Culture is defined as an evolving set of collective beliefs, values, and attitudes. Culture is a key component in business and has a powerful influence on the strategic direction of the business. Culture influences management, decisions, and all business functions — from accounting to production.
Culture is air to the bird, water to the fish, dark matter to the planets. Culture directly and powerfully impacts the relationships people have with each other and the company itself. As Peter Drucker once said, “Culture is king.”
Building Multi-location Dental Practices
Entrepreneurs building multi-location dental practices realize that having the culture assimilated and present in all locations is a primary driver of their success. To date, we haven’t seen any clear, specific models for consistently achieving culture unification. However, the DEO does have proven, proprietary models and methodologies for culture transference and assimilation. We have used them successfully over many years, and they have proven sustainable and scalable.
The DEO methodology is based on language. As one of my teachers, Noam Chomsky, stated, “A language is not just words. It’s a culture, a tradition, a unification of community, a whole history that creates what a community is. It’s all embodied in a language.” A culture is, in our models and methodologies, the language spoken and heard in a company. If culture is a house, then language is the key to the front door and all rooms inside. Having people speak the same language using words with shared meaning is that key.
Language is the framework through which humans experience, communicate, and understand reality. Communicating in a shared language and basing that language on the core values, core beliefs, purpose, and vision of the company is essential. As stated by Rita Mae Brown: “Language is the roadmap of culture. It tells you where its people come from and where they are going.”
The Power of Language
Certain forms of language are universal. They mean the same thing in every culture throughout the world. I’ve professionally worked in 17 countries with people from at least 40 different cultures. In the U.A.E., for example, my work with the American Clinic included employees and executives from 13 different countries and cultures.
In building a unifying culture, we were able to find a common thread of a particular domain of language that meant the same thing to every person: integrity and commitment. A promise means the same thing in every culture. A promise means honoring yourself as your word in every language.
In our work with dentist-entrepreneurs building multi-location dental practices, we develop an entire language system based on integrity and commitment, because it means the same thing to everyone. This language system is the result of my work with Werner Erhard, Michael Jensen, Steve Zaffron, Arnold Siegle, and Fernando Flores, as well as my master’s work in NLP. This work culminated in a proprietary body of knowledge, models, and methodologies only available through our company.
We train and develop people to speak in a language of commitment and in doing that, we generate cultures of high performance, reduced emotional and psychological filaments, greater power, and far better clarity. Far fewer problems and upsets arise. More effective actions result. Goals are attained more efficiently and effectively.
Language and culture cannot be separated. Language is how and what people understand producing a unique cultural perspective. For our clients, we use committed language as our tool to shape and drive business culture, which directly shapes their perspectives of the company, their relationships, and themselves. Absolutely nothing is so important for a company’s culture as its language.
From my experience, it takes a solid six months of training and development to fully embed this language model. Once cemented in place — once people speak the language of commitment, once the culture is consistently operating with and inside integrity — incredible performance and high levels of satisfaction are the result.
If you have an interest in learning more about this for your cultural development, contact me directly via [email protected].
“The limits of my language are the limits of my world.”
— Ludwig Wittgenstein
— Marc
