Culture

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By Jacqui Rose, MBA, CRA, FAHRA     

I hope you were able to join us for the Spring Virtual Conference last week. As with the 2020 Annual meeting, there was a great deal of energy flowing throughout our three days together.  Remember that you still have time to get additional credit by viewing the recorded sessions on demand.  Many thanks to Josh Block from Block Imaging for kicking off the conference with an energetic discussion about taking small moments and creating a BIG impact.  Josh always brings timely and meaningful content and got the meeting off to an amazing start.  Kudos to all our presenters for doing this conference live, everyone did a great job!  Thanks to our great Design team and their chair Carrie Stiles along with Conference Managers for designing a great experience for us.  As I mentioned in the opening, they worked to develop an experience that goes smoothly and again, this one did not disappoint.  Thanks to our 2021 Spring ’21 Corporate sponsors, Nuance, ClariPi, Landauer, Rayence, and SCS.  We truly appreciate the opportunity to partner in bringing great content to our members. 

Over the past few weeks, I have had the opportunity to participate in several meetings from the New member zoom to the Past President zoom, and one theme was consistent through all meetings, a culture of Family.

Whether we are welcoming new members or enjoying time with former leaders, the concept and feeling of family kept coming up.  As we put together our Education Foundation Annual appeal for this year, we continually came back to that concept also.  AHRA as an association continues to touch the heart of our members and draws them into this family. 

A family-like culture doesn’t just happen and sustain itself over time without intentional creation and support.  As I listened to our past presidents, it was clear that this atmosphere was carefully crafted over time.  Each of them intentionally contributed to sustaining the culture much like leaders do at their work.  Many times, over the lifetime of a leader, we have an opportunity to either create, re-create or reshape our culture.  This is one of the most difficult things we do and requires time and patience.  

Culture is elusive and difficult to create or manage and can easily be overlooked in its value to an organization.  Culture is the values and norms of the organization that exists in the mindsets and behavior of its members.  Often, there are multiple cultures within any organization and leaders must be aware of this.  These norms determine acceptable behavior in an organization and when aligned with personal values, it will build strong, resilient organizations.  It is often said that culture eats strategy for lunch and according to the Harvard Business Review’s, The Leaders guide to Corporate Culture, a sound strategy without an appropriate culture will likely fail.[1]  Culture can be a gauge to the satisfaction of its associates as well as its key to success.  A fully engaged team that buys into the strategy and values the culture can be creative in their work to achieve more successful outcomes.  Leaders who intentionally build a culture and sustain it have been shown to have more successful organizations than those without. 

Creation of our culture was intentional by its early leaders and we are tasked with sustaining that strong family culture.  As AHRA continues to grow and evolve, each of us must be cognizant of the culture we create and leave to the next group of leaders.  The AHRA leadership regularly participates in education through ASAE – the Center for Association Leadership and we have identified a great opportunity to transition our Nominations Committee to a Leadership Development committee.  Through the work of this team, we will be able to guide and develop Imaging leaders on a path for leadership within AHRA.  Development of this team will begin this summer.  If you have a passion for leadership development and feel this committee work would be a good fit for you, please contact myself or Dan Kelsey as we are looking for you!

[1] “The Leader’s Guide to Corporate Culture”, by Groysberg, Lee, Price and Cheng.  Harvard Business Review, January-February 2018, accessed April 11, 2021.

Jacqui Rose, MBA, CRA, FAHRA, RT (R) is the 2020-2021 President of the AHRA Board of Directors. She is the Director of Medical Imaging, Telecommunications, IT and Lab,  UVMC; Medical Imaging, MVHN. She can be reached at jfrose@premierhealth.com