Rich Leichwig

Third party.

McKinsey was that partner for us and with us.

McKinsey brought a set of expertise experiences in a variety of different organizations that complemented the work that we wanted to do and the work that we were prepared to staff to do.

But in order to move at the pace we needed, we needed outside help.

Those three ingredients, I would say, and I'm sure there's four, five, and six ingredients, but those are three key ingredients that we identified at the start before we closed on day one.

And that has served us extremely well related to the execution of what we laid out to be about a three-year roadmap.

Well, the old saying, you know, culture eats strategy.

As similar as the two organizations are and have been, as similar as we perceive the cultures to be, we knew as we came together, we really wanted to try to create a more common culture that was built upon

The legacy values and principles of each of our respective organizations for 44,000 employees, 44,000 caregivers, they choose to be part of our organization, we believe, because of our values, because of our purpose.

And so for us, it was important early on that we blended the two cultures.

And we've only gone so far at this stage in the integration to identify a common set of values.

And we landed on a common set of values, starting with the two sets of values that both organizations brought together.

And then we ended up surveying our employees, getting feedback from them, the 44,000, what resonates.

And from that came a new set of BJC values that looked very similar to the two legacy set of values.

We then went one step further and we defined a common purpose.

What are we here to do as a much larger integrated academic health care system?

And so now we use both of those.

Again, it's sort of the home base, our North Star, as we continue to execute along our integration plan.

That's extremely important.

We lead with a value of kindness.