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Lakefield Veterinary Group [LVG] is a family-owned veterinary hospital acquisition company that preserves the independence and local legacy of veterinarians looking to sell their practice. LVG's goal is to obtain successful hospitals without disrupting the unique characteristics that made them so successful.
A veterinary hospital is defined by personal care, a unique culture, and dedication to the community. This legacy matters more than anything. LVG is driven by its purpose and values to help veterinary hospitals create a living legacy.
Since Lakeview has many locations across the country, creating and sustaining connections throughout the organization can take time and effort. Many offices were experiencing a top-down management style, which left little room for collaboration and belonging.
DH's Culture Chief and Lead Coach|sulant Sunny Grosso, and Veronica [Vero] Fernández Mesias, Senior Coach|sulant and Happiness Inquisitor, guided the Lakefield team members on the initiative to enhance happiness by learning new concepts around well-being and resilience. This huge undertaking took place in four phases over many months.
The first step to a thriving culture change is to get the leadership on the same page to prioritize which challenges to address first. This is why Sunny and Vero kicked off their work with Lakefield with DH's Leadership Alignment Workshop. Through this session, Lakefield's leadership team could take inventory of the current state of the organizational culture so that they could align on the challenges and celebrations of their culture.
The second phase of Lakefield's culture journey was to help develop and design a Wellness Action Team. Vero and Sunny helped to establish a program for the Wellness Ambassador team so that they could build initiatives for ongoing sustainment. This was accomplished by immersing the group in the DH model and frameworks, which are built on the science of happiness and positive psychology necessary for a happy, sustainable culture with embedded purpose and values.
With the leadership on the same page and the Wellness Action Team in place, the next phase was to enhance the learnings. In this phase, Sunny and Vero guided the LVG team through the three separate workshops designed to analyze and refine their strategic approach, assign the organizational values to behaviors and gain alignment on individual and organizational purpose.
In the first workshop, MAP, they reviewed the results from their culture survey to uncover the gaps, find the wins, and seek out growth opportunities. Once the key systems were identified, the LVG team moved on to clarify and align with the Values to Behaviors Workshop. The goal of this workshop was to create specific and measurable behaviors.
With a plan and behaviors identified, the final step in this phase was to connect the individual and organizational purpose. In this workshop, using the Me, We, Community model, the LVG team was able to align personal higher purpose with the organizational higher purpose, which motivates on a deep, intrinsic level that is the defining force of their brand and culture.
DH's partnership with LVG is in its final phase as they roll out their All Employee Session. Their goal was to enhance a culture of well-being across all 60+ pet hospitals around the US.
This dedicated group of Lakefield team members spent two full weeks at the Kent office learning concepts surrounding resilience, well-being, and the tools to actively engage in enhancing overall happiness.
Sunny and Vero helped to graduate five internal trainers from Train The Trainer program, and they are now spreading the sessions to all LVG employees! They transferred our signature coach|sulant expertise to the LVG trainers so that they could teach in their own language to their own people.
"My experience with Sunny and Vero far exceeded my expectations and left me speechless, which is hard to do. Little did I know they were going take me to a whole other level of understanding [of ] who I am. This was by far one of the most intense training I've been through, yet an experience of understanding authentic happiness I'd do all over again. Their professionalism, dedication, intelligence, fun, down to earth personalities pushed me out of my comfort zone every day. My sincerest gratitude to Sunny Grosso and Veronica Fernandez."-Angie Cantu | Area Manager
The Lakefield teams are committed, with lots of heart and drive to jump right in and create an even more purposeful LVG where folks choose to flourish rather than languish—building the case, the commitment, the vision, and, importantly, the belief that they can enhance a culture that fosters well-being and resilience.
Lakefield is on a mission to enhance its company culture and, with the help of Delivering Happiness, just launched a new initiative, #FindYourHappy. This initiative began with a message from Lakefield CMO Dr. Mark Mcconnell and a mini-keynote delivered by Sunny. Next, the Wellness Action Group launched the #FindYourHappy BINGO challenge. The intent for this challenge was to continue building a connected culture by encouraging team members to share photos of them living out Lakefield's values.
LVG is well on its way to achieving its goal of creating positive workplace cultures driven by its values. They strive to enhance what they have built and deepen the culture and connection throughout their practices. Lakefield's team is driven to help all their employees with tools and resources to achieve well-being and happiness at work and in their lives.
