Impacting Lives with Valued Culture with Kitsa Antonopoulos of Lumiere Children’s Therapy
Today’s topic will make us realize why a valued culture is more impacting in the lives of the employees in relation to how they live up to the company's culture. Companies as an entity can survive with having core values alone but why is it that valued culture must play an important role in shaking the companies to their roots?
Our guest in today’s show will bring us this enlightenment as she defines corporate culture in a whole new level. Let us all welcome Kitsa Antonopoulos, the successful founder and CEO of Lumiere Children’s Therapy. Let us all be inspired by this leader’s heartwarming success story from starting out a small company and turned it big, simply by being guided by the core values of the company she has established.
Being in the company of children led her to the decision to choose core values that would make every person inside the company be as free spirited and fun loving like kids. She will share with us the different set of core values their company believes in that makes it different from other child care companies and how they managed to sustain it through the years. Let us all be guided with the beautiful advices she will be sharing with us that are quite on point and outright sensible.
“Corporate culture is the heartbeat of the company.”
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In this episode, you will learn:
1:35 – How Lumiere started out as a company
3:50 – What is corporate culture
5:58 – The culture in Lumiere – positive, happy, collaborative, upbeat, busy
8:59 – Lumiere’s core values – Believe, Connect, Teach and Learn, Have Fun
10:10 – How Lumiere arrived with their core values
21:50 – Kitsa shares her personal experience about a culture that doesn’t fit her
personality and its impact on her
26:18 – Kitsa’s favorite story about the practice of core values
28:46 – Advice to listeners
Resources:
Connect with Kitsa:
Connect with Will:
Episode Transcript:
Speaker 1: From core values to valued culture, here is your host, Will Scott, interviewing another CEO about leading culture in their company.
Will Scott: Welcome, everybody, to another of our first CEO interviews where we interview CEOs about corporate culture. You can find this and other interviews at cultureczars.com. Here at Culture Czars we want to help employees feel like they make a meaningful contribution through the work that they do and feel valued. We do this by encouraging companies to not simply have core values, but to truly have a valued culture. We're en route to creating 2,020 Culture Czars by 2020, and today we are interviewing Culture Czar Kitsa Antonopoulos of Lumiere Children's Therapy. Hi, Kitsa.
Kitsa A.: Hi.
Will Scott: How are you today?
Kitsa A.: Really good.
Will Scott: Are you looking forward to talking about your culture?
Kitsa A.: I am, actually.
Will Scott: Yeah? You have a great culture at Lumiere Children's Therapy. Why don't you start by just telling us about Lumiere, how you started the company and got to where you are.
Kitsa A.: Okay. I'm a speech language pathologist, and about 10 years ago I had an opportunity to start seeing clients privately, so I followed that opportunity and ended up building a caseload of my own and found that there was a need for additional families to be serviced, and I couldn't meet those needs. And as clients were asking me for additional services and to pick up more clients, I began hiring clinical fellows to do the work, and then my families would ask for additional services, and then we hired more employees, and it just kind of grew from there.
Kitsa A.: About three years ago, we moved into a larger location and were able to launch our therapeutic preschool program, an additional program, so now we are a multidisciplinary company. We have speech, occupational, physical therapy, social services, and behavior therapy, and we have a therapeutic preschool and enrichment classes, so it's been a long transition, but it's been fun.
Will Scott: How many years in total?
Kitsa A.: 10 or 12, I believe.
Will Scott: Okay.
Kitsa A.: ... give or take.
Will Scott: Okay. Well, thanks and congrats on your success. We know how few companies make it this far.
Kitsa A.: Yeah, that's true.
Will Scott: You definitely feel like the company is a good place right now, and you're building and growing and going onto bigger and better things.
Kitsa A.: Yeah, I do. We've had a lot of growth within the past year or two, and along with that has come a lot of ... We're a service-based industry, so I'm always working with my employees and their needs, which is why I'm excited to speak about culture today: because it's been very important in what I do.
Will Scott: Well, let's start there. When we talk about corporate culture, what does that mean to you?
Kitsa A.: That's a good question. I was thinking about this earlier. To me, the best way to define it would be I see it as kind of the heartbeat of the company. It's really more of an emotional feel. You can quantify it with things, but even when you're describing it, it's a lot of times the feel that you get with your employees, the energy of a space in the office, how I feel interacting with them, so it can feel a lot of different ways, and we've all had those experiences as well.
Will Scott: That's so true, isn't it? It's very much about feelings and the sort of emotional side of business. Do you think as CEOs, though, sometimes we are not very good at acknowledging the softer side of business and how important it is?
Kitsa A.: Oh, absolutely. A lot of the books and stuff that most entrepreneurs read ... And we read all kinds of things. ... do focus a lot on strategy, I think, and people talk a lot about finance and marketing, and there's a people component as well, but it tends to focus a little more on hiring the right people and having the right people in the right seat and things like that.
Kitsa A.: But culture, many times, gets kind of glazed over; people talk about it or you're ticking off the box, saying, "Okay. Well, we've got our core values. We've got our mission and our vision and our purpose, and that's it. We've done this, and we've checked all our boxes," but that doesn't really help influence what's really going on in the space.
Will Scott: Right. Right. How would you describe the culture at Lumiere?
Kitsa A.: I would say that it's very positive, happy, very collaborative, upbeat, and it's also busy. We have a busy culture. We have a lot of movement going on, but we work with children, and so there's always a clinician or an employee, even if it's an administrator, kind of helping a family or helping somebody else. Everyone does have their hands full because we're very hands-on in our work, but we're not bored. That's for sure.
Will Scott: Of course, Kitsa, we work together, so I know your business quite well. Don't you also feel now that you could almost say 100% of your team fit the culture and just how awesome that feeling is once you get to that point?
Kitsa A.: Yes. It's been a pretty dramatic change for me because I do remember a time, not that long ago, before we did start working on the culture, that I personally felt like it was me against them or I was on one side of the table or the situation and they were on the other side of the situation and I was always trying to prove why we needed to do what I felt we needed to do.
Kitsa A.: And I kind of got a feeling at times that there were certain employees that weren't maybe on the same page or had different viewpoints, which is fine, but we weren't all working towards a common goal. And I used to use the analogy of it felt like we were all on a boat, rowing in the same direction, but there may have been some people in the back, drilling holes in the back of the boat, and it just was counterproductive to what we were trying to do. I don't know have that feeling anymore. We're definitely all on the same page.
Will Scott: Okay. Very cool. Very cool. That's a great place to be at, and I think you feel you can achieve a lot. And it's hard to measure a culture, but in terms of productivity and just the way everything is clicking in the company, I think you'd definitely say that your work on culture has helped the performance of the company for sure.
Kitsa A.: Yeah. It's also helped me become clear on if there's some people that aren't a fit anymore. I used to have a lot of trouble with determining ... I'd have a feeling that somebody wasn't a fit, but I didn't really understand why. Now not only do I have a feeling that someone might not be a fit ... And there might also be additional things that they're doing that make them not a fit, but I can actually take a look and say, "They're not really fitting the culture here." And I'm usually not the only person that feels it. I will also have other employees that eventually come to me, and they're like, "You know? I'm noticing this and this," and it just becomes obvious.
Will Scott: Isn't that awesome? Yeah.
Kitsa A.: Yeah.
Will Scott: I know the answer to this, of course. I know you have defined your culture using core values. What are some of your core values?
Kitsa A.: Our core values are believe. It's really the idea of keeping a positive mindset and a positive attitude about what we do. We work with-
Will Scott: And you said earlier how positive ... That was the first thing you said about how you describe how it feels positive.
Kitsa A.: Exactly.
Will Scott: So believe is one of them.
Kitsa A.: Believe is one of them, yes. Connect is another. Everything that we do is about connecting with each other and our families, so that was a really big piece of who we are. Teach and learn. We're a highly-educated group of individuals. Everyone that works with us has some sort of license or degree of specialty, so teaching and learning and continuing education is important, but also teaching and learning with our families and each other. That's a big piece. "Have fun" is our fourth core value, and we have to have fun. We work with children. Our therapy is play based. We celebrate their achievements all the time. We call those magic moments. So that's our last core value, and we have to have fun with what we do.
Will Scott: Kitsa, what process did you use to arrive at these core values?
Kitsa A.: I actually worked with you to arrive at these core values, and the process that we used I really enjoyed, actually. I don't know if there's a specific term for it. I think it's something that you put together yourself. It was one of the best experiences I've ever had with helping to define my culture, and I've done a lot of things. I've read the books.
Kitsa A.: I've kind of followed the steps through different methodologies and things, and I never really felt like I really grasped what was going on because it's really hard as a CEO of a company. You can't sit in a room and "Okay. These are our core values." That's not really how it works, even if you are lucky enough to have a leadership team in place. It helps a bit more because you've got some input from others. But what we did: you got our leadership team together in a room, and then you definitely ...
Kitsa A.: We spent a lot of time really understanding who I was and kind of where my vision came from and "What are my personal core values as an individual?" and "How did those help shape the culture of my company and what we create?" That was really important. And we did a lot of whiteboarding and just talking, and you were able to go in and just find patterns of the same word of feeling or idea or thought. We kind of brought that together there, and then we drilled down on those, really identifying, "What is it that everyone is really trying to say?"
Kitsa A.: And the other thing that I really thought was wonderful is you spent time sitting in the space in our office, listening to my employees speak to each other and being a really good observer. And you were able to pull a lot of information, same thing, same idea, but from my team, and that's while you were working in the middle of their space. Then we pulled that altogether, and a lot of it overlapped with some of the things that I was saying, which pleased me very much because I knew I wasn't completely off base.
Will Scott: That's right.
Kitsa A.: Then we just kind of honed in from there. Then we presented it to the team just to see if any of them felt like we were off from what we had observed, and we weren't, actually. I think we kind of nailed it pretty quickly, so it was great. And it really felt right, where before it felt off, but I wasn't really quite sure why.
Will Scott: Yeah, no, I agree. Particularly with your business, that was one of the interesting parts, was doing the observation thing and just listening for, as you say, "What were people saying naturally and what was part of the culture?" and finding those word and tease those words out that described it and then kind of wordsmith those things to make sure they were memorable and maybe catchy, but also personal to Lumiere Children's Therapy.
Kitsa A.: I think that was the biggest part: making it personal, because all identify with it and there's not really anybody else who could really have the core values that I have necessarily.
Will Scott: That's right. That's right.
Kitsa A.: It was a great thing for us.
Will Scott: They're absolutely unique to you. And under your fourth core value you mentioned "Have fun." One of the descriptors that we use for that is "Let's play," which just came from listening to therapists who are connecting, one of your other values, connecting at the child's level by being down, on their knees, and using words like, "Yeah, let's play. And now let's play." That was fun that that became part of it.
Kitsa A.: Yeah.
Will Scott: And "No drama" is also an interesting one, isn't it, that we went with at Lumiere Children's Therapy? In two words, we kind of know what it means, but hasn't that really helped at Lumiere: not to have staff that kind of are dramatic and cause a stir in the place versus just there's this, "Hey, we don't do drama here. We're kind of calm. This is about therapy and learning and stuff"?
Kitsa A.: Yeah, it's really helped keep people focused on why we do the work that we do and I think really elevate the workspace, and also I think the clients feel it because I think if you have a culture that's not working very well, I think it can trickle through to your clients. And being a service-based industry and working with children who have neuro-diversity and working with these families that have to figure out how to work through this, they don't need any extra stress in their life, so it's a big part of what we do.
Will Scott: Yeah, yeah. One of the things I like to say is we need to bring these core values alive. I know we did that, and I can even see the poster behind you there, which is one way we brought them alive, is we did a design and put them up on the wall.
Kitsa A.: Yeah.
Will Scott: And then make them thrive, so are they thriving at Lumiere? For example, how aware are your employees of the core values? Could they recite them if you asked them to: the four values?
Kitsa A.: Yeah, that's a good question. I think they could, actually. We have them posted in the workspace. We also refer to them often. All staff meetings and any communication that goes out we always try to weave that messaging in. It's throughout our website, and I find it a lot in the various emails that I receive from staff.
Kitsa A.: We recently had an opportunity to interview for some team lead positions, and in a lot of the correspondence that we received from people interested in potentially interviewing for those positions, many of them, if not all of them referenced one or all of the core values in why they feel that they would be a good candidate for the position.
Kitsa A.: I was really excited to see that because they're understanding that these are not just words; they're very important to what we do. I do all the interviewing and the hiring at this time, along with other team members, and we're always referring to them. We're talking about them. We spend a lot of time interviewing people, making sure they're a good cultural fit.
Will Scott: Yeah. As the leader of Lumiere Children's Therapy, how important is it that you're deliberate about managing your culture and don't just sort of let the default happen, that you do describe it with words and then nurture that? How important is it?
Kitsa A.: It's extremely important. It's probably one of the most important things that I do because if you're not being clear on what the expectations are and what everyone should be aligned towards, sometimes people just kind of naturally fill in the blanks for themselves, so I do think that constant repetition and buy-in is also important, which is why I'm really glad we initially went to our team. We didn't say, "Hey, guys, these are your core values. You need to adopt them." We went to them and said, "What do you think of these? This is what we heard, and this is kind of in addition to what your CEO believes. Does this feel right to you?"
Kitsa A.: And when we got that buy-in and that support, it makes it very easy to naturally remind and bring people back and realign with them. And I don't think you can say them enough. I think there's various ways to say it and things to talk about because you don't want to sound like a commercial all the time or anything, but I think it's important to remind your staff frequently. It also helps them reset because I know sometimes work in general can be stressful.
Will Scott: Yeah, for sure. So you don't just think it's important to manage cash and strategy and client relationship and marketing? You think managing culture is up there, just as important or maybe more important than those things?
Kitsa A.: I think it's probably the most important thing that you can really do because if your goal is to scale a company or to really have growth, as many entrepreneurs it is, you can't do it on your own, so it's really important to understand that in order to be a strong leader and to have other people on a team want to follow your lead and work in the same direction or row in the same direction, you really need to be sure you're all aligned in the same place. You can have the best strategy and the best marketing and have your finances all buttoned up, but if you don't have anyone aligning with you or if your team doesn't align with you, you are not going to get anywhere.
Will Scott: That all sounds great, Kitsa. What do you do to keep the core values alive and thriving?
Kitsa A.: Well, one of the things that we've done, in addition to just having them posted and reminding our clinicians regularly and even on the back of their badges, we have little core value stickers and stuff just so that they're seeing them often. We also reward employees in the company that are showing us that they live those core values. We call them gotcha moments or shout-outs. At our staff meetings, we will often go around a circle and call out a peer or a colleague that has really showed us an example of believe or connect or teach and learn and "Have fun."
Kitsa A.: And we'll say, "Thank you," and then we'll talk about what core value that aligns with, and they'll get a little bit of a reward or a badge. We use something online now, so they're able to do an online impression, and then there's a history of those there, so you can see everyone in the company and everyone who is participating in those core values, which I think helps reinforce that that's what we're doing.
Will Scott: And if you go back a little bit, before all of this, did you work anywhere else? Have you worked anywhere where the culture has been really bad and now you know how good it feels as a contrast to how bad it was at some point?
Kitsa A.: Yeah. I'd have to go back a bit because I've been doing this for a little while, but I definitely remember a time, closer to right out of graduate school. I got my first job in Chicago, and the culture was terrible. It was just miserable. I didn't last. I completed my clinical fellowship in that one space, and then I actually moved on quite quickly.
Kitsa A.: I stayed at my next job for a few years, and then again the culture just wasn't really a good fit for me, and it was because I felt like I wasn't being heard. And I was really wanting to go above and beyond and do something more for the company I was working for, but I didn't feel like I was being heard at all. And I didn't even want more money. I just wanted to do something that felt more meaningful to me.
Will Scott: Yeah, yeah. That's beautifully said. Two of our big motivations at Culture Czar to do this work is that we want employees to feel like they're making a meaningful contribution, to use your word, meaningful, and also that they feel valued, they feel heard and valued. It's just so important to Millennials especially. It's not about the money. It's about, again, those feelings that you're getting through the work you're doing.
Kitsa A.: Yeah. It's part of the reason why, when I first started working for myself, I had some relief: because I felt like I could at least control my environment to some extent. And then when I started to bring other team members on, it was a very conscious effort of mine. And when I designed the structure of the company and the way I wanted it to feel, not just for my clients, but for my employees, it's always been something there. "How can I create a workspace that genuinely empowers families, the children, but also my clinicians?" because if everyone is feeling good, then we're going to create better work.
Will Scott: Yeah, yeah. I like to encourage leaders to not think of just leading their company, but leading a culture, and I think that helps us be more expansive beyond the four walls of the company. You mentioned the parents, and I know we show these core values to the parents, don't we? We put the little core value cards in their goody bag or their welcome bag.
Kitsa A.: Yeah.
Will Scott: And some of the things that we have there, whether it's "You've got this," something that we put in our core values from something that you say because you like to encourage parents of these children, "Hey, you've got this. You can do this now. You can go home and do this," even though they may not. It's just another great example of you extending the core values beyond the four walls to your community, downstream to your clients and maybe even upstream to your vendors and of course your therapists.
Will Scott: Another one you like to say is "We make it work," and I think that's very important to parents to, especially when it comes to insurance. "We make it work." Once that's kind of part of the Lumiere DNA for the therapists and everyone and the people that do our billing, "Hey, we make it work. We make it work for the parents too," again it's just an extensive of leading a culture, not simply leading a company.
Kitsa A.: Yeah, it's important. You've got to have everyone on the same page. And one of the big things is definitely not to assume that, just because you have them posted on a wall, people really understand what that means, so with new hires I spend a lot of time talking about it. I do weekly meetings with new hires just to make sure they're acclimating to the position.
Kitsa A.: And it's an important thing. I think the one thing that I have to remind myself, that I would remind other CEOs, is to just regularly be speaking about your core values, what they mean to you and what they mean in a company and just reminding people because if you're growing rapidly and you're hiring new people, they need to hear it just as many times as the people that have been there before.
Will Scott: Absolutely. The CEO needs to be the biggest champion of the core values.
Kitsa A.: Yeah.
Will Scott: I know you're great at that. I've been in the room when somebody will come in and it'll be about marketing or something. "Hey, what should we do for this marketing message?" And you're always saying, "Remember, put this core value in there," or if it's a marketing piece, "Hey, wait. Why aren't our core values on there?"
Kitsa A.: Right.
Will Scott: You do a great job of doing that.
Kitsa A.: Yeah.
Will Scott: So through this process, is there any particular favorite story that you would share with us, that comes to mind around the core values?
Kitsa A.: I was thinking about this one too. Favorite story. I think that what has really impressed me is ... And I think I mentioned this a little earlier, but what's really impressed me is how people think that this maybe needs to be hard or difficult or a challenge, and it really wasn't. What really impressed me is how simply, by just defining the core values, putting it out there and teaching my staff what they mean and making sure everyone is aligned, how quickly they are using them to ...
Kitsa A.: They reflect them back to me through words and through actions, like I said, in emails. I was very impressed to see how quickly that happened, and I'm like, "Oh, you don't have to make this hard. It can just be something that happens and then naturally, if people really align with them and you've really taken the time to make sure that it's something that your team aligns with, they're going to be proud of them and they're going to like using them." So I was really, really impressed with that, actually.
Will Scott: I think you've done a great job confirming one of the things that I like to say about investing in your corporate culture. There are a few things you can do where you spend a very little amount of money. I mean it hasn't cost you much to do this, has it? A bit of internal-
Kitsa A.: No.
Will Scott: ... time, a bit of printing, that's it.
Kitsa A.: Yeah.
Will Scott: So you don't have to spend much. You've talked about the huge return that you've got for the company. Right?
Kitsa A.: Yes.
Will Scott: And it's fun.
Kitsa A.: Yeah, it is.
Will Scott: Yeah? So why not make a small investment to get a big return and have some fun doing it?
Kitsa A.: Yeah, absolutely. Just my stress level around wondering what everyone is thinking or if I'm doing the right thing or if we're all on the same page has decreased dramatically, which it's a big thing because if you're a good leader, you're thinking about that often.
Will Scott: Yeah, absolutely. Last question to you, Kitsa. Is there any advice that you would share with our listeners and the Culture Czars community about managing culture in your company?
Kitsa A.: I would say don't put it off for later because I think I did that a lot. I'm like, "I'll get to that eventually. I need to figure out my this," or "I'll get to that eventually." I kept putting it off, thinking it wasn't really what was making my company grow. And then I would also say don't really be afraid of it because I think subconsciously when you sit down and you have to really reflect on yourself and your culture and your core values, at first you're like, "Wow, this is really where I want to be," and you might take a step back and look around and be like, "Wow, we're not really quite there yet."
Kitsa A.: There might be some people that might need to be let go. There might be some conversations that need to be had that I maybe wasn't as comfortable with having or I thought it would be hard to really align with the core values, which really it came down to, "Is everyone the best fit?" which made me nervous. And then I was like, "What am I going to do? If I let these people go, then I have to rehire."
Kitsa A.: And all of a sudden I felt like there was all this work, but honestly, it's much easier to just kind of align, get everyone on the same page, figure out if there is going to be anyone that's not a fit, work through that, and then the space that you create in your business and the sigh of relief ... And there's probably many other team members that really felt that that other person wasn't a good cultural fit as well, and it affects their ability to be productive and just be happy. So it's worth it. I would just say just do it. Don't put it off. Just do it.
Will Scott: Absolutely. I think one of the things that could perhaps get in the way of some CEOs just doing it is knowing how to do it, I mean just having a process for "How do you go from creating core values to really having a meaningful culture?" or even getting your core values together in the first place. Anyway, there's lots of tools and help about how we recommend doing that at Culture Czars, at our website, cultureczars.com. So Kitsa, that brings us to the end. Thank you so much for your insights. Thanks for being a part of the interview series. And congratulations on everything you've achieved at Lumiere Children's Therapy.
Kitsa A.: Thank you. It's been really just so much fun, and it's nice to be able to say that you enjoy working on and in your business. That's important.
Will Scott: Very cool. Absolutely. Well, thanks a lot. Have a great rest of the day.
Kitsa A.: Thank you. You too.
Will Scott: Thanks. Bye.
Kitsa A.: Bye.