used much in the business world. Business is too tough for love, right?
Not necessarily. In Love-Based Culture, thought leader Ivo Nelson provides 10 love based principles that will help you create happy customers, energize employees, and enjoy rich year-to-year revenue growth, all while steering your business away from fear and toward love.
A LOVE-BASED CULTURE encourages you to:
Become obsessed with a bold, customer-centered goal.
Put your employees' needs ahead of your own.
Be uncompromising in living core values daily.
Have purpose beyond profits.
Focus on long-term growth.
Reward those who add value.
Feel the buzz of success.
Hardwire processes to trust.
Empower those closest to the customer to do what's right.
The no-brainer steps to a LOVE-BASED CULTURE were formed from Ivo's experiences as CEO of Healthlink, which, along with contributing author and COO Dana Sellers, he propelled into the world's largest privately held, provider focused healthcare technology consulting firm. By cultivating a love-based culture, Healthlink enjoyed a 13-year streak of 100% positive customer referrals and became KLAS #1 ranked consulting firm in healthcare.
So, let's get started. We've got a lot of love to do.
Not necessarily. In Love-Based Culture, thought leader Ivo Nelson provides 10 love based principles that will help you create happy customers, energize employees, and enjoy rich year-to-year revenue growth, all while steering your business away from fear and toward love.
A LOVE-BASED CULTURE encourages you to:
Become obsessed with a bold, customer-centered goal.
Put your employees' needs ahead of your own.
Be uncompromising in living core values daily.
Have purpose beyond profits.
Focus on long-term growth.
Reward those who add value.
Feel the buzz of success.
Hardwire processes to trust.
Empower those closest to the customer to do what's right.
The no-brainer steps to a LOVE-BASED CULTURE were formed from Ivo's experiences as CEO of Healthlink, which, along with contributing author and COO Dana Sellers, he propelled into the world's largest privately held, provider focused healthcare technology consulting firm. By cultivating a love-based culture, Healthlink enjoyed a 13-year streak of 100% positive customer referrals and became KLAS #1 ranked consulting firm in healthcare.
So, let's get started. We've got a lot of love to do.
- GenresBusiness
272 pages, Paperback
Published April 2, 2019
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
September 16, 2024
Really interesting book about creating an environment of love within the workplace. I have an ex-work colleague called Ron SIAHPOOSH who’s doing something similar. The best bits:
Most businesses live in industries where competition is fierce, so being on your game means everything. This is similar to the environment our caveman ancestors experienced, who needed fear to avoid danger. Today, we have the same instincts. Our ancestors didn't experience fear all the time, though. Chronic fear was unlikely in their vocabularies, but it is an unfortunate habit in ours.
If you walk into your office with an air of superiority because you are the CEO, then you're missing a key point. You are the CEO because that's the role for which you are uniquely qualified and at which you excel. You are not better or higher or superior in any way to anybody else in the company.
Habits are nothing more than repeated behaviours and those behaviours can be modified. You can unlearn the patterns that have been detrimental to you or to those you lead.
I finally asked Sally out on a date, and when I showed up at the front door with a big bouquet of roses, she burst into tears. It was like we had met and fallen in love all over again. In De-cember, nine months after our divorce, we remarried, and we have stayed very happily married ever since.
I was working in Indianapolis, Indiana, when, one day, the account manager (my big boss) walked up to my cubicle and invited me to lunch. We left the building with little small talk and walked way past where folks normally went to eat. Then he turned into the downtown tennis center where the Indianapolis Clay Court Pro tournament was underway. We proceeded to seats at center court and spent the afternoon, just the two of us, enjoying pro tennis. I would have killed for him after that. The things that made the afternoon special were (1) he somehow found out that I was a tennis fan and had played on a team in high school, (2) he invested his time with me in a personal way, and (3) we did something that had nothing to do with work. This probably cost the company $100 for the 2 seats and $20 for the beer and hot dogs, but it was the best employee recognition I'd ever experienced. I will never forget it, and | have told hundreds of people this positive story about leadership.
In a love-based culture, there must be recognition that not all performance issues can be quantified and totted up to 100%. With this in mind, I came up with a few categories in which performance could be measured. I gave those categories a total weight of 50%. I then created a second category called WIN, which addressed the intangibles discussed above. The total of the items in the WIN category also received a weight of 50%.
For a project, I was the lone rookie on what I discovered was an all-star team of seasoned professionals. Our consulting firm's CEO was on site to make herself available and help in any way. I watched in awe as she went seamlessly from meeting with the key client stakeholders to showing concern for individual consultants. As the week came to a close and I was boarding the plane that would get me home around midnight, I passed her in first class. To my utter bewilderment, she recognized me, called me by name, and literally jumped out into the aisle to block my path. At the same time, she traded her boarding pass for mine, grabbed her luggage from the overhead compartment, and offered me her first-class seat. We exchanged insistences briefly until she made it very clear to me this was not an offer, and explained that She never lets any of her employees sit behind her on a plane. I sat in disbelief the whole flight home, contemplating how | now wanted to make it to a place someday where I could show her a return on her investment in me.
When customers and employees enjoy the effects of discipline, superior quality of products and services, happiness, and a sense of purpose, the result creates a "buzz" in and around the company that is contagious.
Rod Canion, who was the chairman of our board at the time, asked why we were concerned about burnout. I explained that people were working long hours. Rod wisely told us that long hours and hard work don't lead to burnout; burnout happens when that first inkling enters your mind that you won't be successful. A poorly handled fear of failure is more likely to lead to burning out than working really hard.
At a previous employer, my coworker's wife has been diagnosed with a very serious form of cancer. They had 3 kids, who were then 18 months, 3 years, and 4 years old. After using all of his holidays and legal time to take care of his wife, my coworker was facing the dilemma of either quitting the job to take care of her-therefore losing the only income in the household-or to keep working and therefore not be around his wife and kids very much. All of the company's employees (including executives) agreed to give him one of our own vacation days to help. The CEO then decided that every day given would count for the giver as only half a day, while for our coworker it would count as two days. Thanks to that Act of Love, my coworker was able to take nine months of paid time off to take care of his wife. To this day, I wish I could find another workplace where humanity is the primary focus, where we are all there to help each other, and where we feel like a true family.
"The only reason you don't come to a consensus on solving a problem is that you either haven't worked an issue hard or long enough, or you don't have the right people in the room to engage in the conversation." ROD CANION
Leadership - Louis V, Gerstner, Ic. the former CEO of IBM, once said: "Until I came to IBM, I probably would have told you that culture was just one among several important elements in any organization's makeup and success-along with vision, strategy, marketing, financials, and the like. I came to see, in my time at IBM, that culture isn't just one aspect of the game.
It is the game. In the end, an organization is nothing more than the collective capacity of its people to create value."
Most businesses live in industries where competition is fierce, so being on your game means everything. This is similar to the environment our caveman ancestors experienced, who needed fear to avoid danger. Today, we have the same instincts. Our ancestors didn't experience fear all the time, though. Chronic fear was unlikely in their vocabularies, but it is an unfortunate habit in ours.
If you walk into your office with an air of superiority because you are the CEO, then you're missing a key point. You are the CEO because that's the role for which you are uniquely qualified and at which you excel. You are not better or higher or superior in any way to anybody else in the company.
Habits are nothing more than repeated behaviours and those behaviours can be modified. You can unlearn the patterns that have been detrimental to you or to those you lead.
I finally asked Sally out on a date, and when I showed up at the front door with a big bouquet of roses, she burst into tears. It was like we had met and fallen in love all over again. In De-cember, nine months after our divorce, we remarried, and we have stayed very happily married ever since.
I was working in Indianapolis, Indiana, when, one day, the account manager (my big boss) walked up to my cubicle and invited me to lunch. We left the building with little small talk and walked way past where folks normally went to eat. Then he turned into the downtown tennis center where the Indianapolis Clay Court Pro tournament was underway. We proceeded to seats at center court and spent the afternoon, just the two of us, enjoying pro tennis. I would have killed for him after that. The things that made the afternoon special were (1) he somehow found out that I was a tennis fan and had played on a team in high school, (2) he invested his time with me in a personal way, and (3) we did something that had nothing to do with work. This probably cost the company $100 for the 2 seats and $20 for the beer and hot dogs, but it was the best employee recognition I'd ever experienced. I will never forget it, and | have told hundreds of people this positive story about leadership.
In a love-based culture, there must be recognition that not all performance issues can be quantified and totted up to 100%. With this in mind, I came up with a few categories in which performance could be measured. I gave those categories a total weight of 50%. I then created a second category called WIN, which addressed the intangibles discussed above. The total of the items in the WIN category also received a weight of 50%.
For a project, I was the lone rookie on what I discovered was an all-star team of seasoned professionals. Our consulting firm's CEO was on site to make herself available and help in any way. I watched in awe as she went seamlessly from meeting with the key client stakeholders to showing concern for individual consultants. As the week came to a close and I was boarding the plane that would get me home around midnight, I passed her in first class. To my utter bewilderment, she recognized me, called me by name, and literally jumped out into the aisle to block my path. At the same time, she traded her boarding pass for mine, grabbed her luggage from the overhead compartment, and offered me her first-class seat. We exchanged insistences briefly until she made it very clear to me this was not an offer, and explained that She never lets any of her employees sit behind her on a plane. I sat in disbelief the whole flight home, contemplating how | now wanted to make it to a place someday where I could show her a return on her investment in me.
When customers and employees enjoy the effects of discipline, superior quality of products and services, happiness, and a sense of purpose, the result creates a "buzz" in and around the company that is contagious.
Rod Canion, who was the chairman of our board at the time, asked why we were concerned about burnout. I explained that people were working long hours. Rod wisely told us that long hours and hard work don't lead to burnout; burnout happens when that first inkling enters your mind that you won't be successful. A poorly handled fear of failure is more likely to lead to burning out than working really hard.
At a previous employer, my coworker's wife has been diagnosed with a very serious form of cancer. They had 3 kids, who were then 18 months, 3 years, and 4 years old. After using all of his holidays and legal time to take care of his wife, my coworker was facing the dilemma of either quitting the job to take care of her-therefore losing the only income in the household-or to keep working and therefore not be around his wife and kids very much. All of the company's employees (including executives) agreed to give him one of our own vacation days to help. The CEO then decided that every day given would count for the giver as only half a day, while for our coworker it would count as two days. Thanks to that Act of Love, my coworker was able to take nine months of paid time off to take care of his wife. To this day, I wish I could find another workplace where humanity is the primary focus, where we are all there to help each other, and where we feel like a true family.
"The only reason you don't come to a consensus on solving a problem is that you either haven't worked an issue hard or long enough, or you don't have the right people in the room to engage in the conversation." ROD CANION
Leadership - Louis V, Gerstner, Ic. the former CEO of IBM, once said: "Until I came to IBM, I probably would have told you that culture was just one among several important elements in any organization's makeup and success-along with vision, strategy, marketing, financials, and the like. I came to see, in my time at IBM, that culture isn't just one aspect of the game.
It is the game. In the end, an organization is nothing more than the collective capacity of its people to create value."
April 14, 2019
I had the opportunity to work for Healthlink both before and after the company was acquired by IBM. The culture and core values created by Ivo Nelson and Dana Sellers were absolutely wonderful. It was a great working climate within to work and to feel empowered when confronting the many challenges that have to be faced when working on highly complex but critically important projects and business opportunities. It was one of my greatest career sadnesses when I learned that my own position had to be eliminated during a downturn of the business following the acquisition. It was like leaving a family that I had come to love. Much appreciated to see Ivo and Dana collaborating again in this important and timely book on how to build a strong and resilient culture founded on a set of core values. I still have my Healthlink Core Values laminated card and see it every time I open my desk drawer.
April 4, 2019
Great read!
I lived this culture with Ivo and Dana for 20 years. This quick read touches all the important tenets that made Healthlink and Encore so successful, and more importantly, how they came to be. Great to reminisce on for me, but very pertinent to any leadership team going forward
I lived this culture with Ivo and Dana for 20 years. This quick read touches all the important tenets that made Healthlink and Encore so successful, and more importantly, how they came to be. Great to reminisce on for me, but very pertinent to any leadership team going forward
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews