Adizes 2019 Company of The Year - Maxim Healthcare Services

Maxim Healthcare Services is a privately held company, providing a comprehensive suite of home healthcare, behavioral care, healthcare staffing, and personal caregiving services. They are headquartered in Columbia, Maryland, USA. Maxim has seen a drastic improvement in performance while deploying the Adizes methodology and as a result, is being recognized as the 2019 Adizes Company of the Year.

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Here is their story:

Maxim first engaged with the Adizes Institute in 2016 when it was trying to break through a difficult period caused by rapid growth. There was a clear understanding within the organization for the need for healthy control systems. The organization's culture had low levels of mutual trust and respect along with silos and internal conflicts. Maxim’s CEO, who had prior experience with Adizes at a previous organization, was tasked with successfully moving the company forward.

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‍Pavel Golenchenko and Ken Lane, both Adizes Associates, started working with Maxim in June of 2016 with a Synergetic Organizational Diagnosis, (Syndag™). It was during that event that the organization was diagnosed as being in the Adolescence phase of the corporate lifecycle with some signs of premature aging. A need to take drastic actions to reverse subpar performance and to make certain structural changes resulted from the Syndag™.

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To facilitate these needed changes, the Adizes program was deployed. Early efforts were made to reinvigorate sales efforts. Additionally, an emphasis was placed on maintaining quality by introducing innovative, healthy systems. Through these efforts, Maxim was able to maintain the balance between quality and compliance, as well as operational and clinical excellence. As those changes started to show results, a Mission Action Plan was defined by the management team and this was followed by a restructuring that supported the Mission Action Plan. The new structure increased efficiencies by reducing wasted resources, creating individual accountability systems as well as opportunities for bottom-up information flow and, at the same time, addressing many of the cultural issues that had been plaguing Maxim.

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In October 2017, after the restructuring had been completed, Rob Gehman (SVP of Continuous Improvement) and Micah Ensor (Director of Continuous Improvement) were trained as Adizes In-Company Integrators and started to cascade the Adizes Methodology across the highly geographically dispersed organization. Rob and Micah had early successes with various initiatives including some work they did with one of Maxim’s local field offices, which had been underperforming for the previous three years. With Rob and Micah’s support utilizing the Adizes methodology, the local field office quickly turned itself around. Revenues grew, waste was reduced and profitability goals, which had been set earlier in the year, were far exceeded. Additionally, the culture of the office changed which resulted in a reduction of undesirable employee turnover from 50% a year to nearly zero.

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After their success with the local field office, Rob and Micah were in high demand by the organization and charged with various other more complex, more conflictual tasks that required integrating people from across functions and departments in the organizational structure. These tasks included revamping the company’s internal investigation process, addressing regulatory requirements in new markets which were difficult to adapt to and hampering development, redeveloping the entire employee lifecycle including how new employees were being on-boarded, trained, career progression and so on, among many other initiatives.

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With Rob and Micah’s recognizable successes, the Adizes Methodology became accepted by both the top management and field personnel within Maxim. As such, in 2019, over 1,200 employees were given training in Adizes and how to utilize the methodology to run effective meetings.

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Between June 2016, when the methodology was first introduced, to January of 2019, when Adizes became fully integrated into Maxim’s culture, the organization went from financial losses to a 30-year best performance in 2019.

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We congratulate Maxim Healthcare Services and all those involved for its success in utilizing the Adizes Methodology to achieve these drastic results and hereby announce that it will be receiving the 2019 Company of the Year award on January 13th, during our annual global convention in Bangkok, Thailand.