Cultivating Culture in EMS: A Leadership Guide to Culture Change
Project Background
My capstone project, Cultivating Culture in EMS: A Leadership Guide to Culture Change, was an alchemy of proven leadership principles and practices intended to provide the foundational elements for an ailing sister company in our organization. Initially, I had intended this project to be a more generalized leadership training module for supervisors in my organization, however, just as I was beginning my project brainstorming, I was tasked with addressing problems surfacing at one of our sister companies. The sister company has been facing mounting employee complaints and concerns that were negatively affecting employee retention, productivity, morale and leading to unnecessary legal battles that distracted from the mission of the company. Many of the complaints filed were directed against the General Manager, a manager who ended up in the position by default when the previous manager was moved to another location. As is common in EMS, there is very little, if any, leadership training with most leaders landing in the position because they hold a paramedic license and have industry experience, not leadership experience. While I focused on this one company, other sister companies in the organization were dealing with similar issues. I aimed to have this project be a proving ground for a greater initiative across the entire family of companies. Many of my ideas and initiatives had already been proven successful in our Hillsboro organization but required leaders to have some formal training and guidance to do so. This project aims to provide a foundational beginning for young leaders in the company who are looking to create or change a culture that thrives and stays true to the company mission of providing high-quality care centered around safety, continual learning and improvement.