My leadership style has always been: respect for employee colleagues, focus on the external customer, passion for exemplary service, focus on mission, community outreach, and implement your vision, then the numbers will take care of themselves. This has worked very successfully at Northeast Delta Dental, if you track our significant growth in market share, reserves and number of people who have our dental insurance, our high retention of customers, and the very high satisfaction rates of our participating dentists with whom we have contracts. On the latter, in a very recent survey of our participating dentists in Maine, NH and Vermont, 99.6% of dental offices rated us Excellent, Very Good or Good (the response rate to our survey was an incredible 30% btw).
The enterprise does have to craft great numbers in order to have credibility with its stakeholders and board of directors; when you craft the great numbers, this enables you to have a great impact with the community, which in turn leads to new business and helps retain existing business. This is a beautiful cycle and a great business model, one that really works, and one that enables corporate social responsibility, but the enterprise does have to take a longer view.
Tom Raffio, President & CEO of Northeast Delta Dental
