Define Your Company Culture or it’ll Be Defined for You

When Sara McVey, CEO of Sequoia Senior Living, took the Senior Living Innovation Forum stage in Carlsbad, CA, she leaned into what several attendees in the room were likely feeling. Many had flown in from far away, maybe slept poorly the night before. But they showed up to see McVey speak.

That, she noted, is exactly what you ask of your team members every day: they arrive after call-offs and adversity and still rise to meet residents’ needs. It was a fitting opening for a talk about culture, which she argued lives not in grand gestures but in the taken-for-granted "micro moments."

McVey traced her own thoughts on the subject back to her teenage days in Wisconsin, when she worked at a Dairy Queen. The family owners of the place handed the young workers the keys — literally — to open and close the restaurant. Treat a 16-year-old like they matter, she learned, and they'll work any shift for you. It was a lesson that stuck with her.

A company’s culture, she said, exists by either design or default.

That belief was tested when she joined Sequoia in 2019, just after a rebrand and with the pandemic arriving mere months later. Rather than postpone culture work, she used the upheaval as an opportunity to give people something to believe in.

The company’s namesake became the anchor: some of the largest trees in the world, sequoias never stop growing, can withstand fire and earthquakes, and send out roots that connect with other trees to form a tight-knit community that makes for a strong foundation.

"Never Stop Growing" became the company’s mantra.

To define values, Sequoia moved into a company culture which asked every team member three questions: what are your own values, what do you think about the current culture, and what is your ideal company culture going forward. McVey didn’t know what to expect, but was rewarded with 94% participation, sustained for three years. Simplicity and inclusion made it stick.

On turnover, she reframed the question from why people leave to why they stay. People don't quit because the work is challenging — they know that already. 
"People don't leave because the work is hard. They leave because of the emotional weight (of) not feeling seen, heard, understood, recognized, celebrated,” she said. “All of the things that are in our control."

A central metaphor she made: leaders are thermostats, not thermometers. As "emotional architects," McVey said, leaders set the temperature in every hallway, every resident’s room, every event at a facility. That means leading with love and the courage to have the hard conversations that "nice" organizations avoid, like the well-liked director everyone tiptoed around for years. She urged three loves: loving what you do, who you do it with, and who you do it for.

McVey closed by asking everyone in the room to stand up, look to the person beside them, and ask for an embrace. It landed her point: a hug, like culture, says I see you, you matter. Great organizations need both rational vigor and empathy-centered focus to succeed, she said.

“Lead with your head and you're well-run. Lead with your heart and you have loving chaos. You need both to be truly unstoppable," she said.  "A hug says: I see you, you matter, let's connect. And that is the business we're in.