For as long as I can remember, I have wanted to build an organization whose culture embodied excellence. I imagined what would be possible for the people we serve if an entire team pulled in the same direction with excellence as its guide, caring enough to go the extra mile, refusing to settle for work we knew could be better, and taking seriously the trust placed in us by our participants and the community that supports us. 

But time and again, work came forward that fell short of that vision. A document would have errors, a presentation would have grainy images, a report would contain outdated information. To me, these results suggested that people were accepting “fine” or “good enough,” and I could not understand why my repeated calls for excellence were not changing that.

Around the management table, we agreed that a Charter of Excellence, a pledge that would say plainly what excellence meant, what it did not mean, and what we were striving for in service of our mission, would solve the problem. I expected it to take two hours, at most.

Instead, what was revealed was that while some people understood excellence as I did, others heard something entirely different. Where I heard an inspiring standard rooted in care and responsibility, they heard unreasonable demands, perfectionism, overwork and burnout.

So, we kept talking. Session after session, we debated what excellence was and was not, and what it would ask of people in different roles.

We agreed that it meant taking ownership to solve problems, giving and receiving honest feedback, and holding ourselves and each other accountable for the quality and timeliness of our work. We also made explicit commitments not to confuse excellence with perfection, not to fear failure, and not to work to the detriment of our health and relationships.

What I had thought was obvious required time, disagreement and patience before it could become something we shared.

With that understanding in place among our managers, we began working through the Charter with the whole staff, using training sessions and weekly discussions to explore one line at a time, and consider what it meant for the decisions people made in each of their roles.

My quick exercise had become months of work, followed by the painstaking effort of putting those commitments into hiring, performance reviews and a monthly peer recognition award, ‘The Force for Good’. We wanted the Charter to keep guiding choices long after everyone had finished discussing its words.

When we finally finished, we did what busy teams do – we breathed a sigh of relief and carried on with the work in front of us. There were no fireworks, no fanfare, no moment when we could say, “That’s it, we have achieved excellence!” We simply had to trust that the investment would pay off in time.

Four years later, we returned to the Charter with our current Management team, as we make a point of doing regularly with the values and commitments that guide our work. Keeping them alive takes the discipline to revisit what they ask of us, examine whether we are living up to them, and commit to them again.

About half the team had helped write the original Charter of Excellence and  half were new, so we explained why we had written it, describing a time when work regularly fell short and people did not take ownership of its quality.
One of our newer managers looked at me in disbelief. “I’m sorry, that was Ve’ahavta? What changed?”

Her question stopped me. I struggled to remember the last time I had seen the kind of work that used to frustrate me. The change had been so gradual that I had not noticed the problem disappearing, until someone who could not imagine it ever existing drew my attention to its absence.

What I could remember easily, though, were the countless times people who came through our doors told me that Ve’ahavta is different. That our staff team consistently go the extra mile and demonstrate how much they care about the people we serve. 

I also could easily remember that over these 4 years we have doubled the number of people served in our programs, reduced the cost per participant by 32% and more than doubled our employment outcome rate from 19% to 41%.

I would never attribute those results to our Charter alone. Many things had to go right, including the courage and persistence of our participants. But the quality of the organization they relied on, mattered too. All those hours spent defining excellence and building it into our everyday work were an investment in what people could expect from us, and what we could make possible for them.

Looking back, I understand how easy it would have been to rush through those conversations, especially when I thought we were discussing something that should have been obvious. There was always urgent work waiting, and another hour spent debating a word could feel like time taken away from our mission. But if that word was going to guide how we fulfilled our mission, then giving it that time was a responsibility of leadership.

I could not expect my conviction to become our culture without investing the effort into helping people understand what it asked of them and how to put it into practice. Those painstaking conversations were how we built something the whole team could carry forward.

Many of the people who worked through those questions have since left Ve’ahavta. But the commitments remain, carried forward in how we hire, give feedback, and recognize one another. 

I cannot say exactly when our culture changed, but that manager’s question helped me see what all those small, painstaking investments had quietly helped create: A culture I had once imagined had become the only Ve’ahavta she had ever known.

With gratitude,

Cari Kozierok,
CEO, Ve’ahavta