Culture turns strategy into action

Like many people, I enjoy working at startups with a mission I believe in. These companies match talented individuals with the latest technologies to solve important problems.

And small companies typically want to explicitly define a culture of customer focus and collaboration. It is easy to feel engaged and motivated when this small group of people are aligned around a shared purpose.

But as companies grow, this culture can be diluted by layers of bureaucracy unless it is actively nurtured. In How a pregnancy test on a male patient revealed health care flaws, Eric Goldfarb uses an absurd billing error to expose something far more serious: a healthcare system where automation, billing complexity, and fragmented communication overrode common sense.

My father’s last medical bill suggested he might be expecting a child. … Somewhere in the hospital’s system, common sense had vanished. We found the pregnancy test charge only after paying the bill in full. … The scariest part was how certain everyone sounded. The first person promised a refund. The second declared the charge correct. The third told us to use a portal we couldn’t access. Each spoke with the confidence of a script box at the bottom of the screen. Meanwhile, my mother and I kept repeating a small sentence that contained the universe: Men cannot get pregnant.

It doesn’t need to be this way. But it takes intentional effort to build a culture that prioritizes human connection and empathy alongside efficiency and scale. Health care executive and cancer survivor Jeffry A. Peters discusses his personal experience with receiving care with empathy, and how small, human moments expanded clinical excellence into true healing.

The person at the front desk did not simply point me toward a waiting area. She looked me in the eye and said, “We’re glad you’re here. If you need anything, just let me know.”

He goes on to explain how this clinic differs from Eric’s hospital:

[At that clinic], every person, from environmental services to senior clinicians, shares a clear sense of mission. They understand that they are not just treating disease; they are caring for people at the most vulnerable moment in their lives. … Culture is what turns strategy into action. It determines whether a vision inspires or simply hangs on a wall. It is the difference between an organization that delivers results and one that just delivers reports. The best organizations do not try to buy transformation. They build it patiently and deliberately, from the inside out.