Core Values And Ethics That Helped Me Build Suburban Diagnostics

I strongly believe that our upbringing becomes our way of life. What we see around us and the values embedded within have a strong influence on how we shape our behaviour and actions.?

I had seen my parents strive hard to give my sister and me the life that we deserved. This must have played on my subconscious for I have never done anything merely for the sake of it.

I always attempted to put my heart into everything - my handwriting had to be the best in my class; academically I was always competing for the top position; I tried my best in sports even though it didn’t come naturally to me, playing for my school and junior college in football; I was good in arts and craft, although I never managed to learn a musical instrument with any degree of skill (I still retain an aspiration to learn the piano).?

As a result, behaviours like high quality, competitiveness, excellence, positivity and continuous improvement became a way of life for me.?

And so it was with my first entrepreneurial venture, Suburban Diagnostics India .?

Early days

I had never run an enterprise, let alone a lab. But I knew this - it had to be world class and professionally managed, it had to have a high degree of integrity and accountability, with a very high level of trust in the quality of our services.?

Maybe that is why I chose to name it Suburban Diagnostics and not Dr Arora’s lab, an entity that will last beyond me.?

The trip to USA, prior to starting the lab, only strengthened these beliefs. I guess wearing a tie and a long sleeved lab coat, with my name embossed, also made me look the part. This became my signature style in the lab and I passed this on to my team as well.?

As medical professionals, our first appearance always mattered. We maintained hygiene, quality and cleanliness - from the reception, to the lab, our pantry to the washrooms - everything had to be flawless.?

Hygiene has since become an OCD behaviour for me. The first thing I look at when meeting someone is their hand hygiene - how clean are their hands and nails. According to me, a well groomed and hygienic appearance of hands reflects the character of an individual.?

During my time in USA, I saw an ad that greatly influenced me. It helped me with our first tagline, ‘creating higher standards in healthcare’, one that completely reflected my thoughts and actions.

After 30 years in the industry, I can confidently say that we have played our part in doing exactly that, raising the standards of diagnostic testing in India.?

Even though every small aspect in Suburban had been thought-through with meticulousness, the mission, vision statements and core values were not a result of overnight brainstorming sessions. It was a result of countless experiences over the initial years and my personal value system that helped me articulate them over time.?

Through this newsletter, I would like to impart the way I carved my mission and vision statements and how the core values came into existence.?

Why must entrepreneurs create a mission, vision, and value statement for their companies??

When I started out in 1994, I did not know we needed a mission and vision for a company.?

While my personal principles played a role, I did not have anything in black and white for my organisation. There was nothing I had to show to my team members, channel partners, and patients about what Suburban Diagnostics stood for. What showed was our work ethics.

Articulating our vision, mission and values was a deliberate process, that was worth every bit of time and effort we put into it.?

Why do we need to articulate a vision, mission and values??

I learnt over time that vision, mission, and values play a critical role in building and sustaining an organisation. These elements provide a foundation for organisational identity, direction and culture.

Vision

A vision statement outlines the future aspirations of the organisation - what it hopes to achieve or become.

Role of a vision:?

• Inspiration: A compelling vision can inspire and motivate employees, customers, and stakeholders by giving them a clear picture of what the organisation aims to achieve.
• Direction: It provides a long-term focus and direction for the organisation, helping to guide strategic planning and decision-making.?
• Alignment: When the vision is well-communicated, it aligns all members of the organisation towards a common goal, fostering a sense of unity and purpose.

Mission

The mission statement defines the organisation’s core purpose - why it exists and what it does to achieve its vision.

Role of a mission statement:?

• Clarity of Purpose: It clarifies the organisation’s primary objectives, target audience, and key activities, ensuring that everyone understands the purpose and goals.
• Decision-Making Framework: The mission serves as a touchstone for decision-making, ensuring that actions and initiatives align with the organisation’s core purpose.
• Communication: It communicates the organisation’s purpose to external stakeholders, helping to build trust and understanding.

Values

Values are the core principles and beliefs that guide the behaviour and decision-making processes within the organisation.

Role of values:?

• Cultural Foundation: Values form the bedrock of organisational culture, influencing how employees interact, make decisions, and approach their work.
• Behavioural Guide: They guide the conduct of employees, ensuring consistent behaviour that aligns with the organisation’s goals and ethical standards.
• Brand Identity: Values help shape the organisation’s brand identity, influencing how it is perceived by customers, partners, and the broader community.

Combined Impact

• Strategic Alignment: Together, the vision, mission, and values align the organisation’s strategic initiatives, ensuring that all efforts contribute to the overarching goals.
• Employee Engagement: When employees resonate with the organisation’s vision, mission, and values, they are more likely to be engaged, motivated, and committed.
• Resilience: A strong foundation of vision, mission, and values can help an organisation navigate challenges, adapt to change, and maintain focus on its long-term goals.

I have found the vision, mission, and values to be not just statements on a website or in a company handbook. They are essential tools that shape an organisation’s identity, culture, and strategy, ultimately driving its success.

I have seen this play out time and time again. Assessing our values forms a key component of the appraisal process, so that it is actually practised, measured and appreciated.??

The first HR team of Prashant Bhaskar and Maanoj Shah from PlugHR, our outsourced HR partners, helped me focus my thoughts and write my vision, mission, and value statements for Suburban. We locked ourselves in my house in Khandala for 3 days, nearly 20 years ago, and coined the terms that are integral to Suburban even today.?

They patiently asked the right questions, questioned my answers that eventually led to the clarity we see across Suburban Diagnostics.?

- What is it that you are trying to do? I am trying to do testing that will impact people's lives.?

- What does that mean by that? Having complete reports, correct reports, on-time reports.?

- How do you do that? By having passion, enthusiasm, striving for zero errors, by building great relationships.?

Crafting our vision

While crafting the vision statement, I had clarity of what we wanted to chase - excellence, leading to admiration. Excellence in what we do and how it impacts the people around us. We aspired to become the most admired lab in the world. This vision is what drove us every day.?

Our vision statement is?-

To be the most admired diagnostics company that is medically relevant and impacting health outcomes to unburden healthcare.?

This vision brought purpose - of driving preference in our customers, by being accessible and reliable, and delivering exceptional customer service (what I called a “wow” experience!).?

Think about whom we admire - Mother Teresa, Mahatma Gandhi, Albert Einstein, B R Ambedkar, Satya Nadella, Sundar Pichai, Roger Federer, Sachin Tendulkar, JRD Tata, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, etc…

These are the people who motivate us to try and become better. We admire them for their values, their vision, and their ethics. Everything we did was driven by this.??

I will share one example, from the numerous, that I have - a patient has abnormally high potassium levels in her blood, a potentially life threatening condition. After verification on a fresh sample, we insisted that her husband take her to the hospital at that very moment (11 am), even though she was absolutely asymptomatic. Fortunately, he heeded to our advice. On reaching the hospital, his wife collapsed (raised potassium can result in complications of the heart). Since she was in the hospital, she was rushed to the ICU and revived. She continues to live a healthy life, 15 years after that incident.?

This is a virtue instilled in every Suburbanite and projected in every patient interaction.?

How we crafted our mission statement.?

Diagnostics is a dependent branch of medicine, majorly driven by tests recommended by a doctor.?

• Building credibility with the medical fraternity became the first step. Engaging with doctors to demonstrate our capabilities, quality standards and range of tests became an essential component for our team.?
• This relationship would drive our first time “testing” users to our centres.?
• Once they came to our centre, we ensured a “WOW” experience, by consistently giving a correct report, a complete report and an on time report.?
• Based on the experience, testing users got converted to “Live Healthy” users (repeat customers), ones that came on their own, proactively for preventing screening.?

This became the waterfall of our mission statement, something that each member of the team could adopt and implement.

This process also helped move patients from Illness to Wellness.?

It dawned upon me very early in my journey that healthcare is intimidating. So what can we do to reduce the intimidation??

First aspect is - Accessibility and Care?

The way we dress, present ourselves, our hygiene, soft skills, and empathy all constitute the element of care.?

Our front office is called the ‘STAR Desk”, STAR standing for ‘Service Transaction And Relationship’. While Service and Transaction is what is expected, how can we go a step ahead to also build relationships.?

Acknowledging the presence of a patient or customer became the first step in reducing anxiety. No one wants to visit a healthcare facility, everyone has to. Understanding and acknowledging this aspect helped reduce the anxiety by 50% - “we know why you are here and we are here to take care of your needs” - this is the feeling we aspired to deliver with each and every customer interaction.

How can we convert the has to to a want to was the question I posed to the team every day??

For example, even on a Sunday we ensured that all our labs are accessible to people and that there is a Pathologist available. We mentioned on our website you can access a Pathologist 9 am to 9 pm every day because, for me, every report had to be verified and signed only by a Pathologist.?

Second aspect is - Precision?

Precision anchors the quality of our work. We always ensured that our quality of reports was best in class, always striving for zero error. A dear friend of mine, a fellow Pathologist from Bangalore, explained quality in simple terms - Quality is absence of error.?

Higher the error - lower is the quality?

Lower the error - higher is the quality?

While quality can be ambiguous and difficult to measure, errors are more objective and can easily be measured. By quantifying the errors, indirectly we are quantifying our quality.?

Quality also has two qualifiers - accuracy and consistency. Accuracy reflects how close we are to the correct value while consistency reflects the repeatability of our processes and results. We have to be both accurate and consistent to become reliable.?

This translated into our eventual tagline - Precision and Care.?

All the above steps had to be driven by creating a strong value system within the organisation.?

How did I write the values for Suburban??

The endless Q & A with Prashant and Manoj helped peel the onion from my thinking, resulting in the core values so dear to me.?

Exceed the brief?

How do we go from ordinary to extraordinary? But doing a little bit “extra.”?

Everybody has a ”brief” of what is needed to run a business or a project. But when we put in that extra effort to go from ordinary to extraordinary - that is when we exceed the brief. This is the journey from customer satisfaction to customer delight, what everyone in Suburban is imbibed with.?

And you can only exceed the brief when you are Passionate about the work you do.?

Passion and enthusiasm?

What makes us get out of bed every morning - the opportunity to make a difference. This is the fuel needed in everything that we do, the fuel to exceed customer expectations, the fuel to drive excellence with empathy, day after day, with each and every customer.?

Build great relationships and show genuine care

Rather than building transactional relationships, build a genuine one. A good surgeon is one who knows when not to operate. Similarly, a good lab is one that will tell you when to do a test and when not to do one. When we prioritise the health and wellness of our customers and community, we are building genuine relationships.?

Genuine care comes from being proactive - reach out to the customer rather than the customer escalating it to you. Ensure the customer gets what they came for and what was committed, no matter what.?

Attention to detail - strive towards zero error?

Complete report. Correct report. On-time report - this was the epitome of every report that went out from Suburban.?

70% of medical decisions are based on diagnostic results - the responsibility to ensure diligence across every step is paramount in guiding medical outcomes.?

Transparent communication, multiple checkpoints, and processes helped us improve our results. We made a checklist of everything - grooming requirements, hand hygiene, lab procedures, quality checks, pending reports, etc.?

Working in a lab is like a boxing match - if we drop our guard, we get hit. So remaining alert and on our toes is the only way to operate.?

It takes 30 years to build a reputation, but takes 30 seconds to lose it.?

Innovate and evolve?

I always say - evolve or you will dissolve.?

One of our core values is to constantly improve ourselves and our service offerings. That means constantly upgrading our processes and our technology with world class equipment, offering a growing range of highly specialised tests to deliver accurate reports.?

We made this our benchmark while growing Suburban.?

In a highly competitive environment, the ability to evolve helps to stay ahead.?

Lead by example

I have always believed in leading by example - set the benchmark you want the team to follow. If you want the team to be punctual, the leadership must always be before time. If you want the team to be well groomed, the leadership must set the standards. And don’t compromise on your ethics.?

As a leader, everyone is looking at you, so ensure you set the best example.?

Command respect by your actions, don’t demand it with your position. Build more leaders and not followers.?

And this is just the beginning?

It has been 30 years since I started Suburban, but the lessons and values imbibed in everyone remain. It is a matter of pride when customers call me to appreciate the team and their work. This is the best reward a founder could hope for.?

I carry the same set of values to my current organisation, Shubhan Ventures .?

A strong foundation laid with the right principles, core values, and excellent ethics paves the way for success.?