— Compass Health
Building One Culture Across 32 Locations
Client Overview
Compass Health is a community behavioral health organization that has served northwest Washington for nearly 120 years. Operating across 32 sites in five counties — from urban Everett to rural Whatcom to San Juan Island, accessible only by ferry — the organization serves over 12,000 individuals annually with a full continuum of services, from outpatient talk therapy to 24/7 crisis response.
With more than 700 employees across a geography that spans 80 miles, Compass Health faces a challenge familiar to any large, mission-driven organization: how do you build a single, cohesive culture when your people are spread across dozens of locations, serving vastly different communities, around the clock?
Why It Matters
In behavioral health, culture isn't just an internal concern — it directly affects the quality of care. When staff feel disconnected, unsupported, or unsure of how they're expected to treat one another, that shows up in patient outcomes and attrition. Compass Health's story demonstrates that even the most geographically complex, mission-driven organizations can build a shared behavioral foundation — and that doing so is one of the most important investments a leadership team can make.
The Challenge
When Compass Health's leadership undertook a close review of its mission, vision, and values, they quickly discovered a more complex picture than expected. The culture wasn't bad — but it was fractured. Ask one employee how they felt about working at Compass, and they'd tell you it was wonderful. Ask another, and they'd describe feeling disconnected and unsupported.
As Chief of Staff Missy Judd put it, Compass didn't have a company culture — it had a site-by-site, program-by-program culture. Decades of growth and acquisitions had produced an organization with deep mission commitment but no common behavioral framework tying it together.
"We didn't have a company culture, we had a site-by-site, program-by-program culture. There was a huge spectrum — from people who absolutely loved it here, to others who said there is none, or even a negative culture."
— Missy Judd, Chief of StaffThe clarifying moment came during an internal planning committee meeting. As the conversation got real about culture, the tension in the room exposed two very different perspectives: some felt the culture was being unfairly criticized, others felt that no amount of conversation was going to lead to real change. That divide was exactly the problem. The gap was wider than they had realized.
There was also a hard operational reality: high first-year attrition. In a field where pay often can't match commercial healthcare providers, culture is one of the primary levers for retaining people who are deeply committed to the mission. The cost of losing someone in their first year — only to start the cycle over again — was real and significant.
Finding CultureWise
The signal came from a Vistage peer group, where CultureWise was strongly recommended by comparable organizations and described as “the single most important thing we did” for culture. Rather than vetting a long list of vendors, the real decision was simpler: build it themselves or implement a model that already worked. The answer was clear.
The Rollout
With 32 sites spread across five counties — including locations reachable only by ferry and teams running 24/7 medical services — the logistics of rolling out CultureWise were genuinely complex. Compass Health completed 10 sessions in a single week, with 7 held in person and 3 virtual for teams that simply couldn't travel. Every session had one constant: CEO Tom Sebastian was there.
Tom has been with Compass for nearly 40 years. He started as a clinician. That history matters — it means his presence at every rollout session carried a different weight than the typical executive appearance. He wasn't just endorsing the initiative from a stage. He was one of them.
"Our CEO attended every single session. It would be really hard to give this 100% if he had not shown up the way he did."
— Brooklynn Horat, Clinical DirectorThe decision to complete all 10 sessions in a single week was deliberate. Compass Health knew that word would spread — and they used that to their advantage. Each day, people who had attended talked to people who hadn't yet. Energy built. By Friday's virtual session, it was the best-attended and most engaged of the week.
As Tom's Chief of Staff, Missy sat in on the first three sessions to observe how staff were receiving and engaging with the material. In one of them, an employee came in with arms crossed, announcing she wasn't sitting where she was told and wasn't volunteering for anything. By the end of that session, she was raising her hand.
Rapid Results
Within weeks of the rollout, the Fundamentals were already changing how people communicated. Staff were carrying their pocket cards, reordering them because they were wearing them out. The shared language was giving people a way to raise difficult issues — not just celebrate positive moments — with a framework that made hard conversations feel less personal and more productive.
"Taking the time to talk about the Fundamentals has brought more communication in the team and more vulnerability. We are able to learn from each other and grow and be better clinicians. It makes it more of an intentional conversation."
— Kristin Henderson, Care CoordinatorPerhaps the most telling early signal came from CEO Tom Sebastian himself. In his weekly Fundamentals communications, he chose not to write about work. He wrote about his marriage, his family, his personal life. His team — people who had worked alongside him for years — said they learned things about him they'd never known. That vulnerability shifted something in the organization's relationship with its own leadership.
Key Outcomes
- Shared language replacing siloed, site-by-site culture
- Staff using Fundamentals to navigate difficult conversations, not just celebrate wins
- CEO vulnerability in weekly communications, building new trust across the organization
- Energy and engagement visibly higher across leadership and frontline teams
- Teams that "least expected" to engage are now leading the conversations
Teams across the organization reported their daily huddles opening up in new ways. Managers were receiving forwarded emails from their teams saying, "this came up today, and I just wanted you to know how it went." In a field where the work is heavy and burnout is real, that kind of connection matters.
Tom Kozaczynski, Chief Advancement Officer, summarized what he was seeing across the organization:
"I feel like there's just a greater sense of energy than I've felt in some time. People feel energized and excited. And having this common playbook means people know — this is how we treat each other here."
— Tom Kozaczynski, Chief Advancement OfficerThe Culture You Need
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